[X3LU] Mayhem 3.21b

[Darkternal]

Is something wrong with my player console? I don't see Ascension option.

[Sirrobert]

That looks like the LU player console. The Mayhem player console looks different.

[Hairless-Ape]

How do I use the crystal transmuter? Do I need to be personally onboard? And what type of ship would be best to install it? Seems that I wouldn't want to be fighting with this ship, but if it drains a lot of shields, then a M6+ would work best...

There is a command under "special" tab. Click that, and you should see a command to transmute crystals.

The ratio is 5 crystals of 1 tier to get 1 crystal of the next tier, so it works like so:

5 regular crystals -> 1 red crystal
5 red -> 1 yellow
5 yellow -> 1 blue
5 blue -> 1 green
5 green -> 1 black

Higher conversions drain more shields. It's best to use it on a capital ship that's typically left at home such as a TL or a very highly shielded M1/M2 such as a Tokyo. You can also have multiple TLs and pass the transmuter around so that you can still convert crystals after 1 TL's shields are out.

I still don't understand what crystals are used for? Once you convert them, what do you do with crystals?

[4square425]

In an Outpost's hanger with "upgrade ship", you can give them equipment like docking computers, chaff launchers, maintenance reducers, etc. Each costs a few of the different types of crystals.

[Hairless-Ape]

The ability to create a mining fleet seems to have been removed in Mayhem 3.

I can homebase a miner to a TM like you would if creating a mining fleet using the TM as the intermediary mining depot, but you can't tell the miner to actually mine unless it's homebased to an outpost.
Would be a nice feature to have back since the ships and capabilities are all there. You just can't tell the miner to mine.

[Joubarbe]

FYI, here's the temporary changelog: viewtopic.php?p=4540103#p4540103

I'm thinking of adding 5 racial perks (player only):
Argon: Terracorp Mercenaries - Hire some Terracorp mercenaries to protect you from Terraformers and Pirates.
Boron: Diplomatic Center - Increase your reputation over time with all Commonwealth neighbours (cumulative effect).
Paranid: Sacrificial Altar - 1 people is consumed at each consumption cycle. All production of this Outpost and all taxes are doubled.
Split: Legacy - Give the current sector to the Splits and win 1 Favor point.
Teladi: Black Market - All Teladi Traders will look for this Outpost in priority.

[aurelcourt]

I'm thinking of adding 5 racial perks (player only):

Super cool ideas!

But I think they'd need to be balanced a bit more to avoid a no-brainer choice (Paranid seems OP to me like this).

[dunderhead327]

Interesting ideas, but I don't see how the Split perk would work. I suppose you would use it like any other perk and use a perk slot on an outpost, but what happens to your outpost (and any other assets) once the sector has been handed over?

I could also see it as a potential exploit in that you could, for example, give them a sector they couldn't use because it's surrounded by their enemies and still get the favour point, even if you were at war with the Split yourself.

I would suggest that an alternative would be to give the outpost the ability to provide ships and equipment to the Split, and gain favour points based on how much you supply them.

[Hector0x]

Welcome back!

A thing i just noticed.
The Teladi outpost in Duke's Citadel is not dropping any loot if it gets destroyed OOS. If you teleport in sector before it pops, then there are massive loot drops. I could swear that NPC vs. NPC station loot also works OOS and believe it's only the player ships which don't create loot properly.
galaxy+save


Also, question about truces. I believe they are supposed to reset your reputation back to 0. (at least this was stated in the ModDB article "What to expect from Mayhem 3?")
This seems like a great idea because there are plenty of ways to drop into negative reputation. Like the rep hit for claiming sectors or the Task Force Reprisals even with positive relations. Recovering reputation is very luck dependent and mostly based on finding and killing enemies of that faction in their territory.

Once empty sectors run out it gets quite impossible to avoid hostilities. But i assumed they are not supposed to basically last forever like permanent wars? And truces would still be quite balanced, because you can only get one by loosing a sector. Which is a status quo the player is most likely not willing to accept and will often plan to eventually reignite the war.
But for me this didn't work so far. Reputation remained negative. So i believe it's a bug. I don't have a save right now but could eventually provide one.

Right now a truce for the player only means that hostile battlegroups can't attack for 2h. Which already prevents that you can get roflstomped, but tbh i expected more dynamic player-NPC relations. Switching between times of war and times of peace. Repairing relations gets possible if you have large OCV fleets to kill, but before the OCV and after the Xenon it's almost impossible because you need to kill something which now also hates you for it.


If it's not a bug and the rep reset for just 1 sector is considered to be too powerful i would suggest this to make it harder:
The player only gets an option for a truce after he lost 1 sector +10% of his whole territory rounded down. So once you got 10 sectors you need to loose 2 sectors to the same faction to get offered a truce, once you have 20 you need to loose 3.
So each time you loose one sector, the game remembers this (forever) and keeps track of your overall sector losses towards each faction. The number for each faction gets reset once you finally accept a truce with them. The cost of the truce is always based on your current sector count and checked each time you loose a sector. If a truce is possible and the player accepts, he gets a rep reset back to 0 which prevents further invasions.



About the perks:
1) I always thought that a small free defense fleet which isn't yours could be interesting (like the resupply drone). I don't know if this is how you intend it or if the perk just spawns player assets (single use). I think they should respawn and act on their own, but be very weak. At least not enough to take down a pirate M6. Those need to remain dangerous.
2) A reputation repairer. Good idea. Somehow i imagine this as a perk which would also need an embassy station of some sort (goner temple?). But merely the perk can probably be implemented easier.
3) kind of dumb if you ask me. It just modifies your pop growth with -1 so your population cap is a bit lower. Wouldn't be interesting imho. It's basically just a very straightforward boost vs a perk slot. I think this would need to be spiced up somehow.
Like a new religious zeal mode you can activate with quality of manufacture. The ship gets built very quickly, but it drains 10 population and there is a small chance that it becomes Yaki once it's finished (roams like all other flotilla ships but always leaves the player sector so that he doesn't get a free defense fleet or gets punished too hard if he is hostile to Yaki later on ). The extra population cost would prevent small ship spamming.
4) Interesting. But why only for Split? This could work well with truces if those really are supposed to reset relations for the player. Because you would have the choice to give a sector to a third party if you are loosing. You get a small reward right away and also the chance to draw a third party squadron to help defending. But you would also loose the option to use the sector-loss to end the war with your original enemy.
5) I think you could already somewhat emulate this without a perk by lowering your sell offers/increasing your buy offers to make any outpost's prices very attractive for NPC traders. I'm mostly rolling with my own traders, but still interesting.

[Sirrobert]

So, I am enjoying my gameplay, but I'm also kinda stuck.

16 hours in, I have my first sector and a few stations, but I'm struggling super hard. I took the Tax perk to pay for maintenance, and my fleet is slowly growing from bailed M3 fighters and TS for traders/agents to keep everything running, but I'm still broke all the time.
Lately, I noticed why. I do have my TS ships making trades for profit, but they keep switching targets all the time, and they rarely actually complete a trade. At first I thought it was because they were getting beaten to the deals, but as I was paying attention, one switched, but the deal was still there. I also noticed that there were some pirates in the target sector.
Do traders try to avoid sectors they know have enemies? Because this makes them waste a LOT of time, and it makes things much harder, even though I like them surviving.

I also caught one of my Trader buying waste to resell somewhere else, for a grand profit of somewhere between "**** all" and "not worth the time" so that doesn't help.

Is this normal? Will it get better? Or should I just restart?
On that note, does anyone have a generated universe that offers a good starting position for newbies? I have no idea if my position is even good at this point.

[Hector0x]

I do have my TS ships making trades for profit, but they keep switching targets all the time, and they rarely actually complete a trade.

The Auto Trader Workers do require some investment. More so than in earlier versions. Previously they would get stuck with the cargo they can't sell. A recent patch made them drop off this freight at the outpost (goods which can't be sold are stored in the station, not in the ships anymore) So the traders can proceed doing something else. The downside is that you need a lot of investment money. Because you won't get immediate profits.

From my experience profits do get much better later on, but they always get diminished a bit because traders like to pile certain stuff (often waste) in their outpost. Most things will get sold eventually, but you need to have the cash to last until that happens.
The key to make money is to produce your own goods and sell them if they exceed the limit you want to keep for yourself. Huge stockpiles are often hidden sources of $$$. Hoarding everything is not good.


@Joubarbe: a possible improvement for Traders could be to simply forbid them to buy a ware externally if the outpost's freight level exceeds the sell threshold in the trader screen (even if they intend to use it for external trades). I know they check to sell stuff from the outpost in priority, but it seems like they often realize they can't, but shortly after this check is made waste can be sold somewhere and they end up buying it from NPC's again. Or something like that, idk. (they seem to buy more and more Waste)

[Joubarbe]

@Hector: I have no idea where station loot is coming from, so I assume it's hardcoded. Can't do anything about it.
The Truce is supposed to reset your reputation to 0. If it stays negative, it's a bug. I may be able to reproduce it, but I'd prefer a savegame if you have that.

(about Traders: then why don't you blacklist Waste?)

[Edna]

Magic

I love everything I've just read! Looking forward to burn through another Mayhem 3 galaxy when the next version comes out. (And oh boi, if Steam would count my Mayhem 3 playtime, it'd probably be at 200 hours now, not even counting Mayhem 2 or LU)

[Sirrobert]

I did indeed blacklist Waste as soon as I noticed that little trade going on... What a waste of travel time.

More advanced, I have a Pirate Outpost virtually next door, which is probably my main roadblock right now. I have 10-ish M3 fighters, is that enough to get started on destroying it? I don't really remember how much firepower one needs to bring down a station.

[Hector0x]

The Truce is supposed to reset your reputation to 0. If it stays negative, it's a bug. I may be able to reproduce it, but I'd prefer a savegame if you have that.

Here is the save. After a minute the Argons conquer Farpoint. Accepting the truce doesn't change Argon reputation.

(about Traders: then why don't you blacklist Waste?)

I thought it would also block Agent jobs. But this would be the perfect solution. I blacklisted and see what's going to happen.
Piling up Waste is not really a problem. It just seems to drain a bit of cash in the beginning. Later profits outweigh it by far. A few of my outposts have about 150k of Waste and it feels like mostly traders brought it in. But outposts can hold how much waste? More than 2 million i believe. So it's no big deal.

I have a Pirate Outpost virtually next door, which is probably my main roadblock right now. I have 10-ish M3 fighters, is that enough to get started on destroying it? I don't really remember how much firepower one needs to bring down a station.

I wouldn't risk it. 10 M3 might be able to do more damage than the shield and hull regen of the base but it would take ages. Pirates sometimes spawn 2 M6 at once and sometimes these 2 attack your fleet. You're better off with at least 20 ships.
A good trick is to build some garbage level M4 against these bases. For their very low cost M4 offer a lot of firepower. Most even have decent hull hp. Only shielding is very inefficient and expensive compared to M3. Leave M4 unshielded if you like. It won't change their performance against pirate bases.
You can recycle them after the base is down. If you build with garbage level quality you only loose very little resources. And you will get the lasers back.

[Betelgeuse97]

So, I am enjoying my gameplay, but I'm also kinda stuck.

16 hours in, I have my first sector and a few stations, but I'm struggling super hard. I took the Tax perk to pay for maintenance, and my fleet is slowly growing from bailed M3 fighters and TS for traders/agents to keep everything running, but I'm still broke all the time.
Lately, I noticed why. I do have my TS ships making trades for profit, but they keep switching targets all the time, and they rarely actually complete a trade. At first I thought it was because they were getting beaten to the deals, but as I was paying attention, one switched, but the deal was still there. I also noticed that there were some pirates in the target sector.
Do traders try to avoid sectors they know have enemies? Because this makes them waste a LOT of time, and it makes things much harder, even though I like them surviving.

I also caught one of my Trader buying waste to resell somewhere else, for a grand profit of somewhere between "**** all" and "not worth the time" so that doesn't help.

Is this normal? Will it get better? Or should I just restart?
On that note, does anyone have a generated universe that offers a good starting position for newbies? I have no idea if my position is even good at this point.

Try tweaking your workers' sector range so that it is not very large. If you don't have jump beacons, I would say 2 jumps away is good so that they don't have to travel too far. Also, make sure that the trade routes are safe. Your fleet and TL should work together to destroy any pirate bases and Xenon invasions that threaten your emerging empire and trading routes.

If you need to patrol the sectors, a wing (not fleet, as those will do a stupid "fly to position" instead of a beeline) of 3-4 M3s should be enough to take out 1 pirate M3 without fear of taking hull damage (their numbers are usually very small, about 1-3 when they spread out). Make sure those M3s have actually good guns and not those toy IREs/PAC/MD that M5s can use.

[Edna]

Last night I had some time to pass and instead of SETAing around, I redid the factory chart and did a crystal/trading station chart as well. Maybe helpful to someone.

Click for bigger version

Show

Done in Excel - Source

[Joubarbe]

@Edna: thanks, pinned.

[Hector0x]

@Edna: Nice! Looks very clean. It never came to my mind that you can actually make money by transmuting into red crystals. Good to know.

@Joubarbe: How about sending a "return home" command by clicking on a ship in the maintenance screen?
This would make it very easy to replace civilian ships like miners or agents which have reached high maintenance factor. The homebase of these ships is always an outpost so one could instantly scrap them afterwards.

[4square425]

Last night I had some time to pass and instead of SETAing around, I redid the factory chart and did a crystal/trading station chart as well. Maybe helpful to someone.

Click for bigger version

Show

Done in Excel - Source

Looks great, although in all of these factory charts it would be useful to see the ratios to get them mostly self sustaining, i.e. the resources consumed and produced or just the fact that you need two Food Preparation Facilities to support one fully efficient Ore Mine. However, that's why I made my spreadsheet to determine those amounts.