Long Range Scanner

[Neal]

Starting a career as a bounty hunter but having trouble finding the pirates?
Trying to avoid pirates but keep getting jumped out of nowhere?

The Geotex Corporation has the solution. The Long Range Scanner is a series of enhanced scanning modules that can provide a complete look at the system you are in. The Long Range Scanner will let you know how many pirates are in your system and set a beacon at the pirate nearest to you. This will allow bounty hunters to go directly to the pirate without the random searching currently required. It will also allow you to avoid pirates by simply keeping a distance between yourself and the nearest pirate. While this will not prevent attack when you initially jump into a system it will keep you updated on pirates further than the minimum range of approximately 3 km.

The Long Range Scanner makes use of the Advanced Space Compass and thus is not available if your ship is not equipped with that device. The scanning equipment is still rather bulky and takes 2 tons of cargo space. Also be aware that while the scanner is running there is a small but consistent drain on your energy units. In the current release, the Long Range Scanner cannot differentiate between pirates and Thargoids.

The Long Range Scanner while still in its initial production has somewhat limited availability, but can be found in systems with a tech level of 10 or higher and is available for the low price of 10,499@.

While Geotex does not condone this we must report that we have had reports of unscrupulous pilots reprogramming the system to search for traders rather than pirates. While we acknowledge that this has happened, Geotex disclaims all responsibility for losses, injuries, or deaths resulting from pirates who have installed our equipment. Just as you may not sue the laser company for selling the laser that destroyed your brother's ship, Geotex is not liable for how our customers use our equipment.

USAGE:
This OXP provides a piece of primable equipment that, when activated, creates a beacon at the position of the pirate closest to the player. The number of pirates in the system is also displayed.

To Use:
After launch press "shift-N" until Long Ranger Scanner shows. You can then activate or deactivate the roll limiter by pressing "n". A beacon with the code "#" will be displayed in the Advanced Space Compass. When you get within around 3000 KM of the pirate the beacon will be removed to clean up the HUD for battle. Pressing "b" will cycle through the search parameters (Pirates, Traders, Asteroids, Stations).


Thoughts or suggestions?
Neal.

[Wildeblood]

Add something - anything - to the OXP's name, to distinguish from Capt. Okti's Long-Range Scanner.

[phkb]

Neat idea, but I can see there might be a real danger of making the game too easy, for both bounty hunters looking for pirates, and for traders trying to avoid them. Maybe an alternate method, rather than just scanning for ships with the role of "pirate", the device could be a distress-beacon locator - ships that come under attack from pirates almost always send out a distress signal asking for help. But if you're out of comms range you won't know anything about it. So, this device could instead plant a waypoint in the general area of the distress message. Then after a certain amount of time (maybe 1 or 2 minutes max) the waypoint can be removed. This means that the waypoint is not just a free ride to/from "pirate" locations. It also adds an unknown element to it - it might not be traders calling for help, maybe it's a courier under attack from an assassin, or maybe even a pirate under attack from another bounty hunter.

For implementation, I'd suggest keeping track of the 5 most recent and/or closest distress calls, with newer calls pushing out the oldest ones. Then add waypoints to the system within 10kms of the location of the broadcast.

As I mentioned in another location, it's all too easy to fall into the trap of revealing the internal workings of the game, information which the game needs to operate, but as players in a galaxy you really shouldn't have access to. Roles are one of these things - how would a device know who was a pirate? Are logs kept somewhere? Seriously, would pirates ever want to advertise their "pirate" role to the rest of the galaxy? Do they even consider themselves as "pirates"? Many of the pirate vessels I come across seem to be fighting some sort of political battle against GalCop or the local planetary government, so they would probably think of themselves as freedom fighters. In which case, how would the device know the difference between a real pirate, who is just out to rob hapless traders, or a freedom fighter struggling against their arch-enemies.

I'm certainly not saying "don't use the role info", just be careful how you use it.

I think this OXP has some real potential. I'm also working on a bounty hunting OXP (see this post and this one), and I think they would compliment each other if we can get them completed. I look forward to see what you can achieve!

[Neal]

Add something - anything - to the OXP's name, to distinguish from Capt. Okti's Long-Range Scanner.

Thank you, I did search for Long Range Scanner before starting this idea but didn't find anything. I can certainly change the name.

phkb you bring up some good points. I originally was thinking of scanning for bounties rather than ship roles, and perhaps this makes more sense. From a immersion standpoint, it could be argued that the station has information on all ships in the system and they simply don't send police after every ship with a bounty for political reasons. The end result would of course be similar if I were to do that, it may still provide a too easy way to get to the ships. I will have to look to see how to access the comms information. I think your suggestion has merit.

To be honest I was originally using this idea to look for asteroids. In some systems it's no problem to find them, in others though, they are not in the common flight paths. The comms idea would negate the ability to look for asteroids with this scanner, but maybe that should be something separate in any case. As I'm typing here, I'm thinking about possibly purchasing system maps for each system that would allow you to find asteroids, stations and rock hermits, with perhaps some maps being more complete than others. I'll have to give that some more thought.

In any case, I agree I don't want to do something that unbalances things and this may be an issue with this in the current form.

Neal.

[phkb]

I'd probably argue that the station only has knowledge of ships that come in range of it. Ships that bypass the station and refuel by skimming fuel from the sun would be totally off the radar of the station authorities. Police ships are sent out to patrol the witchpoint to planet lane, and will respond to requests for help from traders or other friendly ships under attack, but they wouldn't know in advance that pirate ships were at the wp or anywhere else in the system.

Rock hermits are tricky - on one hand they are hermits for a reason, which means they probably don't want a lot of traffic so a device that points ships in their direction might not be welcome. On the other hand there are valid reasons to want to go there, so pilots might need some help. The Smugglers Oxp and the mining contracts oxp handle this in different ways already, and there is also a Rock Hermit locator oxp as well. Having an asteroid scanner might be useful (don't know if one exists already), but for me, I wouldn't want something that just tells me "go here to find asteroids". That would make it too easy. I'm not sure what the solution is, but something that just gives me a pointer in the general direction so I still have to do some work would be preferable.

Still, some of this boils down to how you want your Ooniverse to work. My suggestions and just that. Build and expand the game however you want. My one suggestion that I think applies to anything is to make sure it makes sense from a game world perspective, and it makes the game more fun. Achieve both those things and you're probably doing something right!

[Norby]

Maybe "Distress Scanner" is a better name, would be useful if put waypoints to the locations where combats happen in the system.

[RockDoctor]

As I mentioned in another location, it's all too easy to fall into the trap of revealing the internal workings of the game, information which the game needs to operate, but as players in a galaxy you really shouldn't have access to. Roles are one of these things - how would a device know who was a pirate? Are logs kept somewhere? Seriously, would pirates ever want to advertise their "pirate" role to the rest of the galaxy? Do they even consider themselves as "pirates"? Many of the pirate vessels I come across seem to be fighting some sort of political battle against GalCop or the local planetary government, so they would probably think of themselves as freedom fighters. In which case, how would the device know the difference between a real pirate, who is just out to rob hapless traders, or a freedom fighter struggling against their arch-enemies.
I'm certainly not saying "don't use the role info", just be careful how you use it.

I came across this post while looking for strategic hints on a related matter. The Navy has contacted my Jameson about a rogue ship stolen from their development yards and asked me to kill it for IIRC 5000Cr. So, is that a "bounty" in-game, or a variable in a particular OXP? Is this a pirate, a freedom fighter, or what? Hard to classify.

What was nagging at my mind having done several search-and-destroy missions for UPS recently (Ooniverse, not Universe), is how to most efficiently perform the search? My strategy at the moment is to enter the suspect's system and fly to the main station (often to be told that "the droids you want headed to XYZ" ; lather, rinse and repeat); main station to star, to top off the tanks and on the hunt ; star to witchpoint, on the hunt ; then I work from witchpoint to each station or planet (in alphabetical order, to keep track of things) then back to the witchpoint ... until I get bored or bump into the target. Which can take a considerable time. And a lot of boredom. The logic is to "work the busy space lanes" but without any indication of traffic weight between (say) MinorStation3 and Moon2, the number of combinations of routes skyrockets and random search remains ineffective. So I just do a "star topography" search from the witchpoint.

Does anyone have a more effective strategy? I must admit to only having worked through this strategy about 4 times, and it's not very good. Lots of boredom.

The OP (Neal) was developing a long range scanner - which doesn't seem to appear in the OXZ lists - with a "distress" scanner as an alternative. Do the internals of the system allow differentiation between "ship in core game" and "ship from OXZ"? If so, then a third alternative would be a scanner that can indicate the location of non-core game ships - aliens, ships generated by OXZs, star jellies, etc. Or, if not the precise location, an indication such as a radio message system to the effect "Coriolis Station at PLANETNAME has detected an unknown ship in it's vicinity. Cruising GalCop vessels please investigate." ("unknown", or "unknown to GalCop" ship??) That would still leave a deal of searching to do (a 25km search sphere in a 1/4 AU search volume, or however you define "vicinity" above) but maybe give a less frustrating gameplay. I also specify a "radio" message since the time-of-flight of electromagnetic radiation is significant in a planetary system - Earth to Saturn is ... (Oh, how convenient. I already worked it out. See table below.) between 2.46 and 2.74 light hours - and getting your ship there is going to take game time too.

Does the game model of Oolite include or exclude FTL communications except by ship-carried messages? I'm not sure FTL communications is permitted at all. Certainly your ships maximum in-system speeds are considerably lower than the speed of light, otherwise firing a laser would be rather harder. So, for a station to send a message which it would take a ship considerable game time to respond to, would not be out of keeping with the rest of the game. The idea of listening in to "police radio traffic" is already used in things like the "status" enhancements for the scanner.

Random thoughts written in preference to another hour hunting for this damned Navy-stolen vessel. Hunting for an assassination target can be as annoying.

========

Table of time-of-flight for EM messages. NB, Orbit diameter

Code: Select all

Planet Orbit diameter (light-s); (light-hours)
MERCURY                386     ;    0.10
VENUS                  721     ;    0.20
EARTH                  997     ;    0.27
MARS                  1519     ;    0.42
JUPITER               5190     ;    1.4
SATURN                9556     ;    2.6
URANUS               19150     ;    5.3
NEPTUNE              29967     ;    8.3
PLUTO                39133     ;   10.8

[RockDoctor]

My strategy at the moment is to enter the suspect's system (...) So I just do a "star topography" search from the witchpoint.

Does anyone have a more effective strategy?

I did a third "star," and got bored, so I hopped out to the nearest next system, blew a Fer-de-Lance to a dissipating debris cloud, saved game and refuelled at the station, then flew back to the target system. I hadn't even got to the main station before my target popped up in my scanner and ... there was a screaming and a breathing of vacuum. Not by me.

Has anyone else seen this work?