Random Assassination Contracts

[Star Gazer]

Maybe it's got one of the 'difficult' suns that make skimming really risky...?

[LittleBear]

Nothing to stop the player doing that, but the Interceptor Kraits have a top speed of 0.65lm and fuel injectors. They have killplayerAI, attack at the beacon and give chase. They can easily be energy bombed (top energy of 100). If the player wants to top up at the sun, he'll have to shoot the interceptors down. Can't just let them sit on his tail all the way to the sun, as they'll cut his shields to bits before he makes it to the sun.

If the player wants to top up at the sun first, he'll almost certainly have to have killed a Krait or two on the way. As they have policeScan class, this means he arrives at the station as a fugitive.

He'll have to pass through the 30 Mega Kraits patroling who also have policeScan class. They'll ignore a clean commander, but a fugitive cop-killer will have 30 sets of Military lasers aimed at him!

One the other hand if he makes a dash from the beacon to the station he arrives clean, but low on fuel. Killing the powered down ship will earn offender status and he'll still have to deal with the Guard ships, but as long as he doesn't return fire, the 30 ships on patrol won't do much more than take the odd pot shot. Can be completed either way though!

[Arexack_Heretic]

How about docking at the station first, then launch and hit the mark?

[LittleBear]

Darn! Guess you could do that! However, you'll probabley still need to use quite a bit of fuel to injector past the interceptor Kraits (you need 5ly to leave the system) so you may have still have to top up at the sun after killing the mark. Also you won't be able to injector much in the yard, as there are too many other ships moving about / parked and you still have to deal with the Guards. The Guards have a different AI to the interceptors. They stay where they are spawned, guarding the powered down ships, so the player will still have a reasoanble challenge.

Might arm the station with a couple of turrets to even things up!

[Arexack_Heretic]

I have an idea for the mega-weapon.

I could make a type of missile with big flashers on it; it would look like a plasma ball.

will test it tonight or tomorrow.


It could be a captured thargoid -huge- plasma fork, harvested from a battlefield.
or a homemade piece of tech. You make up the story.

[LittleBear]

The burger won't however have anything to shoot at except rebels and the player (it is approaching the rebel base when the player attacks it).

Reckoned the Burger would be fairly dangerous with turrets. If the super weapon makes it even nastier, I'll use a Status_IN_FLIGHT check for ships, erebels found less than 8, add ships erebel 2 in the script to repopulate space near the Burger with rebels, so that when the player arrives there will still be lots of rebels getting blasted by the burger!

I'll use the same wheeze to repopulate space with Mongose fighters. I'll use two versions of the erebels. One with an AI to attack the burger (they won't be able to kill it, but by attacking they'll provok it into either blasting them with it's superweapon or launching Mongoose fighters)! The other will have an AI to make it attack the Mongoose fighters. Should therefore be a good dogfight going. Similarly I'll do two versions of the Mongoose AI. One to attack the player and one to attack the rebels.

Got a bit side-tracked doing a "Galaxy 7 iNEWS - Broadcasting around the Galaxies around the Clock!" .PNG as a background for all the iNEWS broacasts the player gets during the OXP. Should finish impoving the repair-yard hit tomorrow. Think it'll be a week before I get to tarting up the Death-burger battle.

[Arexack_Heretic]

Notsure about the power of the uber-plasma gun.

Nor about how to target them.

The burg wil have anear limitless supply of misiles and the missile-role plasmaball.
the plasmaball 'missile' will have a simple AI, that makes it head towards the rebel moon.
How to accomplish this is still in it's embryonic stage.

missiles are launched at an angle, so having them travel only in a straight line probably won't work well.
If you put the moon directly between the burgh and the planet, I could maybe use the planetcoordinates for navigation/targetting.

[LittleBear]

If the superweapon is for the effect of the burger attacking the moon. That should be faily easy to do with Co-ordinates. If I load up the game and play the mission and fly my commander behind the moon, I could get the co-ordinates of a position behind the moon (from the burger's point of view) by flying behind the moon and pressing shift + F.

You could then give the missile a really simple AI that causes it to fly to these co-ordinates. Murgh did this with his addroid in Lave.oxp. If the missile just had one set of pwm co-ordinates to fly to, then it should head straight for these co-ordinates, crashing into the moon as the moon is in the way.

That would give the effect that the burger is bombarding the moon. If the missile had the deathactions of become : explosion, that should give an impressive flash as it detonates!

Not sure how to modify a station AI to make it launch missiles though! - Perhaps have a launch missile command alongside the lauchdefenceship command (the burger's current AI causes it to launch a defence ship evey time anybody fires a shot at it). As the burger will is constantly shot at (due to the rebel's AI), it currently constantley launches defence ships. I woudn't know though how to define the launch missile comamnd. Perhaps if the missiles and defence ships had the same role, it would lauch a mixture of defence ships and missiles.

[Arexack_Heretic]

I want the missiles to be launched from the weapon though.

I think adding missiles to the shipdata will cause the station to launch them as it attacks. The missiles will have the current target of the station, but that won't matter as they will not intercept.

I will use COLLLISION = setStateTo: DETONATE
(for unfortunates caught in the plasma)
and a dealEnergyDamageWithinRange as an update action.

and deathactions likewise....My experiences with using deathactions for detonations are not encouraging though.
Things scripted by deataction to go 'boom!', tend to do 'fizz' instead. :/

[LittleBear]

Looks good!

I'll post some co-ordinates this evening when I get home.

I could e-mail you a cut-down version of the OXP that just has the moon and deathburger stand-in at their respective positions, with a commander saved nearby to the system, so you can playtest.

[Arexack_Heretic]

that would be usefull. thanks

OK,
I can report one thing now; the windows build, does not recognise '&' in strings. I causes the plists to not-parse. I have replaced them with 'n, as in "Bell 'n Braben"
You did not include any AIs with the test package. :/

The planet textures could do with a bit of 'tiling', there is a clear seam where the front and rear textures meet.

edit 29-08-'06:
Ok I got your AIs installed, haven't tested with them in though.
The first try with the plasma-missiles, did not get the station spewing them.
I'll put them on my destroyers tonight, to see whether it's the missiles or my simpleAttackingStationAI which is not working.

[Arexack_Heretic]

:sigh:
Another night of testing...

Tested the plasmaball with another model as center and with an altered AI to 'switchLightsOn' and put it inside a new carrier (by the same contracter as the ATT1) .

The AI I made made them detonate shortly after launch.
Upping the energybanks or delaying the AI does not seem to give them durability.

I now have craches when I get too close.
There is a bug somewhere, not getting a nice hint from debug though.

[LittleBear]

Doh!

At my end, I've scripted a Thargoid invasion of Geteve!

Ships with the role Thargoid are added in the space lanes (so will include your ships if the player has your OXP in), as well as Special Branch Asps to engage them. I've done three versions of the standard Thargoid warship. These are added by the OXP station and the Main Station, allong with Asps with a kill newbugAI. The new Thargoids have AI which in one version cause them to attack the stations, in another version attack the asps and in the third version attack the player.

A group of "weakbugs" only armed with a pulse laser are added at the time of the hit upon the mark. These bugs also have an AI to attack the station. The mark has an AI to attack the weakbugs. As a result, although there is a massive battle in progress and the player is in a fair bit of danger from the bugs, the mark is safe. He is nowhere near ships with the role Thargoid and the "newbugs" will ignore him. He will appear to be bravley engaging the bugs, but will only attack and be attacked by the weakbugs. The weakbugs have no chance of killing him, so the player cannot rely on the Thargoids to do his job for him. All the Asps (including the mark) and all the bugs look identical, so the player will have to plung into the battle searching out the mark, whilst avoiding the bugs with KillplayerAI!

[LittleBear]

PS : On the seam factor, tiltingdosen't help much unless I don't allow the planets to rotate. The planets at PN13 were the first ones I did. The planets added to the other systems don't have noticable seems as I used more complex textures Will try to find a more complex texture to get rid of the seam effect!

On the missile, could you perhaps try an ejectitem command in the AI, but put the eject point where the superweapon is on the model? or is it a problem with the missile in flight? They will dedonate of their own accord when the hit the moon. Would just getting them to fly into the moon work? (basically AIing them as a suicidel ship rather than a missile?)

On the AIs, if you use the repairstationAI, this causes the station to launch lots of defence ships, provided you give it lots in shipdata.

[LittleBear]

To update people, assassins is still being worked on and some additional features have been added in the re-write (including a Thargoid Invasion of the Geteve Sytem! )

I still have one more system to make multi-planeted, but all the AIs (about 30 at the last count) that I'm using to make ships individual "characters" and script set-piece battles are working. Still on my to-do list are:-

1) re-script the Deathburger battle (wasn't that happy with the positions of the rebel and imperial fleets at the first go).

2) re-scipt the Triad witness hit.

3) Improve two of the planet textures (two of the gas giants have a noticable line on them where the front and back textures meet up).

4) If I have time, whilst Heretic finishes the Deathburger, I'll re-paint the OXP space stations.

5) Improve a couple of the background images, that I'm not currently happy with.

The release is going to have 16 missions. There are 10 contracts for you to take on, but there are more missions than contracts as the NPC powers in the game inter-act (you can be the victim of a contract too!).

There are 10 brand new OXP ships in the game and over 40 characters. Virually all the victims are in brand new ships and there are 5 new support ships / escorts. The "background" characters fly either Classic Elite ships or suped up Classic Elite ships.

Although I want to add more variety to the Oniverse, there is just no way I could do 40 completely new ships, so a lot of the background characters gain new AIs and hails (there are about 150 hails new to the OXP to help give the illusion that you are meeting individual commanders), but are flying ordinary Oolite ships.

At my end, I think about another 2 weeks to finish. Heretic has the tricky task of doing the destroyable station. If I finish before him I'll get on with re-painting the OXP stations, but don't expect my artwork to be as good as Ramon's or Heretics!