Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

It's called "Cat (Cougar)", at least in the ship list, and "Cat Mark I (Cougar)" above the screenshot in the infobox.

I am quite certain there is a story behind it. If I'm not mistaken oldships.oxp contains ships that appeared in certain Elite-versions only. Look [url=ttp://oldsat.alioth.net/node/21]here[/url] for a little more information. It seems that "Cougar" was an alternative name for the "Cat" (probably on one platform it was "Cat", on the other it was "Cougar"?).

Well then - the name won't conflict with an existing OXP. Not a problem.

I have to tidy up the typhoon OXP anyway.

Note - my cat actually looks like a cat <smug> but I havn't skinned it yet... I hear there is more than one way...

Is is appropriate to post a different thread per OXP discussed?

Simon B wrote:

Is is appropriate to post a different thread per OXP discussed?

Not only appropriate, but much easier to re-visit afterwards, if the thread name gives a hint which OXP (or problem, or question, or ...) is discussed.

There are even people here on the board who start dozens and dozens of different threads on basically the same OXP.

Oh, and if it is about discussion/questions/error reports concerning an existing OXP, it might be a good idea to find the OXP's thread in the Expansion Pack-forum of the board and post right into the thread. The development of most OXPs is accompanied by a thread in that forum. Or at least the release of a new OXP is usually announced there, so it would be appropriate to post any feedback in the announcement-thread. It may be worthwhile to scroll back two or three index pages in order to find the thread related to an older OXP.

Simon B wrote:

Typhoon Class "Noseoid*" Cruiser (T Cruiser)

*Nickname needed... preferably to fit the theme. (Though using ooniverse animals is an intreguing idea...)

Mustang? Buffalo?

Oops, had overlooked your long post. I think I can answer one or two questions.

Simon B wrote:

The cougar and cruiser to have military varients. Coyote to have a high-tech only ultra-fast version. (Star Runner?)

For ultrafast ships see also about anything Charlie ever designed (the ships which are named after birds of prey).

Simon B wrote:

*** Is there an existing frangible ship someplace? ***

Lots of them. Most notably the Imperial Courier, all ships from military.oxp and renegades.oxp. And of course the very famous Darkwheel Cobra (which resembles the Cobra as seen on the cover page of the Dark Wheel novella). And some others as well.

Simon B wrote:

I wanted to make the Tuatara frangible, so you could blow it up in three bits. Maybe script a spin if one pontoon gets destroyed, and a player action to jettison pontoons maybe? (Does this sound doable to you guys?)

The trouble is that I need the exhaust to go away when an engine is blown off. I tried just adding the exhaust to the engine model in the shipdata.plist - but it didn't render. I'm guessing you cannot have subsystems of subsystems - which would be sane-ish.

So, say, a jettison action would have to change the whole model assigned to the player to be the life-section only. With two pontoons, dead, floating off at angles.

I'd also need (death?) actions for the cases where one or other engine is the first to go or the main section goes. If the first two, I need another action for the next destroyed model.

Much of this seems (somehow) doable. But only by using some tricks. Of course the basics are that whenever a model is frangible, you can shoot and destroy its subentities one by one, and the main entity, together with the rest of the subentities will fly on. They still make up one "super entity", if you will. This leads to some obvious issues in your case:

• If the main entity is killed, the whole thing disappears. There are no subentities without a main entity.
• Main entity and subentities do not care how they are actually connected. Example: Take the Hognose towing a ship, or the GRS Ship towing a buoy. In both cases the towing ship is the main entity, and the towed object, the towing line, and the attached hook are three subentities. If you manage to get close enough to shoot at the towing line and take it out, the rest of the bunch continue to be in unity. The Hognose or GRS Ship still tows whatever is attached to it, although the visible connection is gone (because actually everything is one entity). The same would apply to a ship's pontoon if attached by a small bridge. If the whole thing is frangible you can kill the bridge, but ship and pontoon would still act as if connected. No way of overcoming this.
• And as you have already discovered, subentities cannot have subentities. Which also means that you can't have partial frangibility. You can't group some subentities into a cluster that can only be taken out as a whole. And you can't exempt some of your subentities from frangibility. It's a take-it-or-leave-it for the whole ship.

What you can (and have to) do with scripting (in your case a bundle of ship-scripts, which BTW also replace the legacy death_actions), is to nonchalantly replace your ship with a completely different one altogether. So let's say you are firing on your enemy's pontoon and blast it to oblivion. As you observed, the exhaust would continue to exist. Makes no sense. So in the this.shipDied-part of the ship script you would remove the whole ship and replace it with a different model that is lacking the pontoon and the respective exhaust. You would of course need to check whether the other pontoon has already been destroyed or still does exist, and choose the replacement model accordingly. This has the bonus that the replacement models (left pontoon only, right pontoon only, no pontoons at all) could have reduced speeds in their shipdata. So the crippled ship would lose thrust and speed (and probably manoeuverability as well).

There is no really satisfying method of removing the existing ship yet (replacing it is no problem), but there will be one in 1.72.

I doubt strongly, though, that this replacement-technique will work for player ships (for the game engine the player is his ship; if you remove the ship, what is left of him?). Which might be a drawback for your plans.

Simon B wrote:

I have noticed that NPCs can get more than one laser to a facing if they are using multi-models. (Don't see how this could work with a player. )

It doesn't.

Simon B wrote:

A single ship is excessively dangerous if it has more than 2 weapons on each facing. I'm thinking 3-6... I can use a cluster of legs like a starfish wrapping prey. (So I only need one model repeated.) I can use the traditional SF spot of light for a power supply/engine, and little red balls for missiles. Make it frangible so it's fun to blow up.

So, if I give it three forward military lasers, and a collection of ECM hardened missiles? (Nukes?) And script carefully - it shows up and attacks everything!

All of that has been said and done before. It's kind of the point of the above mentioned military.oxp and renegades.oxp. For the cluster of legs see especially the Hydra. I'd strongly suggest that you study these.

And yes, before you ask: If a subentity that carries a laser is destroyed, the laser stops working. Which is BTW the most satisfying tactic to take on a Hydra: Kill all its nasty laser needles one by one, and then slowly roast its (defenceless) main entity.

Although I have to say: A ship with a couple of front military lasers would be a formidable opponent. The existing multiple-laser ships (the Weeviloid Hunter is also notable, as the first of its kind and basically a design study for the use of multiple lasers and subentities on ships) only have beam lasers in their subentities. Which gives a player with one military laser an advantage, because of the smaller firing range of a beam laser.

Simon B wrote:

Now ... what does it take to destroy a station?

As it is now, only enough firepower. (And we are talking about magnitudes more here than any ship in Oolite could or should ever have.) Main stations were programmed to be indestructible, however, in previous versions of Oolite. And they are still immune to q-bombs, although I don't know why and how that works, and the immunity does not extend to energy bombs.

Commander McLane wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Is is appropriate to post a different thread per OXP discussed?

Not only appropriate, but much easier to re-visit afterwards, if the thread name gives a hint which OXP (or problem, or question, or ...) is discussed.

So noted - I'll have to sort myself out.

While I'm mostly doing ships as a way to learn how the modelling works, I seem to have a number of viable general release oxp candidates already.

I should seek feedback before going cathedral on everybody.

Oh, and if it is about discussion/questions/error reports concerning an existing OXP, it might be a good idea to find the OXP's thread in the Expansion Pack-forum of the board and post right into the thread. The development of most OXPs is accompanied by a thread in that forum. Or at least the release of a new OXP is usually announced there, so it would be appropriate to post any feedback in the announcement-thread. It may be worthwhile to scroll back two or three index pages in order to find the thread related to an older OXP.

Oh sure - that's standard board practice. ;)

Commander McLane wrote:

Oops, had overlooked your long post. I think I can answer one or two questions.

usefully too, I may add...

Simon B wrote:

The cougar and cruiser to have military varients. Coyote to have a high-tech only ultra-fast version. (Star Runner?)

For ultrafast ships see also about anything Charlie ever designed (the ships which are named after birds of prey).

I can look - however, I didn't mean really ULTRA fast.

An early ship I did had a speed of 998milli-LS ... interpreting LS as light-speed, that would be relativistic in what we are pleased to call the real world.

As the ooniverse doesn't do relativity (maybe a patch from me later?) there's nothing stopping a speed of 200LS or so... except maybe that smashing into stars isn't much fun.

Ah - and, presumably, if I point a ship at a lkely object, hit the jump drive, and keep going, I won't eventually reach the next star...

Simon B wrote:

*** Is there an existing frangible ship someplace? ***

Lots of them. Most notably the Imperial Courier, all ships from military.oxp and renegades.oxp. And of course the very famous Darkwheel Cobra (which resembles the Cobra as seen on the cover page of the Dark Wheel novella). And some others as well.

At some point I'll have to get to the novellas.

Before I plow in, I really need a pointer at one with a clear, and recent, enough script. Still, I can read physics papers - how hard can it be?

• If the main entity is killed, the whole thing disappears. There are no subentities without a main entity.
• Main entity and subentities do not care how they are actually connected.
• And as you have already discovered, subentities cannot have subentities.

What you can (and have to) do with scripting (in your case a bundle of ship-scripts, which BTW also replace the legacy death_actions), is to nonchalantly replace your ship with a completely different one altogether.

I doubt strongly, though, that this replacement-technique will work for player ships (for the game engine the player is his ship; if you remove the ship, what is left of him?). Which might be a drawback for your plans.

Could be - though not insurmountable.
It's just that players don't get to enjoy going in a spin.

For the cluster of legs see especially the Hydra. I'd strongly suggest that you study these.

Right - off to oxp-land.

Although I have to say: A ship with a couple of front military lasers would be a formidable opponent.

It is - the Iguana is built this way.

It's not quite as bad as having one front laser with double the strength, since they don't always both hit at the same time. It took me a while to realize why each iguana spike is a separate model.

The existing multiple-laser ships (the Weeviloid Hunter is also notable, as the first of its kind and basically a design study for the use of multiple lasers and subentities on ships) only have beam lasers in their subentities. Which gives a player with one military laser an advantage, because of the smaller firing range of a beam laser.

I come to the same conclusion following the same reasoning - the Tuatara NPC ship mounts twin fwd beam lasers.

Simon B wrote:

Now ... what does it take to destroy a station?

As it is now, only enough firepower. (And we are talking about magnitudes more here than any ship in Oolite could or should ever have.) Main stations were programmed to be indestructible, however, in previous versions of Oolite. And they are still immune to q-bombs, although I don't know why and how that works, and the immunity does not extend to energy bombs.

Well - stations shouldn't be affected by anything which acts on witchdrives - but then, neither should system ships.

http://oolite.org/images/gallery/
... so this gallery shot of a part-damaged coriolis station is not any time soon?

(Note - I cannot get the griff-krait oxp either.)

Coming up with original ship concepts is expected to be tricky... I'm trying to take the approach of messing with the player's psychology - as in the Arachid (there must be an existing ship using that name - c'mon...) which is very fast, but impractical in many ways. The idea is to produce a "must try" ship which is not annoying enough to give up.

There's noview port and starboard (big pontoons in the way), the hud is pretty, but blocks the bottom third of the screen, and you have to remember not to aim right at the station in hyperdrive, or you'll hit it. It's very light and weak and spindly.

OTOH: if you get drive locked by powered ships, you can often coast right past them. And you can run away from most anything.


The Tuatara is a multi-part experiment - lets see if I can add a turret, the models from behemoth say they are only 9m across...

Disembodied wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Typhoon Class "Noseoid*" Cruiser (T Cruiser)

*Nickname needed... preferably to fit the theme. (Though using ooniverse animals is an intreguing idea...)

Mustang? Buffalo?

... and fits with the idea of a light cruiser intended for military use?

Hmmm... mustang I suppose. "Bald Eagle" is right - but doesn't sound right. Raptor maybe?

(I was hoping to dapple the mustang (ford) logo for use in the appaloosa skin...)

Some Mythalogical names maybe? Fendric Class Cruiser?

The Griff Krait is on the Wikki OXP page, so you should be able to get it there.

Simon B wrote:

the very famous Darkwheel Cobra (which resembles the Cobra as seen on the cover page of the Dark Wheel novella). And some others as well. At some point I'll have to get to the novellas.

Here is a good picture of the DW Cobra

And here is the Dark Wheel Novella

Simon B wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Typhoon Class "Noseoid*" Cruiser (T Cruiser)

*Nickname needed... preferably to fit the theme. (Though using ooniverse animals is an intreguing idea...)

Mustang? Buffalo?

... and fits with the idea of a light cruiser intended for military use?

Hmmm... mustang I suppose. "Bald Eagle" is right - but doesn't sound right. Raptor maybe?

(I was hoping to dapple the mustang (ford) logo for use in the appaloosa skin...)

"Buffalo" has a decent military pedigree. It was an American carrier-based fighter in WWII, the Brewster F2A. And there were "Buffalo soldiers" too. Or there's "Wolverine", or "Grizzly".

If you want to go mythological and American, you could try Thunderbird (although – at least in Glasgow – that's more associated with a refreshing drink than with a mythological creature... then again people do often see visions after drinking it), or Wendigo.

Simon B wrote:

An early ship I did had a speed of 998milli-LS ... interpreting LS as light-speed, that would be relativistic in what we are pleased to call the real world.

Well, you have to note that speeds, sizes and distances don't make much sense in Oolite, anyway. We all assume that LS means the speed of light, but even in a Cobra III you can go faster. It has a normal top speed of 0.35 LS. J-speed is three times the normal top speed, so for the Cobra III it is 3 times 0.35 = 1.05 LS. It gets even madder if you measure the distance you cover during a certain time period. In the given example of a Cobra III you proceed a little over 10 km per second in J-speed (precisely 10500 m). Which means that in Oolite the speed of light appears to be 10 km/s (in vacuum). Or probably there is no vacuum in the Ooniverse, but space is immeasurably denser than water on earth (which will slow down light, but not to just 1/30000 of its vacuum speed)? Anyway, there are no relativistic effects whatsoever to be expected at a mere 10 km/s (a rocket needs more than 11 km/s to even leave the earth's gravitational field, and Mssrs Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins did not come back considerably less older than the people they left behind ).

Which just proves the next point:

Simon B wrote:

As the ooniverse doesn't do relativity (maybe a patch from me later?) there's nothing stopping a speed of 200LS or so... except maybe that smashing into stars isn't much fun.

Indeed, it doesn't do relativity. (It doesn't even do Newton, for that matter. )

Simon B wrote:

Ah - and, presumably, if I point a ship at a lkely object, hit the jump drive, and keep going, I won't eventually reach the next star...

No, won't happen, the way Oolite works. Your current system is the whole universe there is. The only thing you can do is get further and further away from its center (which--internally--is the witchpoint beacon; not that it would make a difference if it was the planet or the sun). By doing so you would increase the co-ordinate values of your position, but you never could diminish them relative to another witchpoint beacon (or planet, or sun), because no other such item exists at any given time.

Notably, this was different for at least some versions of 8-bit-Elite. There you could reach the next system by flying straight forward from a point in interstellar space , as Little Bear tested once (too lazy now to search for it and post the link to the thread here; perhaps you stumble across it yourself, it wasn't that long ago, couple of weeks perhaps).

Simon B wrote:

Simon B wrote:

*** Is there an existing frangible ship someplace? ***

Lots of them. Most notably the Imperial Courier, all ships from military.oxp and renegades.oxp. And of course the very famous Darkwheel Cobra (which resembles the Cobra as seen on the cover page of the Dark Wheel novella). And some others as well.

Before I plow in, I really need a pointer at one with a clear, and recent, enough script. Still, I can read physics papers - how hard can it be?

I'm not quite sure what you mean with 'script' here. Subentities, frangibility and the like are governed by shipdata.plist, not by a script. If you are asking for a script that does specific things when a subentity is shot at, I think none exists yet. The only scripter I could imagine could have done something like you are planning so far would be Eric Walch in the GRS buoy repair.oxp. You can ask him.

Simon B wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Now ... what does it take to destroy a station?

As it is now, only enough firepower. (And we are talking about magnitudes more here than any ship in Oolite could or should ever have.) Main stations were programmed to be indestructible, however, in previous versions of Oolite. And they are still immune to q-bombs, although I don't know why and how that works, and the immunity does not extend to energy bombs.

Well - stations shouldn't be affected by anything which acts on witchdrives - but then, neither should system ships.

Not quite right, because it is not the witchdrive mechanism as a mechanical feature that triggers the reaction, but the quirium contained in it. And as you can buy it as fuel in the station, it has to be present on the station, probably in large tanks that can easily get caught in the vicinity of a 'blue sphere of death'--unless we assume that main stations are using a sophisticated shielding system for the tanks, in order to prevent exactly this from happening: a q-bomb attack from outside that would blow away the whole station.

Simon B wrote:

http://oolite.org/images/gallery/
... so this gallery shot of a part-damaged coriolis station is not any time soon?

See here.

Simon B wrote:

Coming up with original ship concepts is expected to be tricky... I'm trying to take the approach of messing with the player's psychology - as in the Arachid (there must be an existing ship using that name - c'mon...) which is very fast, but impractical in many ways. The idea is to produce a "must try" ship which is not annoying enough to give up.

Something it shares with a lot of Charlie's ships (no wonder if you think about how they were designed).

Commander McLane wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Well - stations shouldn't be affected by anything which acts on witchdrives - but then, neither should system ships.

Not quite right, because it is not the witchdrive mechanism as a mechanical feature that triggers the reaction, but the quirium contained in it. And as you can buy it as fuel in the station, it has to be present on the station, probably in large tanks that can easily get caught in the vicinity of a 'blue sphere of death'--unless we assume that main stations are using a sophisticated shielding system for the tanks, in order to prevent exactly this from happening: a q-bomb attack from outside that would blow away the whole station.

...or that there's a difference between "inert" Quirium, sitting in tanks in the station, and the "activated" Quirium inside a ship's hyperdyne drive train. Or (insert technobabble here).

Disembodied wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Simon B wrote:

Well - stations shouldn't be affected by anything which acts on witchdrives - but then, neither should system ships.

Not quite right, because it is not the witchdrive mechanism as a mechanical feature that triggers the reaction, but the quirium contained in it. And as you can buy it as fuel in the station, it has to be present on the station, probably in large tanks that can easily get caught in the vicinity of a 'blue sphere of death'--unless we assume that main stations are using a sophisticated shielding system for the tanks, in order to prevent exactly this from happening: a q-bomb attack from outside that would blow away the whole station.

...or that there's a difference between "inert" Quirium, sitting in tanks in the station, and the "activated" Quirium inside a ship's hyperdyne drive train. Or (insert technobabble here).

Here is a (of course non-canonical) reference for the shields theory.

Heh - I've finally figured out that when NPCs activate their witchdrives, a wormhole appears. This lets everyone dive through.

Technically this explains why npcs seldom attempt to flee by engaging their witchdrives - the hostiles can just follow for free, giving them a fuel advantage. Still, hit hyperdrive the moment you emerge from witchspace and you're away.

Also explains how it is that you can trace down the constrictor - people can tell here he jumped to.

I note
- players do not make wormholes, they get a countdown.
- sensor-lock is not possible on a wormhole.
- players cannot tell where a ship jumps to unless it is scripted.
- npcs don't seem to follow players through witchspace

It strikes me these aspects of gameplay need to be addressed.

The end of the countdown needs to make a big blue sphere in front of you OR the npc initiating the witchspace jump needs to vanish as their wormhole forms around them - then the other ships dive in.

A sensor lock on a wormhole could tell you where it leads - maybe restricted to advanced sensors?

A sensor lock on a ship which jumps out should tell you the destination - in combination with above, by transferring the lock to the resulting wormhole. If you disagree with above, this still needs to be considered.

Particularly viper-pursuit craft should occasionally chase a fugitive through witchspace. Same with hunters, and aggressive pirates.

... addressing these points should create a more seamless gameworld.