Oolite Bulletins

Thanks Greyth,

The script uses bounty as a flag for this count and excludes asteroids and boulders, but I forgot that cargo and alloys can have a small bounty.

Fixed in 1.5.3

one word - awesome -

Minor bug in 1.5.3 involving the initial positioning of the trader - if the main station is large (e.g. torus) it's possible for them to be placed on a collision course with the outside of the station, and fail to take evasive action. Would it make sense to angle them away from both main station and planet when they're spawned?

Thanks cim, I'll look at choosing a specific spawn point on the other side of the station from the planet, which should hopefully avoid this issue. Congratulations on your new Developer status btw...

That might not be enough - this was at Tiera (Gal 3), where the torus station is quite a way round to the side of the planet viewed from the witchpoint - the trader already appeared on the space side of the station, but their trajectory to the witchpoint took them through the outer rim of the torus.

I think subtracting about 10km from the station's z-position should be safe, though.

Where can I edit the script to tone down the offer frequency a little? I'm being offered escort contracts every time I dock.

Easiest thing to do is stop accepting them - your reputation will start to erode as will frequency of offers. Really quick way - accept a contract and kill the ship you are supposed to be escorting. Doing this 3 times in quick succession will drop the frequency to the lowest possible.

Frequency varies between 25% and 100% depending on reputation. But you only stay on maximum reputation if you keep successfully doing contracts. Thinking about it maybe 20% to 80% is a better range??

Capt. Murphy wrote:

. . . maybe 20% to 80% is a better range??

My vote goes here.

That would add to the general randomness of the game, meaning in other words that we'd never haver whatever stuff happening at 100% of possible opportunities.

Cheers

1.5.4 uploaded - download link in first post.

Version 1.5.4 (21/04/12)

Tweak to the chances of contracts being offered. Was in a range of 25% to 100% depending on escort reputation, now a range of 20% to 80%.
Set specific spawn position for mother of 19km directly behind main station to avoid issues with bigger stations (e.g the Torus) (thanks to cim for bug report and suggestion for appropriate fix).

1.5.5 available for download - minor update.

Version 1.5.5 (05/05/12)

Added Staer9's Shipset (http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Staer9%27s_Shipset) versions of the Monitor, Python Cruiser, & Python ET Special as potential mother variants if the OXP is installed.
Made the Escort License transferable equipment when buying a new ship.

some general comments :

- Since the mother is placed further away from the main Station, upon launch it is now everytime on the opposite site of the station.
This means players have to watch out for not bumping into the station when heading towards the mother.
Before the placement was changed this was not the case.

- When mother uses fuel injectors to get out of mass lock, it often seems to continue doing this even when condition green is met.
This costs more fuel then needed, maybe it's not checked often enough ?

Lone_Wolf wrote:

some general comments :
Since the mother is placed further away from the main Station, upon launch it is now everytime on the opposite site of the station.
This means players have to watch out for not bumping into the station when heading towards the mother.
Before the placement was changed this was not the case.

Thanks for the feedback Lone_Wolf. Do you really see this as a problem? I've heard of people having problems with manual docking, but with launching and navigating round a station as-well?

Lone_Wolf wrote:

- When mother uses fuel injectors to get out of mass lock, it often seems to continue doing this even when condition green is met.
This costs more fuel then needed, maybe it's not checked often enough ?

The check is every 3 seconds whilst under injectors via an AI update. The check isn't only for player mass lock but also for mass locking entities within scanner range of the mother. So there could be something off your scanner-range that the mother is detecting as mass-locking and wants to get past. The other thing to bear in mind is that some of the mothers have quite a low thrust - the upshot is that it takes them a long time to slow down from injector speed. So even though the AI has told them to slow down to normal speed it may be a number of seconds before they actually get to normal speed (the exhaust plumes remains purple but gradually shorten as they slow down). I don't think they use fuel as they are decelerating (I vaguely remember Eric fixing a bug a while back to do with this), although you might have to use your injectors a bit as a player to keep up whilst they stand on their ineffectual 'brakes'.

The native AI commands handle injecting away from a fight, using a standard "FLEE" AI.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

Lone_Wolf wrote:

some general comments :
Since the mother is placed further away from the main Station, upon launch it is now everytime on the opposite site of the station.
This means players have to watch out for not bumping into the station when heading towards the mother.
Before the placement was changed this was not the case.

Thanks for the feedback Lone_Wolf. Do you really see this as a problem? I've heard of people having problems with manual docking, but with launching and navigating round a station as-well?

When you've got one of the faster mothers, they can be almost out of scanner range if you take your time getting around the station (maybe if they only travelled at 0.1LM maximum for this part of the journey - running away from their escort at top speed won't get them into witchspace any faster...)

As with the Boa Clipper, the Python ET Special and Python Class Cruiser could also perhaps slow down slightly in normal flight or a player with a Cobra III won't be able to catch up with them without injectors.

A better solution might be for them to generally limit their top speed based on what the player is flying, as traders do for NPC escorts - Asp II pilots won't have any problems anyway; Cobra I pilots won't be able to follow even a stock Boa II without burning up injector fuel. I'm not sure how practical that is, though.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

So there could be something off your scanner-range that the mother is detecting as mass-locking and wants to get past.

While I remember, I've noticed a couple of problems in the other direction with their mass-lock detection. In certain circumstances they'll detect the start of a mass-lock, try to accelerate to injector speed, then notice that there's nothing about and come to a stop. Then do the same again. They can hop along like this for a while, at an average speed lower than their normal flight speed. Basically it happens when there's nothing on their scanner, but the player is still mass-locked - so far I've seen it when:
1) player is flying ahead of mother, object on player's scanner at 12 o'clock and 25km
2) cloaked ship near player
3) large planet near player (get a big planet and a station way off to the side as seen from the witchpoint to test this one)

OK thanks cim,

I'll have a tweak and test session and see what I can do.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

OK thanks cim,

I'll have a tweak and test session and see what I can do.

None of these come up very often, by the way - I just do a lot of these escort contracts.