Oolite Bulletins

McLane wrote:

There are two issues here: One is giving other ships the role police, which could have strange side effects if they don't get scan_class CLASS_POLICE as well. (E.g. you probably could kill them like any trader without becoming offender, which would be strange for a "civilian" police-vessel.) But this is not the issue with Disembodied's post.

The populator is mend to never add police to anarchy systems. Instead it adds bounty hunters. Both have the same AI file and do almost the same except automatic detection of offences which is determined by scan_Class as mentioned by Cmdr James. They do react on distress calls that traders can send but the player can not. So the player is on its own and it should stay this way.

The polulator is also mend to set scan_Class it-selves. But for that to work properly the scan_Class should not be defined in the shipData.plist. Not defining a scanclass works well for the polpulator but not when added by oxp with a addShips command. Therefor all police ships now have an entry of their own in shipData with scan_Class set to police. When Lestradae wants police with neutral scan_class he can just as well define them as "hunter". It will be the same.

McLane wrote:

Remember, we only have Disembodied's observation that he met six police vipers. We don't know which primary role they had, so we don't know whether they were meant to be police in the first place.

The ships must have been added by an oxp. (deliberate or by a bug). In my opinion its a bug when not deliberate for a special mission. Only around stations police should feel save enough to be there.

There is a role based check which is compiled out with an #if 0 test, but even this is not as simple as you might expect, if the role is police, or interceptor, or wingman, then it is considered to be a police ship.

If it is like that, all should be well with my oxp.

I guess he intended to change from scanClass to role based checking. It seems to be only police and thargoids that are checked this way.

Yeah, I noticed this. Was really funny when I made a ship of Charlie player-available only to find out that its subentities had the role of thargoid

That`s changed for version 3.01 of my oxp, mind you!

Essentially, Ahruman`s presumed intended change would be the very same thing that I suggested up above, hope this has been/will be implemented.

The best comes last:

Disembodied wrote:

Just to clarify -- I don't have Realistic Shipyards installed!

It`s not as if one of us had the idea to actually ask ... until I thought of it half an hour ago ...

OK, so the "problem" definitely is not from the Realistic Shipyards oxp, again I can`t stop myself from adding.

(If anyone including McLane finds any real bug with my oxp don`t let this discourage you, tell me only then can I remove it!)

Case closed for me

L

@Eric Walch:

Thank you for the in-depth explanation of the present interplay of role and scan_class for police.

The way you describe it, there should not be a problem with my oxp, except as there will be no "civilian vessel" police. Hm, unintended, but not a problem.

I had a quick look, found a "Condor Flagship (System Vessel)" in the station`s aegis. It looked police-violet on the scanner and closed in when someone started firing away. As the Condor Flagship is unique to my oxp and only has the police role with that in, that seemed to be intended behaviour.

Come to think of it, I never actually found policing vessels that weren`t violet on my radar. My. No civilian police then.

Still think civilian policevessels/police-pretender pirates would make for an interesting oxp idea.

To clarify: police are currently identified by scan_class, and will continue to be. In earlier versions, the tests were inconsistent.

Directly from the shipdata.plist page on the wiki regarding scanclass:

Developer Note
Oolite uses scanClass internally to determine the behaviour of some ships (particularly with regard to who may shoot whom without incurring legal penatlties). Bear this in mind and don't allocate CLASS_POLICE or CLASS_THARGOID to ships lightly!

I think I understand Mclane's aversion to such a huge OXP. It certainly has unexpected affects on the universe being ultra inclusive and mostly untested. The problem is when new players install the OXP and see the unexpected consequences, they won't know that what they are seeing is a bug - they'll assume it's suppose to be that way - and so even those that agree to download the OXP are most likely having their gameplay experienced changed more than they'd like.

Even subtle changes to Roles and ScanClass can produce drastic changes to the game that aren't readily apparent right away, which is why I cautioned so strongly against messing with them in the first place. If you do persist with such endeavors in future versions Lestradae I think you should include a disclaimer.

matt634,

*sigh* ... sorry, what does ride you to fire it all up again? *looks at* *yawn*

I think I understand Mclane's aversion to such a huge OXP.

Lets just not go there again ...

It certainly has unexpected affects on the universe being ultra inclusive and mostly untested.

Where are they ... facts, please, for a change.

The problem is when new players install the OXP and see the unexpected consequences, they won't know that what they are seeing is a bug - they'll assume it's suppose to be that way

Bah, humbug. Have yet to be shown problematic unexpected consequences. Will remove them ASAP if the time comes that (finally) someone tells me where to look for them. They seem more mythical by far than the MNSR. I am sure the latter will be here someday, not so sure of the former.

Tell you something: I have found a few small, definitely non-gamebreaking bugs already. Going to repair them at some point in the future. Not sure if anyone has even noticed them, they are minor.

Same procedure as with every criticism of that kind: Tell me of a concrete problem, I look into it.

- and so even those that agree to download the OXP are most likely having their gameplay experienced changed more than they'd like.

How can they have a problem with the gameplay if they like the gameplay and what might have been changed has been changed without them even noticing that?

Even subtle changes to Roles and ScanClass can produce drastic changes to the game that aren't readily apparent right away,

Aha ... tell me where they are, facts, please, concrete observations ...

If you do persist with such endeavors in future versions Lestradae I think you should include a disclaimer.

Bah, humbug. The Realistic Shipyards, as far as I can see up to now at least, do not need an exclaimer more than any other OXP I can see running around here.

I can no longer take criticism of that kind serious here. If you have something factual, concrete to say about an observable, repeatable mis-behaviour of my OXP, say it and I`ll look into it.

Those fuzzy, fluffy allegations aimed at letting my oxp look like being especially buggy and exclusive to other oxp stuff are just irrelevant.

Bye.

L

@Lestrade. I like the OXP very much, but an inherent problem with it is that its basically every OXP on the Wiki in one package. Its not your fault, but certain OXPs are problematic on certain systems. As a specific, with Realistic Shipyards installed frame rate is about 5 fps with constant pauses in flight and a massive hang on exiting witchspace. Some of Charlies ships cause problems simply because (cool though they are) just push Oolite beyond the capacities of low-end machines. It isn't therefore really viable for players on medium spec computers. I'd suggest a 'lite' version that just has the Config and uses the new replacement-shipdata.plist. That would have the effect of only changing the ships the player actually has installed. A problem with having everything in one, is that its fiddley to remove a problem OXP. If its done with a replacement shipdata then the OXP has desired effect of repricing and re-roleing the OXPs the player has installed.

@Little Bear:

Some ... ships ... just push Oolite beyond the capacities of low-end machines.

I was thinking about posting a disclaimer that warns only to use this oxp on machines that are up-to-date speed-wise (meaning ~ 2GB RAM, 2GHz speed & and ok graphics card).

While I don`t really understand why someone doesn`t just buy a system in that range (I`ve seen some new ones in that span for sale for about 400 euro or less) a warning about that still makes sense.

I'd suggest a 'lite' version that just has the Config and uses the new replacement-shipdata.plist.

As far as I understood the replacement-shipdata.plist and replacement-shipyard.plist will only be in 1.72+? But, yes, when this option has been included, I think I will create a strict version (doing what you said) in addition to the full version again.

EDIT: Ups, overlooked that one:

it is that its basically every OXP on the Wiki in one package

No, it`s definitely not! It contains the 85 of the 90 oxps that contain playable ships plus the Fuel Tank oxp as that one is needed anyways when playing Realistic Shipyards (you really need to be able to run away).

But it does not contain any other oxp than those specific ones - hope to have clarified this idea that pops up every so often. There are a hundred+ oxps on the wiki Realistic Shipyards does not contain.

I'd also respectfully under sign this request - I tried to play your OXP, but found it too taxing.
My 1.65 installation had less than half of the individual OXPs, and was already at its limit, and I shouldn't have reclaimed the disk space so fast...

@Cmdr. Maegil:

I'd also respectfully under sign this request - I tried to play your OXP, but found it too taxing.

As said above, when the replacement plists become available I will create such a version again.

My 1.65 installation had less than half of the individual OXPs, and was already at its limit,

I`m not sure if Realistic Shipyards has any chance of running under 1.65, but I think not, as far as I know. I think it needs 1.71 at least.

Lestradae wrote:

My 1.65 installation had less than half of the individual OXPs, and was already at its limit,

I`m not sure if Realistic Shipyards has any chance of running under 1.65, but I think not, as far as I know. I think it needs 1.71 at least.

You misunderstood, I was talking about the previous installation that I had until recently when I updated to 1.71.

First, a disclaimer: I need to catch up with a lot of the stuff that's been going on with oolite in the last few weeks. (I've had to do some real work for a change, and working to strict deadlines is 'a bit' of a pain - no time at all for the fun stuff)

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here's my 2 pennies' worth: RS, even though it doesn't contain every single ship oxp there is, with 90% of them is still big enough to significantly influence most of the gameplay. As a consequence, it's fairly reasonable of people to assume any unexpected behaviour is coming from RS, instead of, say, much smaller oxps like Hotrods...

Sorry if you feel singled out, but it's something you might have to get used to.
Even more so if you're going to add multi-planet solar systems all over oolite as well... Still, it's a perfect opportunity to help hunting down all those elusive bugs!

@ Lestradae

Don't be so dismissive with your *yawns*

Have yet to be shown problematic unexpected consequences.

Both I and Mclane have pointed out that the unexpected consequences won't be easily seen by players who don't know what to expect. You've made it clear that you don't know exactly what you're doing regarding the various plists, so it's a bit silly to claim the OXP functions as intended when you don't know what you're intending. This is why I warned against changing the roles assigned by the original authors in an earlier post. I thought you abandoned the idea until today which prompted this latest post.

Aha ... tell me where they are, facts, please, concrete observations ...

I don't play with the ultimate version installed so I haven't witnessed any bugs. Given the probabilities of certain ships being selected and added a person could play for several days before seeing problems. But, I did download version 3.1 and took a very cursory look at the contents.

Here's some facts.

First, you have copied every single texture, model, image, etc... from the original OXP and set it up in a way that you're OXP loads last. Which means that if another author ever makes any change what so ever to any one of the 90 OXPs you've included, and a player downloads the new OXP, your OXP will override the changes and the player will see nothing new. I have this same problem on a much smaller scale with my own OXP that I need to correct.

Now for the roles:

• You have given several large ships like the leviathan and condor which are incapable of docking the shuttle role. This means that these ships will take off from the planet and try to dock with station resulting in explosively, unexpected results
  
  You have given an incredibly large number of ships the role wingman and interceptor including the pythonblackdog, renegade viper, and condor. This means these ships will appear in police formations with vipers
  
  You have given multiple ships like the ringhals and sidewinder the role scavenger even though they don't have fuel scoops. This means when they launch to scoop something... well I don't what will happen
  
  You have given an odd assortment of ships like the gigantic swatcondor the role escort. This means a player could see a naga with an escort containing a couple sidewinders, a few mambas, and a swatcondor
  
  You have given an equally odd assortment of ships like the uber-classy ferdelance or the unique moray medical boat the role hermit-ship. This means a player will see these very out of place ships acting like poor hermit miners
  
  You have given dozens of ships the role military which actually does nothing except show that you don't know what the military role does in the game (nothing)
  
  I could go on - bounty hunters with pulse lasers, miners without mining lasers, police with bounties high enough to make them fugitives, etc...

All this from a quick 15 minute check of your shipdata.plist - I spent days and days pouring over my plists and playtesting and I'm still finding bugs in Galactic Navy. Bottom line, I love the ship pricing structure you originally introduced in the OXP. I wasn't interested in the massive compilation of all ships in the ultimate edition because I chose not to download most them along time ago. I am concerned with this newest idea to change the roles originally assigned by the authors which you obviously don't understand. My advice would be to leave them alone or include a disclaimer.

Hi matt634,

Don't be so dismissive with your *yawns*

That entirely depends on what you have to say.

Which means that if another author ever makes any change what so ever to any one of the 90 OXPs you've included, and a player downloads the new OXP, your OXP will override the changes and the player will see nothing new.

That`s true, and if someone actually reads the text about this OXP to which I have devoted a wiki-page, they will find a reminder saying:

This OXP replaces the 85 ship oxps that were merged in and if one of those authors might choose to change them, this would not carry over into the Realistic Shipyards automatically.

You should consider that I (only) merged OXPs if they fulfilled the following conditions:

1. They contained playable ships already or (in one case) ships I considered interesting/funny enough to be made playable. I repaired/corrected mistakes/bugs I found in those OXPs and merged the result.

2. They did not contain much more than additional ships. I did by no means "merge everything in". I merged oxps which`s contents was ships 95%+.

3. The merged OXPs were as good as abandoned in nearly every case. And I say nearly only because Selezen after seeing the merger has decided to take up his Dream Team ships again. I bet that by far most of the oxps I merged just get a new lease of life by that, and will not be further developed over the course of the next years.

You have given several large ships like the leviathan and condor which are incapable of docking the shuttle role. This means that these ships will take off from the planet and try to dock with station resulting in explosively, unexpected results

Happens very rarely. I have been promised a new AI for very big ships that takes their docking problems into account more, by the way. It`s on my To-Do list for version 3.02.

You go on explaining how I have given all kinds of new ships all kinds of roles. How should this be a problem? The only one potential problem you found is if someone goes actually looking if scavenging ships really scoop their loot. Who who just plays this game is ever going to do that? You see diverse ships who scuttle around in the loot, if some actually scoop and others don`t - this is a game! It just has to look like scooping, doesn`t have to be it?!

See, the "point" of Realistic Shipyards is that it basically does three things:

1. It changes the pricing and TL span with which you can buy ships.

2. It adds in actually all ship oxps that contain playable ships for convenience but five (which contain more than "just" additional ships AND some are still worked on by their authors, which is why they are not in). Result: No cluttered AddOns folder, no downloading 85 oxps. Just the one and loads of new ships to buy in one go.

3. As there are many more ships to take from, so the basic roles (trader, pirate, hunter, wingman, police, sunskimmer etc.) are distributed more broadly. So you meet, as someone formulated it, "old friends in new roles". That`s WANTED.

I assumed that Oolite`s role system basically works as intended. So, if there are now 500 different ships instead of 25 of the original ones only, it makes sense that the game now chooses from a broader spectrum of ships for the same roles. What`s so strange about that?

And, by the way, I followed the advice not to go over the top with the roles. I did not use any unique or mission-specific roles for non-unique or non-mission-specific ships. I just used the basic standard ones.

Concerning the police ships there might (note, might, as in could be) one or the other hiccup due to the scan_class / role of police being reworked by Ahruman as we speak. As far as I understood they meant something different before December 2007, mean something different now, might mean something different again in a year from now. So I can just wait and see how the NMSR deals with that and then, if nescessary, modify accordingly.

One last word concerning my dismissiveness. It`s very simple.

If you have some specific criticism that doesn`t just have fluffy insinuations in it but says something concrete, I will go to great length of responding to it, thinking about it, taking it aboard completely or partially if I find that criticism has merit and will change things accordingly.

If I find some fluffy fuzzy stuff thrown in front of me like a heap of garbage in the hope that some of it sticks I will just yawn and tell you to go away.

And if someone should again find the nerve to publicly insult me here on the forum, well after I was told that the moderators are too "friendly" to step in at such behaviour and hope for self-regulation in such matters, I would in the future respond accordingly and build on the hope that they will be equally friendly with me if I answer on the same level.

Matt, concerning the nature of my answers, there is a simple rule to gauge my reaction for the future: You reap what you sow.

I forget & forgive destructiveness the moment someone (anyone!) comes up with something constructive anyways, and be it to show me concrete, factual (!) problems with something I do.

But I`m not interested in meaningless little statusgames.

L

Kaks wrote:

RS, even though it doesn't contain every single ship oxp there is, with 90% of them is still big enough to significantly influence most of the gameplay. As a consequence, it's fairly reasonable of people to assume any unexpected behaviour is coming from RS, instead of, say, much smaller oxps like Hotrods...

Sorry if you feel singled out, but it's something you might have to get used to.

Even more so if you're going to add multi-planet solar systems all over oolite as well... Still, it's a perfect opportunity to help hunting down all those elusive bugs!

Hi Kaks!

I have no problem at all with searching bugs` source in the RS! As you say, they contain loads of ship-related stuff, and if something is strange with a ship it is not unreasonable to take the RS into account.

It just depends for me on the motivation and the goal-orientedness (can you say this in english that way?) of the singling out.

If someone tells me "look into it, about there could be this and that strange going-on with your oxp" I`ll have a look, think about it, and perhaps, if something is found, put it on my slowly growing To-Do list for version 3.02.

But if someone just wants to bash me around, attempts to get unfriendly and/or arrogant with me or throws vague allegations in here that I couldn`t even follow-up if I wanted to as they are too vague, they will only get a reply on the same level in the future, as I don`t see why I should bother with that. I won`t have with it, period.

One of the epitomes of this is this thread here. Read through it. A few people, actually the usual suspects, read that Cmdr. Maegil had seen something strange with Vipers in it.

They assumed that it just had to be Realistic Shipyards because I tampered with the roles yada yada yada.

Until, after a day of debates, I found my head and asked Maegil if he actually had the Realistic Shipyards OXP in! And guess what: No

I think that says it all.

Have a nice day

L

EDIT: Oh, and PS ... we will see if I will proceed with the Solar Systems oxp. Because if the bashing attempts continue, and I see the danger of that getting doubled, someone else can do it if they like and the vocal minority can ... (<-- insert your choice here)