Oolite Bulletins

I'd prefer a menu for comms options or some sort of keyboard commands in addition to (or instead of) voice recognition.

If only because I feel like a tit talking to my computer. I'm old fashioned that way.

Was thinking more about this last.

What about requests from haulers who have had their escort destroyed by pirates asking the player to escort them to the station for "x amount of credits?" This could apply to haulers with offender or fugitive ratings whose escorts had been destroyed, but could mean the player has to fend of the police, bounty hunters or similar do gooders?

Or any of the larger ships - it's an infrequently occurring mission that I would be happy to do occasionally.

Thank the great Lobster that there's a spelling checker ...

Sort of a "live" emergency version of http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Escort_Contracts_OXP... sounds complicated!

Pretty much, yes.

Sendraks wrote:

I'd prefer a menu for comms options or some sort of keyboard commands in addition to (or instead of) voice recognition.

If only because I feel like a tit talking to my computer. I'm old fashioned that way.

Eloquently put

I know what you mean though; I feel the same...

Redspear wrote:

Eloquently put

I know what you mean though; I feel the same...

It'd get worse when it started talking back to me.

"Command For F*cks Sake not recognised."

Sendraks wrote:

"Command For F*cks Sake not recognised."

Computer: "I think you ought to take a stress pill and think it over..."

Text chat would be less usable. Multiplayer games move more and more to menu-driven communications:

• * League of legends started out with two kinds of "pings" (visual and audible signals for all allies), then implemented some more for the most common communication needs.
  * Smite has a menu-driven quick communication system.
  * PlanetSide 2 has a menu-driven audio chat (predefined sentences), even though it supports in-game audio chat and text chat.

For the anecdote, in LoL and/or Starcraft 2 (son't remember which), menu-driven P2P chat has been considered in order to mitigate bad behaviours.

Menu-driven chat has two major advantages:

• * it is quicker than typing. This is especially important for fast-paced games.
  * the message is easily translated from the sending end to the receiving end.

I would love to have such a system in Escort Contracts. The cargo ship seems to go into combats when I would rather flee, and flee when I would like to take a fight.

Astrobe wrote:

The cargo ship seems to go into combats when I would rather flee, and flee when I would like to take a fight.

If you want to travel with someone who gets into the fights you want, you pay them...

cim wrote:

Astrobe wrote:

The cargo ship seems to go into combats when I would rather flee, and flee when I would like to take a fight.

If you want to travel with someone who gets into the fights you want, you pay them...

I'd just prefer the freighter Captains didn't go picking fights that they then expect me to win for them..

As Astrobe says, they're foolhardy when they should be cautious, and cautious when they should be bold.. I think the OXP's AI could really use a makeover.. Hopefully 1.79 will make that easier to do.

(come to think of it, I wonder if the odds-calculation is unintentionally working in reverse of what was intended? I remember many years ago on the C64, when the SSG game Carriers At War accidentally implemented the belt-armour values in reverse.. resulting in aircraft carriers that would go under at the drop of a hat, and destroyer-escorts that were almost impossible to sink.. which led to a rather hasty update being released)

Edit: Awesome! Over 30 years later, SSG are still in business! If you like strategy wargaming, you should check them out.. these guys were brilliant, and the quality of their AI was/is famous.. I cut my teeth on their first game, Reach For The Stars. And Carriers At War is still available, for modern PCs!

http://www.ssg.com.au/

The proof-of-concept OXPs that have been attempted mostly centered around the 'menu-driven' approach.

And my own thread in the Discussions centered mostly on expanding the existing comms messages while actual communication is not yet possible.

I think a tree-menu system a la a lot of FPSs could work here, considering the Z, X, C, and V keys are free, using Z, X, and C keys to navigate the menu and the V key to send/cancel. For example, you could type Z,C,X,V and transmit "Cease fire!", or type Z,C,Z,V and transmit "Get 'em!". Maybe if you type Z,C but wanted to type Z,Z you could press V without a full command sequence to cancel the operation and start again. You could have up to 27 different messages/commands this way. You can even have it replace the current B/N control scheme we have for MFDs and prim-able equips, expanding the amount of things OXP-ers could do greatly.