Question on equivalent_tech_level

[LittleBear]

I have set the available tech level for a missile to 18, in order that it is only offered for sale at a speacial OXP station (which has equivalent_tech_level of 18 ). However its not comming up for sale on 1.69.1. I am right in thinking that if equivalent_tech_level is set to a normally impossibly high level Oolite is resetting it to 15?

Could I use conditions eg a docked at stationname=special station in equipment .plist to get the same result? If so where in equipment .plist do I put the condition?

[JensAyton]

The sixth element of an equipment.plist entry (if present) is a “miscellaneous stuff” dictionary, which may contain a conditions entry.

Additionally, if the tech level of equipment item EQ_FOO is 99, and there is a mission variable mission_TL_FOR_EQ_FOO, the value of the mission variable will be used. This doesn’t seem helpful in your case, though.

[LittleBear]

Thanks for that. I coudn't get the conditions working, but I set the "mission_TL_FOR_EQ_GRAV_MISSILE 1" when the player docks at the Special Station and then when the player launches from the special station set it back to 99. That worked and means the player can only buy the missile at the station.

One odd thing though, I think equivilant_tech_level is broken on 1.69.1. I've placed the Special Station in a Tech 14 system. Although I've set the equivilant tech level to 3, it still has Tech 14 stuff available for sale.

[JensAyton]

One odd thing though, I think equivilant_tech_level is broken on 1.69.1. I've placed the Special Station in a Tech 14 system. Although I've set the equivilant tech level to 3, it still has Tech 14 stuff available for sale.

Try a spell checker. :-)

[LittleBear]

Nah, is spelt right in the shipdata.plist (albiet not in the post)!

Code: Select all

<key>equivalent_tech_level</key>
<integer>3</integer>

[JensAyton]

Important rule there: do not paraphrase error messages or code, always copy and paste. :-) I’ll look into it.

[Commander McLane]

As I reported a long time ago here on the board and Ahruman then put on the BerliOS bug reporter, both equivalent_tech_level as well as equipment_price_factor are not working. (Sometimes it can be worthwhile to have a look through older posts ).

On the BerliOS bug reporter this hasn't got a very high priority, however. Anyway, it doesn't seem necessary to me to have the same bug again in another topic of the bug reporter.

[JensAyton]

Good catch.

[Eric Walch]

LB wrote:

I have set the available tech level for a missile to 18, in order that it is only offered for sale at a speacial OXP station (which has equivalent_tech_level of 18 ).

This was not part of your problem, but last week I browsed a little bit through the source-code of version 1.65. There I noticed that there is a chance that on docking certain items are temporarily lowered 3 tech levels. This means that you could occasionally buy level 18 stuff on a level 15 planet. So just setting the technical level a little bit to high could be not enough. Further I saw that the code explicitly checks the techlevel 99.

So for special equipment it is better to use this level 99 and set it temporarily at the desired lower level. But from a later message in this list I understand you are doing this and there is a bug introduced in the newer test-versions.

[LittleBear]

Got that. My special equipment is now set at tech_level 99 in equipment.plist and I'm using the "mission_TL_FOR_" to set this to a buyable tech_level when the player is docked at the special station selling this stuff and then settimg it back to 99 when he leaves. Seems to work. This method should also be OK on 1.65 as Giles uses this method to make the Naval Engery Unit buyable at high tech systems, once you have completed the native Thargoid Plans mission.