Asteroid scanner

[lave]

In another game I used to play ages ago, you could scan an asteroid and get a basic list of it's constituents. This would determin if the asteroid was worth mining or not.

Would it be possible in Oolite to target an asteroid then get a basic list of it's constituents.
This would be useful in mining only those asteroid that contain large amounts of gold, gem stones, ect.... for when you are bored with just basic minerals, or if you only want to collect and trade in a certain type of material.

This would only be available when you have the Ore Processor installed.

Thanks.

[Zireael]

Seconded.

[Commander McLane]

I'd say that shooting up an asteroid takes so little effort that I don't find it very necessary to know beforehand what it contains.

Also, from a game-engine point of view, asteroids don't contain anything before they're actually shot up. So the information isn't available anyway. (This may be different for certain OXP asteroids, but I think even Ore processor.oxp only creates its splinters when the boulder is destroyed, and boulders may create any kind of splinters. Only at the level of splinters the content is determined, AFAIK.)

[Kaks]

I suppose you could write an 'extended ore processor' oxp that will create a random list of constituent minerals for any asteroid you target, and keep a list of targeted asteroids in memory, so you don't have the same asteroid switching composition every time you re-target it...

Then every time you destroy an asteroid, the oxp needs to label each scoopable bit with whatever it said they would contain...

Once scooped, this hypothetical extended ore processor oxp would then work more or less as the ore processor does now!


It's all doable with 1.75 / 1.76, if a bit of a slog to implement. You could then decide to become a platinum or gem stones miner, an option not present in standard Oolite!

It can also open up quite a few scenarios, like mining syndicates not appreciating anyone moving in onto their gold-rich fields, etc...

[Eric Walch]

I suppose you could write an 'extended ore processor' oxp that will create a random list of constituent minerals for any asteroid you target, and keep a list of targeted asteroids in memory, so you don't have the same asteroid switching composition every time you re-target it...

Since 1.74 we have a setCargo() command. With that you could easy change the content of splinters to whatever you like. At least as long it are plain splinters and not scripted ones. And yes, as you suggest, you must start by attaching a script when scanning, that already contains the final composition. There are probably some pitfalls with oxp added asteroids, but it seems doable.

[ooh-ooh]

Have the scanner only able to give information on the splinters. Just a thought.

[Spartan]

Have the scanner only able to give information on the splinters. Just a thought.

This makes the most sense to me, since this is the largest piece you can scoop anyway. On the other hand why not have a scanner that also scans cargo pods? Or perhaps the first device was the mining scanner, which then evolved into a cargo scanner?