Thargoids

[cim]

Time for a dumb pilot's question: at which point do scooped Thargons morph into cargo containers of alien items?
Is it when the player docks? Or saves? Or jumps? <chortles>

On docking.

[Thargoid]

Except with my replacement ship script, at which point they never morph, and can always wake up again. At that point your ship will have a rather nasty stomach ache.

It'll make misjump harvesting rather more of a risky prospect perhaps.

[cim]

Except with my replacement ship script, at which point they never morph, and can always wake up again. At that point your ship will have a rather nasty stomach ache.

Really? On docking all the entities in the hold should be unpacked, and then when you launch the 1t Alien Items are repacked into a standard 1TC container.

[Thargoid]

My meaning was that they'll still be a risk of being reanimated and causing damage to the ship that's holding them. If ejected after docking they'll appear as containers, although personally that for me sounds like something that could be improved by at least keeping the same model/appearance as when scooped. But I guess it's hardly a priority.

[Cody]

... they'll still be a risk of being reanimated and causing damage to the ship that's holding them. If ejected after docking they'll appear as containers...

That explains something, anyway... cool!

[Thargoid]

Although as it's got me thinking, I've just revised things so that in addition to damage the Thargons are now also dumped, and will be dumped as active drones, not cargo containers.

But if the player just does a manual dump after docking, that will be a cargo container as normal.

[cim]

My meaning was that they'll still be a risk of being reanimated and causing damage to the ship that's holding them. If ejected after docking they'll appear as containers, although personally that for me sounds like something that could be improved by at least keeping the same model/appearance as when scooped. But I guess it's hardly a priority.

How do you tell the difference between scooped thargons which have been repacked, and normal containers of Alien Items, then? (Or are you assuming they all contain a packed thargon, ready to be reanimated?)

[Thargoid]

The latter, just to keep things simple.

Basically if you go into combat with a warship with Thargons in your hold, there's a 1% chance per Thargon that they'll get woken up when the warship sends out its signals.

And if they do, they'll bust out and then go a-hunting themselves.

[Cody]

... in addition to damage the Thargons are now also dumped, and will be dumped as active drones, not cargo containers.

Sweet! I knew my policy of always zapping them, rather than scooping them, was correct.

[davcefai]

I'm a little late to this party but:

I have noticed a new type of Thargoid - "Thargoid Controller". Tiny, agile and just about impossible to target and shoot.

I get rid of them by cloaking and then ramming them. As soon as I do that a LOT of little thargoids die. My conclusion was that the controller took over the management of the drones from the mothership. Am I wrong here?

Two strange things:

1. When I ram the controller, even though I am invisible, I get the 100 credit bounty. Bug?
2. Dead Drones are labelled "Bounty 5cr." However if I shoot then I get 50, Another Bug?

[Cody]

I have noticed a new type of Thargoid - "Thargoid Controller". Tiny, agile and just about impossible to target and shoot.

I presume that's from an OXP - TCAT, perchance?

[Thargoid]

It is, and yes the idea is that the warship may drop one of those, which will as you say take over the control if the mothership dies. It'll prolong the fight and make the drones last longer before going active. But if you shoot both the mothership and the controller, then of course nothing is keeping the drones going and so they become inactive.

As for the bounty - you'll get a bounty for any alien ship you kill by ramming when cloaked. It's just that in most cases you'll also get killed by the collision, but as the controller is small and quite weak in terms of energy you can kill them that way.

And the other bit sounds like the well known "bug" of bounty reporting on alien ships - iirc it's handled a bit differently than for normal ships.

[cim]

1. When I ram the controller, even though I am invisible, I get the 100 credit bounty. Bug?

Yes - thanks. Currently works that way for pirates, too, though safely ramming them for sufficient damage while cloaked is more difficult. Fixed in r5661.

2. Dead Drones are labelled "Bounty 5cr." However if I shoot then I get 50, Another Bug?

I think this is a bug in the bounty scanner OXP: it divides the reported bounty by 10 for cargo to match the award Oolite will give, but doesn't exclude thargons from this adjustment (while Oolite does).

[Commander McLane]

2. Dead Drones are labelled "Bounty 5cr." However if I shoot then I get 50, Another Bug?

I think this is a bug in the bounty scanner OXP: it divides the reported bounty by 10 for cargo to match the award Oolite will give, but doesn't exclude thargons from this adjustment (while Oolite does).

This can be fixed by changing line 140 of the script:

Code: Select all

    if (ship.isCargo || scanClass == "CLASS_BUOY" || scanClass == "CLASS_ROCK")

to

Code: Select all

    if ((ship.isCargo && !ship.hasRole("EQ_THARGON")) || scanClass == "CLASS_BUOY" || scanClass == "CLASS_ROCK")

[UK_Eliter]

McLane, that's helpful. Thanks.