Fuel Tank OXP

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 6:40 pm

I have just installed the Fuel Tank OXP and noticed an undocumented feature: every time I kill a ship my fuel increases.

Is this normal? Fuel management has always been a feature of Oolite and this is a bit of a spoiler.

EDIT: This seems to happen only if you are close to the ship when it disassembles itself.

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 10:06 pm

davcefai wrote:
I have just installed the Fuel Tank OXP and noticed an undocumented feature: every time I kill a ship my fuel increases.

Is this normal? Fuel management has always been a feature of Oolite and this is a bit of a spoiler.

EDIT: This seems to happen only if you are close to the ship when it disassembles itself.

Have you recently updated to 1.68
AND
did you forget to uninstall 1.65 if you did so...

Then im certain, if you do a fresh install of 1.68, and remembering to backup your commander savefiles... that this will solve your problem....

at least, it did for me...

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 10:16 pm

I’m rather curious as to how, exactly, a mixed/updated install could possibly lead to such a bug.

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Sun Jun 24, 2007 10:21 pm

Ahruman wrote:
I’m rather curious as to how, exactly, a mixed/updated install could possibly lead to such a bug.

Me too, but i have seen so many odd things happening in other cases that has nothing todo with oolite..

That i am not surprised, if this is the case...

I had this bug along with the Station Aegis Magic refuel bug, and it went away after a fresh install....

drdenim · Post by **drdenim** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 12:17 am

I've had this same "problem"...although I've only noticed it when killing Thorgon carriers in witchspace (quite convenient for traveling farther than 7 lightyears...heh heh...you could theoretically travel 10.5 light years I believe)
I'm running the Ubuntu Autopackage which is version 1.65 if I remember correctly...and I don't have any upgraded versions on my computer...so I don't think it's as a result of conflicting versions

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:32 am

I am running v1.65.

I'd like to upgrade but there is no Debian package yet and I don't really want to install all the GNUstep stuff to be able to compile.

Strangely enough, after I edited my initial post the "magic topup" started happening less frequently. I couldn't see anything in the fuel tank AI that could explain this behaviour.

drdenim · Post by **drdenim** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:43 am

hmmm...does it spawn fuel tanks or something in with the metal fragments?

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:20 am

drdenim wrote:
hmmm...does it spawn fuel tanks or something in with the metal fragments?

The Fules Tanks OXP allows you to buy additional fuel tanks in place of missiles, each pod carrying 3ly of fuel. Axerack_Heretic's cargo pod teaser adds a pair of fuel pods that either replenish your fuel tanks by a small amount or conversely, causes a fuel leak.

Captain Hesperus

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:19 am

Whatever is causing this effect it is not scooped fuel canisters.

I suspect that if one is in the golden "cloud" of the explosion then one gets the fuel.

Hopefully tonight I'll destroy enough ships to verify this.

Ramirez · Post by **Ramirez** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:54 am

I may have an idea on what the problem is. The AI works by having the mine scan for the player and then awarding fuel to the found target, before then exploding harmlessly moments afterwards. This shouldn't be triggered by shooting down other ships - however: in its shipdata the fuel tank has the role of 'EQ_FUELTANK_MINE'. I wonder, does this mean that other ships could be armed with it, and try using it against the player as they would a Q-bomb? This would result in the player being awarded fuel for no apparent reason while in the heat of combat. It may only work when the player is close to the other ship because the mine has a small scan range.

If this is the problem, does anyone know how to resolve it? Is there something in the 'available to all' part of the shipyard to stop NPCs being equipped with specialist weapons like these, or does the 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander' rule apply?

drdenim · Post by **drdenim** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 12:43 pm

hmmm...does a thargon carrier even have any missles...? I'll check into it in a few minutes

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 1:47 pm

Ramirez wrote:
I may have an idea on what the problem is. The AI works by having the mine scan for the player and then awarding fuel to the found target, before then exploding harmlessly moments afterwards. This shouldn't be triggered by shooting down other ships - however: in its shipdata the fuel tank has the role of 'EQ_FUELTANK_MINE'. I wonder, does this mean that other ships could be armed with it, and try using it against the player as they would a Q-bomb? This would result in the player being awarded fuel for no apparent reason while in the heat of combat. It may only work when the player is close to the other ship because the mine has a small scan range.

If this is the problem, does anyone know how to resolve it? Is there something in the 'available to all' part of the shipyard to stop NPCs being equipped with specialist weapons like these, or does the 'What's good for the goose is good for the gander' rule apply?

nice Thinking, and it seems you are right....

In Equipement.plist the Fuel tank has this code

Code: Select all

<dict>
            <key>available_to_all</key>
            <true/>

Afaik, that means AI can have it too..

However they lob a missile after The Player and instead of having a missile they have the fuel tank. which instantly explodes and awards the fuel...

Just funny no one noticed this before now..

It does however not explain the Station aegis magic refuel bug...

Ramirez · Post by **Ramirez** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:01 pm

I'll see what happens if I set the 'available to all' flag to false. Then again, I've never actually seen an NPC using a mine of any sort so it will be tricky to test for it. Does this happen with any particular NPC, or only specific types of ship?

Having the fuel tank in the equipment plist shouldn't stop ships using normal missiles against the player. If the 'available to all' correction doesn't work, I could just give the mine a really small scanner range so it only works very close to the player. Given that the whole idea of a fuel tank is a bit of cheat though, I trust this little undocumented feature shouldn't be too much of a showstopper!

davcefai · Post by **davcefai** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 4:11 pm

Then again, I've never actually seen an NPC using a mine of any sort so it will be tricky to test for it. Does this happen with any particular NPC, or only specific types of ship?

Renegade Pirates fire off a Q Mine as a death action.

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:11 pm

Had the same problem with NPCs being equipped with Graviton Missions in Assassins, even with available to all being set to false. Adding to roles missile(0.00000001) should fix it. Worked with the Graviton Missile bug. The renegades spawn an EQ_Q_MINE so that is probabley not the problem. However anything in the game can be had by NPCS unless told otherwise, so any NPC that can have missiles could have a fuel pod.

Oolite Bulletins

Fuel Tank OXP

Fuel Tank OXP

Re: Fuel Tank OXP