Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

(But there is a silver-stripe at the horizon: it's called JavaScript!)

Will that make it go faster

TGHC wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

(But there is a silver-stripe at the horizon: it's called JavaScript!)

Will that make it go faster

Yes, because Ahruman will (hopefully!) be able to implement a proper removeCargo-method. The existing awardCargo simply was never designed for negative values.

awardCargo: with negative values is rejected with an error in 1.69. It was never intended to be used that way, and that it “worked” was a fluke.

Removing cargo is somewhat fiddly, because Oolite has two different ways of representing cargo internally. It’s one of those things that really needs a redesign…

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

Frame wrote:

5. if we go by the fan fiction, the slaves are allready "mind wiped" in a science fiction setting way as we know it.. ie slaves that do your every bidding and never revolt... so just selling them to the nearsest station is not that awfull since they are not induvidials with goals/opinions/love/hate in their life anymore.. depending on your view of this.. the best thing for them would maybe to put them to death but thats in there with active death help / morales etc... i think in this scenario im sort of a black mage, they got no lives anyway so lets be mercyfull and releive theire pain with a nice "hadoken" / read laser....

My point on on point 5 is that if they are mind wiped, how would you know what homeworld to goto. Fat lizards goto the Fat lizards homeplanet of which there are several.. again Scripting this would be a challenge, and i bet a very time consuming one too...

What fan-fic? I haven't read that one, although I remember something from (I believe) Elite's manual on that. On all the fanfic I've read, the slaves are in natura.

Citation from Statuos Quo Chapter Five page 106
So not a complete mind Wipe... but same deal...

I think that the most impressive fan-fic I've read on the theme is Brad Chacos' "Heaven's Reach". OK, It's FE2/FFE, but...

Idea (probably should be in Expansion Packs, but what the hey)

Give some systems -- Democracies, maybe -- Amnesty Stations (Amnoosty Interstellar?). They'll provide fuel and little else by way of equipment, and won't sell any cargo, or indeed buy any (all prices except slaves would be set to zero). They'll "buy" slaves from you at a fairly nominal sum. This represents a small thank-you fee supplied by this charitable organisation, who work to rehabilitate and repatriate slaves picked up in space. The actual work of the charity would of course be hidden from the player, but -- if a suitable message could be popped up on docking -- it could be made clear that this is what will happen. Pilots turning over slaves for, I don't know, 1Cr/tonne would be rewarded with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Of course, if you pick up slaves in a non-democratic system and you don't want to commit an offence, you'd have to scoop fuel or find some other way of getting to a democratic destination in order to liberate the slaves without docking at an intervening station, then launching with an illegal cargo -- a test of your moral imperatives! How far are you willing to go to do the right thing?

Maybe there could be escort missions attached: guard a convoy of liberated slaves to planet X? Carry a special cargo of "liberated slaves" yourself?

The last few days I noticed some high fees for picking up escape-pods. normal is a little bit for a pirate and a high one for an innocent trader. Lately I had several with a value of 500. (and if you bring a lot escapepods in you get several pages in your arrival report on docking)

Today I was attacked by a mosquito with offender status. I destroyed him, scooped his cargo and had mercy with the pilot. I also scooped him. On delivery the insurance payed me 500 credits as were it a trader. Must have been a rich pirate with good connections.

Tis the way of things!

The rich can afford to pay high monthly premiums to insure against the risk of being sold into slavery. After all if the scooper has a choice of picking up 500C for releasing the Commander or spending all that time hex-editing him in order to sell him for a measly 20 Credits, which will be pick?

Oolite Market Forces ensure that the rich are liberated in return for their insurance ransom and the poor are scooped and sold!

Not every commander is wise enough to carry insurance. If he has insurance, scooping his pod will give the message "You have captured / rescued [commander-name]". If not, your rather mercenary on board computer recognises that the Commander has no insurance and the best thing to do is convert him into a slave, giving the message "You have captured a slave". The on-board computer takes care of all the nasty buisness of halling the commander out of his pod in the Cargo-bay, slicing his brain up and putting him back in his pod to be sold on docking. As the Computer has a purly finacial outlook on life, all this is just reported as "capturing a slave." Watch your aft view for the Sparticus Brotherhood!

In code its done by giving the ship a piolt entry and a corresponding charcters entry. If none is given its a random chance of whether he has insurance and if so the value paid for returning him. EG in shipdata a:-
Sets the commander of this ship to hard_pirate1.

If you also set characters to:-
Gives the message when you scoop him of "You have caputured a minor renegade". When you dock you get a message saying "For capturing a minor renegade, a fat grey feline from Lave you are paid a bounty of 200C". The species is randomly generated (here he won't be human), the base bounty here is 200, but it may be more or less within random parameters.

I have done some testing with scripts and found out a way to add the slave to the cargo list and later remove him from the cargolist. To be truly honest, it is not my work, but the option was already build in in Oolite itself. And it only works with the cargo: slaves.

Everybody has probably noticed that on scooping a escape-capsule its contents is added as slaves and on docking you get messages in the arrival-screen and then these slaves are removed from the cargolist.

Starting with version 1.65 the scripter can also add these slaves in the form of pilots. I my current OPX I used a pilot in a schip. If such a ship is shot down, an escape capsule is ejected with the pilot and on scooping this capsule you get the pilot on board as slave. On the first docking this pilot disembarks and runs a special script.

I have been testing this a bit. You can also put the pilot directly into an escape-capsule. In that case it is not a real slave but a rescued pilot. But you can also put a pilot in a barrel. You must than define the cargo as slaves and the key: unpilotted must be set to false. If you now pick up the barrel is says picked up slave, (or even the name of the slave as you defined him right in characters.plist). It becomes added to the slaved in the cargolist and on docking he is removed again and the pilotscript is started.

I will write a mission based on this and add it as one of the missions in a future release of my UPS-courier.OXP

As announced in my last message, I added a slave-mission to my OXP. Now you can really free the slaves. Just one drawback: it is part of a larger OXP and the slavemission will not be the first you get and it will be a rare one.

Triggering points for getting this mission started are:

- Having delivered morethan 8 regular parcels
- Scooping an escape-capsule with a slavehunter
- Scooping a barrel with a revolting slave inside.

Only in this forum a hint: the escape-capsule and barrel will all come out of a pirate cobra mark III. This type of ship has a 85% chance of having a escape-capsule. But to extract the escape capsule you must give the pilot time to eject this thing. Just firing with a military laser on full power will leave you with nothing. And once you got the pilot scooped up, only 16% of them will be slavehunters.

This mission involves
- bringing several slaves to their homeplanet.
- destruction of a ground-based structure on the planet surface.

To linkpage for download: UPS-Courier

EDIT: Underscore replaced in link

Eric Walch wrote:

- Scooping a barrel with a revolting slave inside.

Tsk! What self-respecting slaver doesn't at least hose down their slaves before transporting them. The smell they leave otherwise can be unbearable....

Captain Hesperus

I'm looking forward to it!

However currently the wiki-page seems to be empty.

That's because Eric meant to post this link, http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/UPS_Courier.

Thanks! Now I've got it!