Oolite Bulletins

TGHC wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Hmmm, interesting proposition - as a generally all round nice guy it wouldn't affect me (accept when I accidently blow up everything when I ALT+TAB to change screens and detonate my energy bomb at the same time).

Or when you forget to sell contraband and launch yourself out into the ether (or whatever it is out there).

It's the ether, unless you're connected to the Intergalctic Stock Markets via DSL or Infiniband.

As LittleBear just took a break I guess his clean-your-legal-status-OXP won't be released any time soon (if he even started doing it).

If there is any interest I could step in. I think I would place the modified hacker-rock-hermits only in Anarchy systems (makes sense, doesn't it?) and of course only randomly. They then would offer it as a a piece of equipment. Instead of a computer hack into GalCop's system it could also be a fiddling with your transponder, that makes you appear clean again. Shouldn't be too difficult to code. It could also be different pieces of equipment with different price tags, depending on your current legal status. (Of course you would pay more as a fugitive than as an minor offender.)

Just a question: How many points in your legal status counter do you need to become minor offender, offender, fugitive?

Commander McLane wrote:

As LittleBear just took a break I guess his clean-your-legal-status-OXP won't be released any time soon (if he even started doing it).

Great offer to have a go at it and thanks, though I do have reservations:

I'm not sure if there was real interest in producing it since you can always clean your status via the escape pod route.

As far as alt-tab and launching with contraband is concerned, that just goes with the territory, and is a "learning" excersise on the way to the higher levels of commandering!

Looking forward to excaliber, was always a fan of the round table.

I have to admit that also I myself am not too sure about a clean-your-legal-score.OXP, because I feel the legal status is not too big an issue in the game.

I just did some debugged gameplay to find out how the counter legalStatus_number actually works. And it's fairly easy.

0 represents clean status. If you do something wrong the number is raised according to your offence. Leaving a station with a hold full of illegal goods brought it instantly to 102. Interestingly firing at the station right after leaving raised it only to 111 and killing the launched vipers didn't do anything at all to it anymore. One jump later it was 55--still FUGITIVE. I docked manually, sold my illegal goods and bought new ones: 183. Deploying a Q-bomb after launch raised it to 255, from which point it didn't move upward again. Jump: 127. Again doing some illegal stuff: 255. And then some jumps until it was zero again: 127 -> 63 -> 31 -> 15 -> 7 -> 3 -> 1 -> 0. IIRC at a value of 31 I still was FUGITIVE, 15 was OFFENDER only.

The bottom line is: It's a counter that is raised by criminal offenses in a way I haven't fully understood, but trading illegal goods seems far worse than killing the entire police force of a system. (Now what might that mean?) But the ceiling is 255 (I guess it used to be one byte in the old days, can't even imagine how many KB the contemporary counter eats up. ). And the counter drops by half each time you jump (to be precise it is modulo 2 (dividing by 2 and cutting everything behind the decimal point)), so however bad you are, after a maximum of eight jumps you're as clean as a newborn baby again, provided you don't commit any crimes in between. And still there is even the escape pod-way to clean yourself.

So I come to the same question as TGHC: who would bother buying something to become clean, if it is so easy without spending money?

Looking back the thread I discover that LittleBear's idea was actually more sophisticated than mine. He thought of generally preventing the legalStatus_number sinking below a certain line (e.g. 100) and then getting it only cleared by a Hacker Outpost. And also he thought of generally preventing the escape pod-way. I should have read better the first time , but anyway, I like it. I'll give it a thought or two.

And still I think those Hacker Outposts should exist only in some Anarchies, presumable in the ones with a higher techlevel. Only there the hackers would be reasonably safe from the police.

And now i come to my point: I would imagine this as a feature of a "flavour"-OXP called probably Anarchy.oxp. This thread originally evolved around the question whether piracy could be made a viable way of playing Oolite. There was the suggestion of getting Pirate systems as a safe haven for all of us who choose this way, which I guess is not that easy. But I think at least some Anarchies could be formed into that by Anarchy.oxp, because I think Anarchies are the closest thing we have to Pirate systems, already populated mostly by pirates. A pirate-player would still be attacked by NPC-pirates, but, hey, a pirate's life is dangerous, isn't it?

So, would anybody agree with me on this way and probably even take the lead in developing Anarchy.oxp? I'm still ready to contribute a feature as mentioned herein, but wouldn't want to be the main developer.

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TGHC wrote:

Looking forward to excaliber, was always a fan of the round table.

NB: If this was meant for me, thanks for the looking forward, but please don't be too disappointed, because it's Equilibrium, not Excalibur. So, no knights of the round table, I'm afraid. (And no LOVELY SPAM, WONDERFUL SPAAAAAAM!)

i think a more substantial effect should definitely be attached to the Status. getting Offender should be reasonably easy to clear, but Fugitive should be more permanent and have a far-reaching effect - in a bounty on your head making you a target for hunters, more aggressive cop response, etc.

Re Anarchy.oxp, i'd quite like to see a reverse scenario : the innocent habitants of a system are hacked off w/ the pirates buggering up their trades, so a set of missions could be made to wipe a bunch of pirates out and assualt a bigger, meaner Rock hermit pirate base, thereby actually making a system no longer Anarchic, resulting in much wealth in reward and the adulation of the local girlies.
that would actually be quite interesting - veering off here on a tangerine - ie, making the system status more dynamic. consider - if you do a lot of pirating, the system will become more dangerous, and the market prices could rise sustantially....make yourself a nice little market ;-)
be a nice balance - kill nasty pirate, get good rewards. kill a lot of traders, get a good market set up for yourself.

Killer Wolf wrote:

consider - if you do a lot of pirating, the system will become more dangerous, and the market prices could rise sustantially....make yourself a nice little market ;-)
be a nice balance - kill nasty pirate, get good rewards. kill a lot of traders, get a good market set up for yourself.

I think that's getting too player-centric. The player shouldn't be that important to the big picture.

Killer Wolf wrote:

i think a more substantial effect should definitely be attached to the Status. getting Offender should be reasonably easy to clear, but Fugitive should be more permanent and have a far-reaching effect - in a bounty on your head making you a target for hunters, more aggressive cop response, etc.

I've always thought that if you are an offender or fugitive you should get brownie points for taking out some badddies or going to the aid of vipers.

I've always thought that if you are an offender or fugitive you should get brownie points for taking out some badddies or going to the aid of vipers.

I starting fighting some Thargoids once and one of the Viper's said something to the effect "Thanks for the help." After we (I) finished them, I started to continue on my merry way. About 2 seconds later one of the Vipers suddenly started attacking me! I was rated offender at the time, but come on guys, I just helped you fight off the Thargoids!

think that's getting too player-centric. The player shouldn't be that important to the big picture

speak for yourself. when i'm playing the game, i'm the most important part of it. or, y'know, it would just play itself.
and anyways, what's the diff between this and the "old West", which some of the Elite/Frontier etc stuff was based on "ie, things getting more Anarchic away from the inner worlds? You would get people/teams/posses taking out lawbreakers and "cleaning up a town", so why not in space? i'm not saying it would be a couple runs, it would take time, and if coded right in the OXP after a few attacks you might become a high-profile target for the rest of the pirates (waiting by a jump point a la those Eagles??).

@Drumz - lol, aye, i've had the same thing too, killing pirates then getting turned on. bloody annoying.

I've done it. Created what could become an embrionic Anarchies.oxp or could as well stand alone. (That was fast, wasn't it; having posted only yesterday? )

What does it do so far?

- Once you are fugitive (BTW you become fugitive with your legalStatus_counter above 50) you remain fugitive forever...
- unless you buy a Multipass (I didn't come up with a better name, suggestions are welcome), available only at a Hacker Outpost (see last parenthesis), to be found in higher TL Anarchies (TL 6 and above) from the witchpoint beacon heading away from the planet.
- The first time you're landing on a Hacker Outpost a sinister Fierce Furry Feline will approach you, introduce himself as Cap'n Hack, welcome you as a brother and explain the procedure.
- From that point on every time you land on a Hacker Outpost an item called Multipass will be available at the equipment-screen for 2500cr.
- Buy it and your legal score will be cleared (but you have to remain docked for about 10 seconds to send the cleaning signal to GalCop's central database).
- The Multipass is a one-shot-only device. If you become fugitive again you will have to buy another one.

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still to do/problems:

- The bit with preventing the use of the escape pod from cleaning your record doesn't work yet. The way suggested by Little Bear
(mission_legal_status being a variable that stores the value of legalStatus_counter; and, yes, the square brackets have to be there, I tested it) doesn't work, because it seems that part of the script is never run. My guess is that initiating the launch sequence prevents any scripts from running until the status is STATUS_DOCKED again. However often I tried ejecting while I was debugging, nothing happened at all in my log-file after ejection until I was docked, so I think I'm right with that. (And once I ended up in a Behemoth after ejecting near the witchpoint, not in the station , didn't know that was possible. But they were very nice to me, offering me a Bibeian lethal brandy in the Commodore's lounge and handing me over a brandnew ImperialCourier afterwards.) Anyway, I can figure a workaround, storing the status of EQ_ESCAPE_POD or has_escape_pod in a variable, and if that changes from TRUE to FALSE while being docked, restoring the legalStatus_counter to the value of mission_legal_status, as I do now after witchspace travel.

- The encounter with Cap'n Hack needs to be written down in missiontext.plist. As I would like him to speak in a Pirates-of-the-Carribiean-way I think that would be better written by a native speaker, as I don't feel very able to visualize dialect or slang in English. Any volunteers? (Captain Hesperus, please hear my call!!!)

- As mentioned above the legal status will only be cleared if you remain at the Hacker Outpost for at least ten seconds. That's because the game engine runs through the scripts roughly once every ten seconds, looking what actions to perform. So if you buy the item during one run and then leave before the next run is performed, nothing happens. Even returning to the Outpost won't work, because the item is removed again on launch. But I don't see it as a major problem, as it is perfectly explainable as done above (the signal sent needs time to manipulate GalCop's central database) and could be explained as well in Cap'n Hack's babble. (I'll also try to include this information in the text displayed on the equipment-screen, but it is already pretty long.)

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BTW if anybody would like to have some more information on legal status and illegal goods I can share some:

- Each tonne of Narcotics taken out of a main station raises your legalStatus_counter by 2.

- Each tonne of Firearms taken out of a main station raises your legalStatus_counter by 1.

- Each tonne of Slaves taken out of a main station raises your legalStatus_counter probably by 1/2 (during my testing I haven't found a station that sold slaves, but I think it's a safe guess).

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(almost) finally:

Killer Wolf wrote:

Re Anarchy.oxp, i'd quite like to see a reverse scenario : the innocent habitants of a system are hacked off w/ the pirates buggering up their trades, so a set of missions could be made to wipe a bunch of pirates out and assualt a bigger, meaner Rock hermit pirate base, thereby actually making a system no longer Anarchic, resulting in much wealth in reward and the adulation of the local girlies.

That might be a misunderstanding. I thought of Anarchies.oxp as a "flavour"-OXP, like Dr. Nil's Commies.oxp or Ramirez' new Dictators.oxp, just inhabiting Anarchies with specific ships, stations etc. I didn't think of a "mission"-OXP.

But I definitely support the idea of the systems in Oolite being more dynamic. I've just started a new thread called Dynamic Ooniverse. Look there for more information.

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Last but not least I'd like the SPAM posting to be removed from this thread. Can one of the moderators do so? Thank you very much!

To make finding a hacker-hermit easier, but more random, introduce a 'middleman'.

I'll explain.
You enter a system that contains a hacker (according to your script).
This system also contains a pirate henchman that contacts the player, if within a certain range with an offer from the hacker.
ACCEPT and you are awarded a temporary EQ_transponder_frequency.
This enables you to lock onto the hermit (H), IF you have an advanced space compass.
The EQ is removed subsequently the next time "STATUS_EXITING_HYPERSPACE" occurs.

(In reality: accepting the deal not only gives you the frequency, but also spawns a Hacker-hermit that has a locator beacon (H))
Henchmen will be acting like normal pirates along the spacelane.
Appearing on D3 1:Sun-WP 2:Sun-Planet 3:WP-Planet
Random Hacker-hermits are also an option, they are identical but just don't have a locatorbeacon.
Dock to a hermit and find out he's a hacker.
(or ID him from the L33t graffitty on the dockingport.)




Edit: This anarchies.oxp thing sounds like a nice development-adventure!


I could think of a galaxy, (say... #5), where we planetInfo.plist script all planets to be less friendly than normally expected.
(As well as reducing the techlevel according to legalrating, preventing the player from buying a GHD.)

Several small outposts of sanity exist in this galaxy and the player is asked to enforce/expand the peace.
Several missions can then incrementally improve the legal-rating of a star system where missions are completed (or X pirates are nullified).

After a while the player will be able to buy a drive and get out, if the commander wishes to do so.

edit: I thought about it some.
And I suspect, that although a general lowering of the galactic morale is possible without resorting to 500 entries.
Creating adhoc variables for independent systems is not. This would then turn into a 500*X-variable mission script, keeping track of each system and number of 'lynchings'.
Too much bugger.
Easier to take out a few key systems (tech 10) and code seperate missionscripts for only that handfull of individual systems.

Developer's update:

- Fixed the escape pod thingamajig. From now on (provided you've installed the OXP) using your escape pod doesn't change your legal status anymore. If you're clean before, you're clean afterwards; if you're fugitive before, you're fugitive afterwards. Period.

- Gave some more thoughts to the whole legal rating system and decided to redo it (yes, that's OXP'ble). As I mentioned before the player's legal rating is stored in legalStatus_number as a number between 0 and 255 (0 clean, >=1 offender, >=51 fugitive) that is cut to half with each jump, meaning that the greatest felon--"Galaxy's Most Wanted"-- will be clean after a mere 8 jumps. Not realistic. So I'm going to change the system along the following line: Above a rating of 120 each jump will reduce the legalStatus_number only by 20, between 51 and 120 each jump will reduce it by 10. And now comes the interesting part: 51 will be a non-breakable barrier, the legal status is not going to be reduced beyond this point. So: once a fugitive, always a fugitive, unless you buy yourself a Multipass (still no suggestions to another name?). Perhaps I shouldn't be that nasty? Let's say give a 10% chance that the legal status can sink under 51 when jumping, you becoming offender again? Below a rating of 51 I'm not going to change anything, so from there on you'll be clear after a maximum of 6 jumps. Comments welcome!

- I am going to have several Multipasses, according to the player's legal status. So if the bounty set on your head (technically legalStatus_number represents that bounty) is high you have to pay more to get clean. I am thinking of three different price tags: 2500cr, 1500cr, 500cr. As the Hacker Outpost has an equipment_price_factor of 2, in reality that's going to be 5000, 3000 and 1000. They are going to be scripted in equipment.plist as three different items, but the player is going to be offered only the one he needs for his currents legal rating. It will always be called MULTIPASS, but having an adjusted price. Again comments welcome!

@ Arexack: Interesting idea to make it more random by introducing a middleman. The part of creating three ships on the three main routes on entering the system, and having them send a comms message to the player is easily doable. I've done that before. BUT the ACCEPT-bit is tricky, as by now there is no possibility of reacting to a comms message while IN_FLIGHT. (I very much wish to have that, see the In-flight communication thread https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=3025, but it certainly would need hard-coding.) You can't refuse the offer. (So that seems to be the famous "offer he can't refuse". ) That means that having the message sent by the henchman and accepting it is pretty much the same. The Hacker Outpost would be created together with sending the message.--As I think about that again it again seems tricky. Can you place a spawnShip-command in henchmanAI? Probably you can as there is a scriptAction-method in AI, isn't it? Have to look it up in the wiki. But you don't need an EQ_transponder_frequency. Spawning a Hacker Outpost that has a beacon-command in its shipdata will place the symbol at your advanced space compass, period. That means that additional random Hacker Outposts will need a different entry in shipdata without the beacon_command. No problem here, and you don't have to remove an item again later.

And last: Before I think of remodelling a whole galaxy I have to read the Dynamic Ooniverse-thread https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=3043, which I haven't done so far. I have to admit, it sounds quite fascinating, but if I give myself into this now as well, I'm never going to get any far with Equilibrium.oxp, which should be top of my list right now. (Already Anarchies.oxp is a, say, deviation, but, of course, a nice one.)

trying to think up a cool name for the thing (StaR, Status Renewal??), but re pricing : how about setting it to (say) 150x the points you have - the badder you are, the more it'll cost you. to make it more of a disincentive, how about a (Multipass) only taking you down one level. Ie Offender -> Clean, or Fugitive -> Offender, meaning you'll have to buy two. i definitely think doing good deads (killing offenders etc) shuld get you back on the road, mebbes each time you get a bounty you decrease by 2 points??

I don't think Multipass is uncool (it's a reference to "The Fifth Element"), but perhaps there is a better name out there.

I would love to bind it's price to the points you have, but equipment prices are fixed in Equipment.plist. And I don't want ending up with scripting 255 different items, out of which the correct one is chosen by script actions. That would be definitely overdoing it. So for the time being it's a three-stage-scale.

Also taking you back only one level is not that easy, as internally it's not three levels (CLEAN, OFFENDER, FUGITIVE), but 256, so the easiest thing to do is to reset the value to 0. Of course I just could reduce it in steps of let's say 50 or 100. But this would mean that--if you haven't yet reached zero--the equipment would have to be available immediatly again, so that you can reduce you status furthermore. And this is just not doable in a script, because of the way scripts are handled by the game engine. So you would have to wait an average of ten seconds until the next Multipass would become available, and you would have to leave the equipment screen and return to it. Now who would understand and do that? So for the sake of handling the Multipass will make you clean right away. But of cause it could be more expensive. Any suggestions on that?

As for the doing-good-things thing: It would be a good idea, but I don't see a way of doing it. The only remotely possible way I can imagine is putting an "add: legalStatus_number -X" (X being any number) into the death actions of all pirate ships. But this is obviously not feasable. First of all it's not practical to change the shipdata of all possible pirate ships (perhaps of the original ones, but what about ships added by OXPs?), second the death actions are not related to WHO kills a ship. So the player would get this reward, even when a police ship or another NPC kills the pirate. Not a good idea. So, as long as nobody comes up with another way, it's not going to happen.

but, isn't the awarding of a bounty specific to a kill from the player? a simple (??) thing might be to test a player's credits : let's face it, in flight the only way your credits will increase is by killing ships or asteroids or space junk. cannisters are 0.1c, astys are 1c, so any increas over that would mean a pirate kill.

but, i'm just throwing ideas around here. the multipass (great film BTW) is a good idea, i just think the sliding scale would be a good idea. could it not be that you buy the pass (ie, hacker's services) for a given price, but when he starts the procedure the cost of the transaction is deducted when he finds out how many points you have (the rough idea being, if you got more points you've got more entries in your GalCop file and more entries to delete is greater risk, longer job, more expensive.