Oolite Bulletins

Alex wrote:

Wasn't sure where to post this"

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Alex wrote:

Wasn't sure where to post this"

Is this a joke?

The best place for posting bugs, comments, and test results of an oxp is in the thread that the oxp author originally started when he released it. It would be in Expansion Pack Forum. Simple enough to do a search for title names.

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<The following may be harsh but there is a point to be made here. Parental guidance is advised.>
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If you have a problem with an oxp, do you want to hunt through 100+ different threads just to find one relevant sentence? Most people at least do a search first before asking a question. If you did then you no doubt found the railgun thread in expansion pack forum. Why then did you not post it there? Because you never even did a search, that's why. You've been a member of this board since 2008 with so many posts under your belt and you don't know how to do a search?

Flip this around for a second from your life that's too busy for 10 seconds of searching.

If you were an oxp author, where would you want all questions, bugs, comments and test results of that oxp. Try a different view. If you were someone else who was interested in an oxp and what was happening with it would you want to chase all over just to find relevant information concerning it and what is currently being discussed in that oxp's thread. Try a different view. You are doing research on any subject and use a keyword for your search. Anything labelled in a way different from your search word(s) will NOT be shown. You would not want to have to type in 20 different search words just to not find all/nearly all relevant posts. And searching by the word itself instead of the title doesn't help much. Do you know how many posts you have to go through when you type in a word for a general search? 100's to 1000's. Do you really want to search through all those?

Put yourself in another person's shoes for a minute. Make their life easier. Do a search before posting a new thread. With 1000's of topics names that have already been posted there is a good chance 1 of them will fit what you want to post about.

I know you know how to do a search because you could NOT have found oolite without searching for it.

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<The preceding was harsh but there was a point to be made here. You may now open your eyes.>
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I must apologize Alex but I wanted to make a point here and this seemed like a good way to do it. I hold nothing against you personally. This is the most obvious example to come along so I took the opportunity. There are many members who make scores of duplicate threads about exactly the same thing choking up the board and sucking the spare time of everyone just to sift through them both now and in the future when it comes time to look up a reference. Information is useless if you can't find it when you need it. For the sake of oolite and for the love of all that is holy please stop making duplicate threads.

Man that felt good!

Commander McLane wrote:

Well, the Railgun is not designed to be an über-weapon.

I just tried with a standard Cobra at about 7000 meters, and with NPC-shields installed. It took me a total of 24 projectiles to kill it. Six or seven were needed just to take the shields down, so without NPC-shields I probably could have done it with 18 projectiles.

Note that the railgun is a kinetic weapon. It is far more effective against an approaching target than against a stationary target. Best effect is if you fly at top speed and hit a ship that's flying head-on against you at top speed.

As for the resell value: all numbers you see on the F3-screen are prices. A price is generally what you pay, not what you get. In other words, you have to pay a fee of 10 credits in order to resell the item. I think that's fair. Once you vote for that option you are refunded 60% of the original retail price (no refunds for the ammunition, though).

Commander McLane wrote:

Eldon wrote:

Sounds like you only get the kill counted for your elite rating, not for things like taking out your random hits target.

Ah, I hadn't caught the Random Hits reference. And yes, the observation is true.

For the game a railgun projectile is not connected to the player ship, therefore none of the usual hit or kill events are triggered, and the OXP has to "manually" manipulate the appropriate game counters. Obviously that doesn't help other OXPs which rely on the normal triggers.

Spontaneously I'd say that's an unfixable glitch, and I can only advise you to not use your railgun for the final shot on a mission-relevant target, if the mission requires you to kill your target personally.

Commander McLane wrote:

Open the file railgun-1-firing.js inside the Scripts-folder of railgun.oxp (this is for the small railgun) and find the line

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        this.projectile.position = player.ship.position.add(player.ship.heading.multiply(player.ship.collisionRadius + 10));

Fatleaf wrote:

The Caduceus is a long ship compared to the Cobra 3. If you haven't tweaked the position for the projectiles to fire from your ship instantly runs into them. That is the different sound you hear now and then. You are awarded a kill for each projectile you run into. I have just tested this with a Caduceus Omega.

Do you find this error message in your log? [railgun.oxp]: A railgun projectile hit the player ship. Normally this should not happen.

Commander McLane wrote:

Open the file railgun-1-firing.js inside the Scripts-folder of railgun.oxp (this is for the small railgun) and find the line

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        this.projectile.position = player.ship.position.add(player.ship.heading.multiply(player.ship.collisionRadius + 10));

Then replace the '10' with a greater number. I'd suggest 50. This will make the projectile to be spawned further away from the nose of your ship. It may be an idea for Commander McLane to include this warning in the read-me!

Makara wrote:

Unless I am misreading the code, surely the collisionRadius should encompass the whole vessel. So for the impact to happen (with RailGun projectiles), must there be some part of the ship actually outside its own collisionRadius? It does feel connected with the Caddy going pop when not touching anything, maybe this helps shed light on that ongoing mystery?

this.projectile.position = player.ship.position.add(player.ship.heading.multiply(player.ship.collisionRadius + this.projectile.collisionRadius + 1));

Eric Walch wrote:

When you place something big, just outside the collision radius, it just means that the centre of that object is outside and not the whole object itself.

But McLane must already have corrected that as in the current 1.3 release, the code reads as:

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this.projectile.position = player.ship.position.add(player.ship.heading.multiply(player.ship.collisionRadius + this.projectile.collisionRadius + 1));

sdrubble wrote:

I also saw the quote below (from here). I didn't fully understand its meaning and I'm not sure if it would have any bearing on my current issue:

Commander McLane wrote:

Eldon wrote:

Sounds like you only get the kill counted for your elite rating, not for things like taking out your random hits target.

Ah, I hadn't caught the Random Hits reference. And yes, the observation is true.

For the game a railgun projectile is not connected to the player ship, therefore none of the usual hit or kill events are triggered, and the OXP has to "manually" manipulate the appropriate game counters. Obviously that doesn't help other OXPs which rely on the normal triggers.

Spontaneously I'd say that's an unfixable glitch, and I can only advise you to not use your railgun for the final shot on a mission-relevant target, if the mission requires you to kill your target personally.

So ... any tip on how can I (we ??) solve this ? I don't want my kill count to be out of sync with my actual (in)abilities...

Fatleaf wrote:

And may I take a moment to Welcome you to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat.

This is the most important stuff. I already, and most certainly, feel so !!!

So, first things first:

inside my I:\Oolite\AddOns\railgun.oxp\Info.plist I can see :

<string>railgun 1.3</string>

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[railgun.oxp]: A railgun projectile hit the player ship. Normally this should not happen.

Fatleaf wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Open the file railgun-1-firing.js inside the Scripts-folder of railgun.oxp (this is for the small railgun) and find the line

Code: Select all

this.projectile.position = player.ship.position.add(player.ship.heading.multiply(player.ship.collisionRadius + 10));

this.projectile.position = player.ship.position.add(player.ship.heading.multiply(player.ship.collisionRadius + this.projectile.collisionRadius + 1));

Makara wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Eldon wrote:

Sounds like you only get the kill counted for your elite rating, not for things like taking out your random hits target.

Ah, I hadn't caught the Random Hits reference. And yes, the observation is true.

For the game a railgun projectile is not connected to the player ship, therefore none of the usual hit or kill events are triggered, and the OXP has to "manually" manipulate the appropriate game counters. Obviously that doesn't help other OXPs which rely on the normal triggers.

Spontaneously I'd say that's an unfixable glitch, and I can only advise you to not use your railgun for the final shot on a mission-relevant target, if the mission requires you to kill your target personally.

Just to clarify a little on what Eldon and McLane* were referring to here, although it isn't relevant to the problem you have uncovered. There are some situations with assassination-type missions where you specifically have to make the kill - you don't get credited if the target happens to die for some other reason (the Random Hits OXP being most notable as it generates an endless stream of such missions). While Commander McLane was ingenious in recreating the bounty / kill score mechanism for the railgun unfortunately there is no way to trigger off the game's events as though the target had been killed with a regular laser or missile. The upshot is that if a railgun delivers the coup de grâce on an assassination target it will be the same as if they had rammed into a rock, or been killed by one of the NPCs in the system. In practical terms it just means that if an assassination target's vessel starts venting plasma, don't use the railgun

sdrubble wrote:

I'll be reporting on my findings later on.

this.projectile.position = player.ship.position.add(player.ship.heading.multiply(player.ship.collisionRadius + this.projectile.collisionRadius + 1));

sdrubble wrote:

however, when maintaining a straight flight path, we should release 'I' for a half-second after each 1-2-3 rounds fired, in order to avoid overtaking projectiles and colliding with them AFTER they were successfully fired !!!!

Thargoid wrote:

You could always make the offset from the ship on launch dependant on the ships speed.