Space Dredgers ??!!! What is that...

[Chrisfs]

The playable space dredgers are amazing by themselves.

I tried one out today. It was 11 missiles!. It manuvers really slow and I don't think you can dock with a fuel station (I tried and couldn't). It has a 250 ton cargo bay.
It's pretty awesome. What is also fun is playing it and then playing a fer de lance.

The difference in handling is amazing.

[Commander McLane]

Did you ever encounter this super sized dredger which fills the entire scanner? It's already immensely big when seen directly after launch from the station although it's around the W buoy itself

That's something I never understood with the various incarnations of dredger.oxp. They are Deep Space Dredgers. Why would you ever find any of them somewhere else than in interstellar space?!?

[Killer Wolf]

IIRC from the original booklets, the dredgers were supposed to trawl space around anarchy worlds, salvaging all the dead ships no doubt. "deep" space apparently meant sun-distance : one of the guys at college claimed to have come across one after skimming some fuel. it was in a world marked as being beside by terrible civil wars, i believe, and he said it filled the front screen before he even got close enough for a scanner trace. this was on the BBC disk version. never saw it myself, or heard it corroborated but the guy wasn't a gobshte so draw your own conclusions......

[Screet]

That's something I never understood with the various incarnations of dredger.oxp. They are Deep Space Dredgers. Why would you ever find any of them somewhere else than in interstellar space?!?

Well, at some point they would have to return, and they do jump in when there's wreckages, which I think fits very fell. But I admit it should be a VERY seldom encounter. I do see them far too often.

That extreme dredger I only saw once, though....and it would still have been seen from a distance 3*distance of N-W buoys.

But they really should be in interstellar space, where I never saw them.

Funny thing is that I once had generation ships oxp in - and those were pretty often to be found in interstellar space. Sadly in a way that would instantly crash the player. Even if not, these ships would engage JUMP DRIVES in order to flee through witchspace from the fight. If the player was not killed by collision instantly, they genereated such immense witchspace entries that the player would be sucked in and then have another good chance of ramming them. Furthermore, such ships should not have a witchspace engine at all...and because that oxp was so much trouble, I simply removed it

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[Commander McLane]

That extreme dredger I only saw once, though....and it would still have been seen from a distance 3*distance of N-W buoys.

Or not, because Oolite doesn't draw ships at all which are more than about 1,000,000 meters from the player.

Funny thing is that I once had generation ships oxp in - and those were pretty often to be found in interstellar space. Sadly in a way that would instantly crash the player. Even if not, these ships would engage JUMP DRIVES in order to flee through witchspace from the fight. If the player was not killed by collision instantly, they genereated such immense witchspace entries that the player would be sucked in and then have another good chance of ramming them. Furthermore, such ships should not have a witchspace engine at all...and because that oxp was so much trouble, I simply removed it

Generation Ships don't have witchspace engines. I guess in your case they simply got sucked into the wormhole of another exiting ship.

But indeed, the way genships.oxp spawns the ships often leads to immediate collision with the player = Press Space moment. They should be placed further away, and not by addShips:, which causes them to appear out of witchspace clouds, which makes no more sense than jumping out and leaving wormholes.

In genships.oxp they neither jump out nor fight. If attacked, they simply disappear.

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Generation Ships don't have witchspace engines. I guess in your case they simply got sucked into the wormhole of another exiting ship.

In genships.oxp they neither jump out nor fight. If attacked, they simply disappear.

If attacked, they JUMP. They complain about being attacked and fire up their jump engines. At least that's what happened when I had that oxp in.

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[Commander McLane]

Hmm. Maybe Eric or somebody else has played with it?

This is what they do in the original genship.oxp:

Code: Select all

    VAMOOSE = {
        ENTER = (
            "commsMessage: This is an unarmed civilian colony vessel. We are under attack and withdrawing.", 
            broadcastDistressMessage, 
            "pauseAI: 30.0"
        ); 
        EXIT = (); 
        UPDATE = (landOnPlanet); 
    };

As you see, they don't jump out, but perform the AI-method landOnPlanet, which simply removes them from the Ooniverse and increases the number of landed ships on the closest planet, regardless of the distance to that planet. Used to work in interstellar space as well (obviously).

EDIT: Just tested it again with my genship.oxp. The Generation Ships still simply disappear when attacked.

[Screet]

EDIT: Just tested it again with my genship.oxp. The Generation Ships still simply disappear when attacked.

That's wierd. They did jump to a planet and took me with them in the bubble. Once I was far enough away and did follow through the bubble - just to find them at a W buoy of a planet and crash into them. However, I removed the oxp several months ago, so I cannot check wether it was different or maybe some problem from the game code.

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[Commander McLane]

Like I said above: Most likely the Generation Ship itself got sucked into the bubble of another ship. As a result it would create a huge bubble itself, and you would get sucked into that one.

[Lestradae]

I think the genships oxp could really do with a big overhaul to bring it into "modern times" anyways. Also thought that these ships, in interstellar space, should be somewhere in the distance, perhaps visitable but not in the middle of a big space battle.

Didn't you write something about a genship mission story you wanted to do, McLane, or am I mistaken?

A genship actually arriving in a system and causing civil war or somesuch, I believe ...



L

[Commander McLane]

I think the genships oxp could really do with a big overhaul to bring it into "modern times" anyways. Also thought that these ships, in interstellar space, should be somewhere in the distance, perhaps visitable but not in the middle of a big space battle.

Incidentally I just did this in my private version. And while I was at it, I also fixed a small error in its AI. Now the two messages the ship is sending when attacked have a small pause in-between, as it was actually intended. I think I am going to upload it soon.

Didn't you write something about a genship mission story you wanted to do, McLane, or am I mistaken?

A genship actually arriving in a system and causing civil war or somesuch, I believe ...

Indeed, and it is a quite old WIP. I was a little shocked to see that the script is in legacy. I am going to resume work on it some time, I guess, but there were two things preventing me from finishing it:

(1) Cataclysm, which was started much later, but finished much earlier. Okay, that one is out of the way, but there still is

(2) Oolite's still crappy collision detection. Probably it has improved now, I shall check it out in the latest versions. I got stuck in my OXP when it came to a space battle around the Generation Ship, but instead of fighting everything else just instantly exploded, because Oolite thought it had already collided with the much bigger Generation Ship. Not funny, if you want things to not explode immediatly.

[Screet]

(2) Oolite's still crappy collision detection. Probably it has improved now, I shall check it out in the latest versions. I got stuck in my OXP when it came to a space battle around the Generation Ship, but instead of fighting everything else just instantly exploded, because Oolite thought it had already collided with the much bigger Generation Ship. Not funny, if you want things to not explode immediatly.

It's said be better now...but my Caduceus still blows up in fuel stations and thargoid hives.

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[Micha]

I've not had the fortune of meeting a genship (despite having the OXP), but the original Elite manual has the following to say:

Generation Ships Before the development of the WS Thru-Space drive, in all its various forms, interstellar travel occurred in large, self-sustaining environment ships - Generation Ships - most of which have now been logged and their progress monitored. There are more than seventy thousand of these immense vessels ploughing their way through the galaxy, some of them into their 30th generation. The penalty for interference with such a vessel is marooning.

As such I'd expect in Oolite that they'd behave as follows:
1) A very rare chance encounter in interstellar space at a random (possibly very large) distance from where the player gets sucked in. I slightly disagree with Commander McLane in that they should always be far from the battle - after all, the Thargoids that pulled the player out of Witchspace into interstellar space probably found the GenShip and started attacking it in the first place. However, perhaps because it was being monitored by (GalCop?), there might be galactic navy defenders around.

2) Apart from communicating (perhaps not even that - after all, GenShip tech is hundreds of years old so probably no longer compatible) it can't do anything. Neither disappear nor fight back. OTOH, it should have an immensely strong hull since it was designed to withstand the rigors of deep space for hundreds of years so probably immune to most attacks by ordinary craft.

[DaddyHoggy]

I've not had the fortune of meeting a genship (despite having the OXP), but the original Elite manual has the following to say:

Generation Ships Before the development of the WS Thru-Space drive, in all its various forms, interstellar travel occurred in large, self-sustaining environment ships - Generation Ships - most of which have now been logged and their progress monitored. There are more than seventy thousand of these immense vessels ploughing their way through the galaxy, some of them into their 30th generation. The penalty for interference with such a vessel is marooning.

As such I'd expect in Oolite that they'd behave as follows:
1) A very rare chance encounter in interstellar space at a random (possibly very large) distance from where the player gets sucked in. I slightly disagree with Commander McLane in that they should always be far from the battle - after all, the Thargoids that pulled the player out of Witchspace into interstellar space probably found the GenShip and started attacking it in the first place. However, perhaps because it was being monitored by (GalCop?), there might be galactic navy defenders around.

2) Apart from communicating (perhaps not even that - after all, GenShip tech is hundreds of years old so probably no longer compatible) it can't do anything. Neither disappear nor fight back. OTOH, it should have an immensely strong hull since it was designed to withstand the rigors of deep space for hundreds of years so probably immune to most attacks by ordinary craft.

Should also be e-bomb proof (no engine to overload) and should cascade if destroyed by a q-bomb because there's no quirium fuel to be cascaded.

[Commander McLane]

Actually I am just thinking about making its placement a little more randomly, sometimes close, sometimes far. However, the legacy scripting system isn't very flexible in that compartment, so this change would mean throwing overboard the 1.65-compatibility.

I am a little more reluctant, as far as changing its behaviour is concerned—apart from fixing obvious bugs, that is. The OXPs author, Draco_Caeles, has given it a certain behaviour—ploughing through space, not interacting with anything, smashing every other vessel that gets in its way, but mysteriously disappearing if attacked. I think a good reason—and some communication with Draco_Caeles—would be needed to change that.

Part of the good reason is there, though. When the OXP was first released, there was less going on in interstellar space than nowadays. The Thargoids usually did not attack Generation Ships, so they were crushed by their sheer size. There was an attack by the player needed in order to disappear. But since interstellar space has become the grounds for huge battles between Navy and Thargoids, an NPC-attack on the Generation Ships has become much more likely. In my few test runs today the Generation Ships disappeared every time. And that's not how its meant to be. So a change in behaviour—making them absolutely steadfast on their way, oblivious to any interference—might be justified.

I think about that, and try to ask Draco_Caeles. He isn't out of the world—at least he wasn't when the issue if Generation Ships came up last time.

In the meantime, I've started setting up a Wiki page for the OXP. You can have a first look at http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Generation_Ship_OXP