Oolite Bulletins

Fatleaf wrote:

But now and then when you scoop a pod the message reads "you have scooped/captured a slave" and when they register as 1 ton of slaves in your hold.

That's the pods without a character in them I referred to.

I've forgotten the specifics about when and why those pods are created. I think they're the result of buggy OXPs. Eric knows certainly more on the subject.

Commander McLane wrote:

The rule is simple:

pod from non-clean ship: bounty
pod from clean ship: insurance money

(Since 1.75 Oolite handles two mixed cases as well, where part of the insurance money is used to bribe the local authorities in order to get a non-clean pilot free, or a seemingly clean pilot is taken into custody anyway.)

In any case they don't end up as slaves. Only pods without a character in them do.

Fatleaf wrote:

But now and then when you scoop a pod the message reads "you have scooped/captured a slave" and when they register as 1 ton of slaves in your hold.

That's the pods without a character in them I referred to.

I've forgotten the specifics about when and why those pods are created. I think they're the result of buggy OXPs. Eric knows certainly more on the subject.

Oolite adds pilots to ships with bounty, insurance, both or none at all. The exact values depend a bit on the ship role. Pirate pilots always have a bounty, while traders often are ensured. Bounty hunters are rarely insured. On scooping all pilots are added as slaves to the inventory.

On docking, you get your rewards/bounties for the pilots and the pilots are removed from your inventory. Only pilots without bounty/insurance stay as slaved in your hold. But on ejecting, a pilot also inherits part of the ships bounty. That means that such pilots always have a bounty and never end up as slaves after docking.

Some pilots can have both bounty and insurance. Before 1.75, one of the two was just ignored. (albeit wrong as scooping and docking used different values when both were present) Ignoring one value felt somehow wrong, so since 1.75 both values are mentioned on docking, but handled a bit different in high/low governments.

(NB Pilot bounty and ship bounty are two different things.)

The oxp uses the shipDockedWithStation() handler. When this one fires, the Pilots with bounty/insurance are already removed from the inventory. That means the player can still scoop escape pods, as long as he dumps them again when the "scooped slave" message appears.

Eric Walch wrote:

The oxp uses the shipDockedWithStation() handler. When this one fires, the Pilots with bounty/insurance are already removed from the inventory.

Ah! So I was wrong. I was under the impression that shipDockedWithStation would fire before the report screen is shown, and therefore before the inventory is cleared. That's why I suggested reportScreenEnded as an alternative.

Commander McLane wrote:

Ah! So I was wrong. I was under the impression that shipDockedWithStation would fire before the report screen is shown, and therefore before the inventory is cleared. That's why I suggested reportScreenEnded as an alternative.

You were not wrong, the report screen is shown after the shipDockedWithStation fires, but the contents of the reportscreen is already created as text between the shipWillDockWithStation and shipDockedWithStation handlers.

Version 1.1 is uploaded and ready to run. First post has been edited to include the new readme and download link.

Eric - thanks for clarifying the escape pod treatment - I've been testing this morning and it all works OK. If you have purchased slaves and scooped escape pod slaves in your hold when you dock the scooped escape pod slaves are removed from the manifest before my script runs, and the insurance/bounty report screen pops up after my two mission screens are finished.

The only slight issue is that the insurance/bounty report screen may report that cargo that's been handed over is still in the hold when it's not. It's only a cosmetic issue but any suggestions as to how I can script to get my mission screens to run after any insurance/bounty report screen has run? Using reportScreenEnded as a condition doesn't work as this breaks the rest of the OXP if no scooped pods are in the hold.

A couple of screenies from version 1.1

“target practice”.

But how can you be a fugitive with only 40cr bounty? I thought it was 51cr and above that you were fugitive. Shouldn't it read "Offender status".

One more question. Does it work with Items in the Hyper cargo hold?

Fatleaf wrote:

But how can you be a fugitive with only 40cr bounty? I thought it was 51cr and above that you were fugitive. Shouldn't it read "Offender status".

Depends. If he had a bounty of 11 or more before, he would be fugitive now.

I take it the code checks for the current bounty and puts the correct status in the message?

Indeed it does, Test had just launched from Riedquat with 20 tons of Narcotics in the hold and then redocked so had a 40 bounty from the launch and another 40 from the redock to give him 80 bounty.....the message reads the [commander_legal_status] flag.

Don't know about hypercargo - will do some testing tomorrow.

Ah, there's Thargoid with a more precise version of the answer I was about to give...

Anyway. Question: What are the odds of this thing kicking in when landing? Is there a 100% detection rate? That, in my mind, is just as bad as the old 0% rate. Come to think of it, a detection rate based on government type would make sense. Though the Station is GalCop territory and thus officially not influenced by the planetary government (or lack thereof), anyone who's ever taken an occasional glance at the Real World knows that's not how things work.

This gives rise to another thought: Assuming the detection rate is less than 100%, a way of voluntarily releasing non-detected slaves would be nice. This may be beyond the scope of the OXP, but if there was a way to free slaves whenever you wanted to, you could actually roleplay a commander whose whole career was dedicated to freeing slaves, flying from station to station, purchasing all available slaves (if credits allow it) and instantly releasing them. That would make earning a profit a daunting prospect, but hey, if DH can play a pacifist, why shouldn't you be able to play an abolitionist?

A rate depending on the government type would make sense to me. I haven't installed this oxp yet, as I do like to sell contraband (mainly stuff scooped up, but I'm not averse to picking up cheap narcotics for a couple of credits at a constore and selling them on for a hundred). If the detection rate were based on government type, you'd be better off selling illegal items in Anarchy/Feudal State systems, adding more realism.

I've always assumed that the majority of the GalCop staff in a system came from the planet(s) in that system, so would be bound to be influenced in some way or other (though not officially) by what happens on the planet below.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

Don't know about hypercargo - will do some testing tomorrow.

Don't forget Vortex as well, because it has 5 switchable cargo bays.