Cargo Shepherd OXP

[Thargoid]

The latest piece of equipemnt from the labs of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation, the Cargo Shepherd is designed for busy traders, scavengers and bounty hunters.

For those times when your cargo hold is just not big enough, the Cargo Shepherd is designed to mark the location of loose cargo pods, and also keep them in place via a specially designed broad-based tractor field. Put simply it will attract any loose cargo pod in range toward itself, and maintain them in a holding position 200m from the Shepherd unit.

To relocate the unit, simply tune your ASC (where fitted) to the magnet icon and follow it back. The unit is pylon-mounted and can be deployed in the normal manner. The unit is activated on launch, and keyed to the ship that launched it. It is fully re-usable, and once deactivated can be scooped (if sufficient cargo space is available) and restored onto your pylons (again if space is available). To deactivate the unit, gently bump into it with your ship (not too fast, or the unit may be damaged or destroyed).

It is not advised to leave units functioning and unattended for too long though, or else someone else may stumble upon your hoard!

Tech level 6, costs 1000 credits and needs a free pylon to mount. Enjoy!

- - = = Download Cargo Shepherd here = = - -

[Commander McLane]

Sounds like a much improved version of the ETT Homing Beacon. Perhaps this could somehow become part of its backstory?

[Thargoid]

It's a little more specific in task (the fact it contains a beacon is just a useful addition, rather than it's main function) but yes the history of things could go from one to the other.

It's me having fun with the velocity attribute mentioned elsewhere. That and also the "hunter killer asteroids" that I now have in my oonivese too. It's quite weird watching a rock chase a spaceship around...

[Mauiby de Fug]

Neat! Most useful when I indulge a bit of murderous piracy! I get rather frustrated when I find a Python or two and realise that my hold is already full...

[Commander McLane]

Neat! Most useful when I indulge a bit of murderous piracy!

Murderous piracy! How could you! Never would I have dreamt that we had murderous pirates hiding amongst the friendly forum denizens... I am truly shocked!


(personally I call it profit-maximisation by selling what I didn't need to buy)

[Mauiby de Fug]

Murderous piracy! How could you! Never would I have dreamt that we had murderous pirates hiding amongst the friendly forum denizens... I am truly shocked!


(personally I call it profit-maximisation by selling what I didn't need to buy)

*laughs* I generally only take out pirates, but every now and then, if I accidentally end up an offender, I'll indulge myself and splash every ship I see! Unless I have a full cargo hold... Then it feels like a waste...

[Eldon]

Just had a bit of a play with this. I like it a lot, it's a definite upgrade from my normal ett homing beacon.
A few minor points:
Tech level 6 seems a little low, for comparison the beacon is level 10 (missile version is 12). The fact you can reuse it means not being able to buy them at many places shouldn't be much of a problem.
What's the point of de-activating the magnet? You can scoop without deactivating, it still acts as a beacon afterwards (and presumably still attracts pirates), I'm guessing it stops pulling cargo towards it, but really, why would you want it to?

Also, love the acme magnet.

[Fatleaf]

Does this work for deactivated thargletts? Does it draw them closer? What about boulders and splinters? Also abandoned ships? Like the idea though.

[Thargoid]

Just had a bit of a play with this. I like it a lot, it's a definite upgrade from my normal ett homing beacon.
A few minor points:
Tech level 6 seems a little low, for comparison the beacon is level 10 (missile version is 12). The fact you can reuse it means not being able to buy them at many places shouldn't be much of a problem.
What's the point of de-activating the magnet? You can scoop without deactivating, it still acts as a beacon afterwards (and presumably still attracts pirates), I'm guessing it stops pulling cargo towards it, but really, why would you want it to?

Also, love the acme magnet.

I'd counter that tech 10/12 for the ETT is too high for what it is.

Perhaps I didn't word it very well. The deactivation is deactivating the attraction of new cargo - if the unit is deactivated and new cargo gets released around it then that won't be attracted. It was done in game-terms so your player ship could scoop the unit up (it wouldn't make much sense to try and scoop it if tractor beams were on), and in coding terms it is needed to make the item scoopable anyway. The beacon will stay on though as you say. And yes you can leave it running whilst you go off and do something elsewhere, but you won't be able to scoop the unit itself until you deactivate it.

And to save a second post:

Does this work for deactivated thargletts? Does it draw them closer? What about boulders and splinters? Also abandoned ships? Like the idea though.

It will only attract cargo scanclass items with role "cargopod" somewhere in their roleset, so no to those others. It's a very trivial scripting change to make it do so, but I didn't think those were so plausible so I excluded them.

[CheeseRedux]

It will only attract cargo scanclass items with role "cargopod" somewhere in their roleset, so no to those others. It's a very trivial scripting change to make it do so, but I didn't think those were so plausible so I excluded them.

So it doesn't attract spam then. Too bad, I had already planned for another avatar photo shoot.

[Thargoid]

For you and our fellow katana-wielders, I'm sure something can be arranged

[Eric Walch]

It will only attract cargo scanclass items with role "cargopod" somewhere in their roleset, so no to those others.

Most of the scripted cargopods from Cargo_Wreck.oxp have no "cargopod" role.....

[Commander McLane]

It will only attract cargo scanclass items with role "cargopod" somewhere in their roleset, so no to those others.

Most of the scripted cargopods from Cargo_Wreck.oxp have no "cargopod" role.....

Hadn't we discussed that before, and sort of agreed that all cargopods should get it? Or was that only my suggestion at the time?

I still think that having one generic role in the role set of all cargo pods makes a lot of sense for a lot of OXP purposes, like reliably finding all cargopods in the system. If you don't want it to be spawned by the generic role, give it a probability of 0. I just checked, that's what I did in my local copy of C&W. I added 'cargopod(0)' to all roles-keys which didn't have it.

[Eric Walch]

Hadn't we discussed that before, and sort of agreed that all cargopods should get it? Or was that only my suggestion at the time?

I can't remember any discussion, but when adding a "cargopod" role to scripted pods, the internal method of dumping specific commodities, based on availability at the main station, is killed. When the populator wants to spawn a pod with computers, it takes a random pod and fills it with computers. For scripted pods, the content is set in the script, what very likely would overwrite the computers with something else. So, the second pod selection method, based on commodity name, is used to make sure only pods that have a script to generate computers are selected.

Could be that adding 'cargopod(0)' as role will help, but that means the oxp will no longer be 1.65 compatible and I tried hard to keep it compatible with our official release. (the zero role is only added much later) A role-weight of (0.0001) would be 1.65 compatible, so I'll probably change it in that direction.

[Thargoid]

I recall the discussion and also agreeing with McLane (albeit there was some split about whether it should be cargopod or cargoPod if I remember correctly).

Also my copy of C&W (v1.6.5) does have cargopod roles? The first few from the shipdata.plist are:

Code: Select all

	<key>alien_cargo2_ah</key>
	<dict>
		<key>like_ship</key>
		<string>alien_cargo_ah</string>
		<key>materials</key>
		<dict>
			<key>cargo_wreck.png</key>
			<dict>
				<key>shininess</key>
				<string>30</string>
				<key>specular</key>
				<array>
					<integer>1</integer>
					<integer>1</integer>
					<integer>1</integer>
					<integer>1</integer>
				</array>
				<key>specular_map</key>
				<string>cargo_wreck_specular.png</string>
			</dict>
		</dict>
		<key>model</key>
		<string>ah_aliencargo2.dat</string>
		<key>roles</key>
		<string>alien_cargopod cargopod(0.02) Alien_Items alienpod ah_aliencargo2 Alien(0.2)</string>
	</dict>
	<key>alien_cargo_ah</key>
	<dict>
		<key>ai_type</key>
		<string>dumbAI.plist</string>
		<key>bounty</key>
		<integer>1</integer>
		<key>cargo_type</key>
		<string>CARGO_THARGOID</string>
		<key>energy_recharge_rate</key>
		<real>0</real>
		<key>forward_weapon_type</key>
		<string>WEAPON_NONE</string>
		<key>likely_cargo</key>
		<integer>0</integer>
		<key>materials</key>
		<dict>
			<key>cargo_wreck.png</key>
			<dict>
				<key>shininess</key>
				<string>30</string>
				<key>specular</key>
				<array>
					<integer>1</integer>
					<integer>1</integer>
					<integer>1</integer>
					<integer>1</integer>
				</array>
				<key>specular_map</key>
				<string>cargo_wreck_specular.png</string>
			</dict>
		</dict>
		<key>max_cargo</key>
		<integer>0</integer>
		<key>max_energy</key>
		<real>1</real>
		<key>max_flight_pitch</key>
		<real>0.5</real>
		<key>max_flight_roll</key>
		<real>0.5</real>
		<key>max_flight_speed</key>
		<real>50</real>
		<key>missiles</key>
		<integer>0</integer>
		<key>model</key>
		<string>ah_aliencargo.dat</string>
		<key>name</key>
		<string>Alien cargo</string>
		<key>roles</key>
		<string>alien_cargopod debris_small(0.1) cargopod(0.08) Alien_Items alienpod ah_aliencargo Alien</string>
		<key>scanClass</key>
		<string>CLASS_CARGO</string>
		<key>thrust</key>
		<real>0</real>
		<key>weapon_energy</key>
		<real>0</real>
		<key>weapon_offset_x</key>
		<real>0</real>
	</dict>

From a count, there are 22 instances of "cargopod" in the file overall?[/color]