Oolite Bulletins

ClymAngus wrote:

One thing I did find quite funky about the new version, is it doesn't play nice with orbits.oxp,

I would see that the other way round: orbits.oxp doesn't play well with asteroid storm.oxp (and with a couple of other OXP's as well, I would guess). Let's face it: Elite/Oolite is not meant to have Orbits (read: moving planets). If you introduce them, side effects (read: glitches in other OXPs) are to be expected. Same goes for every OXP that changes the basic layout of a system (farsun springs into mind, and the attempts to make Oolite systems into real planetary systems).

Bottom line: Asteroid Storm is not the OXP that is to blame if it doesn't work well with orbits.oxp.

Commander McLane wrote:

ClymAngus wrote:

One thing I did find quite funky about the new version, is it doesn't play nice with orbits.oxp,

I would see that the other way round: orbits.oxp doesn't play well with asteroid storm.oxp (and with a couple of other OXP's as well, I would guess). Let's face it: Elite/Oolite is not meant to have Orbits (read: moving planets). If you introduce them, side effects (read: glitches in other OXPs) are to be expected. Same goes for every OXP that changes the basic layout of a system (farsun springs into mind, and the attempts to make Oolite systems into real planetary systems).

Bottom line: Asteroid Storm is not the OXP that is to blame if it doesn't work well with orbits.oxp.

EEEEK! No you misunderstand me sir the latest version of oolite not asteroids. It does raise the issue however of legacy oxps. The unloved, the non compatable. I believe we need a big fat what works with what archive part of the wiki.

ClymAngus wrote:

EEEEK! No you misunderstand me sir the latest version of oolite not asteroids.

Ah! Sorry for the misunderstanding.

ClymAngus wrote:

It does raise the issue however of legacy oxps. The unloved, the non compatable. I believe we need a big fat what works with what archive part of the wiki.

I believe (but may be mistaken here) that orbits is not a legacy OXP. Therefore temporary malfunctions may be attributed to changes in the scripting engine between two versions of Oolite. And this happens to all JS-OXPs, by the way. Which is exactly the reason why Oolite currently cannot be called stable, and all of us scripters are constantly revising our OXPs from Oolite-version to Oolite-version.

However, one of the requirements for a stable release is full backwards compatibility to 1.65. Therefore every OXP in legacy script that worked on 1.65 has to work in the MNSR as well. I just don't think that's the case for orbits. Just wait a minute... Indeed, downloaded and opened it. Orbits is not a legacy OXP. It is a JS-OXP, and in the version I just downloaded from the wiki it is made for Oolite 1.71. So it is possible that it contains code that has changed in one of the Oolite versions since. And this would be a case of normal OXP maintenance by its author.

So you best report whatever buggy or strange behaviour you have encountered with Orbits.oxp in Oolite 1.72.2 to him.

The strange thing in this version of asteroid storm is that I always get the message that I have helped in the destruction of the doomsday asteroid even if I am the one who destroys it. No energy bomb

Ark wrote:

The strange thing in this version of asteroid storm is that I always get the message that I have helped in the destruction of the doomsday asteroid even if I am the one who destroys it. No energy bomb

I haven't noticed that myself, but it could be because the big rock must also be hit by asteroids. Maybe it can do with a check for the last three hits instead of just the last. Than the player needs 2 out of the last 3.

Maybe it could be interesting to also add a miner so the player is not alone in its fight against the beast?

EDIT: Bug confirmed. Somewhere I changed "PLAYER" into "player". I'll correct this asap. It has only influence on the reward.

Eric Walch wrote:

Maybe it could be interesting to also add a miner so the player is not alone in its fight against the beast?

I am not sure about that Eric. I always considered this mission as a very easy one

Ark wrote:

I am not sure about that Eric. I always considered this mission as a very easy one

I don't think those miners will do any read additional damage. Certainly when I give them pulse lasers to do their job. But it could look cool for the player when seeing he is not alone in his job.

Anyhow, I scripted it up and will see how it looks and see if the miners really get a chance to fire a shot at all. I'll add a temporary logging function to write down the energy damage of each shot made by a npc ship to see if the additional ships have a real effect. I could even raise the energy of the rock back after each ncp hit so those npc shots do no harm at all.

Ark wrote:

I am not sure about that Eric. I always considered this mission as a very easy one

Ah but you have been trained for many years of your life in asteroid-foo. I've always found mounting armed insurections to be childsplay, do you know some people actually find it hard? Totally sub-human, I don't know why they bother breathing to be honest.

It would be nice to actually have someone chipping in instead of pissing off. It would add to the atmosphere. Without help 80% failure. With help a goodly chance of success.

ClymAngus wrote:

It would be nice to actually have someone chipping in instead of pissing off. It would add to the atmosphere. Without help 80% failure. With help a goodly chance of success.

Since the asteroid has got a bounty you normally should have about 1 or 2 other ships chipping away at its surface. None seem terribly accurate, though...

Kaks wrote:

Since the asteroid has got a bounty you normally should have about 1 or 2 other ships chipping away at its surface. None seem terribly accurate, though...

No, the vipers don't do much damage, but my two miners with only pulse lasers killed the beast completely in one of the tests. In the other test only one of the miners was close enough to shoot and I logged a total damage of over 1400. I now added correction code so the miners hits don't drain the beasts energy.

Miners use an other attack strategy that lets them fire much more shots than a normal ship. And I was surprised by the huge effect myself. The vipers normally only scratch the surface.

ClymAngus, as Eric is actually toning down the response of some of the NPCs I can't help noticing your experience with asteroid storm seems completely different to the majority of people who played it.

If you definitely have the same version of AS as everybody else, it must be some odd interference between that and some other oxp.

Why don't you try playing with just AS installed, and see if it's any different? If it is, then we can start looking for the OXP that's actually causing you all these problems...

Kaks wrote:

ClymAngus, as Eric is actually toning down the response of some of the NPCs I can't help noticing your experience with asteroid storm seems completely different to the majority of people who played it.

Today I also failed just for several times. But that was mainly because I also did other things at the same time, like opening the target inspector, shooting missiles and wait for a brief moment to distinguish between the missile and my shots. With the mac target inspector you see the ships energy in a coloured bar. On this I noticed my missiles do almost no damage compared with a laser shot. It looks almost a waist of ammunition.

I don't know if it is coursed by the size as screet showed yesterday a condor attacked with dozens of missiles and that also did not suffer damage. I was afraid somewhere in the code a collision radius was not handled right, but as far I could check the code yesterday, it calculates the damage right: based on distance to outer shell and not distance to core. So size should not matter for the damage.

Eric Walch wrote:

I don't know if it is coursed by the size as screet showed yesterday a condor attacked with dozens of missiles and that also did not suffer damage.

It is true that it did not suffer damage - but that was caused by the missiles being unable to hit the condor. That's why I've always thought missiles to be useless anyway. It's big luck if they manage to hit something.

Well, now I did add, as suggested, the accuracy key to 10. Have to wait what happenes. If it works, I say: change all missiles that way.

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Kaks wrote:

ClymAngus, as Eric is actually toning down the response of some of the NPCs I can't help noticing your experience with asteroid storm seems completely different to the majority of people who played it.

Meh, not a problem. Playing the game is only part of the game. Making and remaking the game now there's a game in itself. I reserve the right to tinker, to remake the world in my preferred image.

Eric Walch wrote:

EDIT: Bug confirmed. Somewhere I changed "PLAYER" into "player". I'll correct this asap. It has only influence on the reward.

Hmmm....that's definitely a bug. Since I just came back to G1, I thought I should have a look. I only miss a few credits because of this, and everything else is just the same as if I got the full reward?

Two times I got the "helped in the destruction" although I got the bounty when I shot it down.
On the other attempt, the Asteroid crashed into a casino, resulting in a big explosion and both gone

Concerning the difficulty: For a ship with 4 military lasers, it's very easy. Launched, stopped, fired. The asteroid typically was 15-16km away when I did start and never came close than 7.x km.

However, a player in a ship with fewer lasers most surely will run into trouble! I doubt that any ship with two lasers could do it by laser power only. Certainly, a ship with only a front laser like the GriffBoa will be unable to do it at all.

Could and should the armament of the players ship come into account for the difficulty setting?

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