Oolite Bulletins

Explosions.plist? And a color_order entry? Mayhaps we'll be able to get those green or whatever explosions someone on the forums wanted...

I have put the changes for NPC targeting in for tonight's build. In summary:
- NPCs can keep their primary target a little beyond scanner range, to keep fleeing a military-armed ship
- NPCs can acquire an aggressor as a primary target, to respond to a beyond-scanner-range sniper
- NPCs can keep fighting a cloaked ship so long as it remains their primary target ... but at a significant penalty to their aim. Once they lose it as a target, they can't usually reacquire it (exception: they'll still respond to requests from their friends to attack it - "it's on your left!"), and they can't use "secondary target" effects on it such as plasma turrets.
Missile fire requires being able to get a good lock on the target still.

Everything else - AI behaviour, combat within scanner range, etc. - should be unchanged.

Those of you testing the nightly build, please keep alert for unusual behaviour, and if you have a military laser or cloak, maybe give the new features a go.

This is all very good, especially the cloaking stuff. Thargoid wrote some routines to more or less do that cloaking stuff, and I used some of that material in my OXPs; it's good that something along those lines - which certainly will be more reliable than my bodged appropriation of the Great Green One's code - is going into the game itself. Good stuff.

I have to admit I use cloaking way too much in combat, in situations where real stealth probably wouldn't work. Making it a little less effective is probably a good idea.

cim wrote:

I have put the changes for NPC targeting in for tonight's build.

Tonight's build will have a bug fix from this, and also the previously discussed changes around NPC injectors/acceleration.

Tactically, NPCs who are:
- outside their weapon range
- inside their target's weapon range
- able to use injectors
will use the injectors to rapidly close to combat range.

The difference between NPC and player acceleration has now also been removed: if an NPC and the player have the same thrust they will now accelerate/decelerate at the same rate. This significantly improves NPC acceleration/deceleration and may have some side-effects. Again, please test and report problems.

cim wrote:

Those of you testing the nightly build, please keep alert for unusual behaviour, and if you have a military laser or cloak, maybe give the new features a go.

cim wrote:

Again, please test and report problems.

Oh well, there goes my weekend - back to the ready-room!

Cody wrote:

Oh well, there goes my weekend - back to the ready-room!

<chuckles> And here Cody say's he is avoiding the 'Dark Side' !

Looking mighty gloomy in Pajero land

You running trunk nightlies, Leafy? You should be - you're an ace test pilot!

cim wrote:

The difference between NPC and player acceleration has now also been removed: if an NPC and the player have the same thrust they will now accelerate/decelerate at the same rate. This significantly improves NPC acceleration/deceleration and may have some side-effects. Again, please test and report problems.

<idly wonders if we'll see the Return of the Kamikaze Ferdies>


(and before anyone says anything, yes, I know we're not talking about injectors here!)

Diziet Sma wrote:

<idly wonders if we'll see the Return of the Kamikaze Ferdies>

One of the commit ids a few behind present has them (I'd typod a variable name and so caused ships in combat to attempt to accelerate to 1.2 times their own speed rather than 1.2 times the player speed. I had a few Asps ram me before I figured that one out)

Otherwise, probably not: the faster acceleration is matched by faster deceleration, so they should be able to stop in time.

Cody wrote:

You running trunk nightlies, Leafy? You should be - you're an ace test pilot!

<blushes> Thinking of getting into the nightly testing scene. Once I catch up on this thread so I am aware of the new stuff to look out for I probably will.

Speaking of testing out the nightlies, is there a requirement for the oxp/oxz folder? Like core game only? What is the preference?

Fatleaf wrote:

Speaking of testing out the nightlies, is there a requirement for the oxp/oxz folder? Like core game only? What is the preference?

I play my normal game, using my main commander, with a mix of OXPs/OXZs/managed OXZs.

A new feature for OXPers today, with two new methods and a property for the Ship class. This feature lets you exclude ships from collision tests against each other. The consequences of this are that:
- they won't collide and take damage/momentum
- they won't get AI or JS collision warnings as they approach
- if one is a station, the other won't be able to dock with it

There's quite a range of things which people have tried to do over the years which this will make considerably less fiddly, and a few other things which have previously been considered impossible should now be practical. Obviously you need to be careful with how you set this up, or it can just end up looking like (being...) a bug.

So, if they don't collide, what do they do, just pass through each other?

Wildeblood wrote:

So, if they don't collide, what do they do, just pass through each other?

Yes.