Oolite Bulletins

Milo wrote: ↑Sat Jul 04, 2020 1:12 am

I can't reproduce your observation with Q-Charger increasing player.ship.speed. I see that velocity is increased with Q-Charger enabled compared to when it is disabled, but player.ship.speed remains the same whether or not I have Q-Charger working.

    if (this.$fuelCounter % 30 === 0 && !_npcShip)
       log("SolarWind", _ship.displayName+": speed:"+_ship.speed.toFixed(0)+", maxSpeed:"+_ship.maxSpeed.toFixed(0)+", factor:"+(_ship.speed/_ship.maxSpeed).toFixed(2)+", vmagnitude:"+(_ship.velocity.magnitude()).toFixed(0)+", thrust: "+_ship.thrust.toFixed(1)+", maxThrust: "+_ship.maxThrust+", torus:"+_ship.torusEngaged);

23:18:03.545 [SolarWind]: Terrapin: Terrania: speed:251, maxSpeed:410, factor:0.61, vmagnitude:251, thrust: 47.8, maxThrust: 48, torus:false

23:19:32.292 [SolarWind]: Terrapin: Terrania: speed:410, maxSpeed:410, factor:1.00, vmagnitude:808, thrust: 47.8, maxThrust: 48, torus:false

Milo wrote: ↑Sat Jul 11, 2020 11:54 pm

Also, a balance opinion: Towbar gives too many credits. Especially when combined with OXPs like Ship Version that provide ships with expensive equipment, which Towbar then pays you for. A single derelict is worth thousands of credits, and you can just loiter in the space lanes and pick off offenders and fugitives (or clean up after NPC vs NPC battles, although derelicts from those are less common) and drag their ships to the station, or even wait to catch offenders and fugitives in the aegis, hit them until the pilots eject and then cash them in.

            if (worldScripts["Shield Cycler"] && Math.random() < 0.6)
                ship.awardEquipment("EQ_SC_SHIELD_CYCLER_STANDARD");
            if( worldScripts["shieldequalizercapacitors"] ) {
                if (ship.equipmentStatus("EQ_SC_SHIELD_CYCLER_INTERNAL") !== "EQUIPMENT_OK")
                    // don't award Shield Equalizer if the ship already has Shield Cycler
                    if (Math.random() < 0.10) ship.awardEquipment("EQ_SHIELD_EQUALIZER");
                if( !small ) {
                    ship.awardEquipment("EQ_FORWARD_SHIELD_CAPACITOR");
                    ship.awardEquipment("EQ_AFT_SHIELD_CAPACITOR");
                }
            }

There are several factors that would be considered by a court in establishing the amount of the salvor's award. Some of these include the difficulty of the operation, the risk involved to the salvor, the value of the property saved, the degree of danger to which the property was exposed, and the potential environmental impacts. It would be a rare case in which the salvage award would be greater than 50 percent of the value of the property salvaged. More commonly, salvage awards amount to 10 percent to 25 percent of the value of the property.

Disembodied wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 5:33 pm

This might be a useful guide - from the Wikipedia page on Marine salvage (my emphasis):

There are several factors that would be considered by a court in establishing the amount of the salvor's award. Some of these include the difficulty of the operation, the risk involved to the salvor, the value of the property saved, the degree of danger to which the property was exposed, and the potential environmental impacts. It would be a rare case in which the salvage award would be greater than 50 percent of the value of the property salvaged. More commonly, salvage awards amount to 10 percent to 25 percent of the value of the property.

Milo wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 6:12 pm

I'm looking at it compared to other methods of earning credits. From that perspective, 4200 credits is a large profit. Rich industrial markets have computers at an average price of 62.1 cr, and poor agricultural markets have computers at an average price of 101.3. That is a 39.2 price difference. So you would need to trade around 107t of computers to match that 4200 salvage profit. Trading also decreases your service level with each witchspace jump, which eventually leads to maintenance expenses, whereas you can stay in the same system all day long fighting pirates and salvaging their ships without any service level reduction. While there can be other costs associated with salvage, such as repairing damage or replacing missiles, it's quite possible to win battles without taking any damage or using any missiles.

Milo wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 6:12 pm

I don't think we should lower prices of OXP equipment or reduce the frequency of NPC ships having them. It's fine for them to have high prices; it gives a reason to earn more credits!

Milo wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 6:12 pm

The frequency of NPC ships having OXP equipment should be a combat balance consideration first and an economic consideration as a distant second (it's only an economic factor at all because of Towbar).

Milo wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 6:12 pm

Since equipment is only part of the salvage value, and the total value is competing with other methods of earning credits, that argues for making Towbar pay even less for equipment. I do not think that salvage should be much more profitable than trading, which is where we are now. Keep in mind that most derelict ships are one military laser shot away from wreckage; they are very heavily damaged. I think this makes it possible to rationalize that the value of the equipment isn't much higher than scrap.

Milo wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 6:12 pm

To clarify, my suggested formula of x/(5 * ln(x)) was not using x as price, but using x as the current Towbar-computed value, which is already adjusted. If Towbar today would pay 15k cr for certain equipment, with my proposed change it would instead pay 311 cr for the same equipment.

this.$Towbar_Payout = function(ship) { //pay reward for the salvaged ship
    var r = worldScripts.towbar;
<...>
        var eq = ship.equipment; //local variable, faster
        var d = "";
        var eqs = 0;
        var hiddeneq = 0;
        var hiddeneqcr = 0;
        var lasthiddeneqcr = 0;
        var lasthiddeneqname = "";
        var maxeq = 5; // 5 equipment line can fit into the main part of the screen
        while( eq[++i] ) {
            if( eq[i] && eq[i].equipmentKey != "EQ_MILITARY_JAMMER") { //skip MASCM due to not fit into one line
                if( r.$TowbarDebug )
                    log("Towbar", ship.displayName+" "+
                        ship.entityPersonality+" "+(i+1)+". "+eq[i].name);
                d = "";
                var cr = this.$Towbar_EqSalvagePrice(eq[i]);   //<======================
                player.credits += cr;
                tc += cr;
                if( cr > 0 ) { // exclude 0 to fit into the screen with ShipVersion OXP
                    if( eqs < maxeq ) {
                        if(cr > 0) msg2 += "\nYou get "+cr+" credits for"
                            +d+" "+eq[i].name+".";
                        eqs++; //listed eqs only
                    } else { //hidden eq
                        hiddeneq++;
                        hiddeneqcr += cr;
                        lasthiddeneqcr = cr;
                        lasthiddeneqname = eq[i].name;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
<...>
}

this.$Towbar_EqSalvagePrice = function(eqInfo) {
    var p = eqInfo.price * 0.04; //max. 40% of the original cost in credits (not in credits*10)
    var rnd = Math.random();
    var cr;
    if( p > 300 ) {
//      rnd = rnd * ( 300 / p ); //costly eqs always damaged - removed, already cheap
        cr = Math.round(Math.max(50, Math.round( p * rnd ))/10)*10; //but at least 50cr
    } else cr = Math.round(Math.max(10, Math.round( p * rnd ))/10)*10; //at least 10cr
//  if( rnd < 0.5 ) d = " the damaged";
    return cr;
}

this.shipSpawned = function(ship) {  //do not give version numbers to cargo, etc.
<...>
/*** begin dybal ***/
            //if( !small && worldScripts["hardships"] ) {
            if( !small && wsHardShips ) {
/*** end dybal ***/
                ship.awardEquipment("EQ_ADDITIONAL_AFT_ARMOUR");
                if(ship.equipmentStatus("EQ_EEG")!="EQUIPMENT_OK") ship.awardEquipment("EQ_EEG");
                ship.awardEquipment("EQ_ESG"); //requires EEG
            }
            if (worldScripts["Shield Cycler"] && Math.random() < 0.7 && ship.equipmentStatus("EQ_SC_SHIELD_CYCLER_INTERNAL") !== "EQUIPMENT_OK" )
                ship.awardEquipment("EQ_SC_SHIELD_CYCLER_BASIC");
            if( worldScripts["shieldequalizercapacitors"] ) {
                if (ship.equipmentStatus("EQ_SC_SHIELD_CYCLER_INTERNAL") !== "EQUIPMENT_OK")
                    // don't award Shield Equalizer if the ship already has Shield Cycler
                    if (Math.random() < 0.10) ship.awardEquipment("EQ_SHIELD_EQUALIZER");
                if( !small ) {
                    ship.awardEquipment("EQ_FORWARD_SHIELD_CAPACITOR");
                    ship.awardEquipment("EQ_AFT_SHIELD_CAPACITOR");
                }
            }

Salvaging (as a career) is only really worthwhile in "interesting" systems (unless it's piracy and not salvaging), and there you can't avoid combat and it's not survivable without an Ironass ship, and even then you will have a pretty big repair bill often (missiles don't enter into it, if you are into salvaging you don't use missiles - they seldom leave a derelict behind)

And while you can get NPC-created derelicts, they aren't common, and the places you can find them reliably (after quite a bit of searching even so) are dangerous places, where someone that doesn't want combat will have to run a lot (and get those huge repair bills quite often).

Someone starting at it with a non-Ironass wouldn't get huge profits until they get that Ironass (and soon after that money looses its meaning, as it probably does in every career once you have the right setup and skills

You don't actually get internal damage at every witchspace jump, it comes in bigger damages every 8 or so jumps

Most of the OXP equipment we are talking about don't do anything in a NPC ship, their code are worldScripts. The NPCs having them or not doesn't affect combat balance.

Salvaging takes quite a bit of time: you have to move all those derelicts to some station, and it takes around half an hour for each with Towbar only (EscortDeck makes it a bit easier, if you have a big enough ship to have the wide deck). Often the main station is so far away, the way there so dangerous, that it's better to tow to another station and pay the 50% tax even in an Anarchy system.

But I would like to see NPC equipment getting damaged with the same mechanism as player equipment, that would make deciding equipment status for pricing depend on what actually happened to the ship and not a random and our guesses about probabilities.

We will have to agree on disagreeing...

I think there is room for balance improvement, but the profitability should be compared on similar levels of gear investment/adequacy + skills: if you want to compare the earnings of a hunter/salvager able to bag those Ironasses NPCs (that come in groups of 4 to 12, and in the more "interesting" hunting grounds the large number is more common) you have to compare to someone with a big trader (400+ TCs: Anaconda, DTT Atlas, DTT Cyclops), not a Cobra Mark III (and I would like bigger market capacity for some commodities in some stations for those big cargo bays to make more of a difference)

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:01 pm

Salvaging (as a career) is only really worthwhile in "interesting" systems (unless it's piracy and not salvaging), and there you can't avoid combat and it's not survivable without an Ironass ship, and even then you will have a pretty big repair bill often (missiles don't enter into it, if you are into salvaging you don't use missiles - they seldom leave a derelict behind)

And while you can get NPC-created derelicts, they aren't common, and the places you can find them reliably (after quite a bit of searching even so) are dangerous places, where someone that doesn't want combat will have to run a lot (and get those huge repair bills quite often).

Every system has some pirates. The safer systems have plenty of police to fight them, and you can join in at the end with a few hits to make a derelict with minimal risk, then haul it in for salvage.

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:01 pm

Someone starting at it with a non-Ironass wouldn't get huge profits until they get that Ironass (and soon after that money looses its meaning, as it probably does in every career once you have the right setup and skills

The problem of money becoming meaningless needs to be addressed with money sinks (repair costs, consumable costs, fuel costs, etc.) and additional expensive things to collect (more ships for your hyperspace hangar [like pokemon, gotta collect them all], more ships for your escort deck, phkb's hermitage, etc.).

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:01 pm

You don't actually get internal damage at every witchspace jump, it comes in bigger damages every 8 or so jumps

My point was that it's a cost only for traders, since salvagers don't need to travel. There is an infinite supply of pirates supplied by the repopulator in every system, and infinite police to fight them for you, so you can just wait for your opportunities with very little risk if you want to play that way...

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:01 pm

Most of the OXP equipment we are talking about don't do anything in a NPC ship, their code are worldScripts. The NPCs having them or not doesn't affect combat balance.

I'm anticipating a future where most of the improvements you suggested to make equipment work for NPCs are implemented.

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:01 pm

Salvaging takes quite a bit of time: you have to move all those derelicts to some station, and it takes around half an hour for each with Towbar only (EscortDeck makes it a bit easier, if you have a big enough ship to have the wide deck). Often the main station is so far away, the way there so dangerous, that it's better to tow to another station and pay the 50% tax even in an Anarchy system.

I haven't experienced this at all, it takes only a few minutes (real-time, not game time) to injector / torus my way to the main station with a derelict, and with telescope I can easily avoid most trouble on the way. Can you identify which of your OXPs are responsible for the danger you see?

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:01 pm

We will have to agree on disagreeing...

I disagree! We are working towards the same goal and if we reach different conclusions it probably means that there is some detail one of us sees that the other doesn't yet, which is why we're having this conversation. We obviously can have our own private tweaks, but let's not give up just yet on finding a formula that makes sense to both of us.

You're saying that salvage should be more profitable, and I'm saying it should be less. You're saying that salvage has high risk or time-to-credit ratio, and I'm saying that it has low risk and low time-to-credit ratio (can earn many credits fast). Those differences might be because of the set of OXPs we are using, as well as your additional tweaks to make some of the equipment work for NPCs, raising the danger level and consequently making you to go out of your way more when salvaging. I agree that the reward should be commensurate with the time and effort involved.

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Jul 13, 2020 6:01 pm

I think there is room for balance improvement, but the profitability should be compared on similar levels of gear investment/adequacy + skills: if you want to compare the earnings of a hunter/salvager able to bag those Ironasses NPCs (that come in groups of 4 to 12, and in the more "interesting" hunting grounds the large number is more common) you have to compare to someone with a big trader (400+ TCs: Anaconda, DTT Atlas, DTT Cyclops), not a Cobra Mark III (and I would like bigger market capacity for some commodities in some stations for those big cargo bays to make more of a difference)

I understand why you are looking at it this way, but to give you my perspective, my current ship is a Kirin Sport with 100t cargo capacity, and I'm seeing that I can make far more credits being a salvager than by trading. Once a ship has 80t or 100t capacity, I would expect to be able to earn more profits by trading than other career options, but Towbar currently defies that expectation by being too profitable.

Your suggestions about making trading more profitable by increasing market capacity for the benefit of ~400t cargo capacity ships are interesting but wouldn't change the balance for my case with a cargo ship with only 100t capacity, which is not as affected by market capacity limits.

• used commodity name instead of commodity display name as cargo identification in cargo pods re-spawned when you scooped more than your available cargo space can hold (with display name as identification, the cargo couldn't be put into the player's ship manifest when the cargo pod was scooped later);

• adjusted Laser Reductor to take into account the damage rate defined for the current weapon (because of high powered lasers other than Military Laser);

• debug code to spawn derelicts just out the station when launching now spawn near the station where the player's ship is docked instead of the main station;

• tweaked code that awards/remove EQ_DTADER to reduce the number of times it's added/removed while targeted;

• upped Oolite minimum version to 1.81, removed code for older versions;

• fixed bug that used commodity display name instead of name in lost-in-transit cargo pods;

• fixed bug that removed rotation when reducing yaw and pitch while towing (affected ILS rotation-sync);

• fixed bug in salvaged ship payout when the ship's cargo is beyond the local market capacity;

• re-factored salvaged equipment pricing into a function, to make it easier to overwrite the pricing policy through other OXPs;

• included port and starboard weapons (if any) in the salvaged ship payout; (yep, I have seen them in salvaged NPCs);

• reduced payout for salvaged ship's equipment and weapons for better game balance;

• some de-referencing for performance.

this.$Towbar_EqSalvagePrice = function(eqInfo) {
    var p = eqInfo.price / 10; // credits (not in credits*10)
    var rnd = Math.random();
    var cr = 0;
    if (p > 20000)
        cr = Math.max(250, Math.round(p*(rnd*0.07))); //but at least 250cr
    else if (p > 10000)
        cr = Math.max(100, Math.round(p*(rnd*0.10))); //but at least 100cr
    else if (p > 300)
        cr = Math.max(50, Math.round(p*(0.1+rnd*0.15))); //but at least 50cr
    else if (p > 10)
        cr = Math.max(10, Math.round(p*(0.1+rnd*0.15))); //at least 10cr
    cr = Math.round(cr/10)*10;
    if (this.$TowbarDebug) log(this.name, "Original payout policy:"+eqInfo.equipmentKey+", price:"+p+", payout:"+cr+"("+(100*cr/p).toFixed(1)+"%), random:"+rnd.toFixed(4));
    return cr;
}