[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Betelgeuse97]

Also, I think I found a bug with corrupted save when boarding ships. It seems like this bug has been here since beta, though I don't know what causes my save to be corrupted. I've seen this occur only with boarding. (See X04.sav for the corrupted save.)

This one is problematic, as I cannot debug anything from a corrupted savegame. I would only able to fix it if you manage to find what exactly causes the corruption, and have a savegame just before it happens.

I've been unable to trace it after boarding tens of ships. Each time this occurresd, I reloaded to a previous save and somehow the next saves after weren't corrupted. I know only that it has something to do with the boarding process, but would need help from others willing to board ships.

(For those who are new to boarding (hopefully to help debug lol) or need help with leveling up your first 4 marines before getting tanky M7s, here's a tip. Make a wing of 4 strong M3s and optionally put them in a TM. Put 1 marine in each M3 and micro them IS. Park them near a pirate base or at a gate leading to a sector containing a pirate base. Let them kill any M3 that comes out for easy XP. A little harder but faster method is taking combat missions.)

[Hector0x]

(For those who are new to boarding (hopefully to help debug lol) or need help with leveling up your first 4 marines before getting tanky M7s, here's a tip. Make a wing of 4 strong M3s and optionally put them in a TM. Put 1 marine in each M3 and micro them IS. Park them near a pirate base or at a gate leading to a sector containing a pirate base. Let them kill any M3 that comes out for easy XP. A little harder but faster method is taking combat missions.)

Let me add this to the micro part:
You can use Quick Access from your player console to create a custom hotkey. Set it to "flee" for your current target. This way you can easily retreat individual ships during combat. Select a fighter once shields drop low and hit your new hotkey. He will disengage and your marine pilot will survive to level up. You can take down an M6 with just 5 M3 without taking losses.

Add all marine piloted fighters to quick access group alpha and create more custom hotkeys for attacking, moving and protecting you. You will never have to open up any command console and controlling these ships gets very smooth and comfortable.


I'm going to upload a video guide in the future but its way down the road.

[4square425]

You're the pony guy?

I'm the pony guy, lol.

[Hector0x]

[*]Ships are built faster (for both you and the AI).

I spent some time with the new version and also kept an eye on NPC ship building before and after the version change (showing AI outposts with the debug option).

During 3.0, very healthy and strong factions didn't have any resource bottleneck at all. Instead they only got bottlenecked by the time it took to produce ships. Meaning they piled up ship parts and didn't consume them fast enough. Which undermined the "true economy" at least a tiny bit.

Now after a couple hours with 3.1 even the strongest factions have at least one stalled production project due to lack of resources. So especially larger factions seem to replace ships faster now. Some resource is always required. And as soon as it rolls in, it's getting used up for some ship project.

Intercepted freight hauls have true consequences.
Just realized that this has always been Egosofts favourite advertisement line. Back then it was just a bold exaggeration.


So i think this was a great change. But in relation the laser production now always seems to take longer than building the ship. (the project size is always bigger) Anyone else observing this?
Seems like you can do with very few shipyard outposts now. And using the highest population sectors for laser production is probably a good idea.

[4square425]

I've also seen the ships that I'm building with a template wait for lasers. I've been pre-building useful stocks of lasers and shields, then moving them to my shipyards to help with that.
It is nice though, to have a space game where you can raid supply lines and have it make an actual impact.

[Joubarbe]

You're the pony guy?

I'm the pony guy, lol.

Thanks for your Let's Play series!

[4square425]

You're welcome, it's fun to show off the mod, both with my triumphs and embarrassing failures alike.

[azxcvbnm321]

Can veterans give me some advice on how to fight the OCV? They can destroy my M7 ships in a few seconds and my M2 Ocelots in several dozen seconds. I'm barely able to scratch the shields of an OCV in return. I'm having trouble micromanaging my fleets, should M2's be in a different fleet from M7's and so on? I'm bringing 7 M2's, 16 M7's, 8 M6's, and 20 or so M3's against OCV 5 M2's 7 M7's, and a bunch of assorted M6's but my ships get destroyed before being able to do enough damage to win the fight. Advice would be appreciated since if they keep on spawning, then there's no way I can produce ships fast enough to match due to the loss rates.

[Joubarbe]

OCV spawns a new wave only if the previous one has been destroyed, except if the following line in t\9972 has been changed:

Code: Select all

<t id="218">1</t> <!-- OCV only spawns a new wave if the previous one has been totally destroyed. 0 drastically increases difficulty. (default: 1) -->

I would recommend waiting for other factions to help if you have trouble, and seriously increase your ship production.

[Hector0x]

there's no way I can produce ships fast enough to match due to the loss rates.

If you got the resources spread them to more outposts. You can build ships anywhere.

Garbage quality works wonders if you don't have enough resources.

[Edna]

Can veterans give me some advice on how to fight the OCV? They can destroy my M7 ships in a few seconds and my M2 Ocelots in several dozen seconds. I'm barely able to scratch the shields of an OCV in return. I'm having trouble micromanaging my fleets, should M2's be in a different fleet from M7's and so on? I'm bringing 7 M2's, 16 M7's, 8 M6's, and 20 or so M3's against OCV 5 M2's 7 M7's, and a bunch of assorted M6's but my ships get destroyed before being able to do enough damage to win the fight. Advice would be appreciated since if they keep on spawning, then there's no way I can produce ships fast enough to match due to the loss rates.

From what I can tell, the OCV will require you to find out how both IS and OOS combat works best with what you have in Mayhem 3. Swarming them seemed most effective to me, meaning I recommend to focus on the production of shieldless M4s with whatever laser you can afford producing en masse or trying to find out which M3 can actually tank more than one shot of an OCV corvette - I felt like it was better not wasting crystals on shields on tanky M3s and instead only place them on M3s with a very slim profile like the Mamba. If they can dodge most of the shots, the shields matter way more than on easy-to-hit M3s like the Barracuda or Nova. You can support your fleet with garbage-quality Kestrels and other slim profile M5s - as long as it spreads the very powerful OCV weapon output on as many targets as possible, your damage dealers will have more time to unload on the capitals. And with that I mean your M4s, M3s and anything bigger that you can afford throwing into the battle. I recommed against using M6s and M8s since they are slow and easy to hit, without being able to tank much.

In terms of capital ships: AI-controlled ships profit more from high-frequency weapons with better accuracy. I usually praise the medium Phased Array Laser Cannon for that job as it has quite good DPS, accuracy and refire while being able to deal with snubs as much as with caps. The Acinonyx is a good choice despite the rather big profile, however on M7s, it's not that much of a topic anymore. The OCV will hit a Tiger just as easily as an Acinonyx. Keep in mind, though, that you definitely will have losses with M7s. On the other hand, whenever you build a ship for combat, it's destined to die at some point, right?

M2s are a different topic. I still think the Ocelote is the best dreadnought for mass-production since it is the cheapest while also being pretty omnipotent in terms of weapon diversity. Give it 72 Phased Array Laser Cannons if you don't pilot it yourself. If you pilot it yourself, you can afford giving it the very heavy weaponry like Incendiary Bomb Launchers or the heaviest guns it can carry. Keep in mind that AI-controlled ships never fire at anything further away than 10km, meaning that a weapon with more range than that won't be able to excel in terms of range. A player-controlled Ocelore however can make use of that, since you can take control of your turrets by switching through the turret views with F1. That way you can sit out of range of the OCV and blind-fire at them like a sniper. Or artillery.

If you want to send in M2 Dreadnoughts, use the Argon Excalibur or the Paranid Cyclops. They are expensive, yes, but they can tank a whole lot more than the Ocelote, the Megalodon or the joke that is the Teladi Dreadnought. My experiences with the Terran M2s are rather disappointing as I do not think the weapons they use are as useful as the Phased Array Laser Cannon or Incendiary Bomb Launchers. The Tobusaku looks awesome, though.

If you want to try it with OOS combat - which is what I probably end up doing mostly, given that the OCV require you to send a shitload of ships into a sector and I do like the game with more than one frame per second - keep in mind that range, laser energy and profile do not matter. That means, go for a fleet with the best lasers and best shields on each ship. Swarming works in OOS, too, however in a different way as in IS combat. It usually feels like OOS combat picks targets randomly (while in IS, it's a distance matter) given that in OOS combat, all combatants are in the same spot. It could pick an M2 just as likely as an M5. Thus, spam M5s.

Although, that's just my perception of things. Maybe Hector made different observations on how to fight the OCV.


One last thing: Keep in mind you can prepare your fleet using the Dry Dock perk of Outposts, meaning you can save up your assets without maintenance costs. It's a game-changer in the OCV stage.

[dunderhead327]

Keep in mind, though, that you definitely will have losses with M7s. On the other hand, whenever you build a ship for combat, it's destined to die at some point, right?

Yep. "If you can't afford to lose a ship, you can't afford to use the ship."

[Hector0x]

Maybe Hector made different observations on how to fight the OCV.

Distracting the OCV with swarms of M4 sounds like the tactic i would resort to if nothing else helps anymore. If they can one-shot everything, then give them lots of expendable stuff to shoot on. Outproduce their rate of fire and send the cheapest crap in first

Believe it or not, but i actually don't have any OCV combat experience yet
I reached the OCV stage back in beta 2. Had to stop playing due to incoming new features with an incompatible patch.

Back then i mostly observed and just learned that wiping a sector usually takes the OCV very long, because they have to destroy these far away Ore mines. It was long enough so that i could stay clear and move my fleets around the dangerous area. (standart galaxy, could be way harder on shattered)
Still, they are 10 times more terrifying than in LU since you don't know for sure which sector they will wreck next. It takes them hours for sure, but unlike LU you can't predict when they will reach your territory.
OCV ship speed should certainly prove to be a good balancing handle if their expansion rate needs further tweaking in the future. But i can't say anything about that yet.

Right now in my current game i've just put the Yaki quest on hold to have time to enjoy the faction wars.
No Xenon or pirate spawns. Everyone uses resources. Less survival feeling and more sneaky turf war. Keep an eye on strong NPC fleets. If most of them are occupied at different frontlines, you can Blitzkrieg to snatch some poorly defended sectors, even from a very strong faction if you play your cards right.
6h later, a big wave of counterinvasions starts to roll over you. Ship losses pile up. You're retreating a bit. Only defending the more valuable sectors. Then you finally loose a sector and sign a truce.

That's the point when you realize "Hey this was all worth it! I lost an entire fleet but in exchange i got two sectors out of it!" You rebuild some factories, develop the new territory with more industry. Then another chance arises to bully some poor faction for your opportunistic gain. Of course the large faction you just backstabbed previously joins in and fights in the sector right next to you.
Does it make sense? Only partly. Do i highly recommend messing with factions?
You can't loose too much. The truce after loosing a sector can always save you from further invasions if anything goes wrong. And your reputation gets reset to 0 now. In contrast to LU, high reputation in Mayhem 3 doesn't unlock anything like more powerful weapons or new ships (afaik). The only important question is if your reputation is negative or not. Grinding rep gets totally pointless after some time because you can loose all of it from just one unfortunate event:

Let's say you're allied with the Split and hostile to Teladi. Eventually one of your ships will destroy a Teladi ship in Split space at a time both factions are in an alliance. One thing leads to another. The Split police gets mad. Your ships defend themselves. Then a Split Task Force goes on a retaliation mission to avenge the cops (high reputation does not prevent it). With all these dynamic sandbox events it can escalate quickly and reputation can get trashed very fast. It should be renamed to "the amount of sh*t you can get away with, until they want to cut you down to size again"


I feel there could be another quest trigger between the Yaki and the OCV phase. To make it more obvious that you are transitioning to the OCV

Spoiler

Show

like involving the player with this wierd professor and the opening of the Maelstrom. Could be sold to the player as a superweapon he wants to unleash on a faction. You could even let the player select a target sector and promise him that it will nuke all stations and make the sector neutral again (just to troll him). Then the experiment always goes wrong and the quest continues.

It's probably intended that the OCV surprises the player. And maybe the OCV is supposed to accompany you for most of the playthrough. But from my point of view the game could also well be designed so that the player never has to activate the OCV at all if he doesn't feel like it. I'm not in the mood for them right now and i know how to prevent them forever. A new player won't know this. Right now the Yaki quest lures you into the OCV stage a bit. And you don't seem to be able to mess around with Yaki without also getting OCV.

In my first game i only ever dealt with pirates/xenon and then almost immediatly the OCV. I know pirates were OP and it all got rebalanced in many patches since then. But my current game is the first time the factions can be the star of the show. And having no enemies which are spawning from thin air at all feels so much better so far. You know what would be cool? A gamestart after the Xenon stage. Player gets 8 sectors mostly in the same area. Full of factories from the usual factory template for the NPC's. Starting resources for everything. Three fleets, sized like your usual NPC task force each lead by an M7. No pirates, no Xenon, no enemies. But also almost no empty sectors left.

One last thing: Keep in mind you can prepare your fleet using the Dry Dock perk of Outposts, meaning you can save up your assets without maintenance costs. It's a game-changer in the OCV stage.

When i first read about this new perk i thought that it is a plain cheat and shouldn't be in the game. I also didn't feel the need to choose it yet (on day 4 with 21 sectors, 23 million credits. And i build almost all my military ships only with flawed or mediocre quality and all M1/M2 at garbage level with the maintenance kit)
But as you say, the Dry Dock is probably required for the massive fleets you need for the OCV. I just didn't reach that far in any playthrough yet.

[Hairless-Ape]

I was trying to get the standard "wingmen attack target" command and can't seem to get it to do anything. It just says "not available" when I try.
I've assigned myself as fleet leader and added fleet members.
I've tried a Wing with wing members.

Something special I need to do, or is this command not available?

Thanks.

[azxcvbnm321]

Thanks for all the generous replies. I am using the Ocelot M2 with 22GJ of shields and armed with 48 Photon Array Cannons and 24 Phased Array Laser Cannons. My M7's are Acinonyx with Phased Array Laser Cannons and a few Gamma Cannons on the back. My M6's are the fastest M6's in the game, forgot what they are called but it's the prototype version and have 200+ speed. I have lots of Nova Raiders (PAC) and Kea Enhanced (Electro-magnetic cannon) mostly to handle other M3-M5's and to keep those from ganging up on my bigger ships. I'm incredulous that M4 spam could be effective against OCV, since even 9 M3's can't destroy a single pirate M6. My strategy is to go big and produce lots of M2's, but I can do only one at a time due to resource limitations and because of the docking limits of 4 huge ships per outpost, I'm making M6's and M3's mostly. I already have 17 M7 Acinonyx. I have a total of 3 shipyards.

I also rushed through the Yaki plotline somewhat because that part doesn't help the player at all. The Yaki outposts spawn pirates so they have to be far away from my own outposts, and regardless the pirates are a pain. I've had to blacklist around 1/5th of the map due to pirate spawns. Escorts of less than M6's won't work since they'll run into a pirate M6 eventually and I don't want to use my M6's as escorts for traders. This brings me to another dilemma faced by the player (a good one unlike the Yaki plotline). I would have attacked the Argon which have the most sectors, but they are also my largest trading partner and I was afraid of losing the income from trade I get from them. So I attacked the Boron, the 2nd largest at that time and took 6 sectors from them (3 of them for the Yaki). I tried to offer a dummy sector, a sector with just one outpost completely undefended so that I could make peace with the Boron and trade with them again, but they never attacked the outpost. Maybe I wrecked their military, but they are also in other wars so my strategy failed and I'm still at war with the Boron even as I try to fend off the OCV. I don't like the Yaki plotline because it's counter-intuitive. Helping the Yaki only hurts the player because it unleashes the pirates which wreck havok on tradelines. I like the fact that starting a war with a faction cuts of trade, that presents the player with a tough choice. Attack a faction to gain more territory, but can the player survive without the trade with that faction? There really isn't a benefit to helping the Yaki though, only negatives.

Finally, I'm encountering a "bug" with M2's when I order them to move to another sector. When I order M2's to move to a sector, or move through a gate, sometimes they'll move away from that gate to the point where they are hundreds of KM away and would keep on going if I didn't issue stop orders. I'll issue the command to move either through the "all ships in sector" command or have a fleet leader move so that the fleet can follow, but this doesn't work. I think it has something to do with the collision avoidance maybe. Some or most of the M2's end up moving away from where they are supposed to go and like I said, end up hundreds of KM away from the gate where they are supposed to go. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but if I can't control my ships quickly or effectively, then I have no chance of doing well in the game. This seems to happen less if I'm out of sector, but any tips would be appreciated. Thanks to everyone.

[Jonzac]

Another problem...

I don't think its a bug, however, I have the Learn to Jump mission....had it for a long while and now that I want to finish it the station the agent was on no longer exists. Soooooooo, how would I restart the mission or get another destination?

I have a save file if someone needs it and tells me where to upload at.

*Edit*

Never mind. After completing the next mission (Boarding) the Learn to Jump reset itself.

[Jonzac]

OK. Idiot here. finished the Learn to Jump mission in my VERY FULL Susanowa Prototype. Picked the Jumpdrive Prototype.

any idea how to use it?

I can't find a hotkey for it, not in my cargo space. Looked in Encyclopedia.

I would love some help here.

[4square425]

Check your Interface options and set a hotkey.

[dunderhead327]

My M6's are the fastest M6's in the game, forgot what they are called but it's the prototype version and have 200+ speed.

Have you considered trying a different M6? Do you need that much speed? I like the Tempestine - yes, it's bigger and slower than your Heavy Centaur Prototype, but still top 6 in each, and it costs less than 60% of the HCP. The one downside is the weaker shields, but no other M6 mounts more guns, including 12 PALCs in the nose (14 if you count the side turrets which can bear forwards) - what's not to like? Plus it's a Split ship, so you can get it in any colour you like

[Edna]

When i first read about this new perk i thought that it is a plain cheat and shouldn't be in the game. I also didn't feel the need to choose it yet (on day 4 with 21 sectors, 23 million credits. And i build almost all my military ships only with flawed or mediocre quality and all M1/M2 at garbage level with the maintenance kit)
But as you say, the Dry Dock is probably required for the massive fleets you need for the OCV. I just didn't reach that far in any playthrough yet.

That was my first thought, too, but I think there are some things to keep in mind. Right now as it is, the perk is very useful during every stage of the game, which is always good. Money is super helpful in the early stages of the game, even though it is not hard to get money (once you know how Mayhem 3 works, with the economy and how traders are to be set up) and still very nice to have in the late game, since some Favor Points might come in handy during faction wars, or simply to be able to have a good amount of cash in case you end up having less regular income than you have regular maintenance.

My first idea was to limit the fighter/corvette slots on Outposts. Let's say to 30 fighter/corvette slots. By the time you are required to have more than 30 fighters/corvettes, you are very likely to have more than one Outpost with spare perk points, meaning you'd have more Outposts that could use the Dry Dock perk. What would be the consequences of that? You'd end up spreading your fighters all over your empire, which makes managing them an absolute pain in the [Teladi]. So, as it is, I believe the perk is perfectly fine, as you will only really use it to the fullest when the dire times are coming, meaning the OCV Invasions. Since Outposts can only service four capital ships, I believe that is the actual point of balancing this perk, since it's a huge difference whether you have to pay 4*10.000 Credits every ten minutes (or 240.000 Credits per hour), no matter what stage you are in right now.

One could say that that contradicts my point about Outpost docking slots and how managing many ships spread out over many sectors is annoying, but it's a difference to talk about a fleet of 300 fighters in 10 sectors while you rarely have so many M2 Dreadnoughts that you will fill the huge slots of 10 Outposts. That, and capital ships can just cheese any big flight distance by having a Jump Beacon in the cargo bay, meaning they can jump from HERE to any previously dropped beacon in no time. Capital ships are simply way easier to micromanage than snub fleets, and if they get attacked during a transit, they don't just die like a snub does in OOS combat.

TL;DR: pls don't nerf the Dry Dock perk I need it for convenience