Constrictor Mission (*Some Spoilers*)...

[Ganelon]

The mission is kinda anticlimactic.

Don't get me wrong, can't complain about the payout. It'd take a whole heap of cr to begin to equal the bump to "dangerous" for "smile on my face" potential. And the mission itself is nicely tense, following the leads and thinking over jumps carefully to make sure of having a bit of fuel wherever you finally run the constrictor to ground.

But the chase was really most of the fun. The "win" and the battle leading up to it just didn't feel on par with the buildup to it. Maybe I just didn't play it in such a way as to give enough sporting chance. LOL As soon as I had him IDed, I slipped up close and got a long bust of lasers into the rear of his ship. He ran a ways and doubled back and I put a missile after him and he started running. I let him get out of sight, ECMed the missile and torussed until he was back on screen, slipped up on him again and repeated the process. Trying to make him use his witchdrive fuel up faster than I did. Kept sniping at the rear of his ship, hoping for engine damage. Eventually he quit running and was throwing out sparks, kept hitting him till his engines went almost dark, let my lasers recharge while getting a good bead on him, and it was over. Just poof, no cargo or escape pod.

Still had one missile left and some fuel. He'd hit me a couple of times when he'd turned to take a shot, but no gear was damaged. Sundived to top up the tank just in case I ran into a mess of pirates or whatever on the way to the planet. Took it in with no incidents. Nice little message from the navy and I was suddenly ranking "dangerous".

Can't really complain, the mission itself was a couple of days of good fun. But from the talk I was hearing in the systems while chasing the constrictor, I had been expecting a much tougher opponent. He was a lot less of a fight than some of the 299 I'd shot down before him.

I know that this particular mission can't be messed with too much since there's a need to preserve some game canon from Elite. Maybe I'm just remembering Elite as grander than it really was, but I thought I recalled the constrictor hunt as being much more of a tight dogfight. Other than pulling up into an Immelman to run back towards me and take shots occasionally, this ended up more of a long chase and snipe.

The constrictor looked great at moments when I got up close. Kind of a shame that it didn't blow up into a scrapheap of Griff's pretty debris, at least though.. LOL What might be fun would be a secondary explosion, so if you were too close when the constrictor goes up, it could cause some damage. After all, it was a top secret military ship. It wouldn't be inconceivable that it might have some massive self-destruct device onboard that it's commander slaps the button of in his last seconds. If the hunter was too close to the wreck when she went up, and had sustained any reasonable amount of damage in the fight, it might make the victory a rather short-lived and pyrrhic one.

But that's what savegames are all about. LOL

Overall, the game is doing excellent. I wouldn't know where to begin on handing out kudos, so for the moment I'll just say that everything looks and plays *GREAT*!

[Poro]

I think it all depends on your final fight with the Constrictor. I tried much the same technique as you, but I had brought along a couple of Sidewinder escorts (Hired Guns OXP) for backup - thinking it was going to be a really tough conflict. (The system they were hired from was fairly run-down, certainly no Viper Interceptors to hire)

There were a couple of times when I would have lost the Constrictor as he (she?) boosted off scanner range and then changed course: I actually had to follow the laser fire and engine plumes of my hired Sidewinders to keep track of the Constrictor.

Then, of course, a far-ranging Viper patrol craft found the four of us... and decided he wanted part of the action. I suppose word about the bounty on this 'mysterious vessel' had been spreading. To cut a boring story short: I almost lost the mission as my Sidewinders and the Viper eventually had the Constrictor venting plasma/sparks. I used the last reserves of fuel I had to boost forward and finish him myself. I think the Hired Guns have their kills attributed to me, but I wasn't sure about mission kills. If the Viper had got to him first, it would have been a reload.

[Thargoid]

The mission wouldn't have completed successfully had your escorts killed the Constrictor. The mission script only checks if the player is the killer - I should probably update the hired guns scripting to explicitly check if they do kill it and do the mission closure properly in that case.

Editted to add - hired guns v1.21 now uploaded, with script tweak to stop it breaking the Constrictor mission.

[Commander McLane]

I do think that the Constrictor suffers quite a lot from the inflexible performAttack in Oolite. I am especially bugged by the AI behaviours BEHAVIOUR_ATTACK_FLY_TO_TARGET_SIX and BEHAVIOUR_ATTACK_FLY_TO_TARGET_TWELVE, because NPCs use to spend long amounts of time in these behaviours in which they never fire a shot.

[Eric Walch]

II am especially bugged by the AI behaviours BEHAVIOUR_ATTACK_FLY_TO_TARGET_SIX and BEHAVIOUR_ATTACK_FLY_TO_TARGET_TWELVE, because NPCs use to spend long amounts of time in these behaviours in which they never fire a shot.

It is intended that they don't fire a shot in this mode. (don't ask me why). In these behaviours they aim at a spot above or below the target. And shooting only happens when the target enters his cross hair. And that won't happen when the player does not move.
But again, don't ask me why its written that way. Probably to not make the ships uber-ships as it would be easy to program a ship to not miss a single shot and kill the player within a few seconds.

[Commander McLane]

II am especially bugged by the AI behaviours BEHAVIOUR_ATTACK_FLY_TO_TARGET_SIX and BEHAVIOUR_ATTACK_FLY_TO_TARGET_TWELVE, because NPCs use to spend long amounts of time in these behaviours in which they never fire a shot.

It is intended that they don't fire a shot in this mode. (don't ask me why). In these behaviours they aim at a spot above or below the target. And shooting only happens when the target enters his cross hair. And that won't happen when the player does not move.

Problem is that the player can easily move in such a way that the NPC never reaches its destination relative to him, therefore the NPC never leaves this mode and gets killed without firing a shot. And I always found that silly.

[Eric Walch]

therefore the NPC never leaves this mode and gets killed without firing a shot. And I always found that silly.

Its stupid, I agree. In 1.73 I added a frustration counter for the target twelve attack. At a certain frustration it switches to normal attack. But as I don't want to make to obvious changes to the code, this frustration triggers quite late.

I feel most problems are in one-to-one combat. When against a wolfpack those problems are not that obvious as there are always ships that are in a mode that does aim at you.

[Eric Walch]

Can't really complain, the mission itself was a couple of days of good fun. But from the talk I was hearing in the systems while chasing the constrictor, I had been expecting a much tougher opponent. He was a lot less of a fight than some of the 299 I'd shot down before him.

Since 1.74 the constrictor becomes a bit stronger against stronger opponents. First increase is against a dangerous player and the second against a deadly player. Although I don't think there will be many players doing this mission being already deadly. Its even likely that this mission made me deadly. I have a saved game with a kill count of 2338 were I still was looking for the constrictor but already next to the target system. And the mission awards 256 kills giving a total of 2594 (and deadly starts at 2560)

It took me so long because I first did assassins to get come combat practice. And there are more that have been in galaxy 8 without killing the beast.

[Poro]

The mission wouldn't have completed successfully had your escorts killed the Constrictor. The mission script only checks if the player is the killer - I should probably update the hired guns scripting to explicitly check if they do kill it and do the mission closure properly in that case.

Editted to add - hired guns v1.21 now uploaded, with script tweak to stop it breaking the Constrictor mission.

Now that's what I call a responsive community

[Svengali]

So is there any chance that performAttack can be changed?

Specially this method is essential for nearly every oxp and the current behaviour is problematic. Ships withs even ID are pretty often not attacking (even with higher accuracy) or only shooting one time before turning away and odd IDs are often not doing anything. Using reportAIMessages doesn't give a clue and logging behaviour changes shows that BEHAVIOUR_AVOID_COLLISION is sometimes triggered >10km away.

I think this gives a lot of headaches for all of us, but it's worth to try it...

[Thargoid]

Agreed. I've been putting together a few clips for my YouTube channel, and it's getting frustrating trying to stage combat where half the time one or both ships basically wander off, even when both are under performAttack.

Also there seems to be a tendancy for ships with both lasers and turrets to always favour the latter without firing the former at all. That is also very irritating having given the ships both and then they just fly in close and turret-shoot only.

[Commander McLane]

Also there seems to be a tendancy for ships with both lasers and turrets to always favour the latter without firing the former at all. That is also very irritating having given the ships both and then they just fly in close and turret-shoot only.

I think this is just a feature of turrets. By their very nature they are not deliberately "fired" at all, but just trigger all by themselves if in range.

Which—incidentally—is why I don't like the turretification of Oolite.

[Thargoid]

That I could live with, if it didn't seem to prevent the lasers being fired too. It's not always the case (see the Serpents clip - it's happily firing off every damn thing it's got) but some of the other ships in TCAT like the Raptor have basically similar armament (same ratio, but different laser types) and it doesn't seem to intermix.

Maybe it's just my imagination, but there does feel like there's a difference.

[Commander McLane]

That I could live with, if it didn't seem to prevent the lasers being fired too. It's not always the case (see the Serpents clip - it's happily firing off every damn thing it's got)

Now you mention it: Is it a deliberate choice that the serpents' plasma balls are purely for the optical effect? I watched a Boa being bathed in red glow, but not losing a single point of its energy. Same with my player ship.

[Thargoid]

No, they're full standard issue turrets.

I was wondering something similar concerning the turrets on the Raptor this morning. It may be worth checking I think that NPC turrets are working at all at the moment?