Oolite Bulletins

Yes, I know the whole control surface/wing thing makes no sense in space, but this isn't mean to be ultra-realistic is it?

Some ECM succeptability can be factored in just to make things trickier. I have the missile detonated with a proximity fuse so it doesn't cause any physical damage to the target. The control override isn't selective and so all cargo carried by the target is dumped - of course it may be that a ship isn't carrying anything in which case the weapon is wasted.

Sorry about the atmospheric comment, it's unimportant.

Now, about the missile's mechanism, how would it work? As far as I know you can't make acumpucture work with ships, and even if you could, the points would be different between (say) an Adder and an Anaconda.

What I mean is that to do this kind of thing, you need an extreme degree of control over the ship's systems - such as the kind you could get from inserting a trojan right into a computer node.

But if this was the case, why only to eject cargo when it could be made much more disruptive?
I suggest to make it not detonate, but to impact harmlessly on the hull and deploy a tiny 'Firefly' robot into the hull. Then, delay 10-15 seconds for the robot to find a node and infect it with the virus.
The effects could be random but cumulative from a list: dump cargo, dump fuel, change AI to 'drunken' (or alter the controls' keymap every 10 seconds for the player) engage HFI, fire lasers, purge energy banks, purge shields, etc. depending on which systems the virus managed to infect and disable/overload, keeping it up for, say a about minute before the ship's computer manages to destroy the trojan.


I'm not sure, but his should work even on the player and be annoying enough to give the missile's owner a definitive advantage in combat.

Nice bundle of ideas. Not sure whether all of them are scriptable, but some definitively are (like inflicting a fuel leak).

And I think the advantage given to the aggressor is somewhat balanced by the fact that the missile has to really hit first (as opposed to reach a certain range only).

I haven't really decided how the missile really works, but I'd imagine it involves some complex electronics that scan the target and identify the bits of code in its systems that it can manipulate or corrupt. It is possible to make this happen instantly at the press of a button (which is another rather devious weapon I have on the cards), but having it as a missile creates that extra bit of challenge to the player.

As to what other effects can be caused, it all depends on whether there's a suitable AI or script command that can be used. In this thread I've modified the EMP missile to cause a temporary loss of control; the same basic approach can be used to engage a ship's fuel injectors or remove an amount of fuel. It should also be possible to have these weapons affecting the player in some limited ways, so long as the necessary script action exists. So, if a pirate fired one of these missiles at the player, the standard removeCargo, awardFuel, etc commands could come into play. I doubt it's possible to mess up or override a player's control system though, as the player's ship won't be subject to AI changes.

Edit: Just noticed - this is my 100th post!!

It is possible to get performTumble to affect the player, although only for half a second or so.

It plays with the controls just enough to be a real pain in dogfights but I'm not sure you could do much else with it.