Communications Pack A

[Cody]

<chortles> Suicide by Cop - sweet! The evidence against The Ecstatic Alligator's Woe, M'lud!

[ffutures]

The thing that gets me about this one is that all of the guys who offer you a free ride to another system via wormhole always tell the truth about where they're going - you'd think occasionally you'd find they were leading you to a pirate ambush or something.

Also, all of the messages are very business-focused - nobody ever asks if you caught Lave's act on the Oorovision Song Contest, tells a "Three Thargoids walked into a bar" joke, or asks if anyone knows what the best Chinese restaurant is on the station, or anything of that sort.

later - what I'm thinking here is that you'd think there's be the equivalent of CB chatter etc. occasionally.

[Cody]

The thing that gets me about this one is that all of the guys who offer you a free ride to another system via wormhole always tell the truth about where they're going - you'd think occasionally you'd find they were leading you to a pirate ambush or something.

There was a short discussion about this a while back, as I recall - there were good reasons against it, I think. Something I'd like to see though, certainly.

As for the rest, Comms Pack B is there for the making - but it ain't as easy as it may seem to create all those messages.
I've been meaning to attempt it myself, but I know from experience how hard it can be to create enough variety.

[Layne]

The thing that gets me about this one is that all of the guys who offer you a free ride to another system via wormhole always tell the truth about where they're going - you'd think occasionally you'd find they were leading you to a pirate ambush or something.

They have lied about actually jumping out of system, though. That's happened to me more than once. Asking for someone heading to system X, and another ship saying they were going that way and are happy to have me tag along. I've followed them outside the station aegis (waiting for them to jump) only to have them turn and open fire. As I recall from the thread where I reported this, others have said that's an occasional assassin tactic.

[Cody]

Asking for someone heading to system X, and another ship saying they were going that way and are happy to have me tag along.

That would be an OXP doing that, I presume?

[Layne]

Asking for someone heading to system X, and another ship saying they were going that way and are happy to have me tag along.

That would be an OXP doing that, I presume?

You tell me.

When I mentioned this behavior before, you were the one who reported that it was expected.

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 25#p235978

[Cody]

You tell me. When I mentioned this behavior before, you were the one who reported that it was expected.
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 25#p235978

Perhaps I have misunderstood you? I thought you meant the player asking for a lift. It has been a long day. As for aegis assassins, I've never seen them jump out. They wait for the player to either jump out, or go beyond the aegis, out of Viper-sight - then they will attack. When they attack is when they comm you.

[Layne]

You tell me. When I mentioned this behavior before, you were the one who reported that it was expected.
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 25#p235978

Perhaps I have misunderstood you? I thought you meant the player asking for a lift. It has been a long day. As for aegis assassins, I've never seen them jump out. They wait for the player to either jump out, or go beyond the aegis, out of Viper-sight - then they will attack. When they attack is when they comm you.

Yes, indeed! I meant when you, as a player, use Broadcast Comms to ask, 'Is anyone heading to Foo-foo Prime?', whereupon the NPC ships either ignore you, tell you they're headed somewhere else, or reply, 'sure, I'm going there, feel free to tag along.' At least twice that I can recall, I've had an NPC ship reply with the last option, and when I follow them away from the station, they never actually jump. Then if you follow them completely out of the station aegis, they suddenly turn hostile and attack. Is that an oxp doing that? I cannot say. Clearly there's at least /one/ oxp at work or I wouldn't have Broadcast Comms to begin with! If there's another that's causing those shady tactics-- either deliberately or as an interesting glitch-- I couldn't say without endless testing of various oxp combinations I've got. I'm going to say it's a clever tactic, and accept that even emergent behaviors can have a pretense to AI.

Is this how the Oolite Turing Test starts?

[Cody]

I meant when you, as a player, use Broadcast Comms to ask, 'Is anyone heading to Foo-foo Prime?'

Ah, so I was correct - an OXP giving you false intel?


As an aside: aegis raiders are more interesting than aegis assassins.

[phkb]

Yes, that's broadcast comms, but it is using the destination system of the NPC to work out what the answer should be. Essentially it is a mechanism to uncover a parameter of an NPC ship. Other than that, though, no changes are being made to the game. Whether the NPC does or doesn't jump out is not determined by Broadcast Comms. That's purely up to the AI code of the NPC ship.

However, I made have to tweak the code a bit so that assassins won't respond to the hail.

[Layne]

Yes, that's broadcast comms, but it is using the destination system of the NPC to work out what the answer should be. Essentially it is a mechanism to uncover a parameter of an NPC ship. Other than that, though, no changes are being made to the game. Whether the NPC does or doesn't jump out is not determined by Broadcast Comms. That's purely up to the AI code of the NPC ship.

However, I made have to tweak the code a bit so that assassins won't respond to the hail.

Why change it? It works as is-- even if not as intended. I personally like that little chance of being deceived when asking to hitch a ride. Please, leave it as it is, it's a very entertaining bit of emergent behavior!

[Diziet Sma]

However, I made have to tweak the code a bit so that assassins won't respond to the hail.

Hell no.. assassins are supposed to be sneaky bastards.. keep it as is, please!

[avder]

How about having them outright trick you into an ambush, or just be road trolls?

Maybe have one of them respond that they are indeed going to foo-foo prime, but the wormhole actually leads to ohdammit where a gang of 8 pirates awaits at the witchpoint? It would be up to the player to have a wormhole scanner and catch the deception and then decide for himself to go through and get in a fight, or to avoid it and continue on his way.

And occasionally have one respond that he's indeed going to foofoo prime, but then you end up in youregoingthewrongway which was a 6.8Ly jump and now you've just lost a couple days and now you're gonna be late delivering that 11,000cr courier. And instead of a fight, the NPC just taunts you and blasts away using injectors. Because you know this is EXACTLY what some people would do with this kind of technology and people asking for free rides. And then to top it off there's a formation of Vipers right there and he's clean so you can't just blast him like he deserves without repercussion.

Or how about Thargon spies looking for gullible pilots? They could reply in broken yet coherent english, and their wormhole leads to interstellar space where they've got a few warships waiting. You get an advantage because you'd arrive to that fight with a full tank of fuel, and if you have the advanced navigation computer and a destination set, you'd have a marker for how much fuel you can use on injectors.

[Layne]

An unusual message from an assassin during a chase and battle! That dirty so-and-so said, and I blush to repeat such language in a public forum:

[CommsLogMFD]: Moray Star Boat: Guisarme of Geinona: [commsPackA_enforcer_firedMissile]

Well, after hearing that, and fanning myself a bit from the shock of that vulgarity, I looked through the log and found this:

Code: Select all

11:37:22.626 [script.javaScript.warning.ooliteDefined]: ----- JavaScript warning (Oolite Assassin AI 1.82): Unknown expansion key [commsPackA_enforcer_firedMissile] in string.
11:37:22.626 [strings.expand.warning.unknownExpansion]: ----- WARNING: Unknown expansion key [commsPackA_enforcer_firedMissile] in string.

And, indeed, opening the guts of Comms Pack A to inspection, there's no such set of strings as 'enforcer_firedMissile'.

Hmmm!

[cim]

So there isn't - thanks for the report. I'm surprised that one's taken so long to notice, too. Will be fixed in the next release.