[MOD] [TC/AP] X3 Rebalance Mod (XRM) - Total conversion - v1.30d (02.12.13)

[zhukov032186]

@Arbiter

It's ok, it's not a bother. You need to upload your images to a file sharing site, say... Photobucket.com is the one I use. It's free, and provides plenty of space. Doesn't take buy a couple minutes to set up.

That still sounds like some kind of hardware/conflict issue, though. I would think if it was the game itself, it would be all or nothing...

It is worth mentioning that sometimes software utilities, or non-video hardware can cause "side effects", too. Had major issues with a sound card recently causing ALL KINDS of trouble, and have had issues with bad memory doing weird stuff, too.

Don't know what specifically to suggest to you, except to review everything you've done the last few days, I mean EVERYTHING and try to back track. Perhaps even try a system restore, if you haven't already.

Are any other programs causing you any trouble, or just X3? As Paul suggested, have you tried vanilla X3 yet?

Sorry if you've already answered that question, I tend to ignore most troubleshooting questions, but sounds like you're having a legitimate issue of some kind

[paulwheeler]

ugh...ok, I just went through a whole bunch of crap and apparently IDK how to post a screenshot here. i read the faq and downloaded junk and I'm just an idiot i guess. but what it looks like is holes in the hulls of ships and lines going from parts of ships to other parts and even on the start screen the mammoth that goes by has holes and spikes and lines and Albion has big blocky lava blotches...everything starts out smooth and it all slowly degrades to crap. i installed an earlier version of my AMD drivers and that still hasn't worked. I have no idea why everything was good one day, then all screwed up the next. Sorry to bother you all but idk what to do

What other mods do you have installed? I replaced the main menu scene in the XRM. You should not be seeing Albion or a Mammoth if the XRM is installed unless another mod is putting the vanilla AP menu back in.

Things like spikes on models sounds like graphics card issues. Youre not overclocking it are you? How much graphics memory does it have? If its degrading over time it may be overheating.

[greypanther]

I am sorry Paul, but I have another couple of issues.

Firstly, the barter system may need another tweek. I found it posible to go from two advanced satelites, use them to buy six jumpdrive kits in the next station; then sold same for 17 million at next privateer port.
Perhaps you should just remove the availabilty of Jumpdrive kits from the barter menu. If that could be done? The kits just make money making too easy, imo.

Secondly, there is a price issue with the orbital weapon platforms. I have just found out that they come fully equiped; I did not expect that!
A small platform comes with 16 photon pulse cannons and 3 2 g shields! These freebies make the actual platforms very cheap.
Could you either make them that they come empty and need to be outfitted, or maybe a price hike.
Thing is, photon pulse cannons are not always the best option for the OWPs, imo.
I have noticed that ai owned OWPs seem to be always equiped with PPC; can that be altered? Just that it is both a tad bit boring as is; not to mention the lack of race specific OWP weapons.

BTW, just tell me if you would rather I not mention the little issues as I percieve them, I know you do an awful lot for us all already and have no wish to add to the presure.

[paulwheeler]

I was not aware OWPs came fully equipped... that must be part of Cadius' deployment script. Ill check it. Maybe they just need a hefty price increase to account for the weapons.

Race specific weapons on OWPs is something that is tough to do at this late stage as theyre defined in the universe map which cant be changed without a restart. Its something that really needed to be done in the initial development of the mod but wasnt. I may be able to script something... again ill look into it.

As for the JDK barter issue - again ill look into it.

[greypanther]

Thank you Paul.
Again sorry for adding to your workload. I honestly wish there was a way you could be rewarded for all your hard work.

[Arbiter Kane]

oh sorry, forgot to say that was a clean vanilla install and test. no mods, just the bare steam install. It must be a video card issue but idk what i can do about it as nothing was done by me...one day it was fine, then the steam ninja update, I restarted computer, turned on X3AP...and it was goofed up. Thanks for the help and suggestions. I'll try to figure something out.

[zhukov032186]

Sorry, Arbiter. If you can, you might try swapping your video card out with an older but still functional one, and see if that fixes it. If it does, you GPU is junk. If it doesn't... God hates you. Or Steam does. Maybe both.

Seriously, though... That's very strange. Still, I've had similar things happen to me in the past. Myself, my brother, and my father all have custom rigs, so between the three of us, it amounts to dozens of "hardware changes", and sometimes, inexplicably... stuff takes a crap. It happens.

My brother once, just a few months ago, in fact, completely overhauled his rig. New everything. Among the parts installed was a new high buck sound card (that I suggested), intended to replace the 10 year old Sound Blaster Audigy (the original one) that he'd been using. Long story short, it ended up the sound card was defective, and it fried two motherboards, damaged a third, some miscellaneous other stuff, before we figured out what it was. -edit (supplementary info, it started toasting crap within 30 seconds of ignition, so... very little room to understand what was happening, except it would suddenly cease working for no reason.)
I suggested my brother return it and seek some form of compensation, but he opted to beat it to pieces with a large mallet. I suppose that was more satisfying.... Was there a point to this story?? I forget.

[Osiris454]

I was not aware OWPs came fully equipped... that must be part of Cadius' deployment script. Ill check it. Maybe they just need a hefty price increase to account for the weapons.

OWP's come almost fully equipped. Most of the time you'll get a full loadout of PPC's and shields, but other times you won't. It's pretty random. Once, I got half of the weapons needed and only partial shielding. Still, trying to track down 48 PPC's, Gauss Cannons, or any other capital weapon is hard at times. Not to mention expensive. Also, OWP's don't come with any equipment per-se. Only some trivial pieces of equipment and only a handful at that. Again, it's pretty random. You have to get the missing equipment for it yourself by using some kind of surrogate ship that you can transfer the wares from.

Perhaps a small to moderate increase in price and a much more random loadout would be better? Like a 1% chance of getting 5000 units of 'Garbage'. Hehe

[Drockt1]

I was not aware OWPs came fully equipped... that must be part of Cadius' deployment script. Ill check it. Maybe they just need a hefty price increase to account for the weapons.

OWP's come almost fully equipped. Most of the time you'll get a full loadout of PPC's and shields, but other times you won't. It's pretty random. Once, I got half of the weapons needed and only partial shielding. Still, trying to track down 48 PPC's, Gauss Cannons, or any other capital weapon is hard at times. Not to mention expensive. Also, OWP's don't come with any equipment per-se. Only some trivial pieces of equipment and only a handful at that. Again, it's pretty random. You have to get the missing equipment for it yourself by using some kind of surrogate ship that you can transfer the wares from.

Perhaps a small to moderate increase in price and a much more random loadout would be better? Like a 1% chance of getting 5000 units of 'Garbage'. Hehe

OWPs are great.,but ya the large is probably alittle to good for its cost(when considering the free load out). I would actually keep the cost on the small, and raise the price on the /med/large(creating a bigger range between the 3). Noone should ever buy a small OWP right now when the large OWP is so much better.

[Osiris454]

I need some advice. I'm having a hard time keeping the sector traders localized to one area because of the wrap-around links. The gates that go from one side of the universe to the other (Ringo Moon --> Venturer's Sentinel). I'm using the Economy and Supply Trader script and I can blacklist the sectors outside of the trading range, but that can be very tedious and time consuming. Is there an easier way? I have the EST's set to a trade range of 5 jumps with the home sector being Argon Prime. I want to prevent them from going through the west gate in Ringo Moon. Any ideas?

Thanks.

EDIT: I know that I can blacklist Venturer's and they won't go there. I get that, but with a sufficiently capable pilot, won't they just jump past it if the neighboring sectors are within range?

[TrixX]

sigh...ok...about the missing hull sections and the spikes on everything, I uninstalled everything, re-installed TC and AP, updated video and sound drivers, and verified all files on both games through steam and still, there are chunks missing from ships and spikes on everything and it's just junk. I looked in tech forum, and all over the place and can't find a fix. I figured you all are the brainiest of the bunch and would know wtf I could do about it, cause as it sits now, I can't play the game with how crappy it looks. I tried lowering all graphics settings and that didn't work either. The game has been working just fine for months, and has worked fine with XRM and Paul's latest patches. It was after the stupid steam patch that this started happening. I love this game and especially the XRM universe and this is making me sad. Sad is stupid. Thanks folks.

Firstly post some pics, secondly what you are describing is called Artifacting in the Graphics Card world. Basically where polygons are being misaligned, textures warped and general calculations going wrong before it is displayed on your screen. This leads me to think that you have a hardware issue with you gfx card or RAM (knowing your computer specs would help too). If you have another graphics card you can test with then that would isolate the issue better too.

Another option if you haven't already done it is to update graphics drivers (if that fails do a clean using drivercleaner or something of that kind from Guru3D.com and re-install the latest drivers again).

It's definitely not XRM or the latest patch from Egosoft causing this issue.

[greypanther]

@ Osiris and Drockt: IMO, the prices should be increased just to cover the cost of the equipment, that seems the simplest way to alter it.

As for aquiring the correct weapons; its MEANT to be difficult, hence the need to build up your own infrastructure. Just as it is difficult to equip a destroyer at times, unless you have your own complexes.


The small OWP is also very useful, not against cap ships I admit, but with the right weapons it shreds fighters and the odd corvette; which is why I mentioned being able to get them with a different loadout.

I am at the moment using a small OWP, with Tri beam and phased array laser cannon, backed up with six lasertowers to blokade a pirate sector in the far SE of the map. The whole thing costs about 45 mil and so far stops most pirates that leave the pirate sector. ( I destroyed the PPC that came free with the OWP. )
Course the biggest ship to leave the pirate sector so far has been a heavy centaur, but it works and fits in with my roleplaying. It will be a long time before the bounty system pays for the defence.
Which is especially so as I think I will have to add a fast fighter wing to pick of the stargglers, ( the odd M4/M5 ) that evades the blockade. I just need to choose the wing fighters now? khaak advanced interceptors maybe?

[Honved]

Well it sounds like you have either not installed the XRM correctly or you have a conflicting mod installed.

All starts give you weapons that you can mount - if you are not seeing this something is wrong. PACs can be installed on all commonwealth ships of M4 class and above (and many M5s).

No missions have been changed at all - again it sounds like something is wrong with your installation.

I mean, do you honestly think this mod would be as popular as it is if there were that many basic, school boy errors?

I think I located the problem: a leftover file, probably from X-Tended (I hated that mod), buried in one of the directories. It had no effect on the "vanilla" game missions for the couple of months since I removed X-Tended, but seems to have affected XRM. Just to be sure I got "everything", I did a complete wipe of the entire game directory and reinstalled the game from the disc, then ran all the updates. It now allows the ships in question to use their starting weapons.

I'm still surprised at how much harder it is to kill a fighter in XRM, with the increased shield regen rates. 8 PACs can gnaw the 25Mj shields of an M4 pretty heavily, but if you don't kill in on the first pass, it'll swing around and be up to at least 50% shields by the time you're back in range. It also makes early encounters with Xenon Ns in the Terran plotline almost laughable, since their dents to your 50Mj shields simply vanish in a couple of seconds. I consider the change from "vanilla" to the current values as "too far in the other direction", but that's a personal opinion.

The Repair Laser has gone from the lethargic vanilla "sit there forever" while it either restores a meager couple of hull points or recharges, all the way to "a couple of swipes and done", with never any drop in weapon energy below 99%. I can now repair an M3 from 50% hull about as fast as I used to be able to fix an M5. Again, what was way too slow now seems a bit too fast for my liking; it almost makes fighter damage irrelevant (although it's probably still tedious on capital ships).

Otherwise, I'm quite impressed with most of the changes so far. Overall, I'd commend the modders involved for a great job.

[robalexhall]

Try a different hull pack if the repair laser is too fast?

[zhukov032186]

Plot ships may be weaker than the spawn you encounter out and about. Also... I don't have any particular trouble killing off fighters. The biggest problem when you're in an M3 fighting M4s or M5s is that they CAN strafe you and circle at a distance while they recharge.
Getting something with faster projectiles, like a PRG, or actually a light missile is best. Otherwise, another M4 or M5 will fight them better.

Regarding the repair laser, I believe the actual repair rate is the same, it's just that it doesn't "shut" off after ten seconds now. Yes, an M5 will repair in a few seconds, largely irrelevant because they're so fragile they either die or they don't. The larger M3s and M3+s can take a couple minutes but aren't too bad.
Ultimately, I don't see how the "repair rate" could really be an issue. If you're going to repair something manually to avoid the bill, you're going to do it regardless of how long it takes. What is the point in making it more time consuming and tedious? You can't use it to "cheat" during a battle, and as far as between battles... A single space man hovering outside a ship waving a magic wand that fixes stuff isn't very realisitic in the first place... So might as well get it over with
It's really only useful for repairing smaller fighters. Larger ones, or even a TS, take a little while, and capital ships you'd pretty much just leave it on over night, I suppose.

[epion]

Hey guys, its a long time since i last enjoyed x3tc.
So i have some questions about this mod.

1. Can i play it with the campaign?
2. Which other mods do you suggest2use with this one?
3. Any other ideas?

thx4help

[zhukov032186]

Hey guys, its a long time since i last enjoyed x3tc.
So i have some questions about this mod.

1. Can i play it with the campaign?
2. Which other mods do you suggest2use with this one?
3. Any other ideas?

thx4help

See the first page of this thread.

[greypanther]

If as zhukov so kindly pointed out, I made some small changes to XRM tships, with X3 editor2; ( assuming I work out how and can make myself do it, ) will I have to tweek every time Paul updated the XRM?

[zhukov032186]

@greypanther

Yep. Please note my earlier post about how I customised my game and "have no intention of updating anytime soon". Everytime you patch, you will overwrite any "personalisations" you have. So... Keep back ups or references of your changes, and don't update unless there is something in the update you've just GOT to have. For example, the last two or three mini-patches have been minor SOS tweaks, fixes, etc, that are non-critical.

-edit

Using that editor is pretty simple. I used it to splice Argonaut's Menagerie Shipyard into XRM and had the whole thing going within 30 minutes, and had 0 prior experience to tinkering with X3. Just install the program, and start poking around. A few minutes of investigation you'll be able to find whatever you want.

A helpful tip: Use the Virtual File System in the editor. It displays what X3 "sees" (remember numbering your cats sequentially so they load in the proper order?) If you are having trouble locating the SPECIFIC file, (like there are multiple Tships) use VFS, click properties on the file in question and you'll see the location (it'll show either the games directory, which cat file it's in, whatever). From there, you know what file to load, and where it is, in order to make your changes.

[Prophet1]

The Repair Laser has gone from the lethargic vanilla "sit there forever" while it either restores a meager couple of hull points or recharges, all the way to "a couple of swipes and done", with never any drop in weapon energy below 99%. I can now repair an M3 from 50% hull about as fast as I used to be able to fix an M5. Again, what was way too slow now seems a bit too fast for my liking;

In vanilla, it didn't matter what the energy gauge read, you always had 100% energy and repaired ships at same rate whether 1% or 100%. XRM has a much more dangerous environment then vanilla and I've often needed the repair laser. But I often push it in combat biting off more than I can chew. I for one am happy with the increased repair rate.