Release: Military Missile update

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Military Missile 1.21 by Wyvern
Updated for Oolite 1.74+
================================

"Hunter-Hawking HMX-10 Military Smart Missile, an enhanced hardened missile developed for use by the GalCop Navy and police forces. The missile's intelligent seek-and-destroy guidance system seeks a nearby Thargoid or pirate ident when ECM'd, otherwise behaves like a standard hardened missile. Also, this ordinance is lightly armored against antimissile fire, further ensuring kill probability."

- AI fixed for 1.74+
- 375Cr @ TL9 and up
- Designed as an optimum fire-and-forget dogfighting ordinance, the Military is slightly faster, with slightly stronger warhead than a typical hardened missile. Accuracy improvements reduce the probability of spiral flight malfunction.
- Chances of NPCs using this missile against you is reduced. Though there will be some pirates stupid enough to purchase one. Hit the ECM and return it to sender!


Now available at an arms dealer near you.

[Smivs]

Military Missile 1.21 by Wyvern
Updated for Oolite 1.74+
================================

"Hunter-Hawking HMX-10 Military Smart Missile, an enhanced hardened missile developed for use by the GalCop Navy and police forces. The missile's intelligent seek-and-destroy guidance system seeks a nearby Thargoid or pirate ident when ECM'd, .....though there will be some pirates stupid enough to purchase one. Hit the ECM and return it to sender!

[Switeck]

If lots of pirates in a group have ECM, they get to play hot potato.

[Sarin]

I met a few pirates like this. One time it happened, I was just lining him up for coup de grace, when his own, long lost missile blew him up.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

As long as you have an ECM and it works, then it's an amusing thing to have one shot at you. By the time that foolish chump realizes he committed suicide, it's too late.

Otherwise, sucks to be you.

In a subtle way,

I'll be over there.

[Switeck]

You could use these as retargetable-on-demand weapons against pirate groups.
If the pirate you fired the missile at is witchfuel injecting away and your missile can't/won't catch it... ECM till the missile choses a closer target!

Fire more than 1 at a time and you can play a deadly form of musical chairs.

[Eric Walch]

- AI fixed for 1.74+
- 375Cr @ TL9 and up

I noticed a conflict with personalities.oxp. That one also contains a copy of the military missile. And its unlike McLane that he did not give the missiles an unique name. Result is that when you have personalities.oxp installed, it will overwrite all improvements of this new release.
Best will be to rename it to "apersonalities.oxp" when you have it.

One bug with the military missile is that it can be fired by npc ships and specially pirates. Its wrong that pirates use missiles that are programmed to target pirates. Best thing would be to add a ship script that does the scanning and will scan for traders when fired by pirates. Pirates would only use a reprogrammed version of the military missile in my opinion.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

- AI fixed for 1.74+
- 375Cr @ TL9 and up

I noticed a conflict with personalities.oxp. That one also contains a copy of the military missile. And its unlike McLane that he did not give the missiles an unique name. Result is that when you have personalities.oxp installed, it will overwrite all improvements of this new release.
Best will be to rename it to "apersonalities.oxp" when you have it.

McLane wrapped an early version of the missile in Personalities - including the AI plist. That's all well and fine, but that's where the conflict comes from. Deleting milmissileAI.plist from Personalities lets the Personalities NPCs use the updated missile.

One bug with the military missile is that it can be fired by npc ships and specially pirates. Its wrong that pirates use missiles that are programmed to target pirates. Best thing would be to add a ship script that does the scanning and will scan for traders when fired by pirates. Pirates would only use a reprogrammed version of the military missile in my opinion.

That's not a bug... Not quite, anyhow.
I agree that a script that limits it's use by pirates may be the best option. But the script is a bit beyond my knowledge. So, I took a simpler, if not quite perfect approach in the shipdata:

Code: Select all

<key>roles</key>
<string>missile(0.5) EQ_MILITARY_MISSILE</string>

I know that limits it's use by all NPCs, not just pirates. As for pirates using it... Well, just like real life, you have morons that really shouldn't do risky things, but do anyway despite wiser advice. Darwin eventually weeds them out.

[Commander McLane]

- AI fixed for 1.74+
- 375Cr @ TL9 and up

I noticed a conflict with personalities.oxp. That one also contains a copy of the military missile. And its unlike McLane that he did not give the missiles an unique name. Result is that when you have personalities.oxp installed, it will overwrite all improvements of this new release.
Best will be to rename it to "apersonalities.oxp" when you have it.

McLane wrapped an early version of the missile in Personalities - including the AI plist. That's all well and fine, but that's where the conflict comes from. Deleting milmissileAI.plist from Personalities lets the Personalities NPCs use the updated missile.

I apologize and will update. I will also think about an "aaa-"prefix. Would certainly make sense, also in order to accomodate the possibility of new and improved ship models.

The issue is that one of the personalities specifically requested military missiles for his ship. So I had to include them, in case that a player wouldn't have the OXP. It gave me a headache, because I knew about the possible conflicts.

Mainly I have to apologize that I am so late in updating my OXPs (I haven't released any 1.74.n-ready versions yet). RealLife™ is quite full right now, and I still haven't come to terms with all the changes in Oolite 1.74.

So, for the time being, all I can offer are my apologies. There will be new and improved versions of my OXPs, but I can't say when.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

I've noticed something odd with Personalities in 1.74.x. The attack code seems broken; the NPCs. rarely if ever open fire, but will send attack hails. Sometimes they won't even bother to fight back or flee.
Yup, an update is in order.

[Dave McRoss]

Yes. You. Kaks and the guy on personal space shuttle (I dunno) always told me bad words but didn't attack.

[Switeck]

My personal favorite from Personalities OXP was a very annoying and persistent fellow who attacked me and I just had to blow up his ship. He ejected so I scooped his escape pod up...and got a trumble for my troubles.
Had to go on a low-level planet flight before visiting the station. Little sucker took a long time to fry...I mean die.

[Dave McRoss]

My personal favorite from Personalities OXP was a very annoying and persistent fellow.

Let me guess...he had two sidewinder escort and a Vector for spaceship?

[Switeck]

Nah, I think he even had a standard Oolite ship. He had a clean rating, so I didn't attack back at first. But after getting beat on a bit, I retaliated because I had to. He used witchfuel injectors (do they all have that?) but I used mine too and that made for a short, one-sided fight.

I uninstalled Personalities because I found it too annoying and it didn't give much for my troubles. Getting a Trumble from an escape pod was just over the top too.

[montana05]

Since Cmdr Wyvern unfortunately didn't attach a license to his work I created a remake which includes some additions.

Available at the expansion manager or alternatively here: Military Missile G2.

Wiki page with further information: Military Missile.

The original Military Missile is available on the expansion manager as well and uses the same wiki page.