Problems with oxp (space dredger, sunskimmers)

chaos syndrome · Post by **chaos syndrome** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:07 pm

Hello, new user here. Really liking Oolite: good to see an Elite in the tradition of the old BBC versions, rather than a Newtonian flight model.

I'm using the Linux version of Oolite and have downloaded some oxps to enhance the gaming experience: sunskimmers, space dredger and ore processor. Haven't tried out the ore processor yet, but sunskimmers and space dredger seem to have problems. The space dredger add-on doesn't seem to do anything at all: I have been flying around galaxy two for quite some time now since I installed it and not one space dredger have I seen. This includes the time after I changed script.plist to increase the probability of finding space dredgers to 90%.

Sunskimmers seems to have rather strange AI: on the witchpoint-sun route, I keep getting attacked by vessels with legal status "clean" (usually Moray medical boats for some reason), which hasn't happened to me so far on the witchpoint-planet route. Also, occasionally clean vessels will go to status red but not attack. I don't know what's going wrong there.

Anyone have any idea what's going on with these oxps?

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 3:51 pm

In the specific case of aggressive Moray medical boats, I noticed just a few days ago that they have roles: “trader sunskim-trader” and ai_type: “pirateAI.plist”. I believe this to be a bug, but it’s possible Giles did this on purpose for flavour (they really are drug runners!) so I haven’t changed it yet. Comments, anyone?

Cmdr. Maegil · Post by **Cmdr. Maegil** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 4:33 pm

chaos syndrome wrote:
Hello, new user here. Really liking Oolite: good to see an Elite in the tradition of the old BBC versions, rather than a Newtonian flight model.

Welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat. Make yourself right at home...
...if you don't mind the company of god-like lazy programmers, katana-wielding borderline psychos, clock-tower nutter snipers, small ursid coders, nonconformist religious apostates, greedy bloodthirsty pirates, cold-blooded contract assassins, awed towel-less wanderers and even the odd law-abiding space trader, that is... But then again, that's chaos syndrome for you!

(BTW, I actually LIKE Newtonian physics and 6 degrees of freedom. The clock-tower nutter was berating me about it just yesterday... not that it did any good!

)

Ahruman wrote:
In the specific case of aggressive Moray medical boats, I noticed just a few days ago that they have roles: “trader sunskim-trader” and ai_type: “pirateAI.plist”. I believe this to be a bug, but it’s possible Giles did this on purpose for flavour (they really are drug runners!) so I haven’t changed it yet. Comments, anyone?

Those are most certainly not drug runners. If they were, their holds would already be full and they'd be trying to keep as low a profile as possible.

Medical Morays, you say? Could be an insurance scam...
"There, I've rescued you. Please sign this form."
"What?! It was you who blew up my ship in the first place! Besides, if I sign that, my insurance premium will go nebula high!"
"Oh, then you mean you don't need help? OK, go get a suntan."
<kicks hapless pilot out the airlock in orbit of the star>

chaos syndrome · Post by **chaos syndrome** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 5:47 pm

Thanks for the welcome!

It seems the witchpoint-sun route is basically full of previously-innocent traders who just so happen to turn pirate when the player comes along... just now I encountered a clean Cobra and clean Medical boat which went to status red and attacked. In fact, I haven't seen a single Medical Boat on the way to the sun which hasn't decided to start attacking me (despite having clean legal status myself... for the moment)!

The frustrating thing is the lack of bounty as these are legally clean ships! Oh yeah, and the police consistently taking their side despite them being first to fire!

It's enough to turn an honest captain to piracy. And scooped narcotics...

Cmdr. Maegil · Post by **Cmdr. Maegil** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:09 pm

chaos syndrome wrote:
Thanks for the welcome!

It seems the witchpoint-sun route is basically full of previously-innocent traders who just so happen to turn pirate when the player comes along... just now I encountered a clean Cobra and clean Medical boat which went to status red and attacked. In fact, I haven't seen a single Medical Boat on the way to the sun which hasn't decided to start attacking me (despite having clean legal status myself... for the moment)!

The frustrating thing is the lack of bounty as these are legally clean ships! Oh yeah, and the police consistently taking their side despite them being first to fire!

It's enough to turn an honest captain to piracy. And scooped narcotics...

As Ahruman said, there seems to be a bug on the skimmers.

About the cops taking sides: when two clean ships are fighting each other, they'll consider the one they SEE firing when they arrive as the attacker, fine and engage him. This also means that you can do whatever you please as long as you don't get caught shooting when they show up... If they arrive and you have a clean status, let the other hit you in their presence and the cops will back you.

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:48 pm

Welcome to the boards!

As us lawyers say: "Everybody once had a good character." Even the Cray Twins were "Clean", until they were convicted.

So Oolite is realistic in this way, a pirate whom the police have not yet caught is still a pirate but has a clean rating.

If it bugs you though, just edit the native shipdata.plist. Open it with notepad and do a search for Moray.

You'll see the code starts like this:-

Code: Select all

<key>moray</key>
	<dict>
	<key>aft_eject_position</key>
	<string>0.0 5.75 -8.0</string>
	<key>ai_type</key>
	<string>pirateAI.plist</string>
	<key>bounty</key>
	<integer>0</integer>

This means the ship will be clean (as the bounty is zero) but he'll behave as a pirate (as he has pirateAI). If you change the number in bounty to 25, so it now reads:-

Code: Select all

<key>moray</key>
	<dict>
		<key>aft_eject_position</key>
		<string>0.0 5.75 -8.0</string>
		<key>ai_type</key>
		<string>pirateAI.plist</string>
		<key>bounty</key>
		<integer>25</integer>

Exit and save. Now these Moray pirates will all be offenders. So the Cops will attack them (if any cops are about), you won't be penalised for shooting them and killing them will pay a bounty.

Personally I'd say its a "feature" not a bug. Some pirates do not have rap sheets and there can be a misscarriage of Oolite justice, if the Cops only see the innocent trader retuning fire in self-defence and wrongly assume that he is the aggressor and pitch in on the pirates side, but thats life!

Its easy to change though if you don't like it.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 12:10 pm

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:
As Ahruman said, there seems to be a bug on the skimmers.

I didn’t say that. I said there’s an apparent bug with the Moray Medical Boat. That said, the Cobra Mk I has a similar issue – it has the pirate AI, and roles “pirate scavenger trader hunter hermit-ship”. I’ll fix both of these for 1.69 (moray medical -> trader AI, Cobra Mk I -> separate pirate/hunter variant), and change them back if someone presents a reasonable argument that it should be this way.

Edit: Actually, I’ll add some low-probability “stealth pirates” too. While I’m at it, I’m giving each built-in ship its own role in a consistent manner; the ship “cobramk1” will have the role “oolite-cobramk1”, etc.

Edit 2: Separate cobra variants not needed, because Oolite sets pirateAI.plist automatically when generating pirates.

LittleBear wrote:
If it bugs you though, just edit the native shipdata.plist.

Don’t do that. Copy ''shipdata.plist'' to your AddOns folder, and edit the copy.

chaos syndrome · Post by **chaos syndrome** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:53 pm

Ok, just to check here, do I just dump the file in AddOns, or do I have to make a somename.oxp/Config folder and put it in that?

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:08 pm

It can just go in AddOns on its own. It'll then "trump" the normal shipdata. If you mess it up you can then just delete the copy in AddOns to go back to the normal shipdata.

chaos syndrome · Post by **chaos syndrome** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 5:18 pm

Ok thanks for that. Still hasn't solved the problem though... is the code handling oxp scripts generating ships in a different way to the way the main game does so?

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 6:13 pm

Search the native shipdata for "pirateAI". Change the bounty in any ship entry to more than 0 if it has pirateAI. I guess there is more than one entry. As best I can remember all the pirates added by OXPs have bounties. If you have a load of OXPs in therefore, you will very rarely encounter clean pirates.

Think of it like a deck of cards. If you have no OXPs installed then when Oolite deals 5 pirates into a system, there are only 10 cards in the deck so hitting one of these jokers is pretty likley. If you play with 100 OXPs in then there are 150 odd cards in the deck, so not so likley to be dealt.

ovvldc · Post by **ovvldc** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:08 pm

I am not sure it completely works that way. I have the Dream Team beta pack installed and I still get normal cobras, adders, morays, pythons, etc in the shipyard. If I go through the ships on the startup screen they are there (at least until go too far through the set and get something that gives Oolite the spinning beach ball).

Or maybe I misunderstood something..

best wishes,
Oscar

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 9:41 pm

Think thats because not all ships are available to the player. If an OXP has a shipyard.plist and a shipdata.plist then the player can buy it and so can NPCs. If it only a shipdata.plist then the ship can be in the hands of an NPC (or Navy Thargoids, Missions Powers etc), but the ordinary Jameson cannot buy it. When generating the NPCs Oolite suffles all the cards to add Police Trader Pirate Thargoid ships to the system. Other NPC ships are added when the script calls them for missions, populations of modded systems etc.

When adding ships to the Shipyard ONLY those ships with a shipyard.plist are included in the pack. Hey, just cos the Navy can buy a Behemoth don't mean that us civillians can fly one!

The Dream Team Moray is one card in the deck. The normal Moray is another. So you may see a Moray (Native) dealt in the Shipyard and a Moray (Dream Team). Just depends on the cards dealt. The Shipyard at a particular system will be filled with X cards. The pack from which they were dealt depends on the number of cards in the deck. Adding OXPs increase the cards in the deck, but doesn't remove the ones already there.

ovvldc · Post by **ovvldc** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:53 am

Thanks! I understood from the conversations in the Dream Team thread that it was meant to replace the standard ships. Now I presume that only works if they are built straight into Oolite, not yet when they are in an OXP.

chaos syndrome · Post by **chaos syndrome** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:59 pm

Applying bounty to the ships with pirateAI does solve the problem, but that still doesn't explain why sunskimmers generates loads more pirates with legal status clean than the default program does.