[RELEASE] WildShips OXP

[Keeper]

Oh, did I fail to mention that I had changed the model before to look for a different texture? Sorry about that... I did that over a year ago, before I realized I could just have the shipdata.plist change the texture. Looks like everything is set up right now, anyway!

...except I think in the demoships plist, you meant to have wildShips_policeDuma there instead of wildShips_tribalDuma, since you have policeDuma set up for the "tribal" cheetah texture and the tribalDuma set up to have the regular bare-metal texture like the standard Duma which already is in the demoships plist. (Thus on the ship library, one sees two Dumas with the same bare-metal texture.)

Or maybe you just accidentally swapped the names in the shipdata of the wildShips_tribalDuma and wildShips_policeDuma -- judging by the roles you gave them, that seems most likely. In game there's no discernible difference to the player, so it's not a big deal.

[Thargoid]

I've just updated this OXZ to v1.09, to include some tweaks by Spara to use the new trunk populator and to allow saving at the Kiota stations.

It should now be available via the OXZ manager in the trunk game. As this requires the trunk features I won't be updating the OXP version, which will stay at 1.08 for compatibility with Oolite 1.77.1.

[Vincentz]

I hate to uninstall this one.

I didnt like the ships, but loved the stations. To bad they are not working with 1.81+

[spara]

I made a very straightforward update to this oxp that enables the market for Oolite 1.81.

* Uses the original old style market definitions converted to js.
* Market capacity set to 63. These are secondary markets after all.
* Market set to monitored, so they follow GalCop restrictions.

Get the changed files here: https://app.box.com/s/bg944x46iyl5zq8k0yirga5e5893tdlm.

* Unzip the Wildships oxz into your AddOns as an oxp.
* Replace shipdata.plist in Config folder with a new version.
* Put wildships-market.js into the Scripts folder.
* Start the game holding shift until you see the Cobra spinning.

This is a no-brainer conversion to make this oxp work with Oolite 1.81. If anyone is interested in making more elegant market definitions or even do some creative thinking, please do so. In the meantime, this will hopefully suffice.

[Vincentz]

Thanks

[spara]

An updated version (1.10), with market tweaks for Oolite 1.82, uploaded to the in-game expansion manager.

[spara]

Version 1.10.1 fixes a couple of texture corruption issues from the previous version. Available from the in-game manager.

[spara]

I'm looking at the roles of the ships in this oxp and compared them with the descriptions in the wiki. And they don't really match. So I'm thinking about rethinking the roles and would like some feedback.

And here's the deal:

Duma is introduced as a multi-purpose ship like Cobra3. However, it's only spawned as trader or police. No hunters, no assassins and no pirates.

Chatu is introduced as a "jump-capable combat ship designed for military, naval and general system protection roles". Like Asp with cargo hold. Again, it's spawned only as a trader or scavenger.

With the current casting, the oxp is quite safe to install as the ships only appear in peaceful roles. But I find the conflict between the descriptions a bit disturbing so I would like to add more aggressive roles too. This would make the oxp more challenging as the stats are quite high on these ships. For example Duma's top speed is 400 and it's very agile. Chatu flies at 450.

So what do you think, should this oxp be kept as a peaceful one (somewhat contradicting the description in wiki) and just tune the current roles to better fit the current game or should the roles be recasted to better fit the descriptions making this oxp more challenging?

[Norby]

Duma is introduced as a multi-purpose ship like Cobra3. However, it's only spawned as trader or police.

I like the connection of Duma with the police, almost the same feeling as Vipers dedicated to the police. Moreover the 2t cargo is not a good pirate ship so I think to keep this as is.

Chatu is escorted by Nyokas which can be an attack squad imho so I suggest to extend the roles of this ship.

[Smivs]

FWIW I think the 'Police' role should be used rarely, and only for ships unique to the Police or those whose function is civilian policing/security etc. I don't like the idea of the same ship being used by Police as well as other roles, including player. Just my personal preference.

[spara]

A new version (1.11) is up.

Thanks for the comments. I made my choices and added some thought and diversity to the roles.

* Nyokas are used as escorts.
* Chatus are used by assassins, hunters and traders.
* Tribal Chatus are used by pirates.
* Tembos are used by traders.
* Dumas are used by assassins, hunters and traders.
* Tribal Dumas are used by pirates.
* Police Dumas are used by, eh, police.

With proper finer rolings and weights of course.

This change probably makes the game a little more challenging, so be careful out there.

[spara]

Phkb has kindly notified me of some escort circular references in some of the oxps I'm maintaining. WildShips is one of them. Version 1.11.1 should fix circular references from Chatus.

[gsagostinho]

Hi all, I have come across an issue with this OXP which I don't know if it's affecting only me nor if it's a known issue. I got a Habitat Station spawned as the main station of a system, but due to the position of the planet and the star this station is not receiving any light. With the regular Coriolis and other stations we would have those beautiful effects generated with light maps, so that parts in the shadow show lights but the Habitat Station is absolutely completely dark to me, except only for the glowing docking tunnel. I took a look at the shipdata.plist file and it seems to me that the habitat station model is supposed to be using specular, normal and emission maps.

[Keeper]

The only actual emissions on those would be the green panels along the outside, so yeah, if the station is in shadow, only the docking port receives light. The way the rest of it is mapped, I don't know how good it would look to add lighted 'windows'; they'd probably appear in weird places.

[gsagostinho]

The only actual emissions on those would be the green panels along the outside, so yeah, if the station is in shadow, only the docking port receives light. The way the rest of it is mapped, I don't know how good it would look to add lighted 'windows'; they'd probably appear in weird places.

I see, so at least there is nothing wrong here on my side

Since most of the stations from this OXP are located between the planet and the sun or far away from the planet, they will normally have at least some light reaching them, *except* for the specific case of a Habitat or Mega Habitat Station replacing a main station which can be fully in the shadow. I have already found two of those hidding behind a planet's shadow, and they do not look good in my opinion, besides being nearly impossible to align with one of them. Here is how they look like:









(also notice in the last picture that there are two round objects, one on each side of the docking entrance, which do not respect the current lightning conditions as they are always bright grey).