Oolite Bulletins

Ramirez wrote:

I've played around with the AI a little and I think I've made the opponents slightly more aggressive by making more use of the interceptAI.plist - this is what the police vipers use and they seem to be quite persistent when it comes to attacking.

I had this problem when I was compiling the Bounty Hunter AI for the Contractor OXP.
I used a fusion of Pirate, Thargoid, Patrol and Intercept AIs . In the end I had almost everything set to 'Attack Ship' (replacing a lot of the 'Perform Flee' commands).
One thing I tried (with limited success) was to alter the 'Flee' parameters a bit. I greatly reduced the distance to be flee'd, in the hope that instead of fleeing right off the scanner and not returning the NPC would flee enough to get out of trouble but then return to fight, say, when their energy had re-generated a bit. Same with incoming missiles. The NPC should try ecm (if fitted) and if that doesn't work flee a reduced distance, then return, only to flee again if you used a hardened missile.
The only real unknown here (to me at least) is the actual range of the scanners. I would like to set the flee distance within this range, but sometimes the NPC will stay within scanner range, and sometimes they would flee out of range, never to return. I couldn't set the range to be really small otherwise nothing would be able to flee at all...they'd just hang around with low energy, or a missile up their and get killed, and of course a dead enemy is not going to fight aggressively (or at all).

Smivs wrote:

One thing I tried (with limited success) was to alter the 'Flee' parameters a bit. I greatly reduced the distance to be flee'd, in the hope that instead of fleeing right off the scanner and not returning the NPC would flee enough to get out of trouble but then return to fight, say, when their energy had re-generated a bit.

For 1.74 that will be standard behaviour of pirates. For an AI to remember its old position there is a new AI command added to 1.74.
And a new AI command to roughly check its own energy so it does not need to wait until 100% but can already return at 75%. The last 25% of depleted energy regenerates on its way back to the old position.

Commander McLane wrote:

FlammableFlower wrote:

For some reason I can't dock with the Hunting Lodge: my Caduceus collides, fatally, every time I try to dock.

What's going on?

A problem with the Caduceus which will hopefully be gone in Oolite 1.74. Until then there are certain structures which you cannot enter with a Caduceus. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Cheers, good to hear, and will bear it in mind for now.

wonderfull OXP this, but i have a few concerns namely it can easily be abused and one can make vast some of credits just sitting at the hunting lodge, if there was a way after your accept a challenge to not allow you to take another and another until after you leave the system, then it would stop that abuse.

As far as the AI go, if one gets on their six, its pretty much game over for them, if somehow they were allowed to use the injectors to maneuver, it possibly would make it less predictable, but i understand you can exit the area, so it corners the NPC abit on their options, their only defense atm is to launch missiles at you, which is a good one, but since missiles for the NPC are not allowed, their missiles disintegrate on launch.

Also have a few errors on the NPC names, with the variable showing instead of the NPC name, i assume this is to do with 1.74

Otherwise a fantastic flavour OXP , well done.

Thanks Cobramac. As you may have read from the earlier posts, making one-on-one combat really challenging for the player is proving rather difficult, especially if you're flying in a particularly good ship. The higher ranking nobles are fitted with fuel injectors but at the moment I've set their AI to keep attacking rather than fleeing too much. Possibly I need to start fitting some of the ships with a discreet rear laser or turret, just to help balance things out.

Stopping the player from accepting another challenge is a good suggestion though and I should be able to do that through a simple script change, which I'll look into.

As variously mentioned, it is a bit easy to make insane amounts of money, so I have stopped doing challenges. However, the Royal Tournament is a fantastic test of flying ability - top drawer!

This is one of my favourite OXPs so far, and I particularly love the detailed back story.

Edit: also, I was wondering. When I entered the Royal Tournament, it said I was "of rank" - do you ever earn a rank (Junker/Graf/Ritter/whatever) yourself similar to the "ranks" in Random Hits OXP shown on the reputation screen, or is that reserved for NPCs?

Thanks Feelgone. Yes, the challenges were a good concept but they're not quite there yet.

You do indeed earn ranks through completing missions. You start off as a knight then progress up through the various levels by completing missions. The actual ranks depend on your gender and the house you're affiliated to.

However, I think I've messed up as you're only meant to be able to join a tournament if you're at least a knight. I've found an error in the script which has allowed you to enter the tournament without having your rank set properly. If you send me a PM with details of your current game I can get you set up.

Hi Ramirez,

Downloaded the latest version of your OXP. Where did the documentation go? I remember in the first version of Feudals that you included a nice manual (I actually read them all). I wanted to know which feudal planets where included in Galaxy 2.

I moved the readme out of the zip file as it was too big (something wrong with my pdf compression). I've added a link to the Flavours section of my site and also to the page on the wiki.

I've uploaded a v1.7 to fix the minor errors noted in the other thread.

I downloaded 1.7 this morning to try, and had soemthing kind of odd happen.

I accept a challenge, go out to the beacon, and.. Nobody's there. Figure maybe they had to visit the head to powder their nose or something, watic for 20 or 15 min. Nothing. Go back and dock at the lodge, and of course I've forfeited my wager.

Tried it again and everything worked fine, so I did a few tournaments and headed for the main planet so I could dock and save. And enroute to the planet, I end up passing the challenger that never showed up at the beacon. I flew around them a bit, but they didn't go hostile or say anything. They appeared to also be headed for the main station.

Just kind of odd, and almost funny (other that it resulting in my forfeiting the tournament they were supposed to have with me).

Oh, and on my f5-f5, I'm still getting "Feudal rank: mission_feudal_player_rank mission_feudal_player_of Maregies"

On the bright side, the OXP seems to run well other than the glitches noted and I think the AI is fighting a little better. It's still not near as hotshot as I'd expect for the occasional challenge that has a good payout like 10:1 odds, but I figure it'll get there eventually.

Also, they keep on firing missiles. Not a problem, since the missiles just disintegrate, but it makes it look as if they're attempting some less than sportsman-like conduct in what is basically a friendly fencing match.

Ganelon wrote:

I downloaded 1.7 this morning to try, and had soemthing kind of odd happen.

I accept a challenge, go out to the beacon, and.. Nobody's there.

I can confirm this report. But just one time, and I decided to press P and then F2 to Begin New Game.

Another question is about the mission. Usually when I finished the challenges in the hunting lodge, I will fly back to the main station to save my file. And then I will land on the planet for the missions. But when I press F8, I see only Commodity Market and never get a proclamation about mission. Do I miss something?

Anyway, It's a great OXP!

Looks like I've messed up again! I haven't set up the planetary landings properly and I need to add more conditions to one of the scripts. It's also the cause of the problem on the F5 screen - Maregies isn't meant to be one of the feudal states. I completely forgot to revisit this aspect after I expanded the OXP into different galaxies.

I've done a quick fix and have refreshed the download link if you'd like to give it a try.

Not sure what's happening with the challengers. If you have the debug tools you can check to see what their AI is set to, and that might help to identify the problem.

Ramirez, I encoutered the same problem...I accept the challange, nobody came.
Only a patrol of 5 ships flying toward the planet, then nothing.

When a ship doesn't appear, has the rest of the challenge worked correctly, e.g. are all the names and ranks showing properly? This same information is used to select the right ship and add it near the tournament buoy. If there's an error in the house name then that would be one possible cause.

The new download fixes the mission bug. Thank you for your work.