* Planetfall support is added. Needs Planetary Compass in addition.
Sounds good spara! I've always wanted to expand on Thargoid's taxi service and include stations, you just did it the other way around!
System redux added a planet to a very faraway location. I took a contract to take passenger there. Maybe visiting a relative or something. Flying there with torus drive took about 10 mins! No stops on the way. If there would not have been a customer wanting to go there, I would probably not have ever visited that location. It may not pay well to be an in-system taxi driver, but it takes me to places.
I agree, the far off planets take an age to get to and there should be more reasons to visit them. Perhaps stations shuld be added to them, if they exist, to encourage people to visit other planets in different systems. Of course, that's a whole new OXP altogether...
Glad to see this OXP coming along (and particularly the inclusion of PF) as it nicely saves me a job.
Floating toward the top of my to-do list was updating PF Taxi to work with Planetary Compass, but I think you've saved me a job. Once this OXP is fully released please let me know, and I'll retire PF Taxi as this more than fills the role.
I agree, the far off planets take an age to get to and there should be more reasons to visit them. Perhaps stations shuld be added to them, if they exist, to encourage people to visit other planets in different systems. Of course, that's a whole new OXP altogether...
I once wrote a small function to add such planets for testing purposes:
this.addStationsRoundPlanets = function ()
{
for (var i=1; i < system.planets.length; i++)
{
var planet = system.planets[i];
if (planet.hasAtmosphere)
{
var p = planet.position.add(Vector3D.randomDirection(planet.radius*2));
var station = system.addShips("coriolis", 1, p, 0)[0];
log(this.name, "Added station "+station.displayName+" at: " + p);
var b = p.add(station.vectorForward.multiply(10000));
system.addShips("buoy", 1, b, 0);
}
}
}
And when such a station in orbit exist, Oolite will even launch shuttles from the planet.
That's excellent Eric! I think that this should be used to add more stations to other planets, but again that's another OXP and I wouldn't want to derail another thread...lol!
Glad to see this OXP coming along (and particularly the inclusion of PF) as it nicely saves me a job.
Floating toward the top of my to-do list was updating PF Taxi to work with Planetary Compass, but I think you've saved me a job. Once this OXP is fully released please let me know, and I'll retire PF Taxi as this more than fills the role.
Your welcome. Planetfall compatibility was actually quite a simple thing to add after all. For once I was lucky and it just fell into place without much hassle. Planetary Compass provides the beacons and Planetfall just plays nicely along.
Now I feel it's stable enough for a release . I have squashed remainding bugs I found and playtested quite a few hours. With high probability there are still some bugs left, so keep reporting and they'll be fixed.
* Various bugfixes
* In-flight offers are blocked when there are hostile ships around.
It would be nice if contract offers were suppressed while in Red condition. I seem to recall an offer popping up while in the middle of a dogfight. Maybe I was temporarily in Yellow condition at the time.
I seem to recall an offer popping up while in the middle of a dogfight.
<chuckles> I dunno.. that sounds rather a lot like the way I remember life as a TD.
(especially in the days before computerised despatch systems)
Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck. ~ Disembodied
It would be nice if contract offers were suppressed while in Red condition. I seem to recall an offer popping up while in the middle of a dogfight. Maybe I was temporarily in Yellow condition at the time.
You are absolutely right, so it's time for a new version (1.1).
* "Taxi unavailable"-mode entered when going to red state. And it will stay that way.
* "Taxi available"-mode is restored after hyperjump or launch.
* Mode can be forced (if possible) by priming with b.
* Restoring after hyperjump or launch is a toggleable feature through a variable in taxi_worldscript.js.
Thanks for the heads up, helps to make this oxp better. .
Oh, I like that idea. Because you're often in yellow state even when fighting (the enemy un-targeting you for a few moments before deciding to attack again), that makes a lot of sense. I like that you basically just have to "turn on the Taxi light" when you're available to take fares again. Sometimes even after a fight and you're in Green condition, you're still too busy scooping up cargo to want to be getting taxi calls just yet!
Another idea came to mind today: Only getting notifications of waiting passengers who are somewhat nearby. It's kind of silly when you're near the main station and there's a notification of a passenger at the solar station wanting a ride to the main station. Surely the Taxi service would call in a closer cab than you (and the amount of fuel you'd burn on injectors to make it there and then back in time wouldn't be worth the fare). Or you can think of it like someone on the pavement shouting "Taxi!" to get picked up by a nearby cab -- so in this case the "Taxi!" shout-out would be on a short-range radio signal, rather than across the entire system.
I guess there are two ways that something like that could be implemented. One just prevents the display of any generated taxi call when the "From" is beyond a certain distance. That would reduce the number of taxi calls you get, so maybe bumping up the fare to encourage you to take those that you do see might be good. The other way would be to make all generated taxi calls have a "From" that is within a certain distance. That may be less desirable as it means a fair bit of calculation to every possible pick-up point, determining which ones to pool from. The first method simply makes the regular call but then calculates the single distance before displaying it or not.
Either way I guess it's a bit of coding for it to check the distance to the beacons of the various stations (and then what do you do about the liners, who don't have beacons? is there even a way to calculate the distance to them when they're not in scanner range?). But if you can pull it off, I think it does make more sense with the distance limitation. Figuring out what is a good distance limitation may be tricky...
Another idea came to mind today: Only getting notifications of waiting passengers who are somewhat nearby. It's kind of silly when you're near the main station and there's a notification of a passenger at the solar station wanting a ride to the main station. Surely the Taxi service would call in a closer cab than you (and the amount of fuel you'd burn on injectors to make it there and then back in time wouldn't be worth the fare). Or you can think of it like someone on the pavement shouting "Taxi!" to get picked up by a nearby cab -- so in this case the "Taxi!" shout-out would be on a short-range radio signal, rather than across the entire system.
This is a nice idea and implementing it is not a problem. Just have to think what is "far." Technically I have give in-flight offers an extra 5 mins of time for reaching the pick-up point. Maybe some simple distance evaluation based on that?
While using version 1.2, I was getting pick up requests for passengers at fuel satellites. I looked at the ship roles and discovered that fuel stations and fuel satellites have different defined roles so I inserted another exception line in the taxi script to also exclude fuel satellites.
SolarTech proudly presents the Plasma Turret Regulator Device Apparatus, aka the Turret Toggler
.
. I have squashed remainding bugs I found and playtested quite a few hours. With high probability there are still some bugs left, so keep reporting and they'll be fixed.
