Not enough "large" haulers?

[CptnEcho]

You could of course, hold a competition.......

Pimp my hauler

Thats a good idea. It will give a nice variety of haulers

Agreed. Good idea.

[CptnEcho]

The planetary production situation is addressed by cargo & passenger contracts to move large quantities from here to there.
Some OXP's increase the number of cargo & passenger options available to Commanders.

Hmm....I never seen contracts going past like 300 tons...and it is highly unlikely to get two contracts at once with same destination...okay, I haven't been much into contract trading yet...

hmm...what OXP you had in mind? Can't find any such....

I was thinking of the Oo-haul and UPS Courier OXP's.

Check the wiki article to see what tickles your fancy.
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP

[Gunney_Plym]

Pimp my hauler, sounds interesting.

I'll put up my Titan and Goliath's up as victims if it would help.

[Eric Walch]

Hello Gunney_Plym, I have been playing with the concept of the big hauler with subentities. I created a variation of the woma fuelship with 4 tanks around. They must also be released sideways. I wrote an AI script that brought the ship near the station. Here I did a full stop and every 30 seconds I called the next JS function over a script message. Every time the scriptMessage is called, it released one single sub. When it has released all, it sends the message "SHIP_EMPTY" back to the AI.

Code: Select all

    "RELEASE_CARGO" = {
	ENTER = (performStop, "pauseAI: 10");
	"SHIP_EMPTY" = ("switchAITo: exitingTraderAI.plist");
	UPDATE = ("sendScriptMessage: releaseCargo", "pauseAI: 30");
	EXIT = ();
	}; 

Code: Select all

this.releaseCargo = function()
{
    if(this.ship.subEntities && this.ship.subEntities.length > 0) // ship still has subentities.
    {
        var silo = this.ship.spawnOne(this.ship.subEntities[0].primaryRole);
        if(silo)
        {
            silo.setOrientation(this.ship.orientation)
            silo.setPosition(this.ship.position.add(this.ship.subEntities[0].position))
        }
        this.ship.subEntities[0].remove()
    }
    else this.ship.reactToAIMessage("SHIP_EMPTY");
}

It did its job better than I hoped for. (although I already had the idea that it could happen this way.) After switching the entities, the released cargo is too close to the main ship and it is pushed away by a small collision. The released entity becomes a sideways movement by this, but does not start tumbling. Than its own AI kicks in and it starts flying.

In my fist few tries about 1 out of 4 containers exploded in the process. But this is probably prevented by defining the right spacing between main structure and its subentities. (And yes, the code is much easier with the new remove function). Try it on your ships when you like.

[Griff]

Amazing code snippet Eric!
I can't wait until we start getting oxp's with big hauler ships parking up and unloading cargo outside stations. Could you up the the 'thrust' value in the main ship to stop it getting pushed away when the subentities spawn?

[pagroove]

@Eric

OMG can't wait to see that in action!

[Griff]

This makes me think of Ramons amazing ork-in-progress Anaconda model, I'm sure he mentioned that he wanted a row of ejectable escape pods along the side of the hull, this bit of code could make that happen i guess?

If you haven't seen Ramons work, here's a reposting of one of the work-in-progress shots that slipped out of Ramon Towers


*drools*

[ovvldc]

Seriously, that dreamteam OXP is going to have SO many fans (when it finally gets done)..

-Oz

[pagroove]

(when it finally gets done)..

What happened to the dream team??(sorry off-topic)

[Thargoid]

Just to revive this thread, based on discussions in this thread, Eric and I have now drawn up a proposal for a new bigTrader role and system populator script (available here.

This OXP does not add any ships of its own, but it is envisaged that people building their own OXPs for large ships can include this zip file in their OXP (it's only 5kb or so), so users who don't already have it can installed in Oolite use the role of bigTrader in place of the normal trader. It is designed to prevent the space-lanes getting too crowded by having too many populator scripts running from different OXPs.

The OXP also includes an AI available for these ships, which acts in the same manner as a normal trader AI but does not attempt to dock.

[Eric Walch]

Just to make a start, I added the bigTrader role to dredgers.oxp and uploaded it again as Dredgers v2.2.2. When this new bigTrader.oxp is also installed, dredger.oxp will skip its own spacelane population and leave it to the new oxp to decide when to add the dredgers. Without the new bigTrader.oxp installed you won't see a difference.

I gave the dredgers a low chance of appearing, but as long as it is the only installed oxp with such big traders it will add them more often than before.

The main reason for such an oxp is to give shipbuilders an easy way to add their big ships in Oolite without introducing docking/launching bugs. (docking could already be prevented by using a custom AI, but traders were also random selected as launching ships)
e.g. the original dredger or Ixian _battleship was way to big to dock but still it was added in a way it would try to dock or in a role oolite might use as a launching ship. This was already fixed in the current releases by giving them a custom addition script.

By using a default populator instead of each oxp its own, we don't overpopulate the sky when we install a lot of such self-adding ship oxp's. The populater choses the number to add, independent of the installed number of such ships. And to give it a logic: The addition chance of the big traders increases with the planets productivity.

[Lestradae]

Great

And: Thanks

[pagroove]

Just to make a start, I added the bigTrader role to dredgers.oxp and uploaded it again as Dredgers v2.2.2. When this new bigTrader.oxp is also installed, dredger.oxp will skip its own spacelane population and leave it to the new oxp to decide when to add the dredgers. Without the new bigTrader.oxp installed you won't see a difference.

I gave the dredgers a low chance of appearing, but as long as it is the only installed oxp with such big traders it will add them more often than before.

The main reason for such an oxp is to give shipbuilders an easy way to add their big ships in Oolite without introducing docking/launching bugs. (docking could already be prevented by using a custom AI, but traders were also random selected as launching ships)
e.g. the original dredger or Ixian _battleship was way to big to dock but still it was added in a way it would try to dock or in a role oolite might use as a launching ship. This was already fixed in the current releases by giving them a custom addition script.

By using a default populator instead of each oxp its own, we don't overpopulate the sky when we install a lot of such self-adding ship oxp's. The populater choses the number to add, independent of the installed number of such ships. And to give it a logic: The addition chance of the big traders increases with the planets productivity.

Looks like an excellent populator. Makes some ships rare to see

[Thargoid]

OK, Aquatics v2.00 including the HammerHead hauler carrier seen in this here thread is now released.

Not that I'm proud of and pleased with how it looks and acts in-flight or anything

[Cholmondely]

I'll put up my Titan and Goliath's up as victims if it would help.

Gunney:

Hoping that this BB sends you an alerting e-mail that you receive!

Did you ever get anywhere with these?

Your pictures look super...