The scientists at the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corp's equipment division, led by Prof's Thargoid (no relation) and Walch have been busy perfecting their latest creation - Repair Nanobots.
Specially designed to fix damaged ship systems in flight, these useful critters are stored safely within a pylon mounted cannister and when triggered can scan the standard ship systems and fix items when they break (one item per cannister). At the moment they only have blueprints installed for conventional ship systems, but they can be enhanced should clumsy commanders manage to break their more exotic toys.
And as a special offer to our existing customers (ie you lot), we're making them available as a pre-production test release for you to try out and let us know what you think of them...
Please report back here any comments, bugs or errors.
Views on pricing and tech level appreciated.
Any additional equipment that you've seen break that's not covered by the 'bots (at the moment it's just the core equipment).
Compact file size - zip just under 6kb.
Grateful thanks to Eric Walch for his discussions about the coding (helpful and reliable as ever).
The price of tharglets can go down as well as up, your grandmother may be reposessed if you do not keep up repayments on her, a trumble is for lunch, not just for Christmas.
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Last edited by Thargoid on Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:45 pm, edited 8 times in total.
Cool idea! At last something to repair the cloaking device with!
But, wouldn`t it make sense to include any and all peaces of equipment into its function that are out there, or is there a deeper reason for the non-inclusion?
And will it repair only one broken peace of equipment, or all of them at once?
At the moment I'm checking with Ahruman what pieces of equipment can actually break in-game (I've never seen a piece of OXP kit break). If they can break then I'll add them in (it's just extending the array in the script), but if only standard trunk-kit can break then it's superfluous. It will of course also mean that if OXP kit can break, this one will need a regular update as people write new equipment...See below.
If anyone else can comment as to that question please feel free to share your experiences or code knowledge.
And for your other question, if multiple items are broken, the 'bots pick one at random to fix (it's one item of kit per cannister, as I mentioned in my original post ). And yes they will repair a cloak
Editted to add - according to Ahruman any equipment can break, so I'll look at sifting through what's out there and add it in for the full version.
Anyone who has written equipment OXPs feel free to drop me a PM or post in this thread and let me know the equipment name (EQ_<whatever>) and status screen name if you want me to add them into the list of kit the 'bots can fix, or indeed if you don't want your equipment to be fixable...
Last edited by Thargoid on Fri Sep 05, 2008 2:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Rock Hermit Locater, will not work, after next launch/witch space entry
Fuel collector... if equipment is damaged, will not work until launch / witch space entry
Bounty scanner, same...
There simply is not included checks, on the fly, which would require timers.. that do not run, if equipment is fixed, after being damaged..
i started to include "FRAME" cause these names are global, and therefore made the names more uniqe to prevent conflicts, after the rock hermit scanner, which erich walch rewrote to java, before i had really looked into java..
OK, so I'll leave them off the list and so make them unrepairable by the 'bots?
I'm planning on making OXP equipment "opt-in" (by their creators/scripters) for repair bot fixing rather than just putting them in as standard due to issues like this.
Editted to add - tested it and repaired Bounty Scanner indeed doesn't work until after docking/launch. So nor will my own EEU as the underlying code's the same.
To transfer the discussion from my Probe OXP thread to this one, as it relates to this OXP...
What I was pondering for the "full" release of Repair Bots was to make some of the more high-tech items only have a chance of being repaired. For example anything above tech 8 has a 10% cumulative chance of not being repairable per level (so tech 15 only has a 30% chance of being repaired).
That way the cost could be lowered a bit without unbalancing things. Would that be a decent solution for people? Say a cost of 2000 or 3000 credits, plus the above tech level dependence?
A little coding later, v0.99 is now released and ready for use.
Features and modifications:
All core equipment is supported.
Some OXP equipment is now supported - Missile Analyser, HyperRadio, Bounty Scanner, Fuel Collector, Rock Hermit Locator and Emergency Energy Equipment.
The price per cannister is now 3000cr.
For more complex items (above item tech 8) there is a cumulative 10% chance per level that the 'bots will fail to repair it (so a cloak and military equipment have a 30% chance of repair).
If any other scripter would like their equipment included into the next release of the 'bots, please PM me. But as it stands it's fully functional (although HyperRadio needs to be Svengali's brand new release version), and ready for play.
Depends how it's done, I'll have a look at it and see (see below).
Assassins hasn't been brought up yet, so hasn't been considered
Update - from a quick look at the script.plist, it is compatible. The OXP doesn't disable the cloak as such (ie break it), it completely removes it for sections of the missions and re-awards it afterwards.
The 'bots can only fix something that's broken (orange and (N/A)-tagged in the F5 screen), they don't award something that the player doesn't have or has completely lost.
They will also at the moment completely ignore the Mark Scanner if it breaks for some reason, as they don't have the blueprints for it (I'm only including OXP equipment by request - to try and avoid play-breaking situations).
Yep. The Cloak will stay disabled by Assassins. The Mark Transponder Scanner already repairs itself if damaged.
OXPS : The Assassins Guild, Asteroid Storm, The Bank of the Black Monks, Random Hits, The Galactic Almanac, Renegade Pirates can be downloaded from the Elite Wiki here.
Those pesky repairbots have ripped me off - AGAIN.
On 3 occasions I have lost equipment after having it repaired mid flight by the bots.
1st event - i think it was fuel scoops got damaged mid battle, quick fix and lots of scooped cargo later returned to base. It was only a flight or so later i realised they had gone.
2nd event - similar to above - think it was targeting memory
3rd time lucky - shield enhancement and injectors got slammed by some nasty good for nothing *&~#. 2 sets of trusty bots later, both fixed back in action kicking some pirate ass.
Got back to base to find a rather empty looking F5 screen - minus energy bomb of course but still very lacking. Both items that were fixed mid flight and had been 'operational' (i guess) were now totally gone - simply not there.
Had to fly far and wide to find a tech level high enough to get everything back.
All they do is scan for damaged items, and if they dice-roll under the chance of fixing that item, switch it's status from EQUIPMENT_DAMAGED to EQUIPMENT_OK (ie fix it). They don't have the capability of removing equipment, especially if you say it actually works in-flight after repair.
One thing to confirm is that you are actually using the most up to date version of the OXP (v0.99), as there was occasionally a glitch with them removing and not re-adding equipment in an early test version. But I don't think that one actually ever went beyond my hard drive during coding, and it would also remove them there any then, rather than letting them work between repair and docking.
OK, last but not least (although they did give a weird error originally), I can announce that the new v1.72-compatible version of Repair Bots (v1.00) is now available for your delectation and delight.
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). And yes they will repair a cloak 
