Oolite Bulletins

Assassins are always squeeky clean.
Never dock at a main station with less than a few squeek docks.
Never take a job your not going to finnish, one way or other.
Never have/leave witnesses.

Makes me think these are not assassins your meeting, but low level thugs looking for a reputation at your expense.

Hmm. My OXP Fer-de-Lance 3G adds various bounty hunters, some of which target the player. I don't think any of those ships end up spawning with bounties at the moment. I think it would be better if they did. I've made some adjustments. Once I've tested, I'll upload a new version of the expansion pack.

Thanks for the idea!

(Technical addition. I think I had the idea already, actually - but there seems to be a note in my code saying that giving bounty hunters bounties causes problems. I can't remember why I thought that. We'll see if it does - and I will be adding the bounty via script rather than ship-data, so if there are some potential problems, perhaps that will get around them.)

UK_Eliter wrote:

giving bounty hunters bounties causes problems.

I think two bounty hunters with bounty will fight against each other and maybe ignore players with less bounty.

Norby wrote:

I think two bounty hunters with bounty will fight against each other and maybe ignore players with less bounty.

Aha. Thanks. Is that true, though, of two bounty hunters added to the game by a script as part of the same ship group?

A new version of my Fer-de-Lance 3G expansion pack is now available via the in-game manager. This version of the pack contains will sometimes add 3G bounty-hunders who are not squeaky-clean!

NOTE: This new version is number 6.2. In order to install it, you may need - I am afraid, and this will not happen in the future - to remove the older version of the pack first. That is, you may need to use the in-game expansion pack manager to remove Fer-de-Lance 3G and then to install the new version, rather than simply using the manager to - in a single step - upgrade the pack. Sorry.

What are the tactical implications of some of the assassins of a pack having a bounty ?
It should mean that hunters attack them unprovoked, right ? And in that case, the clean assassins in the same pack should attack that hunter (pack). Same for police maybe, depending on the bounty. And it makes the Random Hit's space bar a good alternative to the main station to go to if you're harassed by assassins in an anarchy. Otherwise it would only work for pirates. Random Hits shipset also adds assassins with a bounty. It is meant to make the game harder, but maybe it makes it actually easier then.

Well, Oolite does have an 'assassin' role, and 3Gs can have that role, but I haven't changed anything with that just now. Rather, I gave bounties to some of the 3G ships with the 'hunter' role.

Here are the consequences of that change to the hunters (or those I can think of, anyway):

- sometimes police and military will attack those hunters;
- sometimes other hunters will attack them;
- a player with a bounty might be attacked by one of these hunters and not be able to distinguish the hunter from a pirate (although the RandomShipNames OXP will give the hunters hunter names rather than pirate names).

Actually, though, I notice that my OXP already allowed ships with the 'assassin' role to have bounties. And it still does. In fact, it never created any assassins without bounties. I'll change that in a future release - even though it seems that Oolite treats 'assassins' basically as a type of pirate. See Oolite ship roles.

UK_Eliter wrote:

... even though it seems that Oolite treats 'assassins' basically as a type of pirate.

It does? News to me... and I don't think assassins should have bounties (when spawned, that is).

Cody wrote:

UK_Eliter wrote:

... even though it seems that Oolite treats 'assassins' basically as a type of pirate.

It does? News to me... and I don't think assassins should have bounties (when spawned, that is).

Well, they behave like pirates, in that they attack traders:

The "assassin" roles are used for ships which hang around looking for couriers whose passengers or parcels are somewhat more controversial than average, paid by enemies of the courier's client to completely destroy them. Their ships are fast, including fuel injectors and relatively well-armed for their size.

(Source: Oolite_Ship_Roles#Assassins)

UK_Eliter wrote:

Well, they behave like pirates, in that they attack traders...

No, they attack couriers!

Cody wrote:

UK_Eliter wrote:

Well, they behave like pirates, in that they attack traders...

No, they attack couriers!

= Attack ships with role "trader-courier"?

<sighs> I give up!

Sorry - I don't mean to be dense. And I would read the relevant AI code, but I haven't got to grips with the new javascript AIs. I did see, though, that the page I cited - the one listing ship roles - says (only) the following about (anything involving the word) 'couriers':
I'll investigate Oolite's built-in shipdata file.

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I edited this post to remove a typo.

Assassins that spawn with a bounty also will attack the player while he's still in the aegis of the previous system. Just happened with a few that came from random hits shipset it seems. The criminal underworld also wishes to see me dead.
Well I would have attacked them myself anyway upon realizing they are assassins. I wonder what would happen if they were clean...would the police forgive me a single shot as my reputation with the cops should be very good ? Would the assassins then reveal their vicious nature, shoot onto me more than once, become offenders and I can finally fire at will ?

Anonymissimus wrote:

Assassins that spawn with a bounty also will attack the player while he's still in the aegis of the previous system.

I am afraid I don't understand this. Might you try to put the point in a different, clearer way, perhaps?

As to the police: well, I think that you will be OK, legally, if and only if you shoot something that already has a bounty. That may not be the best way the game could possibly be, but it is, I think, how it is at the moment.