Corporate Command Discussion

[Aury]

A thread for discussion of George Moromisato's Corporate Command for Transcendence!

http://multiverse.kronosaur.com/transEn ... 3A00800000

(PS - George, feel free to edit or replace this thread. I was just making this right now so shrike could post a bug report)

[Song]

Specifically....
It's possible to get unwinnable missions from corporate metropolisises (metropoli? I don't know the correct plural form). The "kill an outlaw freighter" mission can in some circumstances spawn the target at a distance from the corporate station that cannot be reached by any ship before the target gates away. I discovered this in Tau Ceti when I got one such mission as my first assignment from Icarus Station. I don't have TransData these days so I haven't decompiled CC to take a look, but I'd guess it's either based on a distance from the gate or from a random station/position. There's a few ways to possibly deal with this: Increasing the distance between gate and destination, forcing it to start within a certain distance of the mission-giver, lowering the speed, and/or not offering the mission if the distances just don't work.

[george moromisato]

Specifically....
It's possible to get unwinnable missions from corporate metropolisises (metropoli? I don't know the correct plural form). The "kill an outlaw freighter" mission can in some circumstances spawn the target at a distance from the corporate station that cannot be reached by any ship before the target gates away. I discovered this in Tau Ceti when I got one such mission as my first assignment from Icarus Station. I don't have TransData these days so I haven't decompiled CC to take a look, but I'd guess it's either based on a distance from the gate or from a random station/position. There's a few ways to possibly deal with this: Increasing the distance between gate and destination, forcing it to start within a certain distance of the mission-giver, lowering the speed, and/or not offering the mission if the distances just don't work.

Thanks! The mission sets a distance based on the speed of the transport and the player. However, in some cases I believe it is assuming that the player heads straight to the optimum interception point (instead of following the transport, which often takes longer).

Moreover, the code expects the player to intercept the transport very close to the stargate, so there is not much room for error.

I'll adjust the calculations.

[Vachtra]

I had this happen and only got a few shots off before he escaped.
I also get the order to return to the beginning station after a few missions with other corporate stations. When I get there they send me on one mission and they're done with me again.

[Miguk]

I've run into a bug with Anton Nasser once. On the mission where he asks you to follow him to attack a chimera station, he didn't move. He just kept wiggling back and forth but stayed in the same place. The station did appear on the map.

[jb12]

I am hoping to get a comprehensive hint or guide to the stock system. The first stock for systems between Eridani and St. K had a simple mechanic, eliminate stations, and increase stock prices. However, the other system related stocks do not seem to be correlated to the same patterns.

I am hoping to get some light shed on what to do for these other stocks, I have tried for example for JNGA stocks, doing all Huari quests, fortress quests, and any Metropolis quests I find between these systems, but so far, JNGA is staying at 8.5 per stock, which dropped from its initial value of 20 credits/stock...

Outer Realm stock's at .06 per share atm... and I am not sure what direction to head in next...

[AssumedPseudonym]

I've run into a bug with Anton Nasser once. On the mission where he asks you to follow him to attack a chimera station, he didn't move. He just kept wiggling back and forth but stayed in the same place. The station did appear on the map.

 I ran into this one earlier today, myself, in the Anaxas system. The only way I could get him to move was to push him with a DK10 Arbalest to an outlaw asteroid. He didn’t even try shooting at anything until the turrets got him up to 50% damage — which, yes, took a long time, and required me to push him back into turret range a few times — but then he snapped out of it and headed for where he was supposed to go. …After blowing the kack out of three turrets, a Sotho, and a handful of Borer IIs.

[Atarlost]

I had a recent discussion with The Shrike and Assumed Pseudonym on IRC

Code: Select all

The_Shrike	ALso is there anything like the Novaya armor that's actually decent for later game, or does the Manticore *have* to swap out its gimmick?
09:37	AssumedPseudonym	I managed to blow up my Manticore with a ballista shot into an asteroid earlier. ¬.¬;
	The_Shrike	I got in a fight with an entire chimera fleet thanks to misjudging an attempt to farm viking chimera for their guns.
09:38	The_Shrike	Heavy novaya armor helps not when you've got 50 of them after you and you can't outrun them.
	AssumedPseudonym	Yyyeah, Manticore + Chimera Drakes = x.x3
09:39	Atarlost	I don't even try to permadeath in CC. 
	Atarlost	I always wind up having to suicide because of Anton Bloody Stupid Nasser bugs.
09:40	AssumedPseudonym	So far the only way I’ve managed to deal with those is to nudge him with something kinetic toward something that will shoot at him, and keep him in range until he hits 50% damage.
	The_Shrike	I've never had bugs with Anton.
	Atarlost	The_Shrike: I also am not ever going to even try the Manticore. I will not run any ship with a base speed below 0.2 c period.
09:41	The_Shrike	I *have* had him accidentally hit me with a Mk.7 shell before though.
	AssumedPseudonym	So have I. That… kinda smarted. x.@
	Atarlost	Anton flies off into nowhere more than half the time for me.
	The_Shrike	Eh, the manticore is a nice ship.
	The_Shrike	It's just that at present it, like the conny, is rather flawed.
09:42	Atarlost	And it moves at under 0.2 c and ships that are slower than 0.2 c drive me bonkers.
	The_Shrike	Frankly, it'd do well to have that "emergency thruster" system that got on the forums as an idea. An engine overdrive or whatever.
	The_Shrike	Or just make drive upgrades actually increase maxspeed on it to something decent.
09:43	The_Shrike	I run drive upgrades on pretty much every ship I fly, except the Freyr and Wolfen.
	Atarlost	Drive upgrades do, but they come after the slow transit times have already driven me to rage quit.
	The_Shrike	Eh, not really. Manticore + tritium upgrade is still really painful to fly.
	The_Shrike	A titan might fix it.
	The_Shrike	But by that stage you've probably given up and installed a regular shield anyway.
09:44	Atarlost	It turns badly, but it should have the straight line speed of a sapphire or freyr with a tritium.
	The_Shrike	The manticore goes from "shrug off the attack" to "die instantly" very quickly as enemies improve.
	The_Shrike	Although my experience is skewed due to aforementioned chimerae.
09:45	The_Shrike	Either your armor can repair faster than the damage accumulates.....
	The_Shrike	......or it doesn't, and you're screwed.
	The_Shrike	Made worse by the fact that the lack of a targeting system for the Burak missiles means that you have no long-range option for the darned thing until you find an upgrade.
	AssumedPseudonym	See, the whole armor repair thing would be just fine if the ship moved fast enough to support it. And the Manticore just doesn’t.
	The_Shrike	Yeah.
09:46	The_Shrike	Although keep in mind that if it *did* then accidentally annoying one in vanilla would be utter hell.
	Atarlost	Boosting it up to 0.2 c would help enormously. 
	AssumedPseudonym	Yes.
	AssumedPseudonym	So very yes.
	The_Shrike	They're evil enough as it is.
	The_Shrike	Especially Re: high flux mags.
09:47	The_Shrike	But I think the freyr is a pretty neat ship now.
	The_Shrike	Not as nice as the wolfen to start with, since the Rassiermesser lasers are kinda iffy to dogfight with due to the low ROF.
	The_Shrike	Also no missile launcher.
	Atarlost	It's a very nice missile platform, though. 
	The_Shrike	But assuming I have a lucky break and actually find a flenser, it should be awesome.
	AssumedPseudonym	The Freyr is currently my favorite of the CC’s, yeah, but it’s still a distant third to the Sapphire and Wolfen.
	The_Shrike	THe conny should easily be the best. But autons suck.
09:48	AssumedPseudonym	Agreed.
	AssumedPseudonym	Actually, I kinda wish CC gave an option to start the original three ships at Tau Ceti, and the CC ships at Eridani.
	The_Shrike	Do we still have the lame "I can 't be bothered putting actual code in here so have the defaults" <10mw limit on device power?
	Atarlost	A dual flenser is arguably better than the level 7 rasiermesser ion weapon. 
	The_Shrike	What, the ion9?
	The_Shrike	Or is there a new one?
09:49	Atarlost	No. It's just a slow firing ion cannon. 
	The_Shrike	Hmm.
	Atarlost	It's to the EI light ion cannon as the Valjor 50 is to the EI laser.
	AssumedPseudonym	I have clung to my dual flensers all the way to Eta Ceti more than a few times. ¬.¬;
	Atarlost	I'm wishing I had. 
09:50	Atarlost	I'd expected more benefit from a two tier type upgrade.
	The_Shrike	So Rassiermeser employ an absolute GENIUS who is unable to just tie two of them together with duct-tape and add more capacitors?
	The_Shrike	Dvalin is kind of a dope actually. Awesome guy, but how exactly does giving him centauri recoillessessess help him make superweapons?
	The_Shrike	(Unless that's been fixed)
09:51	Atarlost	Two and a two fifths of one actually (except not quite. The DPS is a bit lower)
	The_Shrike	In previous versions I carried one all the way to Jiang's Star just to see him be ecstatic about it.
	The_Shrike	"I have never seen such a wonderous device before!"
	AssumedPseudonym	I’ve done that with Urak armor and CLAWs before.
	Atarlost	The (dual) flenser does more and can take enhancerdevices.
09:52	The_Shrike	Can you still do the old particle accelerator + bushido enhancer + optimiser ROM trick on the Hanzo to make it completely insane?
	Atarlost	You should be able to.
	AssumedPseudonym	Actually, you know what I like dual flensers against? Luminous. They really don’t have anything that can deal with kinetic damage.
	The_Shrike	Sweeeet.
09:53	The_Shrike	Assumed<--I actually use the 300D auton against them for exactly that reason. No special laser resists.
		AssumedPseudonym high-fives.
	The_Shrike	And then the 310A takes down pteravores nicely.
	The_Shrike	With about a 50% casualty rate on solo attacks against each nest.
	Atarlost	Really need to do a NW alpha version. Get you hooked on autons that don't suck. 
09:54	The_Shrike	AI that isn't suicidally overconfident and prone to "charge of the light brigade" style tactics?
	The_Shrike	Ability to withdraw autons from battle without them forgetting when they get shot?
	The_Shrike	And an auton upgrade system that works?
	The_Shrike	THose three alone would make the game really far more awesome. Also allow me to do Pacifist Run 3.0
09:55	The_Shrike	Since 2.0 was a bust because of horrible autons.
	AssumedPseudonym	…Oh hey, -that’s- how you do that. *Has learned a new trick on POV-Ray.*
	Atarlost	Autons with a 100mw reactor and flyby or standoff AI. 
09:56	The_Shrike	Hmm. better.
	The_Shrike	THe auton controller class (or whatever it is) is rather........old. And buggy.
	The_Shrike	Autons are basically the equivelent of Nethack pets.
09:57	The_Shrike	But you can't finish the game with them, alas.
	The_Shrike	At least....not in this version.
	Atarlost	But the nonstandard AIs are a huge improvement over the standard.
09:58	Atarlost	Standard circles within range. Standoff tries to stay outside and flyby darts in and out. 
	The_Shrike	Nice.
	AssumedPseudonym	I still like keeping a couple of 300m/i’s on me so I can sic them on Dwarg Masters. “Let’s see how YOU like it!” …Kacking cnidocyst cannons… >.<
	The_Shrike	DOn't suppose you can add a "don't shoot ANYTHING" mode?
	The_Shrike	Because now that the curators dock at BM stations, autons are even more dangerous than ever.
	Atarlost	I'm not trying to alter the auton controller. 
	The_Shrike	the 1M/i is the best auton, and only decent midgame auton.
09:59	The_Shrike	Except maybe the 300D.
	The_Shrike	the 1M sucks, simply because it has an incredibly lame gun.
	AssumedPseudonym	May have gotten the number on that wrong, but you know the one I mean.
	The_Shrike	Ideally, it'd use a slam cannon instead.
	Atarlost	These are intended as late game autons. 
	The_Shrike	yeah. EMP.
	The_Shrike	Yeah, I know. Should be interesting.
	The_Shrike	I need to try the Lumiere autons some time...
10:00	AssumedPseudonym	I’d love to see autons that are less useless, absolutely.
	Atarlost	The siege version starts with something comparable to a mark I howitzer. 
	The_Shrike	Heheh. COmbat mule.
	The_Shrike	First, take mule.
	The_Shrike	Then, take something ridiculous.
	The_Shrike	Eg. Omni X-ray, dual-fusionfire.
10:01	The_Shrike	Then don't add them together, but install the nice weapon and go sell that useless auton and buy some armor patches with the money.
	AssumedPseudonym	Mk. V Repeater.
	Atarlost	The Mk. V repeater would do quite well on the siege auton. 
	The_Shrike	I've never used it. 
10:02	Atarlost	Lots of recoil. 
	The_Shrike	How does it stack against the Fusionfire?
	AssumedPseudonym	The only decent run I’ve had in 1.3 has been with a Mk. V repeater. Those things rock.
	Atarlost	Standoff AI without turrets are helped enormously by recoil.
	The_Shrike	My best ever run ended with a Fusionfire + speedloader +optimiser ROM.
	Atarlost	V repeater is okay. 
	The_Shrike	And that was my "I very slowly kill phobii by flying backwards in front of them doing my thrusting via gun recoil" weapon.
10:03	The_Shrike	Alas, I didn't find an APC.
	Atarlost	It's a bit much recoil for a playership.
	The_Shrike	Hmm. If it were rassiermesser it'd be good on the freyr....but it isn't.
	Atarlost	It give more thrust than the stop command can counteract.
	Atarlost	It's still as good on the freyr as it is on the sapphire.
10:04	The_Shrike	Well, yeah.
	The_Shrike	But a burst fire with recoil-correction and smart targeting would be awesome.
	AssumedPseudonym	Couple it with an inertialess, though, and you have something that can be fun.
	Atarlost	And it's the only thing I've found that hurts things without using ammo.
	The_Shrike	Hmm, true. Although I've never really liked the inertialess.
	Atarlost	Inertialess uses way too much fuel to be practical.
10:05	The_Shrike	Actually, the manticore would be pretty awesome with a jumpdrive.
	The_Shrike	Do an attack run, teleport away, wait for repairs, rinse and repeat.
	AssumedPseudonym	The inertialess is as much a blessing as a curse, and not just for the fuel usage.
	The_Shrike	Although the lack of a good high-level armor that is boosted by the armor repairer means that against heavy stuff it's liable to explode a bit before ending the run.
10:06	Atarlost	Jumpdrives put too much of a dent in your power budget for my taste.
	The_Shrike	When I do use them I disable them when I don't need the bonuses they give.
10:08	AssumedPseudonym	I tend to do that a lot with my weapon enhancers, especially if I’m running anything less than a Koshiba.

The Manticore is suffering obvious issues. This is in addition to the self evident 50% higher armor upgrade costs, increased armor acquisition difficulties, and inability to handle conditions without condition immune armor while using the repair device. I suggested boosting it to Sapphire speed, but that's partly because I don't like long transit times.

The Freyr gimmick hasn't really been helped much by the new weapons, though maybe that will change farther in. I haven't seen a Thorin 300 or switched into a reactor capable of powering one yet.

The Sabel 90 is obviously bad as is expected. All particle weapons are bad because of an excess of particle resistant foes in the Ungoverned Territories and this is inevitable and expected. It would probably take a major overhaul of hostile sovereigns to fix this.

I'm surprised by the Sabel 220, though. It's performing worse than a dual flenser with cannon accelerator against a lot of enemies in the Ungoverned Territories. It's worse than the lower level choice against pretty much all shields, which combined with a tendency towards low level armor makes it weaker against all gunships except Dwarg Raiders (and the only reason it's better against them is that a turreted dual weapon can't hit them at all). Against capital ships I'm finding its damage output trivial compared to missiles. Oh, and I've lost a third of my reach from "upgrading." For the power consumption it's not making me a happy Rasiermesser customer.

I think the Sabel/Valjor line need a better gimmick. I'd look at either more range (similar to the advantage the Flenser has over the Ballista) or high enough damage (with correspondingly lower rate of fire) to consistently single shot out peer gunships. They're currently at an awkward place with slightly low DPS and the chunky damage is only an advantage when it either makes gunships go away instantly or is facing resistances that have lesser weapons losing large amounts of damage to roundoff (eg. when the chunky gun is dropping from 4.5 to 4 while the fast firing gun is dropping from 2.5 to 2 twice).

I am loving what the change to maneuverability has done to the viability of carrying missiles, though. The MAGs and the unguided Orkan 55 benefit wondrously from swivel and actually hurt things.

I mention some in development mod stuff in the auton discussion before we turn briefly back to the Manticore, but Shrike brings up AI problems and that all the autons still have uselessly small default reactors.

[PM]

Seeing the playable Manticore turn as slow as an EI freighter while NPC Manticores turn as quickly as a Sapphire hurts.

[Atarlost]

Seeing the playable Manticore turn as slow as an EI freighter while NPC Manticores turn as quickly as a Sapphire hurts.

Certainly the NPC should match the PC.

A case can be made for either boosting turning rate or top speed. Boosting turning rate will give a better short range platform. Boosting top speed will give a better long range platform since the ship will be able to outrun most serious dangers. Boosting top speed will make it less painful to play before drive upgrades start to come in.

[PM]

I like to see the playable Manticore's turning speed raised to match the Sapphire's/NPCs'. As for max speed, a tritium propulsion upgrade can fix that. After all, wasn't the tritium drive made to raise top speed of slow ships like the EI500 to .20c? If tritium drive is too hard to come by early, make it a Tinker recipe. I prefer the Manticore to get better without messing with its base top speed.

It would also be nice to have a jumbo-sized cargo hold to let the Manticore reach its 200 ton potential capacity.

[Song]

Well, setting aside the extraneous stuff, here's the problems I find with the manticore:

1. It can't run away. This is a crippling problem for a super-offensive optimised gunship. You are forced into a very aggressive strategy, but have no exit options.
2. Because it can't run away, it has to survive an entire fight on its armor segments, then regenerate between fights, rather than having the option to run away and regen (the EI500 has this to a degree as well)..however......
3. Unlike the EI500, you can't tank with shields because you get a massive penalty.
4. These combine to make it so that either you survive a fight (by which I mean "actual fight" not "one-shot everything instantly" fight because damage accumulates slower than you can repair it, or you die because it does not. You also have far less time in which to do this, because you have lower HP than any other ship in the game.....although having 6 segments does sometimes help with this (and I actually like having six segments, despite the extra cost).
5. While a step in the right direction, the new armors still don't fix this underlying set of issues.....some way of boosting their HP or giving a pseudo-shield effect on the manticore might help though.
6. They also don't give an endgame option.....basically you need to farm/buy iocrym armor in order to avoid being disintegrated if you want to fight the ICS without a longreach+GoS strategy (unless it can fit neutronium, which I doubt, or trans-uranic, which might work out). It'd be nice to have more options.

Increasing the turn rate will help with the option to try smashing through things, but still leaves the problem that the manticore is a glass cannon that can't run away from things. It'd need a major offensive boost (like linked weapon slots, a damage bonus to all makayev weapons installed, or something crazy-awesome) in order to make it a "kill things before they kill you" ship, and even then it'll have trouble against the Iocrym and other late-game threats. Otherwise, the Manticore really needs a way to get itself out of fights and regenerate its HP....or else it needs a lot more HP in order to survive those battles.

The freyr is a nice ship, but the rassiermesser guns needs a few tweaks here and there over time, as you'd expect with a new set of guns. That said, the lasers are some of the only decent guns that will fit on autons, so I'm not complaining on that front.

The conny is now a workable ship, but it'sgimmick is as broken as ever due to scrappy autons.

-----------------------

Moving past ships and onto the other thing in that IRC log.....random encounter charon-chimera bases need to have caps on the number of vikings at any given time. Because being swarmed by 50+ ion-spamming gunships in the 2nd or 3rd system is unworkable for any playership.

Edit: having gone through the XMl, it seems the advanced novaya armor DOES give an endgame option for the manticore. That said, the ship still needs tweaks.

[PM]

I would love to see a functional dual primary weapon configuration on the Manticore (without use of PSD).

[Atarlost]

I finally got to the point of trying the Thorin 300. It's a worthy gun on the surface. It'll suffer relatively badly from roundoff against resistant foes, but it has good raw DPS and mops up beams and projectiles. Unfortunately it tends to not leave wrecks from some of the better loot sources in the Ungoverned Territories. Specifically Earth Slavers, Tripolis, and Marauder Raid Platforms.

I also appear, now that I've decompiled the extension, to have misread the stats for the Thorin 10 and should have chosen it over the Sabel 220. Which says depressing things about the Sabel 220 since it's a higher level weapon that consumes 67% more power.

[AssumedPseudonym]

 Minor typo found in Mission1.xml:

Code: Select all

			<Intro2>
				<OnPaneInit>
					(scrSetDesc gScreen
						"\"The biosoft...the download...we tapped a narrowcast...thought it was worth something..."
						"maybe a protected app...but it ran the autofacs...created things...mutated everything...\n\n"
						"Her hand tightens around your arm but her eyes stare lifelessly away."
						)
				</OnPaneInit>

				<Actions>
					<Action name="Done" key="D" default="1" cancel="1">
						(block Nil
							(objSetData gSource 'introDone True)
							(scrShowPane gScreen "Default")
							)
					</Action>
				</Actions>
			</Intro2>

 Missing the close quotes after “mutated everything...” — not the quotes for the string, the quotes for the text.