IronHide OXP

[Captain Obvious]

Kindly raise the price by a large amount so it doesn't feel like an "I can win" mod. In fact, it would probably be sane to adjust the cost based upon the ship. I would like this better if the first tier cost around the same as hull maintenance when hull is at zero and the second cost twice that, making the full armor at least 3x your hull maintenance cost as this armor seems to be a strong boon.

Finally, and this is true of a lot of other equipment, it would be nice if it increased the resale value of your ship by at lease 1/3 - 1/2 of the cost of the armor.

Thanks!

[Anonymissimus]

The effect of ironhide isn't obvious, but if events are logged it becomes clear that it's a lifesafer, such as when hit by a missile in an Adder. About as useful as a shield booster. The repair costs is relative to the hide's costs though, and it's causing repair costs regularly whenever it's used (ship hit onto the hull), unlike all other equipment (which stays undamaged, most of the time). Something like 1000-5000 perhaps.

[Captain Obvious]

Well I've noticed the effect when I realize that I've lost 1 or 2 cargo items but no systems from an incident I would have expected might have killed me before, which is my point. Either this item is too strong or the price is WAY too low. After playing more, I'm thinking that the first tier should be in the 20k range and the military version in the 125k range.

[Norby]

Hi Captain Obvious, welcome in the Oolite forum!

Looking into the code of IronHide I see that this addon does nothing to protect your equipments, it simply reduce the armour value instead of energy first. In your case probably the cargo protected your systems, the documentation of takeInternalDamage tell that either a cargo or systems or the service level of your ship can suffer a hit but one of them at once. If you are lucky then your systems can avoid damage long time in exchange of many cargo and maintenance cost.

The price of IronHide imho good at the start of the game, later could be more costly, especially on larger ships which need more material and on costly ships as you suggested. Due to equipment prices are fixed some compromise must be applied at implementation. At first glance I see 2 ways:
1. The displayed price is a base value only and an extra will be deducted when bought based on the ship.
2. The price mean cost of some percentage of armour, less on larger/costly ships.

[Milo]

In response to Thargoid's open offer, I have adopted IronHide to bring it up to date, as I did not see that anyone else had claimed it.

I've uploaded version 3.00 of IronHide to the wiki at http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/IronHide_OXP. Expansion manager update to follow.

19/06/2020 - Version 3.00, updated by Milo; IronHide OXP now requires Oolite 1.79+; armour durability increased but energy restoration is now proportional to damage absorbed (previously the ship's energy was fully restored after every hit, which could conflict with other OXPs' attempts to regulate energy levels); damage below 5 (10 for military grade) will not degrade IronHide armour; further improved compatibility with other OXPs by checking damage type instead of energy level to decide which damage the armour can absorb.

Note that although it is now more balanced, this OXP is still biased towards the player because NPC ships cannot be equipped with IronHide armour. I plan to look into that in the future.

[dybal]

Note that although it is now more balanced, this OXP is still biased towards the player because NPC ships cannot be equipped with IronHide armour. I plan to look into that in the future.

Good!

I've been working on making some player-only defense-oriented OXPs work for NPCs as well (got to protect my escorts ) and IronHide was in the list

[dybal]

My combatMFD now shows 8 H's in the SEE indicator (before it showd 3 H's) with the military version, and the total energy count ( between "()" at the end of SEE) has gone from 14~16 (don't remember what it was) to 28.

[Milo]

Functionally, IronHide acts like a non-regenerating energy bank that can't be used for anything except absorbing damage after shields are drained (on whichever side of the ship is being hit). Because there is no separate representation of ship health other than energy, IronHide restores energy to implement its concept, but it is really an ablative protective layer, not an energy source. Before 3.00, IronHide was providing extra energy to the ship, which I saw as an error, so in 3.00 it only restores energy that was lost because of damage, essentially "absorbing" it into the armour while also losing armour if the damage is strong enough (more than 5 for civilian grade, more than 10 for military grade). Because IronHide is not providing any energy for use as a power source, CombatMFD should not be displaying any E's for IronHide. CombatMFD should be updated for that.

The extra H's are because, in 3.00, I increased the "amount" of damage that the armour can absorb before being destroyed. In my testing, the armour wears off rapidly under sustained fire, even with the military version, and because it would not make sense for it to regenerate, the methods I considered for extending its longevity were either to increase the size of the absorption pool (this is the method I picked for 3.00) or to subtract only a fraction of incoming damage from the remaining armour instead of the full amount (i.e., change the ratio of armour consumed vs. damage absorbed from 1:1 to something else).

I overlooked CombatMFD's SEE indicator when I made this change, and obviously having 8 H's is excessive. I still think CombatMFD needs an update to remove the E's, but I will switch to the fractional damage method and add new configuration parameters in equipment.plist for the fraction of armour lost per damage taken, and for the maximum damage per hit that the armour can absorb without taking damage (currently the 5 and 10 that I mentioned above are implicit thresholds derived as 1/100th of the total absorption pool - 500 for civilian, 1000 for military).

[dybal]

My IronHide missionVars (from the savefile):

Code: Select all

       <key>mission_ironHide_cost</key>
       <string>382.5</string>
       <key>mission_ironHide_milFlag</key>
       <string>1</string>
       <key>mission_ironHide_percentage</key>
       <string>100</string>
       <key>mission_ironHide_strength</key>
       <string>1000</string>

But I'm being offered a Quotation for repair of IronHide armour at the Ship Outfitting page. If I accept, the cost quoted is 0.

[Milo]

Yes, I saw that earlier. It's caused by a typo in the equipment.plist, conditions_script instead of condition_script. New version now on the wiki:

20/06/2020 - Version 3.01, updated by Milo; IronHide OXP now requires Oolite 1.82+; introduced a new script_info property in equipment.plist (ironHide_percentArmourLostPerDamagePointTaken), which functionally replaces the ironHide_strength mission variable (now unused by IronHide, but kept and returned to its pre-3.00 values because CombatMFD uses it for its SEE indicator); eliminated the "damage below X will not degrade armour" threshold (any damage that gets through shields now will consume armour); set damage_probability to zero so IronHide cannot be made "inoperable" (appear broken on the F5 screen) before it is fully consumed; introduced price variance for installation and repairs proportional to ship surface area (cobra3-player is the baseline); added installation_time of 12 hours for both civilian and military grades and a proportional time advance when repairing (repairing X percent is 25% faster than installing X percent, a small incentive to repair before the armour is destroyed; note that if military grade armour is fully consumed, you must first reinstall civilian grade [12 hrs] and then upgrade to military grade [12 hrs], so it saves even more time if you repair military grade before it breaks; also, while not a change from previous versions, military grade armour costs less to repair than it costs to install)

[dybal]

Found an exception in my Latest.log:

Code: Select all

14:21:21.100 [script.javaScript.exception.unexpectedType]: ***** JavaScript exception (IronHide Armour Script 3.00): TypeError: EquipmentInfo.infoForKey(missionVariables.ironHide_milFlag ? "EQ_IRONHIDE_MIL" : "EQ_IRONSIDE") is null
14:21:21.100 [script.javaScript.exception.unexpectedType]:       /home/dybal/GNUstep/Library/ApplicationSupport/Oolite/ManagedAddOns/oolite.oxp.Thargoid.IronHide.oxz/Config/script.js, line 17.

[Milo]

Please try downloading it again from the wiki. I put up the wrong file.

[dybal]

Sorry, my bad... I forgot there is a newer version... it might already be corrected.

I will download and install the latest version.

[Milo]

21/06/2020 - Version 3.02, updated by Milo; doubled price variance for larger ships and applied proportional adjustment to repair costs (they were still using the baseline price); improved compatibility with ShipVersion OXP by not offering IronHide for purchase on ships that ShipVersion does not allow to use it (when ShipVersion OXP is detected, civilian IronHide is only for ships with mass 30t or higher and military IronHide is only for ships with mass 130t or higher).

[dybal]

Do get to know in F5F5 if the ship has military grade armour? I'm not sure, but I think no, and it would be something nice to know (so we notice we we lose it...)