a few questions about the Khaak starting position

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Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

i've realized that it's going to be a really long time before i get the opportunity to buy a TL

I guess it going to take awhile because money is hard to come by? I guessing you dont cap many ships? or dont have the chance too? I thought players would be making most of their money this way.

after the 1st one, i realized that i had no more shields

that is a problem. I have been updating the main mod, I could update some code to check the stock and reload if required.

i did some exploring and realized something else. even if i found a ship to capp or claim far away from home

Could you not transport your jump-drive to the ship and tell it to jump?

i'm not trying to bitch, just letting you know how i'm doing and what hardships i'm comming across.

I know. The Khaak start wasnt really tested and your feedback is finding these problems and improving it. Sorry for making you a tester

[update] v3.3 (being worked on) now has re-stocking code for all lasers, missiles, shields and Nividium in the Khaak start. Ive been looking at the random event generator, fixed a few things. Could you test a new version? see if new one stops the crashing?

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

I guess it going to take awhile because money is hard to come by? I guessing you dont cap many ships? or dont have the chance too? I thought players would be making most of their money this way.

- Roguey

well, i had been running around with the 3 BKE's that the fighter can equip. i would use all 3 to take down shields, then switch to just 1 to try and cap ships. i recently decided to change the 1 capping laser to the AKE that my HQ was initially equiped with. this has helped a lot. now i can hit the prospect ship more often, without taking off as much health. i've turned in a few ships for money. some split scorpions, a few random transports, and a couple super freighters. for resale, the super freighters are deffinatly the best. they go for about 1 mil as long as they arn't too badly damaged. the other ships are usually only worth about 500,000. i also sold a group of slaves for some cash, but it's hard to find a pirate base that buys them, which is why i was thinking about the slave labour thing.

that is a problem. I have been updating the main mod, I could update some code to check the stock and reload if required.

- Roguey

i was thinking the same thing. the easiest way to fix this would be to respawn items in the station. it would be a nightmare to try to make a station support network for all these wares.

Could you not transport your jump-drive to the ship and tell it to jump?

- Roguey

yes, i could, but then how would my fighter get back? i only have 1 jumpdrive. i suppose i could try to cap a ship that has a jumpdrive equiped, but who knows how long that would take, if ever. if i had 2, i could jump a TS out to the ship with a load of energy, transfer the energy and the JD, and then jump both ships back.

I know. The Khaak start wasnt really tested and your feedback is finding these problems and improving it. Sorry for making you a tester

- Roguey

i don't mind really, i think it's pretty interesting. i'm very excited for the day when i can actually start expanding and fully taking over sectors.

i think the hardest aspect of this game is ships. i'm 14 game hours into the game, and i only have about 3 mil, 2 transport ships running around my home galexy trading goods, a goner priest that ferry's ships from the last selectable sector, to my home sector, and the same 2 fighters that you start with as attack ships. i can now buy a large fighter if i want it, or another regular one. i'm still 9 mil away from a corvette(M6), about 17 mil away from a cruiser(M7), and the same for a TL. The M2 is around 64 mil. even if i get a better ship, or a few more ships, there's no way to make more money to support getting a really big ship. that's not even considering buying the TL and stations. that in it'self is at least a 50mil project. between the TL, and the station network that it would take to support another energy station, and then capping more transports to move all the goods. it's just daunting, and near unrealistic.

i have another idea. it's a bit drastic, but i think it'll fix the ship/money problem. the Khaak arn't a race of merchants, they are killers. they remind me of the xenon, only more efficient and deadly. to me, it seems the ultimate goal of any Khaak would be to pump out as many ships as possible, to kill as much as possible. following that principle here are my suggestions. leave the shipyard alone, that way you have a place to sell capped ships for money. you can't get away from needing money so there must be a way to make some. as for the other stations, make 2 SPP's, 2 advanced mines, and 3 parts stations. i'm not sure about the nividium thing. having one staion that makes like 10 goods is not efficient. it takes like 30 game minutes to make one good, and i'm not even sure if it will cycle through making all of them. it seems to me like it jumps around, and has about 4 total that it will even produce. so, for the 3 consumable stations. 1st should be a metals station, that produces tiladianium and crystals. then a goods station that makes cloth rimes and rastar oil. 3rd should be the tech station, that makes computer parts, quantum tubes, and microchips.

now here's the kicker, load all Khaak blueprints onto the player HQ. this allows you to build as many ships as you want, as long as you have the resources. this might seem unbalanced because you could save up and just build a M2/M1/M0, but even if you did that, it would be a huge waist of resources. you would have to 1st, build enough fighters to escort you so that you can easily attack M6's. 2nd, build a TL. 3rd, sell your capped/built ships untill you can afford to start deploying stations and expand your front. and 4th, build the bigger ships to clear core sectors/defend.

lastly, make the PHQ, adv. mine, adv. SPP, and parts stations available for buying. this way, once you take over about 5 sectors or so, you can set up a new front, and you won't have to travel so far to resupply/deploy new warships.

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

I agree with you on most points, I think the shipyard is fine as it is now - buy or sell.

The restocking of goods is done now, so no need to worry about that in v3.3.

i have another idea. it's a bit drastic, but i think it'll fix the ship/money problem. the Khaak arn't a race of merchants, they are killers.

very true, but all races have to have some 'limiting' thing. I think ur right about making materials more important than credits for khaak's.

so, for the 3 consumable stations. 1st should be a metals station, that produces tiladianium and crystals. then a goods station that makes cloth rimes and rastar oil. 3rd should be the tech station, that makes computer parts, quantum tubes, and microchips.

What do you recommend for input wares for each? So far:

Metal station
Output: Teladianium and crystals.
Inputs:

Goods station
Output: Cloth rimes and rastar oil.
Inputs:

Tech station
Output: Computer parts, quantum tubes, and microchips.
Inputs:

Do you recommend keeping the power and mining stations? then removing the parts station, and then adding the above 3 stations?

load all Khaak blueprints onto the player HQ

Done.

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

i have to go to work lol. i'll get back with you later.

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

right, well i've modified one of LV's cheats to create stations and i'm making the parts stations with different products and resources to see what works. i'll let you know what i find. here's what i'm thinking so far.

metals fab. (made from tiladianium fab)
output = tiladianium, crystals
input = ore, silicon, energy

high tech fab. (made from quantum tube fab)
output = microchips, computer components, quantum tubes
imput = silicon, tiladianium, energy

goods fab. (made from rhymes fac M)
output = cloth rhymes, rastar oil
imput = energy, slaves

i'm not sure about these yet. also, i was thinking of adding crystals to the energy station as a resource to make the station put out more energy, thus making the ASPP efficient enough to support the Adv. mine with some leftovers for the parts stations.

like i said i'll be playing with all of this, creating stations to experiment. if you have any imput on this, please let me know.

edit1: succeded in making the factories with imput and output quantities that look good. will need testing.

i can't seem to make a ASSP that that comes out with good imput output quantities. everytime i try to make one with nividium and crystals as imput resources, it comes out needing like 2000 nividium and 5 crystals to make like 88000 energy.

either way, we need to find a way to produce more energy. or we could just take energy out of 1 or 2 of the parts stations. yes, energy can be farmed from transports, but it's very inefficient, and not really practical once you get a fleet going and start mobilizing. those are my thoughts anyways.

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

hi there, I should name you the Khaak man Smile

atm, I gave the player a Argon Power plant M, I could change to L or XL which should make more energy cells per cycle. I personally think its better to remove crystals from the khaak power plant, because the khaak get power from the unknown material nividium. Also recommend removing energy cells (if they are causing problems) from factories.

metals fab. (made from tiladianium fab)
output = tiladianium, crystals
input = ore, silicon, energy
seem fine

high tech fab. (made from quantum tube fab)
output = microchips, computer components, quantum tubes
imput = silicon, tiladianium, energy
looks good

goods fab. (made from rhymes fac M)
output = cloth rhymes, rastar oil
imput = energy, slaves
I would remove slaves, as they could be hard to come by massively slowing down the factory, maybe replace with silicon/crystals?

The start wont be prefect, as this is something X3 wasnt really designed to do, but hopefully we get something good from it.

ps. Anyone got word, so they could convert the .doc file to .rtf? (I dont have word any more). What name should I add as for you?

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

hi there, I should name you the Khaak man Smile

- Roguey

no pun intended, i'm sure.

yeah, i tried it with the argon SPPM. for some reason, even when i tried it with just nividium, it wanted like 600 of em to make like 10 energy cells. it was retarded. i might try some more later today, it was just frustrating me last night.

goods fab. (made from rhymes fac M)
output = cloth rhymes, rastar oil
imput = energy, slaves
I would remove slaves, as they could be hard to come by massively slowing down the factory, maybe replace with silicon/crystals?[/code]

- Roguey

that's fine, i was throwing slaves in there just to make things interesting. the goods fab that i made took like 600 energy and 2 slaves to make 100 cloth rhymes. i didn't see how much oil it would make, but the numbers would probably be similar.

if you want, we could take energy out of the metal and high tech fab's, and just have the goods one use energy. i was looking at the regular station stats, cloth rhymes is made with dilexian wheat, which is made with just energy. rastar oil is made from chelts meat, which is also made with just energy. so it isn't too much of a stretch that the middle product could be bypassed to make the cloth and oil. do you think we should put the intermediate products in there as a secondary? it would make things a little more complicated, but also a little more realistic. i might experiement with this build, to see what the energy recquiremements would be, and times too.

i'm still interested in using all the slaves that you end up capturing though. even if it's as simple as adding slaves to the Khaak stations so that we can sell them. right now i'm sitting on like 20 slaves, and i have nothing to do with them.

The start wont be prefect, as this is something X3 wasnt really designed to do, but hopefully we get something good from it.

- Roguey

from how far we're getting, i think this is fully possible. it would be a little harder than a regular game, because of the money issue, and because everyone is an enemy. the game that i can see myself playing, once we're finished, seems really fun.

ps. Anyone got word, so they could convert the .doc file to .rtf? (I dont have word any more). What name should I add as for you?
- Roguey

yup, one of the(few) percs of being a gov't employee. i get Microsoft Office, the full edition, for 20 bucks. what exactly do you need word for though? what are you trying to convert? and what do you mean by what name?

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

It sounds like using nividium as a resource is screwing things up?

With the slaves, It would be simple enough for me to add slaves to the trading dock and then update my re-stock script to remove a few slaves. So some extra money and a place to get rid of them. I think putting slaves on a station resource is a bit weird. I dont know of any stories about khaak taking people for resources.

As for the stations, your doing some great research. I dont think its good to put intermediate as secondary's, unless it really does anything. To be honest I dont really understand secondary's as the goods are made regardless. Do they lessen the amount of primary wares required? Something I never understood on non-player stations.

As for the word document. The mod's readme file is in word format. I dont have word on this system, so I can only view the file. If someone were to convert the file into a rtf file then I can update the file and include the rtf version in v3.3.

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

here's an interesting fact. i've made a few Argon SPP's, as detailed below. notice how the imput resources changes the quantities of everything.

SPP(L) 1
product = energy(3840)
resource = (mineral)nividium (5)
cycle time 5:32

SPP(L) 2
product = energy(10)
resource = (natural)nividium (40)
cycle time 1:30

SPP(L) 3
product = energy(88320)
resource = (mineral)nividium (115), crystals (639)
cycle time 2:07:18

SPP(L) 4
product = energy(1380)
resource = (natural)nividium (5520), crystals (10)
cycle time 1:58

SPP(XL)
product = energy(20)
resource = (natural)nividium (80)
cycle time 1:30

note: if you take the adv ore mine and replace (mineral)nividium with (natural)nividium it will take 75 energy every 1 min to make 300 natural nividium. where as the regular adv ore mine will take 3840 energy every 31min 14sec to make 5 (mineral)nividium.

conclusion: mineral nividium is the way to go, if you want to make more energy, faster, but at a higher cost. another factor to think about though, is that energy isn't the concern here.

the ore mine will make 10 silicon every 2min with 240 energy, and 20 ore every 1min with 120 energy. so if you set up 4 SPP(XL) with natural nividium as a resource, you can power them with only 1 adv ore mine(L). you will then be pumping out ore and silicon faster because you don't have to wait the 30 min for the (mineral)nividium to process.

the only downside is that you need 4XL power plants to support only 1 large mine, with little downtime for all. if you lower that down to 2, or even 1 SPP the numbers would come closer to match the mineral nividium process simply because it would take that long to produce the energy.

side note: adding crystals is a no go. it messes all the numbers up, as you can see.

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

hi there,

I didnt know there was 2 nividium's. I just looked through the ware files and saw the second nividium in TWareN. TWareN is like a dummy list of goods and arent real goods that are sold. They are often used to fill job ships, such as civilian, drop-ships, flight school, media service etc. ships. They often have low value, so players dont try and knick their goods.

The two nividium's (ore and natural) are not the same. The real nividium is the ore one. The ore nividium is the one the player will find from rocks or trading docks. Have a look at the price of the natural nividium, 5cr's? hence why more of them are required.

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

my last post was a little rushed, so sorry if it didn't make much since. allow me to clarify my point.

i was just trying to figure out if either of the two resources were more efficient. at first i thought that the natural nividium would be, but as it turns out, they are the same. in the end, if you use nividium(either) as a resource for a SPP(any) you come out with a 1:1 ratio. the problem with that ratio though, is that your mine is also making ore and silicon, thus you actually come out short on energy.

i did the math to find out how egosoft did it normally in the game. i'm not sure if this is the same for different races of SPP's, but here's some crude figures.

SPP(M)
output = 552 energy (2208 per crystal batch)
imput = 4 crystals
time, 1:58

crystal fab
output = 16 crystals
imput = 240energy, 10silicon, 160meatsteak

silicon mine(M)
output = 2 wafers
imput = 48 energy (240 per 10)

bakery(M)
output = 20 steaks
imput = 30 energy, 6 beef
(240 energy, 48 beef)

ranch(M)
output = 6 beef
imput = 30 energy (240 energy)

in the end, it only takes 960 energy total to make 2208 energy. i think this is achieved by going through multiple stations. by using so many different resources in the creation process, you come out with a more efficient system. because we are trying to use energy to create nividium, and then nividium to create energy, we end up with that 1:1 ratio.

What this means:
reguardless of how many power plants we put up, 1 SPP powered by nividium, will only support 1 nividium mine, and visa versa. we can work with this though, as it is a Khaak game, as it's not supposed to be easy. in the begining, you can end up stealing a lot of energy from transporters. with said energy, you should have enough to supply your system with the resources it needs to pump out ore and silicon from your mine, at a decent pace. also, we could impliment the slave supplimental system, where slaves help reduce production cycles/increase production.

however, if we try to add other stations, that also need energy, we would run dry really quickly.

proposed solution:

metals fab. (made from tiladianium fab)
output = tiladianium(80), crystals(40)
input = ore (50), silicon (12)
cycle time(both) 8min

high tech fab. (made from quantum tube fab)
output = microchips(4 in 24min)1, computer components(10 in 8min)2,
quantum tubes(24 in 40min)3
imput = silicon (15)1 (5)2 (25)3 , tiladianium (48 )1 (16)2 (80)3

goods fab. (made from rhymes fac M)
output = cloth rhymes(6 in 1min 12)1, rastar oil(4 in 1min 40)2
imput = energy (36)1 (40)2

i don't see any way of getting around the goods fab needing energy. another concern is that it takes a looooong time to make the high tech items. but i guess that's another thing we may not be able to get around.

so, i know this is a lot of information, so don't hesitate to ask me any other questions you may have about this. i should be up till around 3, and on again tomorrow morning. please let me know what you think about all this. if you approve of these changes, i can start a new game and try out this system as soon as i get a new galexy.Khaak file.

thanks a lot for being so open to working with me on this. as i said earlier, i'm really excited about getting this mod fully functional.

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

1 SPP powered by nividium, will only support 1 nividium mine, and visa versa.

I think that should be fine, as we dont want people making mega amounts of goods. The player should be encouraged to steal and kill from other ships. The factories are 'background' resource generators and shouldnt be deepened on completely.

also, we could impliment the slave supplimental system, where slaves help reduce production cycles/increase production.

I think the best is to be able to sell them for money. Extra money will always be welcomed and the khaak can experiment on them Smile

however, if we try to add other stations, that also need energy, we would run dry really quickly.

Is this not true for the rest of the X-Galaxy? You often need more than 1 mine, SPP in complex. Im gonna add some more stations to the shipyard, so you can expand your complex more.

another concern is that it takes a looooong time to make the high tech items. but i guess that's another thing we may not be able to get around.

Even if extra stations are linked in? I know stations cost a lot of money cost but we dont want to give away a large self-sufficient complex to start with.

I think you also got to factor in that this starts gives you a lot of stations, ships and money instantly. We dont want to cut out the build-up progress too much, as for many it can be fun gathering resources and building up their empire. You are in a very safe sector too - an heavy armed sectored, that even has its own a M0! I doubt a fleet of capitals could take it down.

Im not sure if I can do another small update to the script, has im thinking of doing some bigger changes such as adding a khaak TL. However I could upload v3.3 when im done, if you like to test?

I just want to say a big thanks for your help with the khaak start.

ps. Could you send me the converted rtf if possible?

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

yup, i'm attempting to change it over now. first off, what file type is .rtf? i don't think i've heard of that one. next, how would you like the file sent to you? email?

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

Roguey

Trueguey (22)

Posted 13 years ago.

A big thanks, it stands for Rich Text Format (RTF) Smile

jacer08

Markoguey (10)

Posted 13 years ago.

right, that's what i though. it's converted, but you didn't tell me how you want me to send it to you.

in eternity, forever lasts but an instant.

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