Deep Space Dredger

[phkb]

Prying open the oxp, there are a number of references to something called a "Fury".

Does anybody know what these are?

A Fury looks like this:

[Cholmondely]

Prying open the oxp, there are a number of references to something called a "Fury".

Does anybody know what these are?

A Fury looks like this:

Thanks! How on earth did you manage to come up with a picture of it? I didn't notice one identified as such in the shipdata.plist.

Does anybody know what it is supposed to do - am I correct in presuming that it is a hyped-up version of a sabre defence ship with a turret on top?

[phkb]

In the shipdata it’s called “fury-ds”. And I just used the debug console to bring up an image.

[Cholmondely]

Thoughts:

1) F3 screen

The DSD works on scrap in the same way that the Salvage Gangs in Anarchies do.

Should they not also offer the same cut-price and faulty salvaged equipment and ships that the Salvage Gangs do?

(Some military stuff left over from space battles may well be illegal, and be restricted, but not the rest, surely!)






2) shiplibrary.plist

Link to shiplibrary.plist for this oxp: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=285389#p285389

[Cholmondely]

I'd been suspicious for quite some time about the presence of these.

Back when I was using Redspear's Additional Planets OXP suite, they would often pop up in a long line along my path from planet to planet. Now in Stranger's World, they often pop up along the long journeys to the sun for sunskimming. Often, several in a row.


Reading the wiki page, I found this:

Version 1.1 Addition by Eric Walch: Added a JavaScript for Oolite 1.71+ that generates encounters with these Dredgers in deep space. For debugging purposes there is always one added in the first system after a restart. When flying far enough in deep space there is a guaranteed encounter in that system.

(For purposes of completeness - I also found this in the Newer ReadMe: Deep Space Dredger supports the BigShips.oxp. When BigShips.oxp is installed you will see the dredgers more often in the normal space lanes)




I find this utterly unrealistic (and horrendously player-centric).




Musings

What would one expect about DSDs in a collapsing GalCop?


•1) Lots of scrap - so lots of money to be made. But where is this scrap? If it is just odd ships scattered around hither and yon, there is little profit to be found with the DSD travelling massive distances from one minor clutch of scrap to another. So they will gather (like scavengers) at the sites of large battles/disasters.


Where are these large battles /disasters likely to take place?

Stations? Interstellar space? Anywhere else?



•2) Need defenders against pirates/Thargoids. (OXP does this)



•3) I've seen occasional messages (on arrival at the Witchpoint beacon, if I remember correctly) about large battles having taken place and thus DSD's being present in-system. I presume this comes from this OXP - but can't seem to find it anywhere inside.

[Nite Owl]

Take a look in both the descriptions.plist and the dredger.js files. Once there look for entries that contain salvage_drone_battle. These entries will have other words attached to them but this would be your main search term. This is the relevant stuff for when and where Dredgers are called in after large space battles. As for realism you have to think about what Dredgers do when NOT cleaning up after such battles. They are also Miners, plundering asteroid fields for the resources. You can think of them as having both a Salvage Boss and a Mining Boss who work with the Captain and Crew of the ship to ensure a profit. They are independent vessels that get contracted by GalCop to clean up a mess.

If you also have Big Ships v1.4.oxz installed (recently updated by phkb) it allows the Library.oxz to configure the number of Big Ships that can appear in a given system. Do also realize that the Dredgers are not the only ships that take advantage of Big Ships being installed. If you max out the number that can appear (5) it should be split among all of them. The Big Ships populator is used by the Liners.oxz and possible some others that escape me at the moment. If Dredgers is the only OXZ you have installed that uses this populator then that could account for the large numbers that show up in a given system.

Deep Space Dredgers can be "prettied up" rather easily. Go into the shipdata.plist and search for every instance of shininess = [#] and change it to gloss = 0.75. The 0.75 is my preference so your mileage may vary. Use whatever number between 0 and 1 that suits your eye. The version of Deep Space Dredgers in my Ooniverse has been so changed from the original intent of the author(s) that it would be all but unrecognizable to them, hence it can never be released to the public. Implementing these changes did give me some insight into how the thing works and the rational behind the original intent and my own fiddling with it.

[phkb]

Working on a facelift for this. Some screenies for viewsies:


I'm (*winces*) replacing the Dredger Shuttle, Dredger Trader and Fury with the standard Oolite Shuttle, Staer's Python CC, and a Sidewinder respectively, each with their own custom skin. I'm sorry if anyone was particularly attached to the originals! I'll do this as a "facelift" pack, so if you prefer the original models/textures, you can just ignore this one. Or hack whatever bits you like out of it to update your own version.

I'm also adding in Cholly's shiplibrary file, but I'm not touching (for the moment) any of the spawning rules. Facelift first, then logic.

Let me know your thoughts.

[Nite Owl]

Looks really good. The only possible change that might be suggested would be to the Dredgers themselves. To my eye they are a bit too gritty, a little too dark and not enough shine. Just my opinion. Your re-texture so take it with however many grains of salt you may choose. Whatever the final outcome it will be used in my Ooniverse regardless. The Deep Space Dredgers have been in need of a facelift for a long while now. Thanks Once Again.

[Cholmondely]

Just to echo NiteOwl - these have been looking more and more clunky compared with the rest of Oolite. Thank you for doing this.

[phkb]

To my eye they are a bit too gritty, a little too dark and not enough shine.

I’ve always thought of these ships as pure work-horses, and I thought the darker texture reflected that more. With the specular map the textures have a bit of pop,so for now I’ll leave it as is, pending people actually encountering them in game. If there’s still issues with the dark levels I can update it.

[phkb]

OK, here's version 1.0: DeepSpaceDredgers_Facelift.oxz.

As always, comments, suggestions, bug reports are all welcome. Once a couple of people have had a squiz, I'll plonk it on the manager.

[Griff]

beautiful work phkb! they look really amazing, you have a brilliant eye for cool paint schemes and gloss/spec texture work

[phkb]

beautiful work phkb! they look really amazing, you have a brilliant eye for cool paint schemes and gloss/spec texture work

Thanks, Griff!

[phkb]

For the next release of the Facelift, I'm restricting the number of dredgers than can be spawned in a system to 1. So, if Big Ships spawns one, you shouldn't then get one spawning in front of you on the way to the star. Of if you get one spawned in front of you while traveling, it will be the only one you see (ie you won't get three spawned in a row).

[phkb]

In the current spawning script, when you arrive in a new system there's a chance you will be notified about a "battle" having taken place near the station, witchpoint or on the main spacelane, and some derelict ships will be created in the chosen location. The restriction is based on system government being less than a random number between 0 and 6.9999999999. To me, that's a bit too random. I was considering making this restriction based on whether there is "civil war" mentioned in the description. Or, if Diplomacy is installed, if the system is at war with a neighbouring system. Still with a random chance, so it won't be every time you visit, but sometimes.

What do you think?