Random Assassination Contracts

[Arexack_Heretic]

you can tone down the weaponstrength with <weapon_energy>

same heatup and pulselengths apply, only energydrain and energydamage are changed.

[LittleBear]

The pulse laser is working quite well. And it is in keeping with the nasty nature of the Dictatorship. They don't care about their crews, just churn out hundreds of small cheap ships!

[LittleBear]

I've got an AI for the Defence ships working. They attack anything that is not an "imperial". This gives the effect I want as they will attack both the player and the rebels. To stop them wandering off and attacking a Trade ship or any of the ships the game normally adds, i used the SendShipsAway command, which is meant to cause all ships in the system to hyperspace out. I put this command in my script before the script adds the Deathburger, rebels and imperials. So I should have an empty system.

In the script I've put:-

{
conditions = (
"galaxy_number equal 6",
"mission_assassins equal assassins_STAGE11b",
"planet_number equal 13",
"status_string equal STATUS_EXITING_WITCHSPACE"
);
do = ( "checkForShips: victim9",
{ conditions = ( "shipsFound_number equal 0" );
do = ("sendAllShipsAway");
},
);
},

The condition of not finding a victim9 is true, as this is before victim9 is added. When I jumped in there was nothing on my scanner except the Defence ships. But a minute into the battle a Mosquito Trader appeared and some of the Defence ships went off to attack it.

Have I gone wrong somewhere?

[Arexack_Heretic]

no this is normal behaviour. Ships are added continuously to replace those lost to piracy, hypering out etcetera.

you could add an interdiction warning to a buoyAI to explain the excessive aggression.

UPDATE = (
"sendCommsMessage: WARNING! THIS SYSTEM IS UNDER BLOCKADE",
"pauseAI: 5.0",
"sendCommsMessage: By the command of the Baron,
all ships not compliant with Baronial transponder codes will be deemed hostile and attacked on sight.",
"pauseAI: 10.0",
"sendCommsMessage: LEAVE NOW!",
"pauseAI: 15.0"
);

[LittleBear]

Like it!

To get the AIs working proberly I've had to give the Dictatorship ships Thargoid ScanClass and the Rebels Police Scan Class. This isn't exactly what I wanted, but I can explain it in plot terms by the GalCop Union of Worlds voting to expell Esausve from the Union of Worlds for violating the treaty against Weapons of Mass Destruction and recognising the rebels as the offical Govenment.

Will do a beacon!

[ArkanoiD]

Like it!

To get the AIs working proberly I've had to give the Dictatorship ships Thargoid ScanClass and the Rebels Police Scan Class. This isn't exactly what I wanted, but I can explain it in plot terms by the GalCop Union of Worlds voting to expell Esausve from the Union of Worlds for violating the treaty against Weapons of Mass Destruction and recognising the rebels as the offical Govenment.

Will do a beacon!

Randomly appearing thargoids will ally with Dictatorship then, doesn't it look strange?

[Arexack_Heretic]

Alternatively you could have bounties on the Esausians and none on the Rebels. (as they are gal-coop fugitives).

Then checkForLegalStatus.
(does require the player to be clean though, but galcoop can expunge your criminalrecord easilly)


Why does scanForShipsWithRole: rebel/loyalist not work then?

[LittleBear]

Cos I didn't include role. Having another go with that!

[LittleBear]

I took ThargoidAI and replaced the "scanforNonThargoid" bit

with

scanForShipsWithRole:erebel,

The rebels have the role erebel, but the ships just tumble (I've put 4 erebel ships within 100m of the Dictatorship craft). They will attack the player if he attacks them.

Any ideas?

[Arexack_Heretic]

first: put a space between erebel and the method.

I'll have to look at ThargoidAI....yes, SHOULD work.

check your spelling, looks like a mismatch of roles.
and investigate the stvderr (forWin) debug output file whether the AI crashes.

Ships launched from the station in defence can have interceptAI.plist
Ships meant for guarding, should have something more like the planetPatrollAI.

You could script station to populate space around it with a minimum of interceptors, like thus (I hope)

Code: Select all

<key>UPDATE</key> 
<array>
 <string>checkForShips: Edefender</string>
 <dict>
  <key>Conditions</key>
  <array>
   <string>shipFound_number lessThan 12</string>    
  </array>
  <key>Do</key>
  <array>
   <string>launchDefenceShip</string>
   <string>pauseAI: 10</string>
   <string>launchDefenceShip</string>
   <string>pauseAI: 10</string>
  </array>
 </dict>
<array>

[LittleBear]

I might come back to this, but I'm reasonabley happy with the use of the scanclass. At least it works and has the rebels attcking the Imperials and the imperials attcking both the rebels and the player.

The only side-effect is that a Thargoid appearing would only go for the rebels, player and any normal ships. On the other hand this won't look too bad as Thargoids do normally attack all these ships. I'll set the players legal status to zero when the mission starts (fair enough if he is helping in an attack on a rough state), so the rebels won't go for him. By putting bounties of 100 on the Moogose ships and the Deathburger the rebels will go for them as well. (I'll just award less credits for completing the mission to balance the money earnt out).

Doing this way does have some advantages:-

1) Player can tell friend from foe on the scanner.
2) If the player does use a q-mine or e-bomb and causes collateral damage, then the rebels will turn on him. (fair enough, be more carefull).

Dictership Mongoose Fighters battleing Rebel Cobras:-

[lex_talionis]

/me wants bigger screenshots

[LittleBear]

I just followed your tip to upload to PhotoBucket. How do I make 'em bigger?

[lex_talionis]

damn, does photobucket automatically resize? hrm. might be useful re-saving em as a jpg which will take up less memory (i think) which'll allow you to have em bigger. photobucket has... 250KB upload limit?

unless of course you play oolite that size, in which case make your play window bigger for bigger pics!

[LittleBear]

Getting there. But this battle has been a bitch to script!!

Currently have over 100 Mongoose Fighters in the system and about 20 rebels, with another 30 Mongoose Fighters guarding the Deathburger.

Currently using 30 odd script commands to add the ships in partrols, batteling groups and player inctercepters. Still need to do a lot on makling the battle invole the player more. At the moment the Mongoose Fighters are mainly going for the Cobras and the player can sail through!

But at least their AIs work!

Rebel Cobras engaged by Mongoose Fighters:



Close up of Mongoose Fighter:



These pics big enough!