Fuel Station OXP

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 3:14 pm

Personally I'm not so concerned with the Longway mission, because I think basically it is about having to do all these jumps, and the question where you get the fuel for that is only of second rank. (Of course anything that would break the 7ly barrier would definitely break the Longway mission, but this is fortunately not going to happen.) When I did the mission a long time ago I went sunskimming for my fuel. I don't think I visited a single main station in-between. Even worse: I sunskimmed outside the witchpoint-sun corridor, so I usually didn't meet any other ship. So why shouldn't people these days use constores or fuel stations?

(Just as an aside: I would however raise the prices in fuel stations. Refueling from a fellow trader in interstellar space for instance costs 20cr/ly. For a fuel station next to the witchpoint I would think 5cr/ly, for the on in-system 4 cr/ly. RealLife™ fuel stations at the motorways are more expensive than in the inner city. That's the price you have to pay for your convenience.)

In any new mission OXP it is the author's duty to make sure to disable all 'cheats' or shortcuts he doesn't like. I've done so in Cataclysm. Of course that means that mission OXP have to be revised after some time, in order to introduce countermeasures against new shortcuts. That becomes just a little difficult for old OXPs whose authors are gone without giving the explicit permission to tamper with their work. HINT: I write a very explicit license statement in the readMe of all my OXPs. However, I seem to be just about the only OXP writer to do so (at least examining older OXPs gives this strong expression).

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 3:52 pm

Commander McLane wrote:
(Just as an aside: I would however raise the prices in fuel stations. Refueling from a fellow trader in interstellar space for instance costs 20cr/ly. For a fuel station next to the witchpoint I would think 5cr/ly, for the on in-system 4 cr/ly. RealLife™ fuel stations at the motorways are more expensive than in the inner city. That's the price you have to pay for your convenience.)

A valid point, I'll raise it to 3cr/ly to match the constores. I'll leave the prices the same in both locations I think as it's not such a big price charge compared to everything else. I can understand interstellar space being much more expensive, but there are plenty of other places to get fuel in-system.

Post by **Eric Walch** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 5:52 pm

Thargoid wrote:
You mean system.sun.goingNova? That's what it's listed as in the wiki (or strictly system.goingNova there, but I take your comment about the switch to include the sun).

No I DO mean System.sun.isGoingNova. When you look in the wiki under system you will find system.goingNova together with a message that this is deprecated and all sun stuff has moved to sun. When you look at the sun page you'll will see it is updated for 1.72 with System.sun.isGoingNova. Apparently the name has also changed for better consistency. I just checked the nova mission. Your station is not send away automatically like normal chips so you should use !System.sun.isGoingNova . Currently both the old and the new name is valid.

And I think you can skip the check for the station be present on jumping

As this is an mission from the original Elite I think all oxp should respect this when possible. The longway mission is something else. That is oolite and does not need that special protection. The only thing one can do to not spoil a starting Jamesons is by making the oxp only available by more progressed players.
e.g. by doing a small mission in a higher galaxy or just by hitpoints.

Cmd. Cheyd · Post by **Cmd. Cheyd** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 6:28 pm

Maybe tie it into the upcoming banking update... Only works with a credit card.

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 6:58 pm

OK, I've just uploaded v1.01, which has fixes for Nova and Longway, plus ups the price a little.

Unfortunately before I uploaded this version, I accidentally put the wrong file up which has a bug in it and someone already downloaded it before I noticed . So if it is you (if you downloaded the OXP a few minutes ago and it is fuelstation_1.01.zip) can you please download again. The correct version is now on Box.

The URL is the same as the one in the first post of this thread.

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 7:02 pm

Eric Walch wrote:
Thargoid wrote:
You mean system.sun.goingNova? That's what it's listed as in the wiki (or strictly system.goingNova there, but I take your comment about the switch to include the sun).
No I DO mean System.sun.isGoingNova. When you look in the wiki under system you will find system.goingNova together with a message that this is deprecated and all sun stuff has moved to sun. When you look at the sun page you'll will see it is updated for 1.72 with System.sun.isGoingNova. Apparently the name has also changed for better consistency. I just checked the nova mission. Your station is not send away automatically like normal chips so you should use !System.sun.isGoingNova . Currently both the old and the new name is valid.

And I think you can skip the check for the station be present on jumping

As this is an mission from the original Elite I think all oxp should respect this when possible. The longway mission is something else. That is oolite and does not need that special protection. The only thing one can do to not spoil a starting Jamesons is by making the oxp only available by more progressed players.
e.g. by doing a small mission in a higher galaxy or just by hitpoints.

Hmm, never saw that sun wiki page before. But I see what you mean now (although system.goingNova doesn't give a depreciation warning yet in Debug console, is it going to be depreciated from 1.73?).

I don't like the idea of restricting it to experienced players, that doesn't feel right. But I've lowered the chances of stations appearing when Longway is running, and they won't appear at all in Nova systems now.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 7:31 pm

Hmm, I seem to have totally forgotten to deprecate goingNova/goneNova after adding them to Sun. How silly of me.

They are hereby declared officially deprecated.

Tivva · Post by **Tivva** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:25 pm

Thargoid wrote:
I accidentally put the wrong file up which has a bug in it and someone already downloaded it before I noticed . So if it is you (if you downloaded the OXP a few minutes ago and it is fuelstation_1.01.zip) can you please download again.

That'd be me then....
D/l new version now
Thanks Thargoid

Tivva · Post by **Tivva** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:07 pm

Screenshot posted on 'screenshot' thread

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 8:11 pm

Aww my baby!

Just noticed there's a little error in the fuel station's system set-up script when you're in interstellar space. Nothing to worry about, just means that in interstellar space it will generate an error into the log/debug console (but the station won't appear, which is the correct action anyway).

I've fixed the download version. There's no need to download the new one if you have 1.01, unless the error in the log/debug console when you end up in interstellar space annoys you.

For those of a scripting nature, the isGoingNova check needs system.sun... which has no properties in interstellar space (as there isn't a sun). And as I had the interstellar check after the nova one in the if statement, it gave the error. Fix is simply to do the interstellarSpace check as the first of the two statements in the if, rather than the nova check.

Yodeebe · Post by **Yodeebe** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:20 pm

Thargoid wrote:

Unfortunately before I uploaded this version, I accidentally put the wrong file up which has a bug in it and someone already downloaded it before I noticed . So if it is you (if you downloaded the OXP a few minutes ago and it is fuelstation_1.01.zip) can you please download again. The correct version is now on Box.

and me. is that why i just crashed my lovely ship?

i'll try again, cheers.

Wiki pages · Post by **Thargoid** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:41 pm

The bug wouldn't do that, it would have prevented the station appearing at a witchpoint (I had "witchPoint" instead of "witchpoint" in the script, or maybe the other way around).

The problem is more likely that your ship is too wide or tall for the fuel station to accomodate, or you were off-centre when you tried to fly through. What are you flying?

Yodeebe · Post by **Yodeebe** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:14 pm

nope, definitely lost my no-claims-bonus.
Caduceus. only a 40 tonner.

ive tryed it so slow that i bounce backwards off the thing. mostly it's just another insurance write off though. seems to 'impact' before i get to the yellow bit ( to stop) judging by the external view.
it's not directional is it?

Yodeebe · Post by **Yodeebe** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:16 pm

it's the same even with the revised non-bug version. I tried starting with space pressed too, incase of save-game remnants.

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:37 pm

Yodeebe wrote:
nope, definitely lost my no-claims-bonus.
Caduceus. only a 40 tonner.
ive tryed it so slow that i bounce backwards off the thing. mostly it's just another insurance write off though. seems to 'impact' before i get to the yellow bit ( to stop) judging by the external view.
it's not directional is it?

I just ran into the same trouble

On the first attempt, the station did look so big that I didn't worry, but my Caduceus blew up, too.

Then I got angry and tried again, very carefully observing by switching to outside views, making minimal speed progress and stopping to check views. All looked fine - I definitely had my ship within that station.

The screen turned pretty much yellow, but there was no refueling. Thus I thought I should continue forward a little bit...kaboom.

Maybe it's not a fuel station but some ship-eating thargoid weapon? With such things, they surely won't have to fight for Geteve anymore. No wonder they stopped and placed fuel stations around the ooniverse instead

Hmmm. OK. Next attempt I will launch with a test commander in a different ship.

Concerning the size of the Caduceus: it's pretty big, but doesn't have as much mass as a Boa or such. The size is mostly noticeable by flying up to other cargo ships or when fighting - it's easier for NPCs to hit a Caduceus than many other ships I flew.

Screet