Understanding Traders

[Redspear]

Trader placement within the game influences pirates and therefore police, bounty-hunters and the player.

An analogy might be to think of the traders as the plants, pirates/assassins the herbivores and police/bounty-hunters as the carnivores. But then, like most analogies, that's only any use up to a point...

Anyway, traders are important and so I'm trying to understand both how they appear and especially the key differences between the three (main) trader roles.

There's this of course  Oolite Ship Roles but then the populator script is rather lengthy and both combines with and occasionally overrides shipdata.plist.

From the populator script...

var freighters = 0; // standard trade ships
var couriers = 0; // fast parcel couriers or big passenger liners
var smugglers = 0; // small fast illegal goods traders

Presumably, that is refering to traders (freighters) and their two sub-roles 'trader-courier' and 'trader-smuggler' (I know there's shuttle as well but they generally behave very differently).

Am I correct in thinking that the key, practical differnces between the three groups (besides the pre-determined ship roles and weightings set in shipdata,plist) would be that...

• traders attract pirates
• couriers have injectors and attract assassins (not just in principle but actually cause them to spawn within the system)
• smugglers have injectors and potentially offender status

I'm sure that there's much more to it but from the players perspective, under normal circumstances, would it not be at all obvious which of the roles a cobra 3 (which can perform all of them) was performing?

So if all cobra 3 traders were made purely couriers for example, then the only change that the player is likely to perceive any time soon, would be that of any effect on the role weightings (and consequently how often it appeared as any kind of trader)?

As for escorts, is the idea that couriers don't generally have them but both of the others do?


With other roles, we have light/medium/heavy sub-types with some ships crossing categories.
With traders however, any light/heavy distinction is rendered a bit silly when (despite the above quote) both adders and cobra 3s can occupy any of the trader roles.

Don't get me wrong, the above descriptions from the populator may be generally true but I need to understand that before I attempt to spawn a freighter and become surprised to find that an adder has appeared.

If anything I've written above isn't true then please feel free to correct/enlighten.

Thanks.

[cim]

Most of the differentiation in which ships do which role is up to the role weightings.

As far as the difference goes:
- traders will be on short-distance runs. Either they're inbound, in which case they're found on the WP-planet lane, carry goods imported by the current system, and are heading for the station ... or they're outbound, in which case they're near the station, carry goods exported by the current system, and are about to enter hyperspace.

- couriers will be on long-distance runs. Some of those runs will terminate in the current system, in which case they'll look a lot like a normal trader (if the ship class is the same) but won't be bothered by pirates. They will be attacked by assassins but don't directly cause assassins to appear: they're just added by a separate part of the populator. If their destination isn't in the current system, they'll instead head for the star, simulate fuel scooping, then jump onwards. They don't get injectors added but a lot of them are ship classes which might have them anyway from shipdata.plist.

- smugglers will again be on short-distance runs, but will carry illegal goods. They get injectors added if not on the default fit. They can be attacked by pirates - but will also try to avoid police ships. As a result they're more likely to pick a rock hermit to dock at, rather than the main station - though in the more lawless systems they might go to the main station too.

All three types *can* have escorts: there's a bit of populator code which gives courier escorts extra heat resistance. In the basic shipdata, most couriers are parcel couriers (and small enough not to have escorts) but you get the occasional Boa or Anaconda courier acting as a passenger liner which will have its normal escort wing.


As far as sizes go: the light/medium/heavy distinctions on pirates, bounty hunters, etc. are there to make packs reasonably size-balanced while still allowing any ship to take over pack leadership.

For traders this didn't seem necessary: traders operate alone, and the bigger ones have escorts added which are not themselves traders - so yes, a trader addition might be a lone Cobra or Moray, or it might be an Anaconda with full escort fleet. In *general* the smaller and faster ships are more likely to be smugglers or couriers, and the larger and slower ships more likely to be regular traders, but most of them can appear in any trade role.

[Redspear]

Thanks cim, that's all very helpful.

[Cholmondely]

With other roles, we have light/medium/heavy sub-types with some ships crossing categories.
With traders however, any light/heavy distinction is rendered a bit silly when (despite the above quote) both adders and cobra 3s can occupy any of the trader roles.

I didn't want to muck in until somebody came up with an answer.

I thought that light/medium/heavy was merely a measure of the amount of cargo that the ship could carry. But you seem to be implying something else here. Why shouldn't a heavy trader be able to fulfill all 3 roles? Or a light trader?

Regular traders could be any size. It would seem to me that detectability would be the key. Couriers and Smugglers prefer to be indetectable, no?

I understand that the Georgian period smugglers are supposed to have used light ships so that they would be more invisible and could more easily evade the excise men. But I'm not a professional historian and could easily be wrong. Perhaps the smallness of the ships was due to the need to smuggle by impoverished fishermen, who could not afford larger vessels.

So I'd presume that couriers/smugglers predominately used smaller ships. But they could certainly use larger ones too.

And as regards regular trade, is there not a distinction to be made between the use of massive anacondas etc to carry the bulk of the contracted goods and the number of smaller individual traders? According to cim etc. The bulk carriers presumably carry the "bulk" of the trade. But there may well be more "minnows" (in number, not in terms of % of total trade goods carried) that one would see on the spacelanes.

In the UK I would presume that most groceries are sold by the large supermarkets which are fed by the Juggernauts/Anacondas. I see them mostly on the motorways. On smaller roads, I tend to see smaller vans/trucks in greater numbers. But not all are "traders" - and may well be "tradesmen" instead!




Yet another Red Herring.

To what extent can one hide in Oolite?


Can one hide one's ship amongst the asteroid fields? Or behind a sun/planet/moon? If not, what prevents it?

Can one fool the scanner? Or would this need OXP-ing?

And the various non-cheating OXPs - Telescope, Military Targeting System, Target System Upgrade, Target System Plugins etc?

Reference: Guide to Accuracy OXPs

[Redspear]

I thought that light/medium/heavy was merely a measure of the amount of cargo that the ship could carry. But you seem to be implying something else here. Why shouldn't a heavy trader be able to fulfill all 3 roles? Or a light trader?

There are no heavy or light trader roles however.

If you look at both  Oolite Ship Role Weights and cim's answer above, then I think it makes sense that you might want to distribute your fighters and freighters accordingly e.g. best fighters generally supporting the most cargo (biggest freighters, and more of the former than the latter).

For traders this didn't seem necessary: traders operate alone, and the bigger ones have escorts added which are not themselves traders

So cim is pointing out that there are no trader packs and that the weight categories aboove are used for pack dynamics/composition, rather than (necessarily) ship size or capacity.

So I'd presume that couriers/smugglers predominately used smaller ships. But they could certainly use larger ones too.

This can still be true however (and indeed is) depending upon what is contained within the shipdata.plist under roles for each individual ship.

Lore: The Space Traders Flight Training Manual: Cowell & MgRath Do you agree with Redspear?

Even Redspear doesn't always agree with Redspear for very long.

That's why I'm using all of the above to help me to update an oxp of mine. Hopefully coming pretty soon (mostly coded now).