Scanner Jammer enquiry

[Smivs]

Wasn't quite sure where best to post this really.
I was messing about with something yesterday - an NPC with a Miltary Scanner Jammer. Of course it didn't show up on my scanner, but certainly seemed to show for the Vipers which attacked it as soon as it engaged me.
The conclusion I came to was that NPCs can see other NPCs with scanner jammers fitted. Is this right? I can sort of see how (NPCs don't actually have scanners as such do they) but it seemed a bit odd (and inconsistent) nonetheless.

[Thargoid]

Why odd?

Just 'cos it's not on the scanner doesn't mean you can't see it, for example visually...

[Cody]

[dumb pilot mode] Interesting - as the player, yes one can see it visually, just as one can see a cloaked ship - but how exactly do NPCs such as Vipers detect miscreant NPCs? Is it all part of the game engine? [/dumb pilot mode]

[cim]

but how exactly do NPCs such as Vipers detect miscreant NPCs?

They have a virtual scanner, that only actually scans when required (pretty much never in combat; every few seconds for AIs outside of combat looking for trouble). Scanning is potentially extremely slow, so the engine tries to minimise it. There are also some routines like "target the last ship that attacked me" which minimise the need to actually check the scanner.

It's supposed to have a fairly similar feel to the player scanner in terms of what they see and when: delays in AI activity are substituted for the requirement to lock a gunsight onto the target to get its ident.

(The jammer, of course, is completely unsupported, so it may well be doing strange things...)

[Cody]

Ah... thanks again, cim.

(The jammer, of course, is completely unsupported, so it may well be doing strange things...)

Curious!

[Smivs]

Very interesting...thanks cim.

[Switeck]

At least when it's on the player's ship, the Miltary Scanner Jammer blocks missile locks on your ship. I never recall seeing NPC ships fire missiles at my ship while that equipment is working. Even Thargoids won't launch Thargons if you're the only ship near them. They will however if you fire a missile at them, due to how their thargoidAI.plist script is written and because they can target the missile itself.

[Commander McLane]

Ah... thanks again, cim.

(The jammer, of course, is completely unsupported, so it may well be doing strange things...)

Curious!

It's one of two equipment items (together with its counterpart) that were implemented in the game code by Aegidian (which means pre-1.65), but never actually used for anything. Supposedly he may have had plans for some sort of mission during which you would've got access to one or the other. Nobody knows whether they were even fully implemented, and whether what we see now is what Aegidian intended.

Some time later they were discovered by interested parties (OXP authors; and it took surprisingly long if you consider that they're not really hidden, all you have to do is browse through Oolite's equipment.plist in order to find them), and there were two factions: the sensible faction saw their potential for unbalancing the game and thought it wise to keep them a secret; the über ship crowd on the other hand saw their potential for unbalancing the game and went completely mad with them. The development team (situated more on the sensible side of the spectrum) declared that they had no intentions whatsoever with these two equipment items, and wouldn't support them. Thus, to this day nobody knows whether they work (bug-free) as they were intended to work, and what the original intention was in the first place.

[DaddyHoggy]

Ah... thanks again, cim.

(The jammer, of course, is completely unsupported, so it may well be doing strange things...)

Curious!

It's one of two equipment items (together with its counterpart) that were implemented in the game code by Aegidian (which means pre-1.65), but never actually used for anything. Supposedly he may have had plans for some sort of mission during which you would've got access to one or the other. Nobody knows whether they were even fully implemented, and whether what we see now is what Aegidian intended.

Some time later they were discovered by interested parties (OXP authors; and it took surprisingly long if you consider that they're not really hidden, all you have to do is browse through Oolite's equipment.plist in order to find them), and there were two factions: the sensible faction saw their potential for unbalancing the game and thought it wise to keep them a secret; the über ship crowd on the other hand saw their potential for unbalancing the game and went completely mad with them. The development team (situated more on the sensible side of the spectrum) declared that they had no intentions whatsoever with these two equipment items, and wouldn't support them. Thus, to this day nobody knows whether they work (bug-free) as they were intended to work, and what the original intention was in the first place.

Winces slightly as scab is lifted slightly on old wounds... Ah, interesting times they were (but not in a good way!)

[Cody]

Fascinating!

[Switeck]

there were two factions: the sensible faction saw their potential for unbalancing the game and thought it wise to keep them a secret; the über ship crowd on the other hand saw their potential for unbalancing the game and went completely mad with them. The development team (situated more on the sensible side of the spectrum) declared that they had no intentions whatsoever with these two equipment items, and wouldn't support them. Thus, to this day nobody knows whether they work (bug-free) as they were intended to work, and what the original intention was in the first place.

The odder something is in a game, the more likely it is to draw my interest.

I took it on face value that npc ships would probably ignore me if I had the jammer. But just to be sure, I added a free cloaking device and enough energy regeneration rate to never need to turn it off. One can never be too safe. Together, I could almost "look around the universe" without drawing any npc attention to myself. I've been using it for probably close to 2 years now, in which time I've seen all sorts of game crashes and other weird behavior...and none of those bugs were traced back to the Miltary Scanner Jammer.

Something's original intent or purpose matters less than whether it works the way I want it to.
If that's because of a bug, by the time I'm done it tends to be a well-documented bug or firmly established feature.

[Commander McLane]

Something's original intent or purpose matters less than whether it works the way I want it to.
If that's because of a bug, by the time I'm done it tends to be a well-documented bug or firmly established feature.

Personally I don't care whether has bugs or crashes your game (or not). If used as you describe for yourself it's a completely game-breaking device, and I want nothing to do with it, and don't care for anyone's appraisal of it.

[Switeck]

Then do something about it.
I haven't tested it on npc ships. Perhaps you should.

[Commander McLane]

Then do something about it.
I haven't tested it on npc ships. Perhaps you should.

Yes, I'm doing something about it: I try to forget that it exists, and I routinely remove it from every ship OXP I download, if it happens to be present.

I thought I had made myself clear: I don't want this equipment to exist. It's a game breaker. It's evil. If it were my decision, I'd have removed every trace of it from the Oolite code years ago. At least I can purge it from my Ooniverse.

So don't bother me about "doing something about it" or even "testing it".

[Rese249er]

Is it just me or have things gotten a bit hostile lately?