cascading

Post by **Cmdr James** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:09 pm

Back on topic: I have made a change to cascading based upon scan class. Should I commit the change, or does anyone want to discuss a beter way (checking fuel levels or something?).

Ive done some basic testing, and it seems to work as expected. At least, it works the way *I* expect

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 6:05 pm

Cmdr James wrote:
I have made a change to cascading based upon scan class. Should I commit the change, or does anyone want to discuss a beter way (checking fuel levels or something?).

Which scanclasses do let the cascade cascade and which not?

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 6:58 pm

Cmdr James wrote:
Back on topic: I have made a change to cascading based upon scan class. Should I commit the change, or does anyone want to discuss a beter way (checking fuel levels or something?).

Ive done some basic testing, and it seems to work as expected. At least, it works the way *I* expect

I think by scan_class

Rock hermits would not cascade then, as these are of scan class ROCK. but you can acquire fuel there.

mayhaps an object check would be better, is this a ship or station,

cascade...

anything else. Do not cascade

Buoys may need special case checking...

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:09 pm

Has anyone suggested “ships with nonzero thrust” yet? (This would exclude stations but not carriers, asteroids, fragments… and also other q-bombs, I believe; I think that’s a feature rather than a bug.)

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:22 am

Ahruman wrote:
Has anyone suggested “ships with nonzero thrust” yet?

What about derelict ships in that case? I think they should cascade, as they still would have their engines, and probably a lot of quirium plasma floating around them. Is their thrust set to 0 on being disabled? If not, then go ahead with that.

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:37 am

Commander McLane wrote:
Ahruman wrote:
Has anyone suggested “ships with nonzero thrust” yet?
What about derelict ships in that case? I think they should cascade, as they still would have their engines, and probably a lot of quirium plasma floating around them. Is their thrust set to 0 on being disabled? If not, then go ahead with that.

They sit in space until a salvage missile gets them (or this strange bug kicks in which assigns them an AI, resulting in trader behaviour). I've seen an Ixian battleship(derelict) sitting around and rotating at a very high speed - quite a funny sight compared their normal "slow" behaviour.

Screet

Post by **Cmdr James** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:50 am

Scan class actually works quite well. My understanding is that cargo, and asteroids and stuff should not cascade.

Im at work (no access to codebase) but off the top of my head, I think in my version buoys, rocks and cargo do not cascade. The main station of each system also does not (StationEntity overrides the code in ShipEntity and has an additional check) and everything else does. q-bombs do casacde, and I think missiles too.

I have not seen anything unnatural yet, but I only played for maybe an hour, so its not very thorough.

The code for initiating a Q-wave is different to that for cascading, so maybe I should make it possible to have *anything* create a q-wave, so that its possible to script cool stuff -- maybe someone wants to write an OXP where the station is nuked with some kind of special Q-bomb... that doesnt mean they also have to be cascadable.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 9:50 am

Screet wrote:
They sit in space until a salvage missile gets them (or this strange bug kicks in which assigns them an AI, resulting in trader behaviour). I've seen an Ixian battleship(derelict) sitting around and rotating at a very high speed - quite a funny sight compared their normal "slow" behaviour.

Thanks, but that was not the question I asked.

Could we please in this thread confine ourselves to the following question only: Which type of entity should cascade (i.e.: produce another expanding blue-sphere-of-death), when touched by a previous blue-sphere-of-death; and which entities should not cascade, but simply explode with an ordinary explosion?

@ Cmdr James: What about Rock Hermits (and Hacker Outposts, and Salvage Gangs)? All of them have CLASS_ROCK, but I feel they should cascade. (As should stations, apart from the main station, which is protected anyway.)

Post by **Cmdr James** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:07 am

Well, as it stands they do not.

I am not certain if they should. One key thing for me is that the "true canon" of elite does not include q-mines and the oolite canon is not as far as I know completely consistent -- hence the Status Quo OXP which modifies it to be more like the story.

If we go with the idea that it is related to the fuel use and limited by mass then perhaps (and this is not my opinion, its open to debate) then anything containing fuel, which would include stations and salvage gangs and so on, but perhaps should not go work if they fail the mass-lock test? This might nicely solve problems with things like stations, and more or less fits the logic of Status Quo (I think).

I think that it should be easy to make stations (except main) cascade, as the method which causes cascading is overridden in StationEntity anyhow, so we can easily have different rules for stations that ships.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:56 am

Cmdr James wrote:
If we go with the idea that it is related to the fuel use and limited by mass then perhaps (and this is not my opinion, its open to debate) then anything containing fuel, which would include stations and salvage gangs and so on, but perhaps should not go work if they fail the mass-lock test? This might nicely solve problems with things like stations, and more or less fits the logic of Status Quo (I think).

Let's just not include main stations in the debate. As you already said, they cannot even explode under normal circumstances, therefore much less cascade. I always rationalised that for myself with the thought that the big stations would have a sophisticated shielding system to prevent Quirium accidents from happening. Makes sense for me.

The same shields could or could not be in place for other stations, depending on who is running them with what resources.

However, Rock Hermits, Salvage Gangs, and Hacker Outposts are not even stations. They are hollowed-out asteroids. As we know for a fact that asteroids do explode in Quirium blasts, they—as a station-building material—don't appear to be Quirium-blast-proof. So I think it is justified to have them cascade as well, because they carry Quirium fuel, which would be affected by a blast outside.

As far as the mass issue is concerned, it would indeed be very nice to have a general check in the code that stops the cascading chain at the point where it reaches the vicinity of a large mass.

I'm not sure, however, if I understand you correctly in that passage. Are you argueing that probably stations themselves could have a mass large enough to prevent a chain reaction? I wouldn't agree to that; the gravitational effects of a station's mass shouldn't be large enough for that. And IIRC out of my head, Jim's original experiment took place on board a station. So obviously the station's own mass didn't prevent it. Neither did the mass of the planet it was orbiting. Which justifies my decision to put the margin closer to the planet than the station's orbit.

Post by **Cmdr James** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 11:19 am

Commander McLane wrote:
However, Rock Hermits, Salvage Gangs, and Hacker Outposts are not even stations. They are hollowed-out asteroids. As we know for a fact that asteroids do explode in Quirium blasts, they—as a station-building material—don't appear to be Quirium-blast-proof.

Asteroids are destroyed by q-wave, but I dont see directly why this means that things made from them should cascade.

Surely anyone with large amounts of fuel would store it in a properly sealed and shielded container -- one that would be too large and heavy for any normal ship, perhaps even frozen or in some other way made inert? We dont know that this shielding isnt available to anyone who set themself up as a gas station, do we? Would seem natural that storage comes with the pumps and stuff.

It should be easy enough to make stations (meaning anything you can dock with) but have scan_class of rock still cascade, if this is the general feeling.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:11 pm

I suggest to separate the cascade issue into the following partial questions:

* Should any entity with mass but not too much mass (main station upwards) cascade?

* Or, more restricted version, should anything that presumably contains enough quirium cascade? Then asteroids or cargo containers i.e. are out of the equation.

* Most restricted version: Only something with an active quirium reactor cascades - then derelicts for example are also out of the equation.

By answering those questions, what should be made to cascade an whatnot follows logically.

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:14 pm

Would it be too obvious to suggest using the entities fuel level?

Presuming of course that things have been shipdata'd correctly and fuel levels are actually set for NPC / OXP ships.

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:15 pm

If Salvage Gangs, Hacker Outposts, etc are basically Asteroids and Asteroids are destroyed by q-waves then these "stations" (or dockable objects) should be destroyed too. If they are destroyed then irrespective of whether they are big enough to have shielding, specialist tanks or whatever to contain the quirium fuel seems a moot point if the fundamental structure which holds it all is blown apart - i.e. pipes get ruptured, power supplies to shields fail, storage tanks get ruptured, fuel escapes - fuel goes bang...

just my 0.02Cr worth

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Mon Jan 05, 2009 12:29 pm

Kindly have a look here:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=5526