Oolite Bulletins

That is so much more awesome than the string idea!

I applaud your creativity.

If you saw someone do this though, you'd also be much more prepared for their return. You might also find it easier to decide when you wanted to engage them. So it might be a two edged sword. Of course that's half the fun

The question is how easly can all these ideas be coded into the game?

It really shouldn't be all that hard. The drone itself would work just like any other AI ship in the game. I think it would have three states - follow, return and wait.

In the follow state it could fly straight at a position directly above the target ship at a particular distance. By above I mean with respect to the orientation of the target ship. My reasoning being that ships don't have lasers that point straight up, so it would be a bloody good hiding spot for a small fast drone.

In the return state it would fly straight towards any point with a small sphere surrounding its mother ship, and upon entering that sphere enter the wait state.

In the wait state, it lies motionless until it gets scooped up.

The fun part about that is, if you told your drone to return and it came home and started waiting for you to scoop it, someone else could swoop in and scoop up your drone. My thinking is that anyone who scooped a drone could reprogram it and load into their own missile pylon.

To keep them fair, you should have to scoop them before you can send them off again after a new target. Additionally, they should only be able to follow or return for, say 5-10 minutes, at which time they enter into wait state automatically. When you scoop them you recharge them ready for another shot.

cool stuff. I've made a few different drones who could use such AI. one hurdle is, I think, that AI entities are quite remote from making the cut as cargo manageable..

nice hypothesis though.

Murgh wrote:

One hurdle is, I think, that AI entities are quite remote from making the cut as cargo manageable..

I'm afraid this sentence means nothing to me. Would you mind having another crack at it?

righto.
just that cargo items that exist outside the set list of cargo (the classic stockmarket), and would need to be specifically dispatched as cargo, to in turn become a space entity with roles and AI, could be more than a small problem. seems so unprecedented on a few levels.

I'm no programmer, and frequently in awe over how Giles can shape and bend the laws that make the Oolite logic stucture. only my intuitive take from being a follower of the developements for a while..

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but here goes. Is it possible to create a cargo item that can be scooped up, by your ship only?

I like the ettBeaconLauncher OXP, but other ships keep scooping up the beacon!

CaptKev wrote:

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but here goes. Is it possible to create a cargo item that can be scooped up, by your ship only?

I like the ettBeaconLauncher OXP, but other ships keep scooping up the beacon!

I don't think so.

I think that they would have to be made un-rescoopable for the player too, to make it impossible for NPCs to scoop it (and to make them loose interest in it).

Thanks for the reply Dr. Nil, how about a spawn of the cargo item, just scooped?

If the NPC ship scooped it but didn't get any cargo would it just fly away? If so maybe I could use CARGO_SCRIPTED_ITEM to not award anything to the NPC ship.

I don't think the NPC's flight logic responds well to financial disincentives. Perhaps just letting the NPC's cargo bay fill up would work, although that might have a knock-on gameplay effect.

One problem is, that the beacon is a piece of cargo. Many different ships haave a part of their AI which makes them scan for cargo and scoop it. If it's something you can scoop then they can scoop it too. If they pass by it while looking for things that can be scooped, they will go for it, not caring about what it does to them, I believe.

It's a good idea that you come up with on how to fix it. Unfortunately I don't think that it will work as it is now. Afaik there's no way to control AIs with script actions atm.

Perhaps giving the beacon SCAN_CLASS rock or SCAN_CLASS missile would stop it? It woudn't look too bad for the beacon to come up cyan on the scanner, since is was pylon launched.

Thanks for your replies everyone, unfortunetely it doesn't look like I can create a cargo item that can be scooped by your own ship, but ignored by the other NPC ships.

Might have a quick look at changing scavengerAI.plist, but I'm not too optimistic about it!