[RELEASE] Icesteroids V2

[Eric Walch]

Without claiming to be able to really follow plists / scripts, I think the reference(s) is(are) not totally circular - ......
: the 2nd generation ice-boulders will not produce more ice-boulders when shot, but just vanish. reliably so, for me.
They look the same, but do not behave the same.

The definition is circular because debris_role for the boulders is the same boulder again. It does not lead to circular behaviour because Oolite does see the second generation boulders as splinters and ignores any debris_role for them. It still looks buggy when you blow up a boulder and get back 2 identical boulders of the same size. It would have been more realistic to define splinter as a shrunk down size of the boulders.

That you get alloys when a big thing explodes is defined in oolite itself. Stuff up to a mass of 25000 does not generate alloy, 25,000 till 100,000 generates 1 alloy, 100,000 till 400,000 generates 2 alloys and so on. [n_alloys = floor(sqrtf(sqrtf(mass / 25000.0)))]

The current 'splinters' have a weight of about 60,000 and are destined to produce one alloy. There are some forces that lower this value. In this case it will be 55% of the times one alloy. The way to avoid getting alloys would be making them smaller so they stay below the critical mass of 25,000.

[Staer9]

And it was discussed/ decided by Staer9 they should not produce splinters, on purpose - after all they are meant to be made from water (or methane or whatever ?) so not contain any minerals etc. .

Yes, it is deliberate that they don't give splinters (I found the idea of Ice Processers rather silly) but the fact that they give metal bits is quite unintentional (is there any way of solving this? setting debris_role to none?)

When playing Zeke's mining scenario, I wanted to add all asteroid oxps*, to have more variety, but the icesteroids were too prominent (high %-age of all asteroids) so only very little income was possible.
I then decided to remove icesteroids (and grafitti asteroids) and did not look much further into it.

The reason the probability is so high is because I got bored of the core asteroids and wanted more variety, as I never mine asteroids and found doing so rather pointless as a money-making venture I just wanted them to look at. clearly I didn't take into account the fact that other people might play mining scenarios (I can make a patch that vastly reduces the probability of seeing them if it is of interest to the comoonity)

I also noticed that the asteroids are not smoothed. You see every single triangle what looks stupid for something that should be non-manmade

I tried to make them smooth but when they where smoothed for some reason the normals where corrected, making them look like blue asteroids.

[SandJ]

Am I right in thinking the boulders do not get discovered by 'scanForRocks' because the ice boulders do not include 'boulder' in their roles? Meaning they will not be processed by minerAI?

[Commander McLane]

Am I right in thinking the boulders do not get discovered by 'scanForRocks' because the ice boulders do not include 'boulder' in their roles? Meaning they will not be processed by minerAI?

Sounds about right.

However, just giving them the role "boulder" isn't a solution. While it would solve the problem of being missed in scans, it would at the same time create another problem: they would get spawned when shooting normal asteroids.

There are two ways around that: (1) only give them the "boulder"-role after they're spawned via a script, or (2) give them the role together with a role weight of 0. Then they never get chosen as ordinary boulders. You should add "boulder(0)" to their roles.

[SandJ]

Am I right in thinking the boulders do not get discovered by 'scanForRocks' because the ice boulders do not include 'boulder' in their roles? Meaning they will not be processed by minerAI?

Sounds about right.

Thank you - so I am getting my head around the scripting.

give them the role together with a role weight of 0. Then they never get chosen as ordinary boulders. You should add "boulder(0)" to their roles.

I tried that and now when an ice boulder is shot with a mining laser, it spawns a few more in its place. Although that was reported earlier in the thread, it is definitely doing it now. I am currently watching some mining vessels trying to mine an ever-increasing cloud of blue rocks. Link.

[Commander McLane]

Does that mean that I actually have to download the OXP and look into it in order to help you? Sigh.

[Staer9]

link

That image is so amusing I'm tempted to not try and fix the problem

[Commander McLane]

Having re-read the whole thread now it seems to me that there is nothing to fix. The ice boulder are correctly ignored by the minerAI, because there's nothing to mine from them. So why should a mining ship bother with them?

[SandJ]

Having re-read the whole thread now it seems to me that there is nothing to fix. The ice boulder are correctly ignored by the minerAI, because there's nothing to mine from them. So why should a mining ship bother with them?

I hadn't twigged that was a decision that had been implemented + almost all asteroids seem to be ice asteroids when it is installed + miners do blow up the asteroids and make ice boulders from them.

Having watched miners blow up a field of the asteroids into ice boulders, I could not understand why they then could not find anything else to do.

Thank you for checking and consoling me.

But it was all worth it when the Ooniverse finally filled up with 2047 entities, and then I Q-Bombed the ice boulder field. That was very pretty.

[Commander McLane]

I hadn't twigged that was a decision that had been implemented + almost all asteroids seem to be ice asteroids when it is installed.

That sounds more like a problem of the OXP.

There are six iceteroid-variants in the OXP, and each of them has the same chance as one of Oolite's own two asteroid models to appear in-game. Thus, if you have no other asteroid model OXPs in your game, three quarters of all asteroids will be iceteroids. I'd say that's definitely too much.

Again, assigning a role-weight can help. Try

Code: Select all

        roles = "staer9_asteroid asteroid(0.1)";

for each of the six staer9_asteroid_n entries in shipdata. You can experiment with the number in parenthesis. Making it higher will increase the number of iceteroids, making it lower will decrease it.

[Commander McLane]

The next question is: if there is nothing to gain from mining iceteroids, should miners shoot them up in the first place? Perhaps they'd do it for fun, or to clear the area?

[Smivs]

The next question is: if there is nothing to gain from mining iceteroids, should miners shoot them up in the first place? Perhaps they'd do it for fun, or to clear the area?

...or perhaps they just like a Scotch on the Rocks after work

[maik]

The next question is: if there is nothing to gain from mining iceteroids, should miners shoot them up in the first place? Perhaps they'd do it for fun, or to clear the area?

...or perhaps they just like a Scotch on the Rocks after work

The thread stayed on topic a surprisingly long time

[CommonSenseOTB]

The next question is: if there is nothing to gain from mining iceteroids, should miners shoot them up in the first place? Perhaps they'd do it for fun, or to clear the area?

...or perhaps they just like a Scotch on the Rocks after work

The thread stayed on topic a surprisingly long time

[Commander McLane]

Back to topic again.

The next question is: if there is nothing to gain from mining iceteroids, should miners shoot them up in the first place? Perhaps they'd do it for fun, or to clear the area?

The question is more or less rhetorical, because I don't see an easy way to prevent miners from shooting iceteroids. According to the Wiki scanForRocks scans first for ships havin role "boulder" and, if it finds none, for ships having role "asteroid". Therefore the ice boulders are ignored, because they don't have "boulder" among their roles. The iceteroids, however, are spawned through their "asteroid" role, therefore they have that role by definition. And while it is possible to add other roles after spawning, I don't think it's possible to remove a role after spawning. Thus, as long as they're spawned as normal asteroids (which in itself makes sense), I don't think miners can easily be prevented from blowing them up.