Patrol paths

URRRGGGHH i hear you cry. Well these creatures are in FL and they cause headaches which is why i’m here.

In the quest to get them stable, i decided to create some patrol paths in my mod for a designated purpose, but also to do some testing. The purpose of the patrol paths i’m making is to get the ships to fly to/from four jumpholes to a base, and for the ships to navigate their own way through a minefield to get to said base.

The good news is i got all this bit working without problems. The ships show up, fly their route and behave as they should. All good so far. Next, i thought i’d add some variety. To clarify, i’m using the tradep_trade_freighter_pirate patrol path which means i have trade ships with escorts, sometimes just trade ships wandering up and down the patrol path. Only thing i find wierd is that freighters in patrol paths don’t seem to carry anything, even though they are told to trade, they resolutely refuse to carry anything. Back to variety

Next i thought i’d add this path tradep_trade_smuggler. This in theory should add only fighter type ships, but smuggling illegal goods. Or so i thought. They don’t show up

So next, i tried this one, tradep_trade_freighter_smuggler, no joy with that either, they just didn’t show up.

Now my query is this, do they even work in vanilla? I’ve seen those same paths in Li01 (NewYork) and if they do work, what’s the catch? Is it something faction related, ship related or what? The faction i’m using have fighters and freighters defined and work fine in the first patrol path so why not in the other two?

Also something i’d like to clarify as i’ve seen people approach patrol paths before and made a right balls up. You don’t need to define seperate patrol paths for every faction that uses the same route. You can compile them into one patrol path like a normal encounter, which saves space and coding stress.

@ Thaddeus

Excellent, knew somebody had the answer, well done Thaddeus. You’re quite right of course, it’s the

class_fighter_smuggler

line in npcships i was missing, had all the fighter ships defined as

class_fighter.

Means i’ll have to make some new entries of course but that should cure it. Nice one

@DwnUndr

I tried changing the behavior in MISSIONS/tradep_trade_freighter_pirate.ini and changed the behaviour line to trade, but then the dumbasses ignored the patrol path through the minefield via the tunnel i’d created, and all decided to take a shortcut through the minefield and blew themselves up lol. Guess i’ll have to live with them not carrying anything. One other option is i give them some goods in the loadouts.ini, least that way they’ll have something.

*** EDIT ***

All working as it should, all three patrol types now showing up Even got them carrying cargo lol

Due to the many issues associated with patrol paths, i’m still of the opinion that some of them don’t work. Now this could also be a problem at my end, but after some more than careful checking of files why do some paths work and others not? Forget the issue at the top of this thread as that was my error lol

Looking through the code of New York (Li01) where we all know the paths seem to work ok, why are all the patrol paths for legal and illegal fighter factions the same? Namely this one patrolp_assault. This is used by all the pirates, police and bounty hunters even though if you care to browse through the MISSIONS/ENCOUNTERS folder, you will come across numerous other types of patrol paths that just don’t seem to be used. I’m starting to work out why lol

*** EDIT ***

Ok, so things i’ve noticed so far. With patrolp_assault, it seems you should have this line in the patrol path, pop_type = field_patrol. They all have it, doesn’t seem to make a difference if the path goes into a nebula, asteroid field or empty space.

For those that have tradelanes in their mods, another one i came across that works is this,
patrolp_gov_patrol, which seems to be used with tradelanes because they all have the pop_type = lane_patrol line added to the patrol path.

Will report back when i find some more that are stable

Buck Dannys tutorial is helpul, but there are gaps. I mean it’s possible for ships to carry cargo while on a patrol, you just need to know how to get round the problem.

One of the things i’m doing is checking known working paths in vanilla and figuring out by comparing them to similar paths, why they work. So far i’ve had 100% success which is clearly a good thing as they are running around in my mod on their errands being totally annoying in some cases lol.

I’ll be looking at transport paths and freighter ones next.

I’ll keep this thread updated as i experiment and add stuff to my mod.

A little run down on some of the important things,

[Zone]
nickname = Zone_SL03_path_solpoliceforce01
pos = -28022, 0, -2246
rotate = 90, -75, 180
shape = CYLINDER
size = 750, 6605
sort = 99
toughness = 2
density = 1
repop_time = 30
max_battle_size = 4
pop_type = field_patrol <<<<< ONLY CERTAIN ONES WORK
relief_time = 20
path_label = solpoliceforce_01, 1 <<<<< IF MORE THAN ONE PATH IN THE PATROL, THESE NUMBERS MUST BE CONSECUTIVE, 1,1 1,2 1,3 AND SO ON
usage = patrol
mission_eligible = True
faction_weight = sl_p_grp, 1
density_restriction = 1, patroller
density_restriction = 1, police_patroller
density_restriction = 1, pirate_patroller
density_restriction = 4, lawfuls
density_restriction = 4, unlawfuls
encounter = patrolp_assault, 2, 0.100000 <<<<< CAN BE USED BY LEGAL, ILLEGAL & BOUNTY HUNTER FACTIONS
faction = sl_p_grp, 0.100000

Here’s another one that works, at least for me. As usual i’ve compared it to known code and made sure the important parts are the same.

patrolp_gov_patrol

So far only come across this encounter for use with tradelanes. Important line of code in the patrol path is this one,

pop_type = lane_patrol

This defines the behaviour of the police in this case. Can be used by navy factions as well.

I’m not saying that you can’t use other population types in the encounter as i don’t have time to test all of them, but i know for a fact this one works as i’ve just spent the last hour “on patrol” with my Sol Police Force going up and down every tradelane in my Earth system. Important tip also is to make sure your faction has an entry in each base in mbase.ini where you want to run the patrol path so it should go something like this,

A. Start base (with your faction present in mbase.ini)
B. Patrol path starts from base
C. Set path along tradelane
D. Finishes at base B (with your faction present in mbase.ini)

The ships will take off from base A, fly next to the tradelane giving assistance should you come under attack from some nasty pirates who’ve disrupted the tradelane, then land at base B.

Keep the above points in mind and this will work without fail, does for me lol

Decided to try tradelane attacks before i move onto freighters and transports.

Discovered two types of patrol path are used for these, remembering these are used in this case for pirate factions, they being,

patrolp_pirate_patrol

with the population type

pop_type = field_patrol

and the second one is

patrolp_assault

with the population type

pop_type = attack_patrol

Now then, the interesting bit. You must make a path to the tradelane, one along the stretch you want to attack, and then one leaving the tradelane. The path leading to the trade lane, the one leading along the trade lane and the one leaving the trade lane have this extra bit of code added,

attack_ids = 18 <<<<< Seen different numbers used
tradelane_attack = 30 <<<<< I suspect this is an attack chance pecentage

Unsure of the meaning of the ids number as i’ve already mentioned, seen about 3 or 4 different numbers used, this might be an attack preferance or some sort of behaviour manager. Not sure

Without adding those two extra lines, naff all will happen and the pirates will simply fly the route without attacking so make sure those are added.

mknote wrote:
The attack_ids is (or at least should) the same as the lane_id of the lane that is to be attacked. The lane_id can be found in the tradelane zone.

Also, it seems that pop_type = attack_patrol is used far more often than pop_type = field_patrol for patrolp_assault encounters, even when the path doesn’t attack a tradelane. The use of pop_type = field_patrol seems to be confined mostly to the Liberty systems.

MK

Hmmm, interesting. I’ve looked through the code for Colorado and what you say seems to be how things should be. Problem i have is that the tradelane attacks still happen in my mod and the lane ids is different to the one in the patrol which maybe a recipe for something horrible about to happen. I’ll match them up and see if it still works.

Do you know what the tradelane_attack = 30 line is all about? Is it a percentage thing as i suspect?

My point about the encounters was simply to show which ones work, and both of those do. I’ve not had any crashes using the field patrol encounter as i set one tradelane to be attacked using that one and the other tradelane using the assault encounter. Both work fine.

Cheers for the info, off to test some more…

*** EDIT ***

Well tested some more, with surprising results. The tradelane_attack line indeed seems to be a percentage for the attack, the higher the number, more chance of attack. Also, while both types of encounters work, the one using the patrolp_pirate_patrol coupled with pop_type = field_patrol yields far more regular disruptions than the other encounter. Bear in mind my mod is a total conversion one and while this code maybe more liberty based, it works far more regularly. Hmmm

Moving on to Bounty Hunter patrol paths. These all seem to work ok although they all seem to use the same path which is this one,

patrolp_bh_assault

I’ve looked in Li01 and Hi02 for comparison. There is another patrol path which i haven’t tested which is this one,

patrolp_bh_patrol

but it doesn’t seem to be used.

The population zone used with the first patrol path has two possible options that work, they are,

pop_type = field_patrol & pop_type = attack_patrol

This whole thread invites anyone else to chime in lol. I don’t claim to know everything about these, just trying to find out how to make them stable and use recognised formats to make them work

Hi Chips. The number is normally around 30 in most tradelane attack codes i’ve seen. I bumped it up to 80 and i get an attack nearly everytime i go through the tradelane. It seems the higher the number, the more chance i get attacked. That’s what i’ve noticed anyway.

On the consecutive path number point, that’s simple. It crashes unless it is consecutive. Say you have a patrol with three sections to it, they should be 1,1 1,2 1,3. The next patrol path should be 2,1 2,2 2,3. The simple fact is if it’s not like that, FL goes straight to a ctd. That’s why when you look at original patrol paths, they are all numbered like that. They must be unique.

As to the last point, the next point of call is to check the encounters and look up the relevant patrol ini file. In that are the various pilot jobs which you can then trace through pilots_population.ini. Still doesn’t explain why the pp’s can be buggy, but a simple ship not defined properly will happily crash a pp.

Nice find. For fighters it still has to be patrolp_gov_patrol as obviously the one you found was for gunboats. Does it work though?