X4: Foundations
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Loktide

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loktide

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About this mod

Increases the scan range and speed of the long range scanner mode. Optionally makes locating lockboxes easier. Optionally increases purple ping duration.

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Increases the scan range and speed of the long range scanner mode.  Default is 10x Max Range, 200km->2000km;  speed is 1.2x,  this means scans take 67s to complete (they'll probably find everything in sector before hitting max range though) .  Setting the speed higher than this causes instability (crashes) in extremely dense sectors (only crash reports came from 'Nopileo's Fortune II').  Easy edits can be made to change detection radius, they're left vanilla by default;  see 'Editing' section below if you wish to edit this or any of the other values.

Optional Files:
1) Increased Lockbox Detection Range:  this will make any lockboxes within 200km of you show up on your map as an unknown object when scanned.  Most lockboxes spawn in on demand (this is the vanilla behaviour), so its rare for them to exist farther than 200km from the player.
2) Increased Special Duration:  this will increase the length of the purple, "special", pings to 40s from vanilla 20s.  Special pings are used for datavaults and wormholes.  If you'd like to increase the duration further, it's an easy edit and there are directions within the 'effects.xml' file

If you want to have the effects of one or both optional files without the main mod then:
-install mod with optional files
-delete 'libraries\parameters.xml'

Notes:
-The game can provide false positive pings on the long range scanner, not sure if bug or feature, the increased scanner range will also increase the frequency of these false positives. 
-While the mod works great for detecting the location of objects like stations/gates, other items like datavaults have a limited detection range that I haven't been able to change.  For datavaults the detection range appears to be 140km (which is less than even the default scanner range of 200km D= )
-The mod is compatible with the 'Unique Datavault Pings' mod, however the optional ping duration increase will not effect the new datavault pings, although that mod also increases their duration to 40s.


v1.3.5 Update:
-Added optional file.  Increased Special Duration, increases the ping duration of purple pings.

v1.3 Update:
-reduced the speed on scans down to 30000m/s,  this is a LOT slower, especially on the 2000km version, but it was necessary to avoid crashes in extremely dense sectors (looking at you 'Nopileo's Fortune II').  This means that on the 2000km version the scan won't hit maxrange for 67s,  I was able to use SETA during this time without crashing in 'Nopileo's Fortune II' but your results may vary.  If you wish to play around the stability issue, you can follow the Editing instructions below or download the 1.2 version.  Thank-you to those reported this issue, it would've taken me a long time to encounter this on my own.

v1.2.5 Update:
-Added an optional file.  If  used, increases the detection range for lockboxes.  This makes it so instead of pinging, they're marked on the map, previously the player needed to be within 50km for this to happen,  I increased that range to 200km.  The way the lockbox mechanics work, there are no lockboxes (mostly) more than 200km away from the player (they're spawned in), so any lockbox ping results that occur at greater than 200km range become false postiives.  Note that using this option makes lockboxes extremely easy to acquire.

v1.2 Update:
-Added dummy translations to 'context.xml', some users were having compatibility issues due to missing translations
-Mod now comes in 3 versions:  2000km, 1000km, and 500km.  Original game value is 200km.  Max number of results and speed have been scaled accordingly

v1.1 Update:
-Added new lines to 'parameters.xml' to allow editing the detection radius
-Lowered the maximum results from a single scan from 1000->500 to improve performance issues (original game value was 100).



Issues:
-Some people have reported performance issues (crashes) caused by too many detections occurring at once.  You can edit the max number of detections possible per scan by following the directions below or reduce the max range/speed, etc to get values that work for you.  In 1.3+ versions, the speed has been reduced by default to alleviate this issue.
-Some people have trouble installing mods directly to their X4 install directory, in such cases install instead to "...\Documents\Egosoft\X4\####\extensions\", the #### will be some random number, the extensions folder will have to be created manually if not done already.
-Items are being detected correctly but there are times when false positives occur, gold pings in empty space;  this mod doesn't change ping triggers and this issue exists with the vanilla game but a larger detection radius makes these more frequent.
-Pings of the same colour can have varying durations, the time the pings last is dependent upon the object triggering the ping;  the mod doesn't change ping timings at all, this is the default behaviour of the game.  It's possible but unverified that hitting your maximum results will shorten ping times.  The optional special ping file only modifies the purple ping, and it doubles the duration by default.


Editing:
If you wish to change the values altered by this mod or some scan values (like detection radii) which aren't altered by default, it's very easy to do.  Specific instructions are included at the top of the related file.
For the scan itself (range, speed, radii) edit 'libraries\parameters.xml'
For the purple ping duration edit 'libraries\effects.xml'
For the lootboxdetection edit 'libraries\defaults.xml'  (although as mentioned earlier, it's rare for lockboxes to exist more than 200km from the player so changing this value has little effect)


Installation:
-browse to your x4 folder
-create new folder named 'extensions' if you haven't already
-unzip file into 'extensions'
 
Paths should be:
...\X4 Foundations\extensions\IncreasedLongRangeScan\content.xml
...\X4 Foundations\extensions\IncreasedLongRangeScan\libraries\parameters.xml
Optionals file:
...\X4 Foundations\extensions\IncreasedLongRangeScan\libraries\defaults.xml
...\X4 Foundations\extensions\IncreasedLongRangeScan\libraries\effects.xml


Uninstallation:
-delete the 'IncreasedLongRangeScan' folder; does not effect save games.
-the optional files can work independently of the core mod, see instructions above in optional files section