Deposed Mission

[DaveG]

I'd like to take this back to square 1, as I don't remember starting it, and all my save game refers to is heading for Bien, which I've done, and nothing has happened - Its distinctly possible I answered wrongly to the first question, as I was probably running multiple missions and contracts at the time, not realising I couldn't go back! Alternatively, it was so long ago that they gave up on me at Bien!

So, which bits do I need to delete in a save file to completely start from scratch? I have

Code: Select all

	<key>mission_depask</key>
	<string>BIEN</string>
	<key>mission_depbien</key>
	<string>OKAY</string>
	<key>mission_deposed_started</key>
	<string>YES</string>

by searching for 'dep'


can I just set the started string to NO?

Or can I delete the whole lot and wait for the prompt?

cheers!

Dave

[cim]

Or can I delete the whole lot and wait for the prompt?

That's probably safest.

[Eric Walch]

This oxp was long on my list for converting the legacy script into JS. Yesterday, I finally made some time.

Now I started to play it from scratch to find some mistakes in my code. I reached the "Black Widows' mission. Much tougher than I remembered. Actually, I think it is much tougher that the original I played back in the time of Oolite 1.65. These ships have aft lasers and those were not very effective in the past. In the first 2 tries I was killed.

I think this oxp should be for intermediate players and is now a bit to tough. Also the energy bomb is gone to deal an initial blow. To compensate for the better handling of aft lasers, I replaced it with beam lasers and the ships were still deadly. When you manage to hit every shot of a cooled down military laser, you can put the target in fleeing mode. And even than it is difficult to finish the kill as the recharge is so high, that you must keep hitting it with your heated up laser. At least the target keeps in fleeing mode and will not shoot back.

Any opinions on this for replacing the aft military laser for a aft beam laser to better match the original difficulty?

In the legacy version, all 3 targets were back when you re-entered the system. I now will remember the killed ships so they stay dead when loading a saved game were 1 or 2 were already killed. This also will make it a bit easier.

I have no intentions to make big changes, only adapt it to the new scripting system. e.g. the hints for the black widow mission on the F7 screen are a bit clumpy. They are now moved to the new F4 interface screen as an option to start inquiries at the bar.

[Norby]

can I just set the started string to NO?

Set it to NO is not a good idea due to missionVariables parsed as string and the "NO" string is equal with true if checked as boolean so maybe working maybe not depending on the source code. To make sure delete the whole key.

[cim]

Any opinions on this for replacing the aft military laser for a aft beam laser to better match the original difficulty?

Since in 1.76 and before the NPC military laser was marginally less effective than the beam laser (same expected damage before overheating, but longer cooldown time) it would probably be in the spirit of the mission to give them the second most powerful laser now, too

[Eric Walch]

Even with a beam as aft laser they are quite deadly. Before Oolite 1.76 the aft laser fired rarely during a fight, because of a bug in the code. This allowed to kill such a ship from behind like any other ship. Now the aft attack is even more dangerous than a front attack.

I compared the stats with the constrictor:

Code: Select all

	"deposed-blackwidow1" = {
		"energy_recharge_rate" = 8;
		"has_shield_booster" = 1;
		"has_shield_enhancer" = 1;
		"max_energy" = 500;
	};
	"constrictor" =
	{
		energy_recharge_rate = 5;
		"has_shield_booster" = 0;
		"has_shield_enhancer" = 0;
		max_energy = 450;
	};

The shield booster and shield enhanced both increase the energy with 256, giving it a real max energy of 1012 that is twice that of the constrictor. The shield enhancer also boosts the recharge rate by 50%, giving it an real recharge rate of 12. That is 140% more than the constrictor. When the player is not able to hit the target with > 90% of his shots, the target is able to recover from these shots.

And there are 3 ships you have to fight. I think that I also will remove the shield_enhancer by script if the player is less than deadly (score < 2560). That still leaves 3 ships to deal with, each more powerful than the constictor.
(I was just killed by the aft laser of such a weakened ship )

[Eric Walch]

I now finished the second and third mission. What an anti climax. The missions become easier and easier.

The tarantula was relative easy to kill, despite the swarm of asp helpers. I now will give him some hardheads instead of just plain missiles.

With the third mission, the target was a complete sitting duck. There were 15 pirates spawn around the factory and 20 asteroids. The pirates were scanning for prey, but like all oolite scanning routines it only checks the 16 most nearby objects (even worse, but that becomes technically). So, as long as the player leaves the asteroids intact, he will not get found by the pirates and can destroy the factory from a great distance, without getting fired at himself. I now have put all pirates in a group belonging to the factory and when the factory is shot, the pirates will find the attacker through the groupAttackTarget command. At least the player now has to kill the pirates first before attacking the main target.

In the light how easy the 2nd and 3th mission are, I changed the aft lasers of the 1st mission into pulse lasers. With that, it still will be the toughest mission of all 3, but it will bring the missions more into balance.