Realism regarding scooping attributes

[Killer Wolf]

just wondering what opinions are regarding this. back in the day, the BBC scooping protocol was simply that you kept the cargo cannister in the lower half of the screen - got to the point where i could zip around and snatch stuff up even in full dogfight scenarios.
w/ the advent of OXPs and building my own stuff, i've been placing the scoop positions where they actually are on the model, meaning that for things like the Werewolf you have to position the cannister a fair bit below your POV as you close in. all i'm wondering is, if i/others amended attributes like to be more in keeping w/ the BBC, in that the scoop position is slightly below your forward view and not really where the scoop is on the model, would this make things too easy, be good for nostalgia, or does it not matter? obviously for aesthetics, NPCs would have the scoop in the right model position.

[DaddyHoggy]

I think it should be where it is on the model - if you've got a nice ship, but because of its design the scoop is in a stupid place then you have to learn to scoop where the scoop actually is.

It didn't matter in the 8-bit days - we only ever had the Cobby3!

[Smivs]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a scoop position. You just need to pass over the cargo pod, so in a big ship you have to be a bit 'higher' than you would in a small ship.
If you've ever watched NPCs scooping you'll see a variety of methodologies. For example a Cobra Mk III will sort of suck the cargo in somewhere near the thruster at the back, whereas a mining transporter seems to face the splinter it's collecting and the splinter just vanishes into the ship.
The way it seems to work is that the scoops capture the cargo or whatever probably in some sort of electro-magnetic field, and hold it near the ship, where it is drawn in by some other, unexplained mechanism.
What I am sure about is that the scoops are not just like big funnels that suck stuff into the cargo bay. They can't be, can they, otherwise when you sunskim the fuel would end up in the cargo hold as well.
And you can 'over-run' stuff as well if you're going too fast, again suggesting that the field was not strong enough to capture your target at high speed. Also, if you stop in a tight group of cargo pods (say after you've dispatched a Python at close range), your scoops will collect several at once, again fitting in with the 'field holding stuff near the ship' concept.

[caracal]

I think it should be where it is on the model - if you've got a nice ship, but because of its design the scoop is in a stupid place then you have to learn to scoop where the scoop actually is.!

I second this. Also, a custom_view that's placed in the same position as the scoop_position, and faces directly forward, can be very handy. You could call it, say, "Scoop Camera". (I add one to all the ships I design, even if their scoops are in the "usual" place.)

[Ramirez]

For player ships at least, it's worth adding a bit of variation with the scoop position, so it actually feels like you're flying a different vehicle and have to adopt a slighlty different style. Similarly with the view position, in a fighter you're likely to have a combat-oriented boresight view of things, whereas in a large freighter, sitting on top with a whole load of ship below you makes docking that extra bit more tricky. Of course I'm ignoring the fact that the front view could easily be a tv camera mounted right on the nose, but I'm a bit old school and like the idea of having actual cockpits.

[Eric Walch]

w/ the advent of OXPs and building my own stuff, i've been placing the scoop positions where they actually are on the model, meaning that for things like the Werewolf you have to position the cannister a fair bit below your POV as you close in.

I think you must add the position were you want the scoop. In code terms there are two mechanisms.

- 1st the cargo pod has to collide with the bottom side of the front half of the ship to start the scoop mechanism. Hitting the pod with any other part of the ship will result in just smashing a pod. That makes scooping with a big tail (like the Boa) a bit more difficult than with a small tail. With the latter you just miss the pod and can try again.
This is independent of the defined scoop position.

- After the hit, tractor beams pull the cargo in the direction of the scoop position. And it than looks more realistic when this is a spot on the surface of the ship, instead of the ships centre (= default).

[Commander McLane]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a scoop position.

Here it is.

And I am all for having it where the scoops on the model are.

[Smivs]

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a scoop position.

Here it is.

And I am all for having it where the scoops on the model are.

I stand corrected

[Killer Wolf]

"- 1st the cargo pod has to collide with the bottom side of the front half of the ship to start the scoop mechanism"

? :-/

i take it you mean "collide" w/ the bounding box of the model?

[Eric Walch]

"- 1st the cargo pod has to collide with the bottom side of the front half of the ship to start the scoop mechanism"

? :-/

i take it you mean "collide" w/ the bounding box of the model?

No with the ship itself. It is part of the normal collision detection. When a collision is detected and the object is cargo than there is a check if this was a collision with the front part of a ship. When yes there is a second test for the player if it was also at the bottom of the ship. When all is yes, it is not handled as a collision but the scooping procedure is started.
This is not a collision with the bounding box, but with the faces itself. Therefor, when you scoop with a boa and fly a bit to high over the barrel, you will hit is with the back of your ship and smash the barrel in pieces, while with a Cobra there is no big tail so when you miss it with your front half, it is less likely to scatter into the back half.

(For npc ships scooping is easier: For them also a collision with the front top starts the scooping.)

[Killer Wolf]

that's interesting, cheers Eric. i'm just wondering if there's any implication on scoop positions : the Werewolves have them set fairly far back, but i did have half an idea for a ship where the scoop ws on the "bonnet" of the ship, so the model would look like a car's air scoop : looks like this wouldn't work.

[Eric Walch]

that's interesting, cheers Eric. i'm just wondering if there's any implication on scoop positions :

It has some implications. After the initial collision the tractor beams start working. The tractor beam pulls the cargo in the direction of the scoop. So it will be more profitable when the scoop position is in the natural path of the cargo after the initial collision. When you define the scoop on the ships top, I can imagine that in the process of pulling the cargo upwards it might often get catapulted away when the player flies to fast. However, I never experimented with bad placed positions, only with better optimised positions.

[DaddyHoggy]

Can the rate at which fuel is scooped and/or cargo collected be fiddled with/increased?

And by cargo collection rate I mean the position/ease at which the scoop starts pull in cargo - from what Eric says probably not because it relies on collision detection with the front of the ship.

I just suddenly had an image of a ship - a great big funnel on one side with fuel tanks and cargo bay behind it and a small cockpit with a mining laser mounted underneath, strapped to the side.

Basically a rock smashing, cargo hoovering, fuel sucking (in to storage tanks) scavenger.

[Killer Wolf]

i'm kinda baffled how the stuff works at all, given the horror stories about Oolite's collision detection. obviously some CD stuff works pretty well, other bits are just horrendous ~ is there some particular feature/attribute causing one or the other?

[Killer Wolf]

Can the rate at which fuel is scooped and/or cargo collected be fiddled with/increased?

And by cargo collection rate I mean the position/ease at which the scoop starts pull in cargo - from what Eric says probably not because it relies on collision detection with the front of the ship.

I just suddenly had an image of a ship - a great big funnel on one side with fuel tanks and cargo bay behind it and a small cockpit with a mining laser mounted underneath, strapped to the side.

Basically a rock smashing, cargo hoovering, fuel sucking (in to storage tanks) scavenger.

or build a big one w/ a geet big power source and you could have a manmade black hole to annoy other ships w/!!