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[JDCollie]

Is there a reason why sometimes my mining fleet doesn't seem to, well, mine? (I'm talking about my own fleet equipped with mining wings, for reference)


Sometimes it seems to mine about every six seconds, and sometimes it goes for in-game days without ticking. Is there some kind of internal timer, or is this just a result of the code skipping a check somewhere because my computer is overtaxed?

Also, I cannot for the life of me get my ships to mine fuel at gas giants. Is that feature functional? If so, what are the requirements to do it?

[Nanao-kun]

Also, I cannot for the life of me get my ships to mine fuel at gas giants. Is that feature functional? If so, what are the requirements to do it?

You should be able to do it by clicking the the gas giant, leaving the interaction menu, then double clicking it again. This time you should be right on top of it, so you leave the interaction menu again and then just stay there.

EDIT: Note that the newest build (2e1ce36) doesn't actually work with ICE. Not sure in what way though.

[JDCollie]

Also, I cannot for the life of me get my ships to mine fuel at gas giants. Is that feature functional? If so, what are the requirements to do it?

You should be able to do it by clicking the the gas giant, leaving the interaction menu, then double clicking it again. This time you should be right on top of it, so you leave the interaction menu again and then just stay there.

EDIT: Note that the newest build (2e1ce36) doesn't actually work with ICE. Not sure in what way though.

Aaaah! Okay, it was the double clicking after closing the interaction menu that I wasn't doing. Thanks!

[Zaphide]

EDIT: Note that the newest build (2e1ce36) doesn't actually work with ICE. Not sure in what way though.

Hmm, you may have to change things within the ICE mod itself but I can't remember what I did (I added support to my local version ages ago).

It's not *officially* supported yet, more just the placeholders are there for when Sundog reaches a point where the ICE mod is released Also, I wanted to give the faction a go and, well, I prefer to play Exerelin believe it or not haha

[Zaphide]

Also, I cannot for the life of me get my ships to mine fuel at gas giants. Is that feature functional? If so, what are the requirements to do it?

You should be able to do it by clicking the the gas giant, leaving the interaction menu, then double clicking it again. This time you should be right on top of it, so you leave the interaction menu again and then just stay there.

EDIT: Note that the newest build (2e1ce36) doesn't actually work with ICE. Not sure in what way though.

Aaaah! Okay, it was the double clicking after closing the interaction menu that I wasn't doing. Thanks!

Yeah sorry, it is kind of a hack to get around the problem of not 'sticking' the players fleet to a planet/station after the dialog window opens

[Nanao-kun]

Hmm, you may have to change things within the ICE mod itself but I can't remember what I did (I added support to my local version ages ago).

It's not *officially* supported yet, more just the placeholders are there for when Sundog reaches a point where the ICE mod is released

Ah, I see.

Also, I wanted to give the faction a go and, well, I prefer to play Exerelin believe it or not haha

Who would've guessed?

[Sundog]

@Nanao-kun:
Yeah, sorry for taking my time about adding Exerelin support to ICE. I know how important it is and it's definitely something that's going to happen, but not until I feel that ICE is feature complete and reasonably stable. For now, other than following the instructions for 'Adding support for additional faction mods' in the Exerelin OP, you might try removing (or commenting out) lines 25 and 26 from \mods\ICE\data\scripts\ICEModPlugin.java

Those lines should look like this:
    new Ulterius().generate();
    Global.getSector().addScript(new ICEEveryFrameScript());

There might be other conflicts as well.

@Zaphide:
So you tried ICE with Exerelin? Any tips for improving the faction (WIP 2 version)? How did they fare in auto-resolve?

[spudcosmic]

Hello, I'm new here to the forum, and I wanted my first message here to be addressing this awesome mod. I've had alot of fun with it so far, it makes the game like a mad game of space Mount and Blade Warband, but I do have a few issues and suggestions that I wanted to talk about.

My main issue right now is just the fact that some vanilla ships/items don't appear at all, I've played all of the vanilla factions so far except for the pirates and these are the things I was unable to find:

Longbow Support Fighter: It looks fairly Tritachyon-y, yet was unable to find it after two long games of playing Tritachyon.

Trident Torpedo Bomber: Also looks like it should belong to Tritachyons, it's a shame because this looks like a super effective bomber.

Phaeton Tanker: Never seen it. Personally I think that all tankers should belong to all races just to make it easier to effectively gas mine.

Prometheus Tanker: Never seen this ship either. Only use would be for mass gas mining.

Now onto weapons that I have yet to ever find while playing exerelin:

The Gauss Cannon: Might belong to the pirates, but I doubt it because I never saw a pirate using one. The Sindrian Diktats should have the Gauss cannon in their shops.

The Storm Needler: It's a shame that this weapon is missing, because it's epic, but anyway the Sindrians should also have this available in their shops.

Standard Bomb Bay & Frag Bombs: Not that big of a deal that they can't be bought, because I'd personally never put them on a ship, but someone out there in the world is     probably a bomb fanatic.

Atropos-class Torpedos: These are awesome weapons, seriously, I'm a bit disappointed that you can't even find the fighter that carries this weapon.

Plasma Cannon: Also an awesome weapon, Never seen one in exerelin, really should appear in Tachyon stores.

High Intensity laser & Heavy pulse laser: Yes, I know these can be found in Sindrian Stores, but I find it odd that the Tachyons don't sell them also.

Ion Cannon: It's a shame that you can't find these. It serves to even further alienate the emp damage system (In which only the Tachyon Lance and Salamander MRM are the only other vanilla weapons to have EMP damage).

I think these are all the things that I could not at all find in the game after playing exerelin. The only cause I think would be the fact factions fleets & variants don't use any of the above ships/weapons, therefor not putting them in shops. I'd be great if you could fix these by the next release of Exerelin.

Edit: Now onto the ideas I had for this mod: (Note: I understand my ideas are pretty complex and some might not even be possible with the current api, but they still might be something to consider for the future.)

First off, I have noticed a pattern I have been doing in this mod, which is Mine for credits, buy a fleet, fight a few times, replace destroyed ships, fight some more, not have enough credits for ship replacements, mine for credits, buy a fleet, ect... It gets a bit repetitive, so I propose a solution: Station Ownership! It would be alot like owning a city in Mount and Blade. The station you own will give you credits every week based upon it's efficiency and how much supplies/fuel have been mined by it's mining fleets. If your station is constantly being attacked and it can't get mining fleets in/out, you will receive a much lower paycheck. Now, How do you own a station you ask, well it's simple, any station you take over personally automatically becomes yours (So by that token, you start out with a station owned by the start of the game), or alternatively, you can pay a fee (Probably a lot of credits, so much in fact that it is more economical to organize a boarding fleet and take over an enemy station) to personally own any of your factions current stations. This should provide a sustainable way to earn money without constantly resorting to mining.

Now, for the people who really like mining (for whatever reason) I propose a change to trade based on supply/demand. It is probably important to note that the next update will probably make this idea obsolete, but you never know, it might make the implementation even easier. Well, anyway, I propose that the price of weapons/supplies/fuel is dependent on the amount of the said resource at the station you are selling it to. For example, you want to buy one unit of supply from one station and sell it to another. Station A has 2000 supplies and is selling and buying it for 20 cred/unit, and station B has 100 supplies and is selling and buying it for 50 cred/unit. So to make a profit you'd Buy from station A and sell to station B, another benefit to this is you effectively distributed the supplies. This would make player logistic convoys a profitable and useful playstyle, it would also make you think about where you'd want to sell your mining stock.

This next one would be a pretty big change to how the game currently works, but I still think it's worth considering for future versions of the mod. Station construction: Factions will now have to construct stations around planets instead of simply taking pre placed abandoned stations over. This means that at the start of the game you'd start out with an  2 atlases and a 4000 thousand supplies and instead of finding a station to takeover, you'd find a suitable planet and sit on top of it with your fleet and the atlas and 4000 supplies would be consumed and a station would be built. After that your station would sent out it's own station construction fleets and attempt to build stations up to the maximum stations per star system set at the start of the game.

Also a pretty big change that ties in with the idea above. Station Assault: Now, when you go to a hostile station you'll have the choice to assault the station, in an attempt to destroy it. When you attempt to assault a station, it prompts you to deploy your fleet, in which you then fight the station and a task force of ships to defend the station. Stations would be immobile behemoths, with a deadly arsenal, seemingly impenetrable armor, and 360 omni shielding. Taking down one of these bad boys would cause the entire station to be destroyed, requiring a replacement to be built by a station construction fleet. This would hardly be as efficient as just boarding a station and taking it over, but destroying one would be a major blow to the economy and defense of the star system you're fighting. Your fleets and enemy fleets would occationally attempt to destroy stations themselves, but would usually be unsuccessful, it would probably take multiple attack fleets in a row to lower its CR enough to the point where the ai would take one over.

This one would be pretty useful and even could be implemented easily (probably, what do I know?). Buying Station form allies: This change would allow you to purchase a station from allied factions, obviously, solving the frustrating problem of that faction who owns one station in the star system you nearly have conquered. Provided the station ownership idea is implemented you'd also own the station you purchased, buy purchasing stations from allies would cost much more credits than purchasing station ownership form your own faction.

Finally, changes to faction relations: This change would do away with the prisoner thing that jut materializes at your storage facility and any faction accepts and gets happy about. Instead you'd raise faction relations with bribes. When you go to another factions station you'd have another option to choose: "Give Bribe". You'd then be prompted with three choices: small, medium, or large bribe, each for an amount of credits (decided later depending on what seems most balanced). Clicking one of these options would take away that amount of credits and also raise the faction's relation with you by an amount. This makes a whole lot more sense than the current prisoners.

Phew, that was alot of work. Let me know of what you think of these ideas, do you hate them, love them, think they were sort of good but you can't implement this because of X restriction? Well, anyway I'm going to grammar check this later because I'm exhausted, sorry any potential grammar Nazis that will be reading this.

~Spudcosmic

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

@spudcosmic

Hi, and welcome to the forums! So, you know how some weapons, ships and wings never appear in your faction's stations? Well, as far as I know, Exerelin doesn't always put every ship or weapon into the game. For example, I have played through my mod several times in Exerelin. However, 2 campaigns in the past have never spawned a Nova-class cruiser, as well as a few other items. Perhaps you should try playing the tri-tachyon agan to see what items you get. Materials can also be a limiting factor on how much content is produced, just to let you know.

[spudcosmic]

@spudcosmic

Hi, and welcome to the forums! So, you know how some weapons, ships and wings never appear in your faction's stations? Well, as far as I know, Exerelin doesn't always put every ship or weapon into the game. For example, I have played through my mod several times in Exerelin. However, 2 campaigns in the past have never spawned a Nova-class cruiser, as well as a few other items. Perhaps you should try playing the tri-tachyon agan to see what items you get. Materials can also be a limiting factor on how much content is produced, just to let you know.

It just seems so weird because it has always had the ships that were in station fleets and weapons that were part of stock variants... is your Nova-class cruiser part of regular fleets the station deploys?

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

Indeed it is. Fleets have 2-3 Nova-classes in my current playthrough. I now have all of the ships in my Omnifactory, which is really rare, but awesome.

Oh, and weapons are spawned in automatically through the .faction's ships' variants files as far as I know.

[Zaphide]

@Zaphide:
So you tried ICE with Exerelin? Any tips for improving the faction (WIP 2 version)? How did they fare in auto-resolve?

I didn't play overly long with them (just enough to see how they go and try out all the ships), but some of the things you have been able to do with the AI is amazing

Probably my favorite fight was trying to take down a much larger ship with a couple of frigates. I also had one of the 'fission drill' frigates (I forget the name) which, right as I am struggling to pressure the larger enemy ship, comes out of nowhere and 'drills' straight through it! Great synergy

I did feel the Phantom fighter was a bit lackluster for it's cost; I was expecting more out of it I think, although it didn't really seem to want to stay on target that often so perhaps that was the issue.

Auto resolve seems OK; They tend to do well but generally the ICE ships seem to out-class an equivalent so I'm not sure how relevant that is in the grand scheme of things. One thing that is apparent is their CR regain and repair tend to take a lot of supplies, and so ICE fleets tend not to hang around as long as fleets from less-supply-intensive factions.

In the most recent DEV version I have changed things around a bit with the fleet resource cost and sizing's. It seems to work a bit better for the less regular factions such as ICE.

- SNIP (Lots of great feedback) -

Thanks spudcosmic for playing the mod and leaving your feedback

The latest DEV version has a re-shuffle of a large number of things. Some variants were missing from the fleet lists for certain factions (although mainly modded ones). This would have affected ship and weapon availability. I'll double check for Vanilla variants.

One thing to bear in mind is that is is random which ships/weapons appear in stores (and also, stores only hold onto a finite number of ships/weapons before replacing them).

 - The Trident and Longbow are indeed missing from TriTachyon; I'll add them in.
 - I'm fairly sure the Phaeton tanker is used by the Tri Tachyons?
 - The Prometheus isn't actually used by any faction, although I have been trying to decide who should get it I'm thinking TriTachyon
 - Gauss cannon should be available to the Hegemony (at least in the most recent DEV)
 - Unfortunately I don't think the Storm Needler is actually used by any Vanilla variants. I probably should create one so it appears...
 - Bomb bays I'm not sure about. They may not be on any of the variants I've included.
 - Atropos Torpedoes, these should appear for Tri Tachyon
 - Plasma Cannon, HI Laser and HP Laser should all appear for Tritachyon
 - Hmmm, I always seem to find Ion Cannons (RNG perhaps?)

Thanks for the ideas too! Station construction (and destruction) will eventually replace the current boarding mechanics. I'm toying round with the idea of having the factions own the planets/moons and then having the stations as a kind of 'presence in space' for that planet. As stations get abandoned/destroyed around a planet, the planet itself becomes open to takeover. Once a planet is taken over by a faction, that faction can then begin re-crewing/constructing stations of their own around that planet.

I'm not quite sure how to handle gas giants and un-inhabitable moons; perhaps they are just single outposted stations similar to now? Factions can build them if there is a resource need? i.e. low on fuel so we should build a station around this systems gas giant(s).

Currently there is no real supply/demand system, but I think I'll wait and see with what Alex puts together with the Trade update. I'm hoping I can use that to produce the kind of outcomes I'm hoping for

These can then feed into the faction relationships; "We need fuel but that faction controls the gas giant in this system, so we don't like them" type of thing. And yes, I was imagining a sort of demand/offer type structure, where you could make a demand (or offer) to another faction and they would respond appropriately. The current prisoner/agent thing is more of a hangover from previosu StarSector versions where you didn't have nearly as much modding options available

Hmm well many ideas!! Most of which a doable (at least, should be in the next StarSector update), it's just I don't really have the time to implement much at the moment I'll hopefully get time to look at the station constructing stuff next though, as that is unlikely to change too much in the next StarSector update

Anyway, thank you for the feedback

Indeed it is. Fleets have 2-3 Nova-classes in my current playthrough. I now have all of the ships in my Omnifactory, which is really rare, but awesome.

Oh, and weapons are spawned in automatically through the .faction's ships' variants files as far as I know.

Yep Although in the latest DEV this has changed slightly. Everything is now in data/config/exerelinFactionConfig/<factionId>.json.

By the way, I played the Citadel on one of long plays recently, really great fun! The faction has come a long way. They definitely have their own play style, fitting style and fleet styles now. Everything feels much more polished and balanced

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

Why thank you very much Mr.Zaphide! I would love to hear any finer details/criticism/opinions you might have sometime, thanks! 

Btw, I have recently experienced the mining bug where you can't mine. I think I may habe experienced it after clicking on multiple asteroid targets, but not arriving at one. It seems that visting a station helps though, which is pretty easy.

[Titann]

I think download link doesnt work, or is it for me? can anyone upload to mediafire or something like that?

-nvm downloading it right now

[Sundog]

Thanks for the feedback Zaphide
I'll take a close look at the Phantom. Glad to hear auto resolve works ok. I worry about that with how unconventional ICE ships are.