You're welcome.
So I've had the chance to run the looter script at a competitive IDOC now and I have some observations/ideas about how I'd like to improve it even further, IDOCs are competitive and so every tool/edge counts. Firstly, I got PWNED by another scripter. I don't know if he's using the elite version or something else entirely but he destroyed me in grabbing those items... but that's OK because from failures comes improvements right?
details: Atlantic IDOC near Vesper yesterday, house contents visible, several chests locked down next to the west wall making them 2 tiles from us standing outside... ie: within grabbing range. I set all 4 of these chests as priority and had the script already looting when the house fell. He had 3 pack animals and was standing on top of me and he easily snagged all 4 chests before my script could. I think I *almost* got one of them, it appeared on my cursor momentarily, but no go. Yes, my script is working fine, I did get some other things as I walked away from the others.
What I learned: Straight up vs his script I will not be getting much loot and he's a regular(with friends) so I need to speed my script up and/or come up with some tactics to improve my loot skillz. I noticed that he did not appear to pathfind at all the entire time, no stutter steps etc. On my end, from the time I hit begin looting, pathfinding was telling me I couldn't get there so perhaps my script was in the pathfind loop while his was already taking chests, but I don't know.
Ideas: I'm not sure the elite version will be for me since I do not plan on using pack animals, I prefer fel idocs where pack animals are often a hindrance instead of a tool. That means improving what I've got until it's competitive so some ideas...
- I can create a hybrid setup so that some items are specifically targeted by ID while others are targeted by Type. This would help at private idocs and in getting items I did not originally see.
- I can then create a quick destruction loop which finds chests which can be destroyed and quickly destroys them. I believe it's faster to destroy a chest than it is to grab and drag it to a pack(not sure on that?). Since I'm already scanning for specific item types I could then grab any that fall out of the chests which others may not have set as priority. Also, since I'm not using pack animals, I won't fill up with containers or items I don't want. This will also increase the amount of looting required to fully clear the idoc. Right now a player with packies can sometimes clear the entire idoc in seconds thanks to chests. I think someone once said "if you can't make things better, make them worse"... and I think this would create quite the mess. Players who grab items using the ctrl/shift method would also be out of luck since they would see a lot of items stacked on the same spot.
- I have other ideas I'd like to try, including one radar-like idea that might be a game changer in fel, but I'm not sure it's OK to post them here. It's not breaking any EA rules but it is taking advantage of a game mechanic that EA likely didn't intend on(I noticed it while fishing of all things). I'd rather share that idea with an interested admin before posting it, in case it shouldn't be posted. In fact I don't know if I should be posting any ideas like this here so I'll stop there, let me know.
I'm not so greedy as to hoard ideas but I do want the most from my tools so any suggestions, especially for Fel side idocs, are appreciated. IDOCs are a competitive sport! If only my scripting skills could keep up with the ideas I want to try.... soon!