Ship behaviour while cloaked

[Commander McLane]

By “doing stuff based on player position rather than scanning”, I meant that a script might periodically check the player’s position and, if it’s in a certain region, call in a bunch of ships explicitly to attack (or otherwise interact with) the player.

Okay. I thought you meant checking only the proximity to the player ship in a ship script.

[Mauiby de Fug]

Finally got around to playing again. Was being attacked by a peeved Triad member in Assassins and on a hunch cloaked my ship. I was able to sidle up alongside him and blast him with my turrets. They definitely fired more than once. The ships have role revenge4, and I had a look at the AI, but couldn't make head nor tail out of it - AIs are still a mystery to me.

I tried to grab a few screenshots...

[Commander McLane]

The cloak isn't perfect, especially if it comes to an AI scanning for ships (in this case for the player ship). I thought we had mentioned this above.

The various find-and-attack-player AIs in Assassins perform a lot of scans and lock on your ship. The cloak causes this lock to be lifted immediately, however initially it was there, which means that sometimes their weapon may get to fire one shot in your direction. If it's an auto-aiming weapon like a plasma turret it will fire.

[Eric Walch]

They definitely fired more than once. The ships have role revenge4, and I had a look at the AI, but couldn't make head nor tail out of it - AIs are still a mystery to me.

Are you sure they targeted you and not a ship behind you? Cloak is not perfect for scanning methods and some can find cloaked ships. But ships can never attack cloaked ships. At every update there is a check if the primary target is cloaked. If yes, the primary target is lost and only than the ship decides to shoot. It won't shoot without target.

To your first remark about the deep space pirates: They did find a cloaked player, but I now rearranged the AI to make sure no message is broadcasted. The AI did receive a message about lost target, but at that time the message was already broadcasted. It will be in a next release.

[Mauiby de Fug]

I should stop posting at 5 in the morning - I'm not at my most coherent...

By "they" I was referring to my ship's turrets whilst my ship was cloaked. From my understanding, while my ship is cloaked, the hostile ship ceases to become hostile, and therefore the turrets shouldn't fire. The enemy ship just sat there spinning on the spot.

[Commander McLane]

By "they" I was referring to my ship's turrets whilst my ship was cloaked. From my understanding, while my ship is cloaked, the hostile ship ceases to become hostile, and therefore the turrets shouldn't fire.

Ah!

Indeed, your turrets shouldn't fire when you're cloaked. I think this bug was reported before, and probably is fixed already?

[Mauiby de Fug]

To your first remark about the deep space pirates: They did find a cloaked player, but I now rearranged the AI to make sure no message is broadcasted. The AI did receive a message about lost target, but at that time the message was already broadcasted. It will be in a next release.

Other ships I've just found that can broadcast a message at you whilst you are cloaked are the Bounty Hunters that come after you when you become a fugitive (from Anarchies, I think?) They do not become hostile, just send you a message.

[TGHC]

BTW which hud is that?

[Mauiby de Fug]

'Tis a custom dynamic HUD by JeffBTX, which I quite like!

Relevant BB topics are https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8830, and https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8868. You can see pics of it from http://www.flickr.com/photos/34159828@N06/, and download it from http://www.box.net/shared/zq6hgs9ocl.

It's my current favourite HUD, which I moved to from MilHUD. I've changed the alpha of the cross hair image and the width of the critical/cloaked overlays to match my preferences. The blue glow you see in the screenshot is the cloaked overlay.

[TGHC]

Brilliant, having a cloaked indicator is extremely useful and has been on my wish list for a long while, and the basic premise of leaving the screen as uncluttered as possible is right on commander! Many moons ago I dallied with an imperial courier very briefly, very uber ship, but half the screen was obscured so I ditched it.

Very well done JeffBTX

[Commander McLane]

Brilliant, having a cloaked indicator is extremely useful and has been on my wish list for a long while,

Note that this is not a special HUD property. In 1.74.2 the condition indicator has a condition for 'green/yellow + cloaked' (= white) and one for 'red + cloaked' (= pink) regardless which HUD you use.

[Eric Walch]

Note that this is not a special HUD property. In 1.74.2 the condition indicator has a condition for 'green/yellow + cloaked' (= white) and one for 'red + cloaked' (= pink) regardless which HUD you use.

It is a special HUD property, but the default value is true so all old HUDs that don't specify this explicit, will have the cloak indicator. However, a HUD might explicit set it to false.