NPC-shields v 1.1 now available

[Switeck]

Given the choice, I would rather have more aggressive enemies that indestructible ones

Get my Switeck's Shipping v0.5 OXP mod...and misjump to interstellar space and pick a fight with the Thargoids. I changed their behavior from the original ones to be more aggressive and sometimes tougher. You can inadvertently trigger a Thargoid invasion of a system that kills everything from the witchpoint beacon to the main station if you're really unlucky...and that's without my OXP adding any additional Thargoids. 5-6 Thargoids releasing 5 Thargons each that stick together as a pack will do that. I call it a Thargoid Swarm. If combined with NPC shields, killing all the active Thargons becomes extremely hard.

It's still got errors though, because the Thargoids and Thargons currently run into each other after emerging from your wormhole...but I already have mostly-working code to correct that for the next released version.

[Commander McLane]

Please excuse me for making an unexpected on-topic remark in this thread.

... If combined with NPC shields, killing all the active Thargons becomes extremely hard.

I think you (or someone else) mentioned something like that once before, and therefore would like to clarify this point: Thargoids are among the ships/entities that are expressly excluded from getting shields. So having NPC-shields.oxp installed should make no difference whatsoever in a fight against Thargoids. If anything it should work in favour of the navy, because their ships do profit from the extra protection of shields.

The exclusion is based on scanClass (more precisely on the isThargoid flag which is currently the same as having scanClass CLASS_THARGOID), therefore it covers Thargoids as well as Thargons and any Thargoid ship from every Thargoid-based OXP. I did this for two reasons: First, Thargoids are difficult enough to fight even without having shields, especially as they tend to come in numbers. And second, their technology is different from GalCop technology; I don't even know whether it allows for something like shields. At the very least their shields would glow green, which is impossible to achieve by the quick hack that is NPC-shields.oxp.

Therefore no shields for Thargoids. Period.


... and now back to discussing whatever you like to discuss ...

[Cody]

Therefore no shields for Thargoids. Period.

Curious... I always got the 'impression' that they were harder to kill with NPC Shields installed. Hey-ho!

(Oops! Another on-topic post!)

[Cmdr. Maegil]

Some of the furballs I get into with Random Hits and other OXP's are close to impossible unless you use quite powerful OXP weapons in my view.

Unfortunately, if you kill some targets with such weapons the missions might fail...

I was thinking on a couple of workaround to allow destroying them with railgun projectiles, wingmen, weird munitions, etc., but I don't know if they're feasible.

The first would require the collaboration of both missionmakers and weaponmakers:
-the former by using hasRole alongside with, or instead of, isPlayer when checking for the cause of death;
-the latter by assigning a common role (such as player_ancillary) to be added to their creations.

The second would add yet another item to the dev's list, but could also open way for new OXPing: to allow some entities to somehow be able to return true to isPlayer.

[snork]

I wasn't aware of this OXP, now the more you people talk about it, the more I am convinced to go and install it.
But only after I could afford a ship that may stand a chance against the next Adder.

Unfortunately, if you kill some targets with such weapons the missions might fail...

I recently read about that with Asteroid Storm, and it raised my respect for the oxp builder even more.

[CaptSolo]

Just put NPC Shields back in AddOns. After removing my own shipdata_overrides mod, launched to meet the enemy. Not as difficult as I thought. Now to put my mod back in and see what happens. It gives most NPC's aft beam or military lasers and increases the chance of them being equipped with shield boosters and enhancers.

[Makara]

Surprised that this OXP isn't proving popular - it is definitely one of my essentials, even though I miss out on the whizzy graphical effect. It adds an interesting "do I finish off this guy to stop him recovering, or take out his friends before they hurt me badly" dynamic to firefights. It also makes the life of a fresh Jameson that bit more interesting

Yesterday I noticed that given enough time, even a derelict NPC would get its full shields again. I found that a little silly. A ship that has thrown plasma for a while and is clearly damaged should not have working shield generators anymore. Therefore I made a small tweak to the script in order to prevent this from happening.

Unless I misread the 1.1 vs. 1.0 code, the shields will now stop recharging after ejection, not just because a ship has been a bit sparky for a while but recovered with its pilot on board. At least I hope that it works that way now as NPCs should be able to bounce back from near-death experiences too Would be grateful if you could confirm that I read it right, and NPCs don't lose their shields in the 1.1 version just because they have taken a hammering.

[Commander McLane]

Yesterday I noticed that given enough time, even a derelict NPC would get its full shields again. I found that a little silly. A ship that has thrown plasma for a while and is clearly damaged should not have working shield generators anymore. Therefore I made a small tweak to the script in order to prevent this from happening.

Unless I misread the 1.1 vs. 1.0 code, the shields will now stop recharging after ejection, not just because a ship has been a bit sparky for a while but recovered with its pilot on board. At least I hope that it works that way now as NPCs should be able to bounce back from near-death experiences too Would be grateful if you could confirm that I read it right, and NPCs don't lose their shields in the 1.1 version just because they have taken a hammering.

As I wrote (and you deduced from the script) the change is for derelict ships, which is the same as "after ejection". Perhaps I wasn't consistent enough with the reasoning. My point is that I feel the shield recharging should stop after the ship is "dead". At this point the ship's systems should be dead as well. I find it strange enough that derelict ships recharge their energy. I think even that shouldn't happen, but it's hardcoded default behaviour.

[Makara]

As I wrote (and you deduced from the script) the change is for derelict ships, which is the same as "after ejection". Perhaps I wasn't consistent enough with the reasoning. My point is that I feel the shield recharging should stop after the ship is "dead". At this point the ship's systems should be dead as well. I find it strange enough that derelict ships recharge their energy. I think even that shouldn't happen, but it's hardcoded default behaviour.

Heh - thanks for clarifying. Got a bit puzzled as "thrown plasma for a while and is clearly damaged" isn't exactly the same as derelict - my ship has been in that state a few times and I still didn't man the lifeboat
And the reasoning is good - the shields seem to be built-in to player ships and can't be damaged. But if you rip the cockpit out it seems fair that the vessel pretty much shuts down. So derelicts wouldn't be expected to have their shields recharge. As to them recharging energy... well, "energy" seems a bit vague in Elite (you use the ECM - that takes energy; a shot hits your hull - that takes energy too ) so adjusting that core behaviour looks like a whole can of philosophical worms.

[snork]

Hm, I think I stay with the previous version then.

- the reasoning : I have sometimes survived with the ship having nothing more than the smallest possible amount of energy. Broken equipment aside, energy banks were then reloaded and shields restored.
So why should this not happen automatically for a NPC ship, where the captain was maybe a bit hasty in their decision to abandon ship ?

- gameplay : I don't know about this, but am afraid that this could alter gameplay (read : reduce my income ), as with little (free) cargospace I prefer to force the bigger-ship captains to abandon their ship over blowing it up inmediately; and come back to pick up loot only later.*
While everyone and their grandma likes to scoop free cargopods, hardly any NPC (none?) ever goes after derelict ships.
But in a big fight, them derelict ships may receive accidental fire, or be bumped, so without them recharging they will most likely explode and then the cargo will probably be gone when I return.
And I'd have more problems finding the place, as derelict Pythons often are visible from beyond scanner range.

I have never tried this salvaging derelict ships, but imagine this could get a lot trickier, if the derelicts never recharge. Maybe someone with Deep Space Dredgers installed may want to have a look and if necessary mention "incompatability" with the newest NPC-shields ?

*this originates from playing in 1.73.4 times, when I felt that every single object in a system could lower framerate.

[Makara]

Both versions should satisfy your need for non-fragile derelicts, Snork. The modification in v 1.1 is just that a ship abandoned while you are in-system (as opposed to one spawned as a derelict) won't recharge their shields now (ones spawned as derelict never had shields). Their energy should replenish as normal.

So a fresh derelict that has been left for a bit will still need a decent chunk of abuse to crack it open

[snork]

Ah, ok, thank you for making that clear.

[OneoftheLost]

Does this work with Griff's Arcelite pack? I don't see shields blinking, even with full shaders on, and they seem to 'pop' faster then when I have another shipset installed that works with them.

[Commander McLane]

NPC-shields works exactly the same with everything that is a ship. I am not familiar with the ArcElite pack, but I don't think that the ships in there are different from any other ships.

[Svengali]

The shaders in the Arcelite pack don't use hullHeatLevel, so they won't blink. No surprise, they are meant to play similiar to the appearance in the Acorn Archimedes version.