Power Distribution Commands?

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Power Distribution Commands?

Postby Schmobius » Thu Sep 10, 2015 11:54 pm

I've been at least toying with the idea of getting Voice Attack, though my neighbors would probably think I'm even stranger than they already do (not like this apartment is sound proof), and I realized the only thing I really want it for is power distribution, since I think it's quite impossible to have it run scans on planets while I go about my business in supercruise.

As I'm poking around, it seems like most of the commands that people use to divert power a certain way just send a macro with a serious of arrow button presses. It seems to me that this won't work well if you aren't always starting from the exact same power configuration.

Is there a way to map a button to instantly set 2 pips to SYS and 4 to WEP, or 2 to SYS and 4 to ENG?, rather than cycling through as one would do on the keypad? Or does one just have to add in a ton of extra button presses to force the issue in a macro?

Whether I get voice attack or not, this would be useful, as I have plenty of buttons to map such a function to.
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby Hrdina » Fri Sep 11, 2015 1:15 am

If you can write a macro, you can do this:

1. Send the "Balance Power Distribution" command, which gets you back to a known state
2. Send the remaining keypresses to make changes from there
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby Schmobius » Fri Sep 11, 2015 3:17 am

Hrdina wrote:If you can write a macro, you can do this:

1. Send the "Balance Power Distribution" command, which gets you back to a known state
2. Send the remaining keypresses to make changes from there


Yeah, I guess that does make sense. Would be nice if there were a slicker way to do it, but if it works, it works.
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby StaticRadion » Fri Sep 11, 2015 4:22 am

Schmobius wrote:Yeah, I guess that does make sense. Would be nice if there were a slicker way to do it, but if it works, it works.


VA presses keys for 0.1 seconds and releases them in any order you want. I don't know if there is a "slicker" way to do it but it takes longer for me to say "Power Weapons" than it does for the key presses to auto complete. Oh and it talks to you if you want or plays any confermation sound you want. I think that is rather slick personally.
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby StaticRadion » Fri Sep 11, 2015 5:01 am

P.S. are you using the free trial of VA? It only allows 20ish commands if I remember, but it would give you a feel for the program. http://www.voiceattack.com/download.aspx
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby TorTorden » Fri Sep 11, 2015 7:06 am

Yep that's precisely what I did, all my power command macros started with the down button.
The macro executes so quickly anyways, you barely see the pips flash between.
Although it was a little slower to execute the VA macro than just changing them.
But that's because voice recognition is a little flaky at times :P
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby Wulfy » Fri Sep 11, 2015 7:28 am

I use this for pip distribution, but I have a "base" setting that I use as a rule for cruising etc so if I say "reset" it goes to that and I get confirmation from ASTRA, then everything works from that point. I just set it all up with multiple arrow key macro's in VA. Its pretty simple.
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby Schmobius » Fri Sep 11, 2015 3:16 pm

StaticRadion wrote:P.S. are you using the free trial of VA? It only allows 20ish commands if I remember, but it would give you a feel for the program. http://www.voiceattack.com/download.aspx


Not using any voice attack at the moment. Just pondering the idea of getting it, when it brought up this related question.

I have a Saitek X-55, so I'm not hurting too badly on buttons, but it would be nice to delegate a few things.

Would be kind of nice to have it talking at me during boring stretches in supercruise, especially as I'm finding Radio Sidewinder getting more and more repetitive. On the other hand, I play with headphones mostly because any sound in my apartment will be heard by my neighbors (and to get the volume to where I can hear dialog well, the explosions might actually blow out windows), and vice versa. So barking spaceship commands at my computer might feel very awkward.
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby Wulfy » Fri Sep 11, 2015 3:30 pm

Schmobius wrote:Not using any voice attack at the moment. Just pondering the idea of getting it, when it brought up this related question.

I have a Saitek X-55, so I'm not hurting too badly on buttons, but it would be nice to delegate a few things.

Would be kind of nice to have it talking at me during boring stretches in supercruise, especially as I'm finding Radio Sidewinder getting more and more repetitive. On the other hand, I play with headphones mostly because any sound in my apartment will be heard by my neighbors (and to get the volume to where I can hear dialog well, the explosions might actually blow out windows), and vice versa. So barking spaceship commands at my computer might feel very awkward.


I have the X55 too plus Voice Attack plus I use ED Tracker...a lot to plug in/set up before I can even play, without even talking about TeamSpeak and my tablet lol. Although its nice to use the buttons on the stick/throttle, its just as nice sometimes to say "prepare to dock" and have the landing gear automatically come down & landing lights come on :)

The one thing you might find mildly annoying is that while you can get the voice responses via VA (I use the HCS Voice Pack), this happens sometimes at the same time as the games in-built voice responses. I think you can turn those off though, but I prefer to have them on just "to be safe".

One thing you might like to do is to set up a series of music tracks via Voice Attack so I can say "play track 3" and it'll play an MP3 music file
or "play random" and it'll play a random track from my selection of good space trucking music.
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Re: Power Distribution Commands?

Postby Cmdr Kharma » Fri Sep 11, 2015 4:20 pm

Hrdina wrote:If you can write a macro, you can do this:

1. Send the "Balance Power Distribution" command, which gets you back to a known state
2. Send the remaining keypresses to make changes from there


That's the way I do it in powergrid.....
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