Why do Uln and Forsaken Citizens hate me?

[Jimera0]

Alright, so I was playing this game and enjoying it, found a very lucrative trade route between a planet in Enyo and Atlantis. All was going well and then I made the stupid move of docking from inside the geometry of an Asteroid Fighter Base and then saved the game. Every time I undocked I'd spawn INSIDE the geometry of the astroid and be unable to escape.

That is not what I am here to post about, as that was my own doing. No, what's bothering me now is that I can't get new games off the ground. Why? Because there are pirates on route to my trade destination a lot of the time. This isn't an issue normally; even my completely un-upgraded Llama can handle them easily. What IS a problem is that every time I kill a Pirate for some reason my Uln and Forsaken Citizen reputation drops, and since they're set at base 0 reputation, this puts them into the negative and turns them permanently hostile to me. Seeing as citizens are freaking everywhere, it pretty much cripples me.

Is this a bug of some sort or am I missing something? It might be worth mentioning that before this started happening, I bumped into an Uln Citizen while going through a wormhole. This obviously counted as an attack, turning them hostile. So I reloaded my save, and the reputation was reset, but then THIS started to happen. It's driving me nuts... how the hell am I supposed to progress when killing PIRATES turns the citizenry against me?

[klauss]

IIRC, this was fixed in SVN.

[Jimera0]

IIRC, this was fixed in SVN.

Pardon me for being a bit of a noob here, but what's SVN? If it's an update, how can I get it? Because this is really starting to tick me off...

[travists]

SVN is a method of rapidly updating by only downloading those files that have been changed. It is how Subversions work here. Bugs and new features show up in SVN before, sometimes long before, the stable release. Unfortunately, it's called a stable release for a reason. Sometimes an update causes crashes under certain systems. If that happens just report a bug and these fine folks here will try to help you out. If it truly is a code or data problem they need to know so it can be fixed for everybody. The subversion link on the home page takes you here. If you have problems just ask, someone should be along to help. Welcome aboard and have fun!

[pheonixstorm]

The real question that should have been asked.. what version of vega strike are we talking about? .5.0 or .5.1 beta 1? klauss, did that fix show up after the beta release or before?

[Jimera0]

Oh sorry, I should have mentioned the version. The version I'm using is the current Stable version 0.5

I've worked around the issue now and managed to get going again btw (I simply have avoided landing the final blow on pirates, and gotten a bit lucky). However I would like to be able to kill pirates so if I can fix it by downloading the Beta... well that'd be really nice.

[pheonixstorm]

It has probably been fixed in the beta, may want to wait and see what klauss says first though. If your running on windows though you might want to check out the svn using TortoiseSVN Its the easiest way to keep up on bug fixes but requires a little more computer knowledge to fully use

Depending on what you want to do you can use one of the following links

Full game and source code: https://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/ ... rike/trunk
Game only: https://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/ ... runk/win32

Using game only it will download all the files you need to run the game and you can use the svn to keep it updated. I suggest trying to update once a week as there is normally something new every week worked in or changed (at least on the windows side)

There are also two branches that will be seeing a lot of activity soon(ish)
Planetary Flight: https://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/ ... perimental (may be unstable or unplayable at times)
My branch: https://vegastrike.svn.sourceforge.net/ ... eonixstorm (usually stable and has changes yet to be included into trunk)

When or if you get comfortable running tortoiseSVN you can setup a folder running trunk and the above two branches. Its failry detailed on how to get it to work so I would not advise it until you have learned to use the svn client and are comfortable running the different commands and functions. Any questions beyond that just ask away and we will either answer them here or point you were to find them

[TBeholder]

You could still update data files, though.
As long as you don't leave out dependencies, e.g. data/master_part_list.csv (parts, ships and cargo for sale) <-> data/units/units.csv (parts and ships parameters and lists of tradeable cargo for bases and ships) <- data/modules/faction_ships.py (NPC ships generation obviously needs a ship to be defined).
In the last version of factions.xml, Forsaken don't care about pirates and Uln don't care about anyone but Uln.

[Jimera0]

Well thanks for all the help guys I would like to point out I am not very computer savvy at all so I'd need step by step intstructions do anything that involves editing data files.

What TBeholder suggested sounds like the simplest and most direct fix to this particular issue, and really, that's all I really want atm. I'm fine with all the other quirks in the game, but this one is particularly irritating. Could I get some detailed instructions on how to implement that particular fix? Again, I'd like to emphasize that I only have a very basic knowledge of computer stuff, so I'll need pretty detailed instructions (and in laymen terms) in order for me to understand what to do.

[klauss]

The real question that should have been asked.. what version of vega strike are we talking about? .5.0 or .5.1 beta 1? klauss, did that fix show up after the beta release or before?

I think so, yes.

[TBeholder]

Could I get some detailed instructions on how to implement that particular fix?

Download the file from SVN (link above leads to the web interface)
find where your VS is installed,
navigate to the same place (/data)
rename factions.xml to factions.bak.xml
copy the new file here
see if this works correctly (in case of XML it shouldn't add new bugs)

[Jimera0]

Ummm I can't seem to download it. When I click on "Download" for what appears to be the appropriate revision I get a page with this message at the top:
"This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below."

And then the rest of the page is filled with a tonne of code. Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: I decided to look for this /data that was mentioned while I was at it and I can't find it in the VS files. Is is a folder, or a document? I think I'm going to need a more detailed location to find it.

[pheonixstorm]

For a windows install data is the directory you installed in. Under svn all the files needed to play are kept in two folders, data and bin. .5 installs slightly differently as it installs data as whatever folder location you want. I have it installed in E:\Games\Vegastrike0.5 with the current release as E:\Games\Vegastrike0.5.1

Also in previous installs you would have the exe files in a bin directory ie E:\Games\Vegastrike0.5\bin instead of the normal windows installation of just having them in the bottom most install directory ie E:\Games\Vegastrike0.5
0.5 and earlier does the former while 0.5.1 does the latter. So, when someone refers to a "data" folder look in the folder you installed vegastrike in.

As for the link you tried.. right click the link and choose save target as, then you will be able to download the file.

[Jimera0]

Alright I think I finally got it figured out. Just to clarify, it's the old factions.xml that I rename to factions.bak.xml, not the downloaded factiions file correct? I also simply paste the newly downloaded factions.xml into the same location as the old factions.xml, without deleting (simply renaming) the old factions.xml right?

Finally, I have one more question. The factions.xml file I have is actually just called "factions" with no .xml on the end. It is however an xml file. When I rename it, should I include .xml in the new name, or should I just name it factions.bak?

EDIT: Well I tested it the way I thought it was to be done, aaaaaaaaaaaaand everyone is set to freakin -100 except bizarrely a few races (Andolian and Privateer set to +100, Aeran Merchant Marine to +5). This is the same for both my old file and any new campaigns I start.

Clearly I screwed something up.

(my exact process was to dowload the factions.xml, rename the old factions.xml to factions.bak, then to paste the new factions.xml into the same location as the old factions.xml, then to test the game).

EDIT2: Alright,trying some troubleshooting. Deleting the newly copied factions.xml and leaving factions.bak simply caused VS to crash when loading, which is hardly a surprise. Deleting the new factions.xml from that folder and changing back the name of the old factions.xml reset my faction values back to where they were before I made any fixes (at least this means I can reverse any changes I make). going to test a couple other things now, will post updates.

EDIT3: After some troubleshooting I've found that for some reason when I loaded a new campaign my factions stats remained the same for the new pilot as they were for the old pilot. When I started a new campaign after having closed Vega Strike and restarted it, my faction values after the fix were more what one would expect. I also noticed something odd in my old save file; in that file I have only two kills, both luddites, but after switching the faction.xml file I'm using those kills become Homeland Security kills, which could explain why so many of the factions are at -100. The Andolians being +100 could be because of a few cargo missions I had done. I think the reason why the Luddite kills became Homeland Security kills could simply be because the order of the factions in the old XML document is different than the order in the new one, and I suspect that Luddites are in the same position in the old document that the Homeland Security have in the new document.

I would really like it if I could keep my old file though, so if anyone can figure out a work-around for this issue that'd be great.

[eracc]

Well, I do not use Microsoft products here even for gaming so I do not have much specific information that deals with Microsoft in relation to Vega Strike. However, the lack of .xml on the end of the factions file when viewing the directory under Microsoft's "file manager" is because of Microsoft's idiotic idea that hiding file extensions is a good idea. One could turn that off under XP, and I did for every system I worked on here in my business. I have not tried to do that under Vista or 7 though so I do not have instructions for that on those beasts. Since factions.xml is basically a text file, just make a backup of the file and save it outside of the VS directory structure, such as in your "Documents" directory. Then edit the original file in a PLAIN TEXT editor and set all the factions to 1 for anything "privateer". As far as I know that should make relations "great" for you, unless there is something I am missing when I look at the file in 'vim' here.