Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2012 1:19 pm**

One last remark about the Aurora: it should probably have frangible = no like the other liners. As it is now, you can shoot an engine away and still see the exhaust afterwards. That looks a little odd.

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:41 pm**

Thank you Commander Mc Lane for taking the time and patience to fix all this. Also Thanks to Smivs for support.

I'm very interested in the changes you made. Send them to Smivs for the next update. The Aurora was my first ship and at the time little did I know about things like centering. I believe I did better with the Tigershark. But we still found that this liner could/should be in the OXP.

So yes I'm interested and I want to say a big thank you!
And Commander Mc Lane should definitely be in the credit list of this oxp too.

One thing I wish (But I've read elsewhere that it is virtually impossible) is that you could land on a liner and then it would present you with the message that the liner is about to jump to system... so that you could get the choice to hitch a ride.

Posted: **Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:37 pm**

pagroove wrote:
One thing I wish (But I've read elsewhere that it is virtually impossible) is that you could land on a liner and then it would present you with the message that the liner is about to jump to system... so that you could get the choice to hitch a ride.

With the initial release of the OXP, I was flying near a Liner near a witchpoint, when it suddenly (and with no warning) jumped, and I got pulled into its wormhole. When I emerged I flew away and it jumped again. This time, I managed to stay clear.

The wormholes left by these liners are huge, and long lasting. See the screenshot below, check out the time until collapse!

Oolite Liner Wormhole by JazHaz, on Flickr

I had a bit of fun shooting through the wormhole at a constore, and have the defenders come out and make a beeline for me, only to get caught by the wormhole!

Posted: **Tue Mar 13, 2012 2:32 pm**

Yep thats the fun! The wormholes almost fill the entire scanner range

It happened to me too.

.

Makes me think about a sort of Black hole.oxp where you have to escape random appearing wormholes that eat everything. Ships are sucked in and appear on the other side in instellar space. Could it be a new Thargoid weapon?

Posted: **Tue Mar 13, 2012 2:58 pm**

pagroove wrote:
Makes me think about a sort of Black hole.oxp where you have to escape random appearing wormholes that eat everything. Ships are sucked in and appear on the other side in interstellar space.

... and when you next dock there is a call for pilots with experience of the phenomenon - i.e. who have been through it and survived - to go to [some planet] to give evidence ...

... where you get given the job of going to [another planet] for a conference where you personally are told to go to [third planet] to meet someone ...

... where you can volunteer to take a specially modified Q-Bomb back to [original planet] ...

... where you are to set it off to destroy the anomaly causing the black holes. Sadly, when you get to [original planet], you find the Thargoid war fleet that created the 'anomaly' and discover the truth that it is a Thargoid weapon, and, having detonated the modified Q-Bomb you return to [third planet] to report it, where you are told your counter-Thargoid-special-weapon activities have only just begun...

Posted: **Tue Mar 13, 2012 8:23 pm**

Progress Report
Commander McLane has kindly sent all the Aurora updates to me, so I will try to incorporate them and issue a re-release shortly.

Posted: **Tue Mar 13, 2012 8:47 pm**

That's perfect! a big thanks to Commander Mc Lane!

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 10:27 am**

The liners spawning script produces odd results. I'm getting a liner in roughly every second system. Also, I just met one in an Anarchy. Wouldn't the touristic routes be more confined to safer systems?

The script itself doesn't contain a political condition, only productivity and planet radius. And both are rather broad. With two small random values you get a liner everywhere, independent of what they compare to.

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 10:48 am**

Commander McLane wrote:
Also, I just met one in an Anarchy. Wouldn't the touristic routes be more confined to safer systems?

Unless a fire in your machine room leaves you unable to maneuver and you get into pirate waters

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:06 am**

Commander McLane wrote:
I just met one in an Anarchy. Wouldn't the touristic routes be more confined to safer systems?

The P&Oo Cruises Saga Class liners, which specialise in retirement cruises for the elderly are limited to safer systems. The others, however, can be found more widely as the patrons might like a bit of excitement on their holidays.

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:15 am**

Commander McLane wrote:
The script itself doesn't contain a political condition, only productivity and planet radius. And both are rather broad. With two small random values you get a liner everywhere, independent of what they compare to.

It is a copy of the conditions of the big_ship populator. The only difference is that the big_ship populator has a (fast decreasing) chance of adding a second and third ship.

The conditions do contain government, only not explicit. productivity is defined as:

Code: Select all

productivity = ((economy ^ 7) + 3) * (government + 4) * population * 8;

And even population in above formula increases with government:

Code: Select all

population = (techlevel * 4) + government + economy + 1;

resulting in:

Code: Select all

productivity = ((economy ^ 7) + 3) * (government + 4) * ((techlevel * 4) + government + economy + 1) * 8

And here, even techlevel increases with govenment

For the big ship populator the ship addition was mainly triggered by expected trading and than is productivity the main key for addition. At first I also added government as criterium, but checking it separately seemed pointless as it already was part of the productivity.

I agree that for a pure liner population script, testing productivity makes no sense and it should use other criteria of its own.

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:21 am**

Smivs wrote:
Commander McLane wrote:
I just met one in an Anarchy. Wouldn't the touristic routes be more confined to safer systems?
The P&Oo Cruises Saga Class liners, which specialise in retirement cruises for the elderly are limited to safer systems. The others, however, can be found more widely as the patrons might like a bit of excitement on their holidays.

Indeed. I'll keep that in mind when I choose a company to book a cruise from.

I have another issue, however. The blurb in the OXP talks about finding liners either in the main space lane or orbiting the planet. It would be cool if the latter would actually occur. Currently it doesn't.

I think it shouldn't be too difficult. Having an AI that keeps the ship in a certain distance from the planet (say 2.5 times the planet radius) should suffice. Could be called liners_orbitPlanetAI.plist.

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:54 am**

Commander McLane wrote:
The blurb in the OXP talks about finding liners ... orbiting the planet. It would be cool if the latter would actually occur. Currently it doesn't.

It sort of does. You will find them from time to time adjacent to the main station, loading and off-loading passengers and supplies. As the station is in orbit, so are any liners 'parked' near it.
Having said that, I like the idea of an orbitAI and this may be a feature we can add to a future version.

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 12:36 pm**

Smivs wrote:
[Having said that, I like the idea of an orbitAI and this may be a feature we can add to a future version.

It won't work with AI alone, so you need help of JS to calculate the next point of the orbit. You could do it with something like:

In the AI

Code: Select all

{
    GLOBAL = {ENTER = ("setStateTo: ORBIT_PLANET");
    };
    ORBIT_PLANET = {
        "COURSE_OK" = ("setSpeedFactorTo: 0.65", performFlyToRangeFromDestination);
        "WAYPOINT_SET" = ("setAITo: gotoWaypointAI.plist");
        "TARGET_FOUND" = (setTargetToFoundTarget, "setAITo: traderInterceptAI.plist", fightOrFleeHostiles);
        "INCOMING_MISSILE" = ("setAITo: traderInterceptAI.plist", "setStateTo: INCOMING_MISSILE", "randomPauseAI: 0.5 2.0"); 
        ATTACKED = ("setAITo: traderInterceptAI.plist", fightOrFleeHostiles);
        UPDATE = ("sendScriptMessage: newOrbitPoint", "setDesiredRangeTo: 500.0",
            setDestinationFromCoordinates, checkCourseToDestination, "pauseAI: 10");
    }; 
}

In the ship script:

Code: Select all

this.newOrbitPoint = function ()
{
    var v = this.ship.position.add(this.ship.heading.multiply(10000));
    v = v.subtract(system.mainPlanet.position).direction().multiply(2.5 * system.mainPlanet.radius);
    this.ship.savedCoordinates = system.mainPlanet.position.add(v);
}

The script calculates than every AI update a new point 10000 meters in front of the ship on the orbit.

Posted: **Fri Mar 16, 2012 2:08 pm**

@ Eric: I think this isn't necessary. The reason for me thinking that is that we already had neatly orbiting ships in the game.

Back in the days when exitingTraderAI only went to a desired range of 10000 from the station, traders launched by (among others) Superhubs never could jump, because they were still masslocked. Thus they were stuck in the AI state where they flew to a desired range of 10000 from the station. This lead automagically to orbiting the station in an almost perfect circular orbit. Whenever the desired range was reached, the ship would just dive a little bit until its current destination vector was inside the 10000 m radius, and continue its journey. Rinse, repeat. The result was a circular orbit with the ship's belly always pointing to the station. I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work for orbiting a planet as well.

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