Bacon Mod

[RogerBacon]

I'm working on fixing a couple of bugs for the next release. I've always suspected there was a bug with prisoners where I would get a report of capturing a spy and they would never show up in the prison screen. I thought the RNG was screwing with me but I set the capture chance to 1.0 and still nothing. It turns out that the game always resets a spy's mission to counterintel after their current mission ends, even if its planning on killing them, That screwed with my logic so I moved my capture cheak up earlier before the mission is reset. Now my captured spies are showing up as they should. Speaking of which, check this guy out...


An ambassador with +63 counter-espionage. This guy's made me so much money capturing spies and ransoming them back. No buddy, you're not going anywhere even if you are an ambassador. You're staying right here.

The other bug I'm working on is the "exploration ships stuck around an unknown star". I always thought it had something to do with gravity wells but I just started a game without gravity wells *rare for me) and I saw the bug. Hopefully I can figure it out because I know its caused at least one person to uninstall the mod.

[elvendeathknight]

All right, keep up the good work !

[marathom]

Hi there,
installed this mod properly (copied both .txt-files + .exe to the main DW-folder in the Steam-app-folder), try to start it directly in the folder (not via Steam-link) but -- nothing happened. [&:]
The game won´t start. There´s no response. In the Task-Manager DW is not present.
Tried to start the original-.exe without problems. But the Bacon-.exe won´t even start. Tried to start as "admin" in the properties - no effect. What went wrong? Is there a Workaround for that? (Using Win10)
Thanks in advance...[:)]


[Edit]: Oh, I saw on previous pages: netie and aviper9 had the same problem. I run it on a Windows Surface Book w. performance-base, last win10-Build. Did anyone gets an solution? Really want to try this interesting mod...

[RogerBacon]

Version 1.69 released.

Fixed bug in captured spies.
Fixed bug in exploration ships getting tuck around "unknown star".
New option to make bases weapons ranges longer than ship.
Added configurable settings in the BaconSettings.txt file for:
capturedSpyEscapeChance=0.02
capturedSpyDefectChance=0.02
marketPriceUpdateChance=1

[sotthata]

Howdy. I've been playing Bacon since 1.68. I like the quality-of-life changes with the ship designer being hands down my favorite! So thanks for the mod

I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

1) Can asteroid colonies be built outside the colonization distance?
2) Do asteroid colonies extend the colonization range (i.e., using them to bunny-hop to a world outside of the colonization range of your other worlds)?
3) What are the repair/rearm mechanics of bombers and fighters? When in combat, do they return to their hanger to reload ammo and is damage repaired at that point?
4) When fighters or bombers are destroyed, when are they replaced?
5) When you build state freighter ships and use the !freetrader option, does that move them to the private sector?
6) What is the purpose of the !freetrader loan and the difference say from 1 and 100K?

and lastly, this is perhaps more of an opinion than Bacon-related, when you have a lot of unfilled Caslon, would it serve you better to build more private freighters or private gas miners? Or is this a case made for the non-stop freight mission? (I've yet to use that feature.)

Some oddities I saw in 1.68.

1) I noticed a mass of private ships that were stuck in a system. I disabled the stars hyper-limit and it didn't help. What did unstick them was returning the Bacon defaults of 1500/6000 (hyperjump accuracy/threshold) to the DW defaults. I'm now running it at 500/6000.

2) I've not been able to trust the "refuel" icon or allow constructors/explorers to automatically return for fuel. It appears they sometimes get confused and never complete the refuel order. I can catch the situation when using the left-menu and seeing them sitting with a "Refuel" mission but at 0% fuel. Typically issuing a move order directly to a fuel station and then when they get there, then pressing the "Refuel" button seems to work consistently.

edit: clarified ship type in question #5

[RogerBacon]

Hi Softhata and welcome to the Bacon Mod.
Lot's of interesting questions there.

1 and 2, the answer is probably yes. I've never limited colonization range in any of my games so I haven't tested it. However, since the way the asteroid colonies is created is different than usual colonization then they can probably be created regardless of range. Once created, the game should see them as regular colonies so they should extend colonization range. Wow, you may have finally found a good use for asteroid colonies.

3 When out of ammo the bombers (not fighters, which continue to have unlimited ammo) will break off and return to their carrier to re-arm. I'm not sure if damage is repaired at that point. Maybe someone can observe and let us know.
4 The game begins replacing fighters/bombers as soon as they are destroyed. Usually it happens very quickly but there is an option to slow it down in the Baconsettings "fighterBuildSpeedDivisor", which is 2 in vanilla DWU because it takes twice as long to build a new fighter as it does to repair one.

5 I think you meant to say "state" ships here since you wouldn't want to use the !freetrader on private ships since you can't control private ships. The answer is, no, a state ship that is a !freetrader remains a state ship. However, the distinction is academic because freetraders pay for their own upkeep. It is not paid by either the state or public sectors.

6 The freetrader loan is the initial amount of starting capital the freetrader has to work with. You need that money to make your initial purchase of goods.

Re: your observed oddities...
1 Were the stuck ships all explorers? There was a condition that seemed to cause explorers to get stuck exploring the same star forever. That was fixed in 1.69. If they weren't explorers then I don't know what it could be. I haven't observed that.
2 I haven't experienced any refueling oddities. I'll keep my eyes out for it though. One of the shiplist display options I added was "Low Fuel Ships" so at least you can use that to keep an eye on them.

[sotthata]

Ugh. I had a nice post written up but I had a link in it... and the forum wouldn't let me post it and I lost it. Le sigh. I'll PM you.

Thanks for the response, too.

[netie]

Hi,

Finally, I can run BaconMod on my Surface pro 2 (Win10) today!
(At the moment, I only tested to launch and did not try actual playing.)

Everyone who have had this problem, please try reinstall the DWU after applying latest monthly update for Win10.

Before April (or May?: sorry I can't remember correctly) monthly update, BaconMod on my machine was doing nothing. But after the recent monthly update for Win10, the BaconMod's version info dialog started to appear (even the game did not start at that time).
And today, I find the BaconMod is updated and now I can get it running on my machine.

>RogerBacon
Thanks for your hard work. BaconMod looks greater!

[DasTactic]

It breathes!!! The latest version 1.69 opens after the big Windows 10 April update. Thanks for posting, netie. Really looking forward to trying this.

[RogerBacon]

That's great to hear for all the Windows 10 users. Maybe somebody at Microsoft is a fan.

[sotthata]

I've encountered a pretty reproducible bug. Bacon related? No idea. I'm running 1.69.

Whenever I try and have an explorer "Explore Sector" and it first chooses a black hole (as indicated by a dashed yellow line), a moment later the arrow will switch to A1 (0,0) and the explorer will warp to that position.

If I manually tell it to explore the black hole and then tell it to explore the sector, it behaves properly.

[DasTactic]

I've come across a couple of items that I'm not sure about.

First of all, Ctrl P to ransom back your spies seems to be set to accept the asked amount or lower. If lower it sets the balance to zero. If your money is in the negative it still sets it back to zero. An easy way to get out of bankruptcy.

Secondly, I'm having a lot of trouble controlling fighters - especially in fleets. I park a carrier fleet and then with the fleet selected press Alt 6 and then left click the target. But no fighters or bombers are launched. Eventually, a carrier from the fleet will go after the target and launch all its fighters and bombers like in vanilla DWU. Am I supposed to control the fighters carrier by carrier? Not sure if I'm doing something wrong.

Another thing with fighters is that I had to micro-manage the loadout of every individual carrier (select carrier, select fighter, delete fighter, ctlr-B, manage fighters, select bomber) which becomes painful. Is there a better way? By the way, my carriers had 2 bomber bays and one fighter bay and I was wanting 4 fighters and 8 bombers per carrier.

I should point out that the ships I am using as carriers currently are just destroyers with fighter and bomber bays, not actual carriers. Does the design need to be designated as a carrier for this to work as designed?

EDIT:
I tried a dedicated carrier and it still only built interceptors.

Also, a funny thing is happening where all of my caslon mining operations have all their mined caslon stocks reserved and ships that are sent for refueling can't get any. The cargo bays are full but all reserved so they don't mine any more.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Das123

I've come across a couple of items that I'm not sure about.

First of all, Ctrl P to ransom back your spies seems to be set to accept the asked amount or lower. If lower it sets the balance to zero. If your money is in the negative it still sets it back to zero. An easy way to get out of bankruptcy.

Secondly, I'm having a lot of trouble controlling fighters - especially in fleets. I park a carrier fleet and then with the fleet selected press Alt 6 and then left click the target. But no fighters or bombers are launched. Eventually, a carrier from the fleet will go after the target and launch all its fighters and bombers like in vanilla DWU. Am I supposed to control the fighters carrier by carrier? Not sure if I'm doing something wrong.

Another thing with fighters is that I had to micro-manage the loadout of every individual carrier (select carrier, select fighter, delete fighter, ctlr-B, manage fighters, select bomber) which becomes painful. Is there a better way? By the way, my carriers had 2 bomber bays and one fighter bay and I was wanting 4 fighters and 8 bombers per carrier.

I should point out that the ships I am using as carriers currently are just destroyers with fighter and bomber bays, not actual carriers. Does the design need to be designated as a carrier for this to work as designed?

EDIT:
I tried a dedicated carrier and it still only built interceptors.

Also, a funny thing is happening where all of my caslon mining operations have all their mined caslon stocks reserved and ships that are sent for refueling can't get any. The cargo bays are full but all reserved so they don't mine any more.

Hi Das. Thanks for the feedback.

You have, indeed, found a bug in the ransom routine. I'll fix it for the next release.

For the fighter and carrier management, you are using it wrong. It would be nice if it worked the way you are trying to use it but that wasn't possible. So here's the procedure. Select your intended target and press Alt-4. Then every carrier or fightrer you assign to an attack mission will go after that target when you press Alt-5 or Alt-6. If you select another target with Alt-4 that's OK. It won't change existing fighter orders. The commands work with any ship with fighters and bombers, not just carriers.

I'm not sure why you have to micromanage building fighters and bombers. Bomber bays should only build bombers and fighter bays should only build fighters. The only issue I can think of that might cause this to fail is if you are using a mod that allows you to research just fighters or just bombers. Then the game might try to fill up the space with the only think it can research. That's just a theory though.

I'm not sure about your Caslon situation. Reserved resource means that it has been allocated either for refueling or for sale if its reserved to another empire. Are you playing with gravity wells? Maybe the ships its reserved the Caslon for are en route but just taking a long time to get there?

[DasTactic]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

You have, indeed, found a bug in the ransom routine. I'll fix it for the next release.

For the fighter and carrier management, you are using it wrong. It would be nice if it worked the way you are trying to use it but that wasn't possible. So here's the procedure. Select your intended target and press Alt-4. Then every carrier or fightrer you assign to an attack mission will go after that target when you press Alt-5 or Alt-6. If you select another target with Alt-4 that's OK. It won't change existing fighter orders. The commands work with any ship with fighters and bombers, not just carriers.

I'm not sure why you have to micromanage building fighters and bombers. Bomber bays should only build bombers and fighter bays should only build fighters. The only issue I can think of that might cause this to fail is if you are using a mod that allows you to research just fighters or just bombers. Then the game might try to fill up the space with the only think it can research. That's just a theory though.

I'm not sure about your Caslon situation. Reserved resource means that it has been allocated either for refueling or for sale if its reserved to another empire. Are you playing with gravity wells? Maybe the ships its reserved the Caslon for are en route but just taking a long time to get there?

Re: Fighters and Bombers
Ahh. OK. I can see where I went wrong and following these instructions the attack commands work a treat. I got confused because the note for Alt-4 mentioned 'Fighters' while Alt-5 and Alt-6 mentioned bombers. So that works well.

Also, I checked my mod settings and in the RetreatUE research.txt file the initial Fighter tech releases the two bays and the initial Interceptor and Torpedo bomber, but the next tech along also releases the same Interceptors and Torpedo Bombers. Until the actual Interceptors and Bombers are researched it won't build any. In my game, I by-passed Torpedo Bombers and instead researched Missile Bombers and so I think the build queue for fighters and bombers stalls at that point and only gets the Interceptors. I think I'll mod in some rudimentary Interceptors and Torpedo Bombers to be released when the bays are researched. So that also would indicate the Bacon Mod is working as designed.

Re: Caslon Reserves
This is a weird one but I think you are right about the ships reserving the resources in advance and then taking a long time to get there because of the gravity wells. I can't think of a good way around this. I love what the gravity wells bring to the game so I don't want to turn these off. One suggestion may be to allow ships without weapons to halve the gravity well effect if that could be added easily to the Bacon Mod. That way the freighters, passenger ships, constructors, explorers etc would have a bit freer movement and speed up the movement of resources. In the meantime though I think the best solutions would be to mod in greater cargo space capacity so I might try that.

Anyhow, really enjoying what the bacon Mod brings. Well done Roger.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Das123
One suggestion may be to allow ships without weapons to halve the gravity well effect if that could be added easily to the Bacon Mod.... In the meantime though I think the best solutions would be to mod in greater cargo space capacity so I might try that.

Anyhow, really enjoying what the bacon Mod brings. Well done Roger.

Glad you are enjoying the mod. Believe me, NOTHING is easy about the gravity wells. It was, by far, the hardest thing to get working in the mod. The effect is the worst at the beginning of the game when your construction size is small and your sublight engines are weak. It gets better later on, especially if you don't constantly build to max allowable size. By mid-point in the game you hardly notice gravity wells unless your planet is like the innermost one in a system.

That being said, there are some ideas I'm tossing around that might mitigate things a bit. As always, no promises.

[DasTactic]

Sounds good.

I've been fiddling about a little trying to get the correct loadout in the fighter / bomber bays but it isn't working with the mod I have. The only thing I can see is that perhaps the category number in the research.txt area is a little different or that it relies on the component number some-how. I tested it in the Bacon World theme and it works correctly there.

EDIT: I found the issue. It needs the bomber bay component named exactly as 'Standard Bomber Bay' and 'Advanced Bomber Bay'. In the mod I'm using all the components are renamed with the category name in front. Unfortunately, if you have a modded faction with special bays and ships such as the Caleph from the Extended mod it will only build fighters by default.

@Roger: What would be the code impact of string matching the tail instead of the whole string looking for just 'Bomber Bay' and applying the bombers to those components? It would mean that other mods would work better with the Bacon Mod even though modded factions like the Caleph would need another component added such as 'All Dimension Bomber Bay' with the special bombers linked from that.

[RogerBacon]

Hi Das. That's strange. The only requirement for building bombers over fighters is that the component CONTAIN the name "Bomber". Its case-sensitive but it shouldn't matter where it is in the name. "Bacon's Badass Bomber bay" should work as well as anything else with "Bomber" in the name.

[DasTactic]

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

Hi Das. That's strange. The only requirement for building bombers over fighters is that the component CONTAIN the name "Bomber". Its case-sensitive but it shouldn't matter where it is in the name. "Bacon's Badass Bomber bay" should work as well as anything else with "Bomber" in the name.

After a little more testing the problem is that the mod I'm adapting uses a classification system in its naming convention and anything carrier related has the prefix 'Fighters - ' so the bomber bay in the mod would be 'Fighters - Standard Bomber Bay'. I assume the program also looks for the word 'Fighter' to designate that it is a fighter design. By changing this to 'Hanger - ' it works as it should.

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: Das123

ORIGINAL: RogerBacon

Hi Das. That's strange. The only requirement for building bombers over fighters is that the component CONTAIN the name "Bomber". Its case-sensitive but it shouldn't matter where it is in the name. "Bacon's Badass Bomber bay" should work as well as anything else with "Bomber" in the name.

After a little more testing the problem is that the mod I'm adapting uses a classification system in its naming convention and anything carrier related has the prefix 'Fighters - ' so the bomber bay in the mod would be 'Fighters - Standard Bomber Bay'. I assume the program also looks for the word 'Fighter' to designate that it is a fighter design. By changing this to 'Hanger - ' it works as it should.

Glad to hear its working. Yes, it also checks for "Fighter" and it makes that check first.

[RogerBacon]

Coming in the next version... (See if you can spot it).