Oolite 1.70 and Random Hits OXP: Other peoples Q-bombs..

Timm74 · Post by **Timm74** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:32 pm

Hi,

I was just hunting some stupid edible poet when he hyperspaced. Fine, so I followed him. On the other side he killed himself with a Q-Bomb.

And the bounty hunters guild fined me for it!

Doesn't seem to be to fair, does it?

Cheers!
Timm

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:41 pm

Yeah sorry about that! Its unlikely to happen. As long as you hit him at least once with a laser beam, you'll get the credit (even if he killed himself with his own mine). The game doesn't regard q-mining or e-bombing as an "attack", so I'm using this to detect a dishonerable kill. Its unlikely that a mark will kill himself with has own mine as he only will realese one when fleeing on injectors (and even then its a random chance whether he does or not). Course if he's out of fuel, he can be got with his own mine. This bug can only happen in the doubley unlikley event that you never hit him with a laser and he was out of fuel and launched a mine. The code should get it right 99% of the time though.

Timm74 · Post by **Timm74** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 11:59 pm

Hi LittleBear,

no need to say sorry, its a great OXP!

I did hit him frequently with my lasers, but not after he did the witch-jump.
I also think it is unlikely that he ran out of fuel, as he did not use injectors beforehand. And the jump from Lave to Diso is not that far, is it? On the other hand I of course do not know how much fuel he started with...

Does your explanation mean, that if I hit him with a laser once I can Q-Bomb him afterwards without being fined?

Anyway, I'll watch out for further clues if it happens again.

Oh, and some other unusual thing: when I was following him to Diso, it had TWO stores, while it usually has none. Maybe some strange OXP interaction?

Cheers!
Timm

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:46 am

Yes, however marks are wise to q-bombs! If they spot one they'll either witch out or hit the injectors. There is a 60% chance he'll jump and a 40% chance he'll hit the injectors and keep fleeing until the bomb is at least 25kms behind him. Since he'll most likely jump, dropping a mine will usually make it harder to kill a mark than in a straight fight as you'll have to find and enter the wormhole before it collapes whilst avoiding the Blue Sphere of Death from your own mine! Any ship with injectors can outrun a mine, as long as it reacts as soon as the mine appears. The marks in Random Hits always attempt to flee and will always succeed with a witch-jump (obviosuly) and always succeed with an injector flee (as long as they have injectors and sufficent fuel). So your chances of killing him with the bomb are pretty small. They don't make a witch-jump though in response to detecting their own mine, so if out of fuel they are more likley to be got by their own mine than one you or another NPC dropped. Although the marks AI tells him to hit the Injectors when he drops a mine, if he was using his injectors alot in the previous system, he may not have enough fuel left to get away. How much fuel he starts with is random. NPCs don't use fuel in a witchjump and can still make a jump with zero fuel. For NPCs fuel only really effects injector use. If he started with a low amount of fuel, then although the game allowed him to jump, he's only got a couple of seconds of injector use. The "whoshot" variable is reset when follow the mark through the wormhole. This is so that if a Viper kills him at the other end (possible as he'll generally only jump when seriously low on shields) the Viper would get the credit. For you to be credited you have to hit him at the other end. If you and a Viper are scrapping for the kill then the credit goes to whoever fired the fatal shot. Even if you wounded him and the Viper just hit him once, if that was the shot that killed him, the OXP will chalk up the kill to the viper.

Hoopy · Post by **Hoopy** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:09 am

i've had some luck against cunning opponents with dropping two q bombs. As they chase you drop the first one, they'll carry on chasing you. Then stop, turn round and drop another and accelerate towards the enemy. You now have a line of Q bomb, enemy, you, Q bomb.

Wait for the q bombs to go off then then turn and run!

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:47 pm

Quite an expensive way of killing your mark, though, isn't it?

Hoopy · Post by **Hoopy** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:27 pm

you get 50,000 for some kills so it's a bargain. And I've got about 1.5 million Cr so any way to spend them is good

edit: just realised - it's only assassins that pays that much isn't it?

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:40 pm

Yep. Random Hits is more designed as a feature to the game and an alternative or supplement to trading for new and moderatley experinced Commanders (the missions never end as the code proceedualy generates over one trillion different ones). An easy hit pays 300 - 700 Credits, a medium hit 1,800 to 5,500 Credits and a difficult hit 7,000 to 9,000 Credits. The Marks are smart enough to generally avoid being q-mined and the cost of the q-mine will wipe out or at least take a big chunk of your profits. Since risking collateral damage is a breach of the rules you may well also be fined by the Bounty Hunters Association. In any event, you don't improve your ranking with a non-laser kill. Although the ships the marks fly are all standard ships, they have tricks up their sleeves and should therefore prove a tougher fight than a standard pirate.

Timm74 · Post by **Timm74** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 1:56 am

Hi!

And again, fined for no reason

This time there wasn't even a q-bomb involved...

I shot his ship, he used a capsule, I killed the capsule by flying into it (trying to save some laser heat, there were still two worms out there

).

And I got again: fined for mass-destruction...

Cheers!
Timm

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 10:24 am

That is odd! The game does not regard a Ramming to Death as an attack. However the "whoshot" variable is not reset when the mark ejects, so it should still be set at whoever blew up the main ship. Ie If a Viper blew him up and you rammed the pod the game would give the credit to the viper. If you blew up the main ship then you would get the credit. The script only fines you if whoshot is undefined (ie he died without anyone shooting either his ship or his pod). I'll have a look into this. How often is it happening? Are you usually getting the credit rather than a false positive and being fined. I playtested it quite a bit and it seemed to be working.

The way to make sure you get the credit is to use your lasers at least once. Unfortunatley the "thisShipDied(whom)" is broken on 1.70 (fixed for the next version of Oolite), so I had to use thisBeingAttacked(whom) which isn't quite as accurate. Switching it over to "thisShipDied(whom)" would fix these oddities but that has to wait for 1.71 of Oolite.

EDIT : Are you using the Lastest V1.1 of Random Hits?

Timm74 · Post by **Timm74** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:41 am

Hi.

Seems that I am using 1.0, but how can I find out? I just installed 1.1 to make sure I have the newest one installed, but it does not seem to have a version number somewhere?

I think I did 5 kills now, three alright, one was the Q-bomb suicide and one was the one where I rammed the escape pod.

Cheers!
Timm

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:06 pm

The Space Bars will have turrets (which fire multi-coloured plasma at attackers) on V1.1 but not on V1.0. The readme also says which version your on. To update it follow the link on my signature and the instructions for updating.

The false positive bug should be squashed on 1.1 but it is a known bug on 1.0. There are a load of other bugs in 1.0 (and it really slows the game down), so you should really update it.