Auto Join Escort group

[pagroove]

What about a OXP that activates the option to join the escort groups that you sometimes encounter? For example: when a player meets with an Anaconda escorted by 3 cobra MK1's an comes within a certain range a message can be given:

Hi: we are transporting Food to planet ... Do you want to join our group? When you say yes you then become part of the escort flight and share bounty of the groupkills (when attacked by pirates). When the escorted ship reaches the Coriolis you could get paid a protection fee. This idea comes from playing Freelancer where you had an auto-join function.

[Frame]

Well you can run a mission screen, in Mid Flight, from there you could get a yes or no response, the other day I made a in mid flight brief player screen object. To get the player out of harms way while reading the message.. it is basically station without a hull, but with a docking bay, that spawns at the players location, thus auto docking him... it carries a unique role too, whereby a script detects if he docks to that object... after relaunch, which would happen automatically, when he presses space to end the mission screen, the object is removed, and exploded far far away, exactly 150.000.000 Oolite meters away. But of course there is no way to remove the docking rings

But would anyone actually be using this escort feature... since I guess it would be quite boring, maybe the offer should be made in only Anarchy and feudal systems.

but the outline of a script should be

1 Timer* that checks for traders with escorts... within players range 3k, preferably with a 1 minute gab

2 if alert condition yellow -> check distance to station... no point in making an offer 25 km from the station, or when you are within station aegis->make offer/run mission screen..

3 if player accepts start a new timer** preferably with a 1 minute gab

*simple timer, that is started at launched from station/left witch space

**timer function that incl...That checks that the player is still escorting, and will award the protection fee...<-- could be directional proportional to how many bad guys player killed while protecting.

but atm i dont have time to write this...

[FSOneblin]

That would be awesome! I can just see the looks on the pirates faces when they see that that supercobra is an escort. the same thing should happen with pirates, but with death threats.

Don't Panic: FSOneblin

[pagroove]

I don't see how this can be boring. it's just another option to make money and make in system flights a little more interesting. And you get the idea that you are doing something right, namely offering your services to a 'helpless' npc.

BTW the system of inflight missions could always be expanded like:

NPC's asking to do certain things.
If you are offender of fugitive you could join pirate groups for a raid on convoys

A bit like the RPG type of mission where you see a 'i' symbol over the npc.

[Frame]

Well... yeah, but it would be a real bummer, if the NPC then subsequently died while docking ... no pay for ya...

but of course that is solved by making the pay fall, at entering Station Aegis...

Regarding the pirate feature... a script can do that, not sure though that AI.plist can look for traders, that are not the player...

But i´m writing the save anywhere oxp at the moment, and getting ready to wrap it up for a release... so i do not have the time...

And after this save anywhere oxp, i´m going to rest a bit from scripting, before resuming on the solar system oxp... i just try not to get tired from scripting

[Thargoid]

There's a whole wealth of scanning options using roles under an AI (scanForNearestShipWith... and scanForNearestShipHaving... for the role of trader - to differentiate them from the player). Also if all else fails do it in JS and use a sendScriptMessage: to make the AI use it. We played with that in Probe.oxp, and it works well thanks to using the filteredEntities and Eric's inspiration about using isPirateVictim (look in the scripting for details)

Or am I misunderstanding what you meant above?

To be honest, to me this sounds just like Eric's Dr Nil's escort missions in UPS OoHaul , except there you're the only escort for the UPSOo Hauler from the ConStore to the Station rather than part of a group. But if you want a variant that way try the reserve missions under Galactic Navy, although you'll invariably find that the rest of the wing just get in the way (at least in my experience of that one).

And as with Frame, I've got a little too much on the go at the moment to give serious time to something like this, although from brief thoughts it's certainly do-able, and could be quite nice if good interactive usage of AI, scripting and worldscripting is used.

PS Wouldn't this thread be better in the Expansion Pack section?

[pagroove]

I was by no means asking that you two do this. I know that both of you are very mucht in the OXP train a.t.m. So don't feel pressured

AND I have to thank you for help with my Famous Planets OXP. A fact for which you get the credit when a new version comes out

Make no mistake:
The community is already doing outstanding work!

But hey, this is a suggestion box

My motivation for doing this suggestion that you ofteh meet those groups and there it should be nice if there is more interaction between the player and the NPC ships. Would be nice if you get escort offers, missions or that you can trade with them

[Thargoid]

You've lodged it in my brain now, so it'll probably get looked into at some point (although as I said it's similar in concept to OoHaul's escort mission - now I look back not UPS as I said before, I seem to keep mixing those two up for some reason ).

But as your FP coding work led onto Welcome Mat, I think here I may use some ideas from Welcome Mat (your inspiration about ident scanning as a communication initialisation) on such a thing as this. A poor battle-scarred and damaged Anaconda that's lost it's escorts in a firefight and needs help to limp onward to the station for example.

And as I've only now got 3 OXPs on my to-do list (and FP and RepairBots are virtually completed code-wise I would say) I just need to crack on with TCAT. Should really be done given it was my originally planned first OXP, and I seem somehow to have generated 7 other ones in the 10 weeks or so that I've been on this board and actively scripting ( eeep - that's nearly an OXP every 10 days! )

[TGHC]

You're doing great work Thargoid, all us non techies are very grateful, and that goes to all the OXPers out there.

Thanks