Visiting the Aera

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heinz2199
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Visiting the Aera

Post by heinz2199 »

Hi,

I decided to switch professions from AI-Core reseller to killer. So I located the warzone and now I'm doing some sightseeing within the aera territory and want to join them. However, that's not quite as easy as I expected:
  • I noticed that you can't increase your aera reputation by trading nor by flying cargo missions for them. So how do I get them to like/respect me so that they'll eventually stop hunting me?
  • I'm selling them AI-Cores so why on earth do they attack me in the first place?
  • I can't go anywhere without aera fighters harassing me en masse which in most cases turns out fatal for me. So what kind of ship can you recommend me? I'm having a hard time in my lancelot, but it's not any better inside a pacifier or franklin. Recently I bought an areus but I'm appalled by its speed and the ridiculously oversized cockpit interior. (Please note that I can't fight them because there's just too many of them for my graphics hardware to handle.)
  • They somehow offer cloaking devices but I fail to purchase one: no ship I tried (including the aera ones) could take it. So how do I get it?
  • Is there a feasible way to (a) do small military jobs for the aera while (b) not pissing off most other factions?
  • Anything else I should know about the aera?
Any suggestion is very much appreciated! Thanks
Psyco Diver 69
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by Psyco Diver 69 »

Best way to get on their good side is to kill Confeds, shapers, andorlians, basically kill their enemys and they'll be you friend. Remember everyone else will hate you and it really limits you to their territory
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by Sarin »

Last time I played, killing pirates also increased reputation with Aera. You'll get less hate by killing those than by killing feds.
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by AVBJim »

I noticed that you can't increase your aera reputation by trading nor by flying cargo missions for them. So how do I get them to like/respect me so that they'll eventually stop hunting me?
To get faction from cargo runs, you have to take off or land at one of their facilities. Bit tough when everything in the system is trying to kill you, and faction through cargo is slow.

So you have to kill. What? That is easy and hard at the same time. You kill anything that is not Aera. Of course, this will tend to irritate other factions. Pirates will lower ULN and ULN Citizen Factions. These are easy to raise again as long as they are not too low, you just spam their ships with a "I am a friend" message. F1 when communicating. If they kamakazi you, reload to before they did. You can kill Luddites, this somewhat upsets the purist, but if you kill a few pirates to balance, not a big problem. You can kill ISO. The DGN get mildly upset about you doing so, but again, Pirates will help balance this back.
I'm selling them AI-Cores so why on earth do they attack me in the first place?
You are not Aera and thus are in their list of targets until you raise your faction. It doesn't matter what you are selling them.
I can't go anywhere without aera fighters harassing me en masse which in most cases turns out fatal for me. So what kind of ship can you recommend me? I'm having a hard time in my lancelot, but it's not any better inside a pacifier or franklin. Recently I bought an areus but I'm appalled by its speed and the ridiculously oversized cockpit interior. (Please note that I can't fight them because there's just too many of them for my graphics hardware to handle.)
No player ship is going to stand up. You also cannot fight them because killing them seriously reduces your faction. For the graphics problem, change your Video, shaders, resolution and colors to the minimums. Yeah, it looks crappy, I know. Also use full screen instead of windowed and turn sound off. Sound uses up cpu cycles that you want for video. If you are using Linux, custom build you a Kernel that uses only the bare minimum needed. You could then boot into it when you want to play. For Windows and Mac, don't know a lot that will help. Just use the most current driver and minimise the amount of apps that are running.
They somehow offer cloaking devices but I fail to purchase one: no ship I tried (including the aera ones) could take it. So how do I get it?
You have to have a stealth capable ship. Check out the Wiki to see if there is more info on it. I think the Shroedinger (sp?) is supposed to be stealth capable. You can check the units_working.sxc in the VegaStrike/data/units folder. It will tell you which ships are stealth capable.
Is there a feasible way to (a) do small military jobs for the aera while (b) not pissing off most other factions?
I assume you mean bounty mission, sweeps, etc, aka, you are killing something. Nope, you kill something, you upset their faction and the faction of their friends. If you get the factions balanced the way you want, doing Cargo is the only thing that is fairly safe. I do not know if doing cargo runs for them will have negative influence on other factions, just keep a watch on them.
Anything else I should know about the aera?
They hate everyone and everyone hates them. Get used to other factions doing mass attacks on their systems. Hopefully you are not negative with the faction doing the attack, otherwise, run fast and pray.
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by klauss »

AVBJim wrote:For the graphics problem, change your Video, shaders, resolution and colors to the minimums. Yeah, it looks crappy, I know.
A more intelligent approach is possible, but usually that requires some expertise.
It's quite likely that there's one factor bogging down your GPU. Either too many textures, too high a resolution, too heavy shaders, too much geometry.

If it's geometry, you can lower detail levels (albeit doing that sometimes makes a few bugs come to the surface that will kill VS).

If it's shaders, just lower or disable them.

If it's too many textures, lowering detail level helps too, but a more precise control method exists by editing vegastrike.config - you can disable faction-dependent textures (which decreases the amount of VRAM needed to play many-fold), you can set a lower texture resolution cap (keep that number a power of two, say 256, 512, 1024).

If none of that helps, it's not the graphics. It could be your CPU. VS is quite heavy on the CPU as well. There are settings in vssetup that let you reduce CPU consumption.

Sound usually consumes very little CPU cycles, but quite a lot of RAM. Music consumes a lot more RAM, some cycles when loading tracks. You can disable any of those if you wish (I wouldn't wish, but sound is very important for me personally)
AVBJim wrote:Also use full screen instead of windowed
This is good advice, full screen tends to be easier for the GPU since it doesn't have to manage any windows.
AVBJim wrote:If you are using Linux, custom build you a Kernel that uses only the bare minimum needed.
I don't think you should be going that far. You could. But I don't think it's necessary, and I'm opposed in principle to the idea of having to recompile your kernel to play a game.
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by VGSailor »

Is it even possible to have a positive reputation with the Aeran Ascendancy in the current build? I've been trying to complete some cargo missions for them, but their ----ing Merchant Marine swarms me right before I dock at the prescribed base.

I decided to try and hack the game save file so that they would leave me alone long enough to complete some cargo missions, but no matter what I set the "Relation_to_aeran_merchant_marine" value to, in the game it shows as either a negative number or zero. It's like there's some algorithm somewhere that says

Code: Select all

If value > 0 then set value = -1*(abs(value))
I've tried fractions, I've tried negative fractions, I've tried fractions greater than one and I've tried negative fractions with an absolute value greater than one. The value in the game always ends up being either negative or zero.

Is this true? Can you not have a positive reputation with Aeran factions? If so, I'm not even going to bother trying to fly missions for them.

I'm using 0.5rc1, compiled from source.
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by TBeholder »

Sarin wrote:Last time I played, killing pirates also increased reputation with Aera. You'll get less hate by killing those than by killing feds.
And the Luddites. :twisted: Nobody likes them, only Purists somewhat tolerate - but they hate pirates, so minor drift from killing lots of luddites will be offset with a few pirates.
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by VGSailor »

VGSailor wrote: I've tried fractions, I've tried negative fractions, I've tried fractions greater than one and I've tried negative fractions with an absolute value greater than one. The value in the game always ends up being either negative or zero.
Okay, I played with it a little bit more, and what I've discovered is this:

1. If I set the value to a negative fraction, the reputation score in the game ends up being a negative value equal to the percentage indicated by the setting.
  • For example, -0.25 in the save file equals a reputation score of -25 in the game.
2. If I set the value to a positive fraction, the reputation score in the game ends up being a negative value equal to negative one-hundred plus the percentage value of the positive fraction.
  • For example, 0.25 in the save file equals a reputation score of -75 in the game.
Based on this observation, it would seem that it is impossible to have a positive reputation with the Aeran Merchant Marine. Or, if you ever can, you cannot have it carry over from one play session to the next, because no value in the game save file translates to a positive value.

So, the question becomes: Is this a bug, or is it actually programmed so you can't become friends with the Aeran Ascendancy?
klauss
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by klauss »

The aera get no special treatment from the engine. But there may be either an error in how you manipulate the faction relations, or a bug in the faction relation propagation graph.
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by VGSailor »

klauss wrote:The aera get no special treatment from the engine. But there may be either an error in how you manipulate the faction relations, or a bug in the faction relation propagation graph.
Well, there must be something wrong because I've been killing pirates and Ulns (from both the Uln and Uln citizen factions) in Aeran systems for days, and my reputation with them still won't rise above zero.

Just as an experiment, I decided to go ahead and kill an Aeran Merchant Marine. I had previously been careful not to kill any Aeran ships. So, I killed one, and saw that my reputation with the Aeran Merchant Marine had dropped to -25 and my reputation with the Aera had dropped to -10.

Looking in the game save file, I saw the following lines:

Code: Select all

Relation_to_aera 1 0.9
Relation_to_aeran_merchant_marine 1 0.75
This proves that it is impossible to for me to earn a positive relationship value with the Aeran factions. Those same values entered into any of the other factions would result in reputation scores of 90 and 75, respectively.

So, how do I fix my bug in the faction relation propagation graph?
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by klauss »

I think the Aera actually like the Uln.

So... set everybody to -1, the Uln to 0, and the Aera to 1. See if that helps. Any sane propagation graph in those conditions would make you friends with the Aera.
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Re: Visiting the Aera

Post by VGSailor »

klauss wrote:I think the Aera actually like the Uln.
Okay. I'm glad you told me that because, although killing the Ulns in Aeran space had no effect on my reputation with the Aeran factions, it would otherwise seem a positive thing because my news feed would always talk about how the Shlimazel flightgroup helped out the Aera with smaller scale attacks by killing Ulns.
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