[Mayhem 3.21b] Zero Hour 2.2

[Edna]

Currently downloading X3AP to make a new clean game to test this. I'm really hyped for this one! The installation process alone has more depth than Inception: Install X3AP, install Litcube's Universe, install Mayhem 3, install Zero Hour, install X3AP NoCD.

[Hector0x]

the feedback of a true Mayhem veteran like you will be most welcome

[Edna]

Okay, so while playing, I made some notes on everything that I've noticed. Disclaimer: I haven't played Mayhem 3 in a long time, so I don't know exactly what tweaks were done by Joubarbe's Mayhem 3 and which are specifically from Zero Hour, so bear with me for not differentiating here.

- Universe: No Progression, shattered, extra sector stats, dynamic races, clustered Xenon
- Game Settings: Quickstart, Easy, Teladi M3, known sectors, fair amount of credits

- Starter TL getting attacked by Khaak is frustrating since it will always try to fight them instead of moving away, fleeing does not work since the TL has no homebase
- Fighting the Khaak M4s in the starter M3 (Kea) is fun and doable on Easy, so clearing a path for the TL is doable with that specific start.
- Betty's message about finding the location of the Maelstrom portal by browsing through the spam mails was hilarious!
- PRAISE THE NAKED GOD!!!
- Seeing the Aran getting used in a cool way for the first time in X3's history is awesome, I love how the Nomad Flagship just roams my otherwise empty sectors
- I loved seeing other races using the Ring of Fire perk. That really surprised me.
- I like the Terran Jump Beacons at the beginning. Speeds things up a lot!

- Map Generation: The No-Progression start leaves all unclaimed sectors empty in terms of special objects, meaning you won't see any billboards or wrecks in the non-starter systems. While I know the story says that nobody but TerraCorp was in this galaxy before, I think it would be cool if there were at least wrecks spawning even in unclaimed sectors from the start, and maybe billboards could spawn once a sector has reached the initial max station support capacity?
- Map Generation: I like how the asteroids and debris are following the same tentacle-ish spawn formations as well as a cluster around pirate bases, but I think having some stray asteroids a bit further away or more in the center of the system but off-plane would make the systems feel a bit less generic

- Love the Black Market. Really rewarding if you focus on credits instead of resources!
- Being able to churn out Outposts directly after dropping the first one feels both good and weird. Good, because especially on smaller galaxies, this is very useful to claim turf. Weird, because it is SO MUCH FASTER than Mayhem 3 the last time I played it.
- The Administration Tab feels a bit more bloated, maybe Perks and Worker Assignments can be put in separate sections?

- BUG: I've noticed a weird issue when assigning miners. I built 20 Miners and equipped them. All of them have their four Mining Lasers. I assign them to Outposts that don't have any miners yet, and when I assign them as Miners and tell them to mine any, the homebase gets cleared and the miner doesn't do anything, having no command. For some reason, if I try it over and over again, it works at some point.

- I like the reworked maintenance system, because nothing was more annoying than seeing how ships that are frequently sitting for minutes in outposts before resuming work to not reset their maintenance levels.

- The Photon Artillery Array weapon effect looks SUPER SATISFYING for a weapon of that purpose! Reminded me of the Kusari blade weapon effect from the Kusari Capital ships in Freelancer Discovery!

- When being in sector Miners working on debris, they have a tendency to get killed by debris. I've never seen what exactly happened, but I guess when the debris explodes, it moved into the miners? I guess increasing the range of the Mining Drill could prevent this inconvenience. I've lost all four miners to debris when sitting and SETAing just half an hour in the same sector. Quite infuriating, to be honest, since that happens only to in-sector miners and doesn't seem to be intentional.


I'll keep playing, but that's all I've to say from playing it the past few days.

[Hairless-Ape]

- Map Generation: .....I think it would be cool if there were at least wrecks spawning even in unclaimed sectors from the start, and maybe billboards could spawn once a sector has reached the initial max station support capacity?
- Map Generation: I like how the asteroids and debris are following the same tentacle-ish spawn formations as well as a cluster around pirate bases, but I think having some stray asteroids a bit further away or more in the center of the system but off-plane would make the systems feel a bit less generic
- Love the Black Market. Really rewarding if you focus on credits instead of resources!

I can address a tiny bit of this, although maybe not overly helpful.
You didn't specify what Map generator you are using. Mayhem 3 comes with a default map generator, but there is a 'more advanced' one you can and should use called ZMap.
In either case, spawning wrecks at game start is not a function of the map generator. It is something the mod would have to do. I too would like to see wrecks at game start.
Regarding asteroid and debris generation, I hear you. Mayhem 3 came with a large 'template' of asteroid/debris fields that I think Joubarbe extracted from the original game, so they are most certainly "generic" as you state. The tough part is that generating new fields requires a considerable amount of work for little gain to be blunt. It is a real pain to mathematically generate asteroid fields that look pleasing and are also 'grouped' as well as having the proper randomness to them. I'll give some more thought to how this might be done, but it would be difficult for me personally. Given the source code for ZMap is open, and the 'templates' for the existing asteroid fields are all in a single file that comes with Mayhem 3 (\mayhem_data\extracted\asteroids.txt), I would say that just about anyone could take a crack at making a new asteroids.txt file if they had the skillz, and I would be happy to include it in ZMap.

I've had the same problem with miners hitting debris and dying.. along with M3's that I happen to command to attack something that is in a debris field. I think the collision avoidance logic in X3 is probably at it's limit if I had to guess. I like the idea of greatly extending the effective range of mining lasers. Seems like an easy win. I also would love to see mining lasers be about 5x more powerful, as to be perfectly honest: Miners suck. Pain vs gain just isn't where it needs to be for them.

I am curious what exactly you do with the Black Market, and how you 'focus' on credits? That's part of the game I never really tried and would love to know more. Of course, I used to love to do the in-game gambling, but for some strange reason they nerfed the casino's

cheers.

[Edna]

With focusing on getting credits I really just mean that - focusing on getting credits, as in, trying to get as many credits out of the cards you're played. To explain this a bit further, I liked playing Mayhem 3 as One-Outpost-Challenge-Mode, where I'd really only play with one sector. That obviously made the No-Food-Perk mandatory, but since I'm really not much of a min-maxer and play X3, regardless of whether it is vanilla or any kind of mod, in a lazy "let the game play itself" way, so I usually take that perk in any case anyway and don't bother with the food system. All the free food can be sold at trading stations, so that's a good cash boost, especially if you have many outposts.

That means a viable strategy is to focus on mining operations to get colored crystals, as well as crystal fabs to produce regular crystals that can be turned into equipment and red crystals via transmutation, which are the best resource to sell for quick money. Slap a few Crystal Transmuters on TLs or M2 Dreadnoughts and they can easily boost the credits income to the point where you can simply buy all the resources you need for building stations and ships. With the Black Market, you can buy yourself a decent fleet, although you can't select the exact ship but only the ship class, which is fair and fine to me. I bought an M7 frigate and got a Cobra missile frigate - which was a neat surprise and made me instantly tell my missile outpost to produce as many silkworms as possible from the silicon wafers mined from debris.

I generally like this alternative playstyle, where you don't need to establish a complex economy in your systems and focus more on trading and crystal management. Considering TLs now also act as Mobile Factories, this can even be optimized even further! Plus, focusing on making money also makes both Mercenaries and Hacking an interesting option. I haven't gotten to fully prepare hacking yet, but the encyclopedia entries sounded promising. If it is even only remotely as entertaining and fun as Mayhem 2's boarding minigame, it's probably a really cool addition!

[Hairless-Ape]

Yea, I hate managing food also and always use the nofood perk.

I think that play-style you cover here was nerfed. Unfortunately, in the latest Zero-Hour, you can no longer buy Hull-parts, Quantum Tubes, or Computer components from the market.
I'm not a fan of this at all and would far prefer this be an option you can turn off. So much excessive factory management drives me nuts after a while.. sigh.
This nerf also possibly forces you to build (at the very least) these specific factories so you can build ships. Everything else you can buy including the materials that go into those 3 factory types. You can always buy guns/shields from a corporation and even recycle them into Crystals.

I've never used Transmutation before so perhaps you can create everything with that? Hulls too?

I've had a lot of trouble with Hacking personally. It's convoluted and the in-game encyclopedia on it should be re-written so the steps are clear. It just doesn't seem fun either as it involves no real overt actions on your part, but I guess it probably appeals to some and gives some passive play options which is always a good thing.

I miss boarding a lot.

[Hector0x]

You can still buy Hull Plating and the like. But its only sold by faction Outposts which often have trade restrictions. They only sell what they don't need. So an Outpost might have too many Hull parts, the next sells Quantum tubes, etc.

Hacking can be used very well to make lots of money by scanning and then infecting miners for example. Its a bit grindy and cannot be automated but thats intentional.

Automated hacking cannot make any money but maybe help you in combat. The idea is that you have an Outpost with the Cyberwar perk in the general area where you expect your enemies to be. The Cyberwar perk automatically infects their ships for you. You basically enable targets for it with your port research decisions. Then you wait and see what useful hacks you could do.

So lets say the Split use many Taipan M2 in their Battlegroups and you plan to attack the Split in the future. Then it could be nice to unlock a few Taipan subsystem ports. The Cyberwar perk will infect those ports on nearby Taipans (you could also do it with your playership).

Then you are free to remotely disable shields on these M2, or send some of them in a different direction, make them sitting ducks, damage their hull, etc.

[Hector0x]

Hacking Guide - Mayhem 3 Zero Hour

Ultimately hacking wants to mess around with a specific subsystem on a specific ship. Like disabling their shields with the press of a button. Or venting their lasers into space . How you get there is a bit complicated, but it can give your empire an incredible edge. Your overall hacking ability has a limit. Eventually you will get detected and then have to switch targets or stop doing it. Zero Hour added a new feature which eventually 'unlocks' your hacking ability again but still on a very long cooldown.

In my playthroughs i never do much hacking but it often has great impact. Its most powerful when you want to prepare for betraying a friendly faction. Planning this can be real fun and useful, but overall its more of an early- to midgame feature. You can even use it as an effective opening strategy for your first sector. Only you can decide if its worth the investment (money/perks/effort).


1) First decide what you want to do:

A) steal lots of money for your early empire (Accounting hack)
B) get early access to capships by bailing them (Oxygen hack)
C) secretly compromise ships with combat hacks (Power, Cargo, Radar, Cooling) to prepare a major betrayal where you can instantly debuff a faction into the ground to defeat them easily

2) Scan a target
- choose a ship type that the NPCs use a lot and scan it. Don't choose one that they only got 1-2 copies flying around unless its a big capship. Having more hacking targets is better.
- its worthwile to try and look for matches of the same attack vector. Take this example when you want to steal money (Accounting hack): You have many Argon Mercury Freighters flying around in the general corner of the galaxy where your starting sector is. And their Accounting system can be attacked via Shellcode. Then you see Argon Miners also with Accounting > Shellcode and nearby are also some Split sectors with Caiman Miners, who also got Accounting > Shellcode and then there is also the Paranid Police nearby with their Nemesis which also has Accounting > Shellcode. Finding these matches saves you time and money because you can use just 1 virus to target all of them.

Good targets:
A) Money
- any ship which doesn't travel and stays in its homebase sector, so that the jump distance to your hacking station never changes > Miners, Service ships (TP)
- ships which tend to stay alive > civilians often better than military
- random example: Argon Nexus Miner TS
- maybe also bigger ships because they give you lots of money at once, but they often need higher virus jump ranges (less security) which you don't really want here
- friendly factions are best. You have to get close and do some manual work and even if your virus gets detected later they won't go to war with you
B) Bailing
- capships because you want them
- example: Split Ocelot M2
- also works well for friendly factions because they cannot attack you over this
C) Combat Hacks / Debuff
- always go for capships first because debuffing them has the biggest impact
- its best to target factions that you plan to attack later. Also works if you are already at war but then it might not be worth it anymore.
- Xenon/OCV also work in Zero Hour and they even have worse firewalls than the others. (but money + oxygen hacks are disabled for them)
- example: Paranid Patroclus M2. Lets say you want to betray them and they have randomly built lots of this ship type in your game
- for the navigation hack (forced retreat to a different sector) NPC fleet leaders are best because their entire fleet will follow them

Manual port scanning requires the Hacking rootkit on your playership. You get it from pirate bases or by upgrading your ship in your Outpost with color crystals. Target an NPC, then hit Shift + C and select Hacking > Scan ports

Automatic scanning needs the Cyberwar perk on an Outpost. This one bulk scans entire nearby sectors. It has quite the range but staying within 2 jump distance is best.

3) Research port for the entire ship type
- this is basically your guys finding an exploit for a specific subsystem which already exists on all ships of the same type but hasn't been noticed by anyone
- once you have researched it you will know the vulnerability while the enemy does not yet. He will only know once you fail with a virus upload. Then he patches it away and you get locked out.
- convert a research station into a hacking station with the Outpost perk
- inside the hacking station select your target ship type and research the target port
- ports are always the same for all ships of the same type. Sometimes a port is closed on an individual ship. This port on this one ship simply cannot be hacked.
- now transfer money to your hacking station. It consumes it to generate port research progress.

Example
Stealing money:
A) Argon Nexus Miner > Accounting
Bailing ship:
B) Split Ocelot > Oxygen
Preparing betrayal for the Paranids
C) Paranid Patroclus > Cargo and Cooling

- once your hacking station finishes port research all 'Open' ports for that ship type turn into 'Vulnerable' ports.


4) Infect a ship
- installing a 'Backdoor' into a 'Vulnerable' port gives you the opportunity to upload a virus whenever you want or use that ship as a relais to upload to other ships and cover your tracks this way.
- 1 Backdoor always consumes 1 Hackerchip. In Zero Hour you can build those instantly in any Outpost consuming Microchips
- Cyberwar perk slowly generates them passively, depending on research speed in that sector. But you will want to put additional Hackerchips in that Outpost to speed things up

Backdoors for A) Stealing Money + B) Stealing a ship can only be installed with the Hacking rootkit from the playership (game balance). Note that you can still mass scan with the Cyberwar perk. But it will not install backdoors into these systems for you. Only for combat related debuff hacks. With the Rootkit installed select target > Shift + C > Hacking > Install Backdoor > type port number
example:
A) you fly around and randomly stop to install lots of backdoors like > that specific Argon Miner Nexus in sector Hila's Joy > Accounting > 57312. Then next sector 2 Argon Miner Nexus > Accounting > 57312
B) you fly to that Split Ocelot that you want and install the backdoor just once
C) Hacking Rootkit also works for combat hacks, but its not required and since you probably want to compromise a lot of different ship types that a faction is using, the Cyberwar perk should always be more convenient. It frequently converts all vulnerable ports in a nearby sector into backdoored ports, consuming a Hackerchip for each backdoor. The sector research stat also speeds up the frequency how fast the perk goes through different sectors.
example: player simply waits a couple hours and now 3 of 5 Paranid Patroclus in the player's corner of the galaxy have an active backdoor in their cargo and cooling subsystems.

5) Design your Virus
- done in the hacking station. Virus gets researched with money just like ports
- you have to choose between Virus Efficiency vs. Security. This affects many things but most importantly virus jump range on the galaxy map and detection risk.
- when your virus eventually gets detected you will loose the ability to hack that specific port on that entire ship type. In base Mayhem 3 this lockdown was permanent for the rest of the game. In Zero Hour the entire ship will reset with a software update after a long waiting time. Meaning that this locked system where your virus got detected will eventually get unlocked again, but you have to redo your port research for that entire ship type for all ports.
- a virus gets designed for a specific subsystem, not for a specific ship type. You can reuse the same virus on different ship types, but they must have the same attack Vector, like SQL infection, or Buffer overflow. The vector has no real gameplay effect other than that your virus must be designed for it.

A) stealing money
- high virus Security rating gives you the most money on average because you can upload your virus very often before you finally get detected. Select your virus Efficiency just so high that your virus jump range can still reach the sector where your preferred targets are, measured from your closest hacking station.
- high virus Efficiency can also work well sometimes because you will reach a lot more targets and you also get loads more money at once. Its just that you will probably get detected soon and it locks down for you. Zero Hour rebalanced high efficiency so that its much more viable and you should not get detected instantly all the time. There are still diminishing returns if you go over 90 Efficiency.
example: Accounting > Shellcode > 80/20 Security/Efficiency
- here we choose high security. It only gives us little money per virus upload, but we can probably upload very often before detection happens and get more money overall this way. With 1% detection risk you can get about 10 million credits before getting detected. With half a dozen different ship types to target you have like 50 million credits earlygame. All money worries are basically gone now.
- high security means low range. But that is no problem because we target mostly mining ships who always stays in the same sector so we can perfectly tune our virus to reach them on the galaxy map
B) Bailing
example: Oxygen > Buffer Overflow > 10/90 (high detection risk, range and success chance)
- we go for maximum efficiency because the target is a military ship that travels on the map so we need high range or it might be too far away when we are ready. We also want high success chance so that we get it right the first time and don't waste time following it around. Or even worse, getting detected before we can even make 1 Ocelot bail out.
- we also don't need high security here because we probably only repeat this hack once or so and then already run out of targets
C) Debuff
example:
Cargo > Network Exploit > 10/90
Cooling > Shellcode > 10/90
- we want maximum efficiency because we probably betray the Paranid only once. WIth just 1 virus upload we can already cripple the Paranid fleet and destroy almost all of their weapons and hull integrity of their many Patroclus M2s! They will most definitely detect us but its worth it.


6) Upload Virus
- upload happens from a hacking station to an unlimited amount of targets in jump range. Any upload has a one time effect on each target ship.
- target ships need an active backdoor on the subsystem that your virus was designed for. And the virus needs to be designed for the correct vector.
- you can trade away potential targets to act as relais and not upload the virus TO them, but THROUGH them. This is just for risk management.
- selecting relais is optional. If you get detected any relais will make it harder for them to know that the virus came from you. Relais do not reduce detection chance.
- if they successfully pass a backtrace check through all your selected relais ships they will blame you publicly (infamy) and launch random cyberattacks on your ships in retaliation (only a single wave). You can prevent these counterattacks by activating the 'Active Defense Program' in advance as an insurance.

example:
A) stealing money
Eventually we have 12 Argon Miners in virus range of our hacking station. All have a Backdoor in the 'Accounting' subsystem port. Now we select 9 of them as targets for our actual virus upload and 3 will act as relais to mitigate the risk of Argon counterattacks in case we get detected. After a while we steal about 2 million cash and can repeat this a couple times until someone probably detects us and patches the Accounting port for the ship type Argon Miner Nexus. For detection chance its irrelevant how much time passes between our multiple virus uploads. But we better do them quickly anyway in case the Argon miners get physically destroyed by something.
B) bailing the Ocelot
We upload when the Ocelot is in range and then follow him around to quickly claim the ship before an NPC salvage crew beats us. We don't need relais because we only plan to upload once or twice and the Ocelot is so big of a price that its worth the risk.
C) crippling Paranid fleet
We will probably get detected because of uploading 2 virus with high detection risk to multiple targets. We don't care about port lockdown for the Patroclus because after this these ships are done for anyway and we don't need to do these hacks again. But we still use the active defense program because hacking counterattacks are just annoying. We upload our virus and after a while all Paranid Patroclus M2 loose 90% of their hull and weapons!

[Edna]

I've done some hacking now, it's very overwhelming at first but gets very simple the moment you realize that multiple ship types can have the same combination of vulnerability type per tab. I feel like this mechanic is ideal for One-Outpost-only-No-Research run, given it can boost both money and ship count. The cyberwar perk makes things so much easier, I love it!

[aurelcourt]

Hi Hector,

Nice to be back here after quite a while and seeing yet another Mayhem game
Are your video tutorials from Mayhem3 still valid for Zero Hour?

Any new gameplay series to show off all the new features?

Looking forward to give it a proper go, hopefully in the weeks to come...

Best regards,
Aurélien

EDIT : found the tutorials, super cool, thanks !!

[Hector0x]

EDIT : found the tutorials, super cool, thanks !!

Here is the up to date series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4c4 ... SSiau7mpQ1 (Mayhem Zero Hour Complete X3 Beginner Guide 2022). Some features are still not explained and there is also still no proper 'introduction' video yet. Right now i'm focussed on expanding the mod further. Eventually i will return to producing more videos.

[SaulGoodman]

Glad you were able to make compatibility and expand the Terran mod to work with ZH! Small problem though, I sent two messages over the course of the month and didn't receive any replies so I was worried as to the state of the project. Although it could be an issue with my forum mailbox.

[Hector0x]

Glad you were able to make compatibility and expand the Terran mod to work with ZH! Small problem though, I sent two messages over the course of the month and didn't receive any replies so I was worried as to the state of the project. Although it could be an issue with my forum mailbox.

last PN i got from you was from 09/04/22
inbox was only filled 93%. I emptied it completely now, so maybe try again.

Your Terrans mod was a good foundation to start from, but there were still lots of smaller things missing here and there. Police license, company, vocalisation for their outpost, Taxi, etc.

[Hector0x]

I've been having Architect issues as well... It's like it forgets things, or something.

the Architect was indeed broken. Will be fixed with 1.8. He's also going to give more detailed info about what he is currently doing or waiting for.

[SaulGoodman]

Great work on the mod! I never expected boarding to make a return but am super happy it did. Could you elaborate if marines are handled like in vanilla x3 or if they have a custom storage system? Thanks

[Hector0x]

Could you elaborate if marines are handled like in vanilla x3 or if they have a custom storage system? Thanks

Its just the vanilla boarding system with some tweaks to make it less grindy and more rewarding.
Marines are easier to level up, but there are forced losses and its not very viable to steal ships over and over again. You are supposed to do it only a few times to reverse engineer the blueprint and then build more copies the usual way.

Storing marines is best done on a TP with Transporter Device. Before boarding you can select your team and transfer them to an M6 or M7 with boarding pods. All potential targets can hold 15 marines but sometimes its better to send fewer guys to reduce the new penalty for being too crowded and receive lower losses overall.

Rookies can be hired for free in the Hangar section of the Outpost manager. They add some fighting skill and level up even faster, but you also need to hire mechanical and hacking specialists from a pirate base.

Black market has an option to get a good boarding team for free but it triggers the Yaki arrival and turns them hostile to you (they are a good first target faction for your boarding attempts)

[aurelcourt]

Hi,

Now that we don't have full connection gates between all sectors, how is calculated the workers max distance?
Map grid?
Or actual gate distance?

See image below : if I set Worker distance to 2, will my Agents in Cho's Defeat go all the way to Ianamus Zura? or will they realize it's actually 8 jumps and not go?

Thanks in advance

[Hairless-Ape]

8 jumps.

That's why you build Jump Beacons. Put one in each system, and then it's only 1 jump.
You start the game with 3 jump beacons, but build a jump drive core factory and you can make more beacons in your shipyard.
Alternatively, use the "capture ship" command to capture any terran beacon. You can then scoop it up with your TL class ship and move it wherever you want it.
I generally build an M5 to go around and capture some terran beacons in nearby sectors controlled by other races and then move some back to my own area to use.
I leave some in place though, allowing my traders easy access.

[Hector0x]

That's why you build Jump Beacons. Put one in each system, and then it's only 1 jump.

this is only true when using Alaankwa.

In base Mayhem 3 or base Zero Hour its always considered 8 jumps, and that's the maximum range that Traders and Agents can search when set to "all reachable factories".

[aurelcourt]

Hence my question

So the calculation is via jumpgates, and the jump beacons don't change the distance from the point of view of the Outpost. Good to know.

Also thanks for the tip: I didn't know we could remote capture terran JB !! That's what I'd been doing for hours flying manually to each of them ! Guess I'll get a fleet of fast scouts to do that for me now

And also also thanks for the new Quickstart and explore map!! Gone with the tedium of very early game (when you've done it a few times...), and straight to actuel empire early game, so cool !