Oo-Haul - random escort missions (v.1.5)

[Dr. Nil]

Update!

The L-Crates finally spawn scoopable cargo

DOWNLOAD HERE!

--------------------

EDIT:

Download Oo-Haul HERE

An update of the AI:

Oo-HAUL

v1.5 by Dr. Nil, January 2007

Escort missions offered at Pi-42s plus a new cargo hauler for players and NPCs.

* Tired of zipping from station to station in 2-3 minutes?
* Remember those relaxing flights trapped behind one Anaconda after the other?
* Remember before you knew tricks like fuel injection and avoiding trade lanes?
* Has your gaming experience become as hurried and stressful as everyday life?

Now you can earn your Credits while rediscovering the joy of Oolite played as a space simulator!

Due to their wage policies the Oo-Haul Corporation is constantly struck by strikes among their escort pilots. You can profit from this! The Oo-Haul emergency contracts (which were originally made to deal with the event when escorts got lost in witchspace) pay scabs a lot better than what the corporation could have gotten away with, had they not upset the unions. And space being a really hard place to stage a picket, the unions voted to go Zero-G Bowling instead of even trying.

The randomly offered Oo-Haul escort missions in this OXP are best played with some nice music, a good cup of your favorite drink and a lot of time. Prepare to use about an hour in flight if you accept an Oo-Haul contract. Oh, and do remember that these are escort missions and as it is in the security business, the endless minutes of quietly watching the monitor may suddenly be interrupted by red hot action. And then again, they may not.


The name and logo is from an ad by DaddyHoggy in Your Ad Here set 1.

Things you may not want to know (highlight to show):

Mission requirements:

Rating: Average +
Pi-42 in system (population of 4 billion or more) +
D100>80 +
Good standing with the Oo-Haul corp (at least 15 jumps since turning down a contract or 20 since ditching a mission or 25 since failing).

The presence of a Pi-42 Clerk near the witchpoint is the hint to a mission being offered.

--------------------
Original post:

Oo-HAUL

v.0.5

This ship doesn't yield any booty ATM since I'd really like the crates (subentities) to hold the cargo.

The name and logo is from an ad by DaddyHoggy in Your Ad Here set 1.

Any suggestions on how to have the subentities yield cargo? Can subentities have death actions?

@DH: I'll replace the company name and logos promptly if me using it interferes with other ideas you might have for it.

[DaddyHoggy]

@ Doc - you star - if I could model or texture for toffee this is exactly what I wanted to do! I think I even mentioned it in a thread somewhere (when somebody wanted to design a "trailer" that carried extra cargo).

Bravo.

DaddyH

[Charlie]

@ Dr. Nil:
Any suggestions on how to have the subentities yield cargo? Can subentities have death actions?

Take a look @ shipdata.plist in my Swift.oxp...
Firefly & Lampyris both have a sub-entitiy for a cargo-pod!

Well - not exactly, a bit of a dodge using death_actions to eject cargo, & force a change of ship to a version without the cargo-pod.

Seems to work - though a bit of a bodge & I can imagine it could get very complex if a ship had lots of sub-entities simulating such behavior.

I know the death_actions thing works: Try shooting the cargo-pod off one of the above & see what happens.

Sadly I can't seem to get sub-entities to produce their own comm-messages.
Most of my ships should complain when you shoot bits off - but don't.
I guess not all things work with sub-entities...

[Dr. Nil]

@Charlie: Some really interesting things you have got hiding in those plists. I ended up just having the subentities spawn cargo cannisters when they are blown up.

OO-HAUL

(and yes, it is theoretically possible for a small ship to pass through this ship, if the cargo has been blown away)

[Dr. Nil]

Download ZZ-Oo-Haul

Are you tired of zipping from station to station in 2-3 minutes. Do you remember actually enjoying an inbound flight trapped behind one Anaconda after the other, before someone tipped you off on using fuel injection and avoiding the trade lanes, so you could turn your gaming experience into something as hurried and stressful as your everyday life? Now you can make money while rediscovering the joy of Oolite played as a space simulator. Due to their wage policies the Oo-Haul Corporation is constantly struck by strikes among their escort pilots. You can profit from this. The Oo-Haul emergency contracts (which were originally made to deal with the event when escorts got lost in witchspace) pay scabs a lot better than what the corporation could have gotten away with, had they not upset the unions. And space being really hard to blokade, the unions decided to go zero-G bowling instead of even trying.

The randomly offered Oo-Haul escort missions in this OXP are best played with a good cup of your favorite drink, some nice music playing and lot of time (count on using about an hour in flight if you accept an Oo-Haul contract). Oh, and do remember that these are escort missions and as it is in the security business, the endless minutes of quietly watching the monitor may suddenly be interrupted by red hot action. - And then again it may not.

Zz-Oo-HAUL expansion pack for Giles Williams' Oolite

by Dr. Nil, January 2007

This version has:

A player and an NPC ship.
Escort missions randomly offered at Pi-42s (missions are only offered if Your Ad Here.oxp is installed).

If you've already got Oo-Haul.oxp installed, you should delete it before installing this new version.

The name and logo is from an ad by DaddyHoggy in Your Ad Here set 1.

More blabber:

This OXP goes really well with the textured planets branch of Oolite.

The name? ZZ because space truckers listen to ZZ Toop? Zz because simulations may cause drowsiness in todays give-me-it-all-before-now culture? Nah - just easier to have the script read after the script in Your Ad Here!.

[DaddyHoggy]

Doc you're a star - I haven't downloaded the extra textured exe - is this dajt's one?

I will certainly give this a go.

DH

[DaddyHoggy]

@Doc - as of 22:08 I can't seem to get to your space - the links to downloads time out and the link to your page in your sig hangs up too - will try again later - just making you aware of potential server hitch...

[ramon]

I like the sound of this one. I'll look forward to my first contract, better make sure I've got a couple of hours spare though by the looks of things.

[DaddyHoggy]

22:43 - all singing and dancing again! ZZ-OO-Haul downloaded...

[johnsmith]

How do you tell if the ship you're escorting makes it home safely? Do you just make sure its death actions aren't triggered? And how the hell does one of those things dock anyway? Looks fun!

[Dr. Nil]

Dunno what was up with the web space. I suppose it was just one of those things.

@johnsmith: I really hoped to find answers for doing those things in your recession.oxp That was the last time anybody talked about making escort missions and I thought that most of the stuff I would need was already in there.

Well here's the solution I found. Making sure the ship makes it to the station safely is done by setting a mission variable from the AI just before it switches to docking. Using Google I discovered some ring entity AI which used the scriptActionOnTarget method to do such a thing. As I see it, this use opens for a wide array of really cool possibilities.

And now that I've discovered the embarrassing truth about why I couldn't get the escorted ship to scan for the player during flight, I'll probably make the AI check more for whether the player is actually there during the flight as soon as I get to it. I do have an alternative AI ready which checks for the player 3 times on the way and stops until the player is present.

I had another version in the works which still had the journey cut into a number of shorter stages, but didn't stop. Instead it scanned for the player during each stage and set a mission variable unique to that stage if it at all encountered the player during that stage. The script was then made to test that a certain number of those variables were set, before making the pay.

Atm I prefer the stop and go version (but hopefully having the ship not stop if the player is already in range, when it reaches a waypoint. I would however like to know some more about some quirks I seem to encounter when setting the range for this scan, before I put any of them in an updated release.

On the docking issue: The shot above was taken with the ship a lot closer to the view than the station (actually it's a manipulation to get a nice angle, but the ship in the original had the same size). The L-Crate Hauler loads 150tc and is only a little bigger than a Boa.

Here's a shot of an Oo-Haul L-Crate Hauler docking:

[Dr. Nil]

Download Oo-Haul HERE

An update of the AI:

Oo-HAUL

v1.5 by Dr. Nil, January 2007

Escort missions offered at Pi-42s plus a new cargo hauler for players and NPCs.

* Tired of zipping from station to station in 2-3 minutes?
* Remember those relaxing flights trapped behind one Anaconda after the other?
* Remember before you knew tricks like fuel injection and avoiding trade lanes?
* Has your gaming experience become as hurried and stressful as everyday life?

Now you can earn your Credits while rediscovering the joy of Oolite played as a space simulator!

Due to their wage policies the Oo-Haul Corporation is constantly struck by strikes among their escort pilots. You can profit from this! The Oo-Haul emergency contracts (which were originally made to deal with the event when escorts got lost in witchspace) pay scabs a lot better than what the corporation could have gotten away with, had they not upset the unions. And space being a really hard place to stage a picket, the unions voted to go Zero-G Bowling instead of even trying.

The randomly offered Oo-Haul escort missions in this OXP are best played with some nice music, a good cup of your favorite drink and a lot of time. Prepare to use about an hour in flight if you accept an Oo-Haul contract. Oh, and do remember that these are escort missions and as it is in the security business, the endless minutes of quietly watching the monitor may suddenly be interrupted by red hot action. And then again, they may not.


The name and logo is from an ad by DaddyHoggy in Your Ad Here set 1.

Things you may not want to know (highlight to show):

Mission requirements:

Rating: Average +
Pi-42 in system (population of 4 billion or more) +
D100>80 +
Good standing with the Oo-Haul corp (at least 15 jumps since turning down a contract or 20 since ditching a mission or 25 since failing).

The presence of a Pi-42 Clerk near the witchpoint is the hint to a mission being offered.

[Dr. Nil]

Update!

The L-Crates finally spawn scoopable cargo

DOWNLOAD HERE!

[Timm74]

Hi.

I only once got a mission (not sure if this was still 1.65) and had to reload afterwards (so my actual commander never played on). After that I never got one again. My counter is at -140.

Does someone have a hint what is wrong?

Cheers!
Timm

** EDIT: sorry this message should show up one message later **

[LittleBear]

If you make a mess of a mission it takes a while before you'll be offered another one (you bad performace needs time to be forgoten). Even if you do it right, its random whether one is offered each time you vist the store.