Oolite Bulletins

Could do it that they either eject a pod (big bounty if captured) or eject a mine. 50 : 50 of either

"You'll never get me alive!!!"

He He. Might do it as a pod-mine. The renegade always pods out, but somtimes his pod is wired to blow like a q-mine! (20% chance) . He'll send a hail when he ejects. If he's in sucide mode it'll be a q-mine related threat, if not it'll be a plea. Too mean or fun?

Ahh, I see.
My experience was that everytime I jumped into a particular system (can't remember which and it probably doesn't matter) onroute to sun skim I always encountered the same Renegade who either blew me up in combat or got me with a Q mine when blew him up - this must have happened 5 or 6 times. After that I just removed the OXP.

My suggestion, if its possible, is that if the Renegade is going to use a Q bomb then he is worth more bounty, otherwise you seem to get more reward for an easier oppenent.

As its stands each renegade has the role "hardpirate", but there are 13 entries ranging from an Renegade Adder to a Renegade Asp Mk II. A hardpirate is added if the dice pick the chance of one being in the system. Which hardpirate appears is also random.

You were probabley unlucky to always meet a renegade who happend to use q-mines.

Only the top 5 spawn q-mines as an attack (these have 1000 to 2000 C bounties). Thinking of changing it so they don't use q-mines (as such) anymore, but when when they die each type of renegade always launches a pod. Scooping the pod will pay 200 to 2000 when you had him in at a Station depending on how hard the renegade was. So I'll C&P 16 entries for the renaged pods. 13 will be normal pods, paying a bounty when you scoop them, but 3 will be pods that blow like a mine! Oolite picks a pod from the list to randomly eject, so 13 times out of 16 it will be normal but occasionally you'll get a nasty suprise. If the pod is gonna blow then you get a message from the pod threatening this.

LittleBear wrote:

Only the top 5 spawn q-mines as an attack (these have 1000 to 2000 C bounties). Thinking of changing it so they don't use q-mines (as such) anymore, but when when they die each type of renegade always launches a pod. Scooping the pod will pay 200 to 2000 when you had him in at a Station depending on how hard the renegade was. So I'll C&P 16 entries for the renaged pods. 13 will be normal pods, paying a bounty when you scoop them, but 3 will be pods that blow like a mine! Oolite picks a pod from the list to randomly eject, so 13 times out of 16 it will be normal but occasionally you'll get a nasty suprise. If the pod is gonna blow then you get a message from the pod threatening this.

Right, OoK, got it. Did I miss the bit about adding the number I first thought of cos I get an answer of 7.5

LittleBear wrote:

but 3 will be pods that blow like a mine! Oolite picks a pod from the list to randomly eject, so 13 times out of 16 it will be normal but occasionally you'll get a nasty suprise. If the pod is gonna blow then you get a message from the pod threatening this.

Could you have the pods just damage a random piece of equipment (probably Fuel Scoops makes sense actually) as you scoop it rather than have a Q bomb explosion?
Or possibly if we had some technobabble about the Fuel Scoop field nullifying the Q bomb if the pod is scooped in time then it adds a bit more tension to the whole event as well as giving an alternative to just injecting out of the way. I.E. Blow the renegade away, pod ejects threatening death and destruction, try to scoop it before the explosion.
Sounds good to me but then I'm not going to be (possibly) coding it!

3 out of 16 = 3 divided by 16 mutilplied by 100 = 18.75% chance of a pod-mine! Have to have 13 differnet entries for the normal pods (as each type has a different rank, spieces, orgine and bounty :- eg "For capturing a Renegade Captain, a furry feline from Beatle, you are paid a bounty of 1,500 Credits") then three cloned entries for the explosive pods to make the total of 16 with the same role.

If you managed to scoop the pod before it blows then you would get the bounty and it woudn't blow up. Wouldn't need any coding, this is just the way Oolite works. My pod-mines are pods as far as Oolite is concerned, so can be scooped. BUT the normal pod has homeAI (it just heads for the station and docks), these have timebombAI (the wait a bit then blow). So if you are quick enough you can scoop the pod before it blows and the scooping disables the bomb. Tricky though!

EDIT: I'll use a custom AI. You have 20 seconds to scoop the pod-mine, after that it'll blow!

Famous Renegade last words:

"When you get to Hell, save me a seat!"
or
"You might have got my ship, but I'm gonna get yours too!"
or
"Say hello to my little friend!"
or
"Is there anyone you want your remains posting to?"
or
"What does this button do?"
or
"Hah! I fitted a Witchdrive Fuel Injector in this Escape Pod! See ya, sucker!"
or
"I'll see to you, and your little Trumble too, eee heh heh heh!"

Captain Hesperus
"Long hours 'studying', plus double strength coffee add a pack of Pro Plus and you end up with the mind of Captain Hesperus. Be warned!"

Shame on you! You forgot the most classic, the most cliché, the always easy "You'll never get me alive!!! MWAHAHah*cof*cof*cof*!!!"

LittleBear wrote:

...but as the renegadeAI is so dead set on fighting...

You're telling me. If I find one and have the Cloaking Device activated, they constantly try to lock on. You know that "boop-boop-boop" sound the radar makes when a normal ship turns hostile?

Try having that repeat. Over and over and over. Until you turn the Cloak off or they're destroyed. Constantly trying to go hostile and failing, not even turning around to attack me.

Sorry about that. It seems to be the way the AI searches for a target. When you cloak your ship "flickers" in and out of "existance" as it were. So the AI gets caught between "Target Found" and is switched to "Attack Ship", but then as you flicker off again it gets a "target lost", goes to look for targets, you flicker on again and so on in the loop. Not sure really how to get round this, but the Beeping is every time it switches to Attack Ship. Think of it as the renegade thinking: "I know he's here somewhere I'll just wait until he runs out of energy and has to uncloak." Some of the Assassins.oxp nasties have cloak jammers, but I didn't issue the Renegades with them, as these seemed more approprate for mission ships!

You could add to AI some "I'll go where I last saw him" navigation?
but that might be a bit too much micromanagement.

Unfortunately I don't know any "let's fire randomly in that direction methods or tricks.

So the best any AI could do is try to ram the player ship.