[Release] EscortDeck v1.11 and EscortPack v1.2

[Fatleaf]

I can't help thinking of one of those wee beasties with 40,000 of its young hanging on for dear life!


But besides that, good work. And with the new collision handler it looks a lot more compact.

[Norby]

@SirArian:

[SirArian]

@SirArian:

Cool! Pirates, here I come. (Right after I can manage to find some of that equipment... With it being so new and all, not many shipyards carry it. )

[Diziet Sma]

I started to bundle OXP escort ships into an Escort Pack OXP which can land on the deck and has nice graphics. Candidates: Bushmaster, Chameleon, Far Arm Hunter, Gnat, Hognose, Mussurana, Night Adder, Nyoka, Sidewinder Special, Sonoran, Viper Raider, Yasen-N.

I must admit I'd never considered the Hognose as an escort..

[Norby]

I'd never considered the Hognose as an escort..

Well, I don't mean the unarmed [wiki]Hognose[/wiki] tugship but an escort version of a very small ship from Griff Industries based on the Hognose missionary ship from the Archimedes version of Elite:

This will be the weakest escort with his single energy bank and 80 max. speed, but the deck can hold it in the smallest side pads and very cheap. Planned to euip with Injectors to be usable for a while and a Pulse laser for 30.000 credits. Better than an empty landing pad on a poor commander's deck.

[Norby]

Now after about 1500 lines of code and more weeks spent on eliminating problems I have an usable version, but I will do a few more tests for sure before release.
Here is a screenshot when escorts open fire on a bad guy:



Please read the new [wiki]EscortDeck[/wiki] wiki page and tell me your opinions about the rules and possibilities.

[Norby]

I can't resit to code another feature before release for [wiki]Carriers[/wiki] which use the ship hull as the largest Escort Deck. This is less than the goal of Carriers where the player will sit into an escort during flight (which is already scripted just need fixing&testing), but with the features of Escort Deck you also can feel yourself in a real Carrier.




Looks like the previous [wiki]Carriers[/wiki] but these ships are not static subentities anymore, they moved in FCB and listed in the MFD of Escort Deck so can launch and fight, at least on my machine. A bit more patience please...

[Norby]

Since my last post I polished the escort AI which can do various things depending on the situation and display the selected tactics on MFD (see details in the wiki). For example they prefer your current target if you delivered at least one laser hit on the targeted ship.


I also made the deck to [wiki]Towbar[/wiki] compatible. Salvaging derelicts still fun imho and now you can transport many small ships on your deck and a large ship on Towbar at once. If you haven't Towbar OXP installed then you will get the same money after docking for salvages, just display small messages without the fancy mission screens of Towbar.


Sounds good, but where is the release? Here: [wiki]EscortDeck[/wiki] v1.0
Find in the Activities category in the manager.

[Norby]

[wiki]EscortPack[/wiki] v1.0 add more escort ships into the game:



These are based on existing ships but the models are modified a bit to fit into the Escort Deck.

[cryptotheslow]

This is a great OXP - thanks! Just 2 S8 Snipers attached to my Morrigan and it already starts to feel a bit Uber.

It would be handy to have a way to disable the auto launch when entering into red alert. (Maybe called "MANUAL" status). Sometimes I want to try to force a pilot to eject so I can salvage their ship, but as soon as they fire back at me my Snipers leap into action and blow them up - have to be really quick to get them back into LANDING status when they launch. So to have a way to disable the auto launch would be good here I think

[cryptotheslow]

Me again!

I think I uncovered 2 odd bugs / quirks.

1. Injectors
If you have Injectors active and go to Red Alert, your escorts launch at super speed and zoom out of scanner range in a second or two (I presume they inherit the mother ship's speed). You then have to catch up with them using Jump - at which point you find them Fuel Injecting away from you - you have to hit N a couple of times to get them to calm down and back to LANDING status. You can replicate this easily by simply holding Injectors while hitting N to deploy your escorts, then release Injectors and watch your escorts disappear into the sunset Perhaps the fix is not to Auto-Launch escorts if Fuel Injection is engaged? (Display a message "Escorts unable to launch, Fuel Injection engaged" or some such, then auto-lauch them when Fuel Injectors are off if Red Alert still persists).

2. Slight conflict with Galactic Navy OXP (I think it is that one!)
You witchspace into a Navy Sector Command planet. As you arrive there is always a mass of Navy ships, and often a few GalCops too. The problem arises when there is also a Bogey ship that immediately attacks you. Your escorts auto-launch and foolishly accidentally hit a Navy ship - so you recall them to LANDING. They land and become DECK. This is not good, as your careless escort is now a Navy target and is attached to you - you die as the Navy ships turn their fire toward your DECKed escorts and miss - hitting you in the process. Perhaps the fix here is to have a check for (IF navy_vessels_in_scanner + galcop_vessels_in_scanner > 0 THEN abort_auto_launch), escorts stay DECK until sent away individually. Leave it to the Navy boys to sort out the Bogey. No idea if that is even possible, and excuse the pseudo-code!

Above was experienced with Oolite 1.80, EscortDeck 1.0, EscortPack 1.0, Galactic Navy v5.4.3, a Morrigan player ship with 2x S8 Sniper escorts (plus a bunch of other oxp's that I don't think are relevant).

Been great fun experimenting with this tonight - thanks for the work that has gone into it

[Norby]

This is a great OXP - thanks! Just 2 S8 Snipers attached to my Morrigan and it already starts to feel a bit Uber.

My pleasure.

Yes, both Morrigan and Sniper ships are uber and reachable in the late stage only, at least if you worked hard for the almost 4M credits to buy these.

Thanks for your suggestions, added to the todo but I have many other open projects so I need some time to arrive back and make these.

Meantime you can disable auto launch within the EscortDeck oxz by commenting out the 220.line with // in Scripts/escortdeck.js like this:

Code: Select all

//		this.$EscortDeck_ControlAll(true, false, this);

Alternatively you can launch your escorts far away, left behind them and press landing right before your first shot.

A launch at high speed is not recommended due to can cause fatal collision: when an escort try to avoid a nearby ship at launch sometimes run into another. This chance is increasing with the number of escorts, so launch will be disabled at Injector speeds.

I think to disable autolaunch at the maximum normal speed also, in this way you can use your speed to control this feature and usually when you travel at max. speed to avoid furballs then your escorts will not counterattack but will do if you slow a bit below the maximum.

About GalNavy your pseudo-code is nice, just I do not think to go into this way due to an accident, maybe enough if you hold down injectors when you travel in witchspace to raise your speed in time and avoid launch in the next version.

[cryptotheslow]

Yes, both Morrigan and Sniper ships are uber and reachable in the late stage only, at least if you worked hard for the almost 4M credits to buy these.

I spent a very, very long time hauling around in a Boa Cruiser doing cargo runs to amass my millions before adding lots of OXPs to play with - I've done the hard miles

Meantime you can disable auto launch within the EscortDeck oxz by commenting out the 220.line with // in Scripts/escortdeck.js like this:

Code: Select all

//		this.$EscortDeck_ControlAll(true, false, this);

This works perfectly for me - now I must order my escorts to launch, I like it! Thanks.

A launch at high speed is not recommended due to can cause fatal collision: when an escort try to avoid a nearby ship at launch sometimes run into another. This chance is increasing with the number of escorts, so launch will be disabled at Injector speeds.

I think to disable autolaunch at the maximum normal speed also, in this way you can use your speed to control this feature and usually when you travel at max. speed to avoid furballs then your escorts will not counterattack but will do if you slow a bit below the maximum.

About GalNavy your pseudo-code is nice, just I do not think to go into this way due to an accident, maybe enough if you hold down injectors when you travel in witchspace to raise your speed in time and avoid launch in the next version.

That seems like a good solution. I have had an escort run into me and terminate itself at launch once. Also the first experiment I made, I had just bought 4 S8 Snipers - I was just flying away from where I bought them and thought I would like to watch them launch and land again - so I launched them - that looked great, they zipped away on fuel injectors. Unfortunately, 2 of them took a mirror path of each other and ended up crashing into each other a few KM behind my ship at full injector speed - there was not much left That was the fastest ~5 million Cr I ever spent!

[Norby]

took a mirror path of each other and ended up crashing into each other a few KM behind my ship at full injector speed

Oops, then you can take my permission to reload your savegame like a bugfix of dumb pilots.

The current AI is set to don't use injectors within 2.5km from the player if there isn't emergency so I have no idea why this happened. Thanks for the test report, maybe I will be able to do something if I can reproduce it.

I am still waiting for more tests from others before I will start my work on this package again.

[Norby]

[wiki]EscortDeck[/wiki] v1.1 is out:
- No escort launch at injector speeds nor autolaunch at maximum speed.
- Fixed escort equipments after load game.
- All escorts got a missile pylon to workaround a bug with Carriers' sit into feature.
- Escort view positions added.