Oolite Bulletins

Switeck wrote:

hyperspacing away

Which leads me to think that GalCop Interceptors should be able to follow a fugitive player through his wormhole, as pirates can now do.

El Viejo wrote:

Which leads me to think that GalCop Interceptors should be able to follow a fugitive player through his wormhole, as pirates can now do.

Nope, police forces are assigned to their respective systems and cannot leave them without specific authorizations. GalCop regulation is very clear on that, you know.

Damn... there goes my fiendish plan for luring some of GalCop's finest into interstellar space.

El Viejo wrote:

Damn... there goes my fiendish plan for luring some of GalCop's finest into interstellar space.

Their colleagues of Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy are certainly more than willing to "take care of you" there.

Commander McLane wrote:

I think my first parenthesis was confusing. What I wanted to say is that the behaviour outlined in the paragraph is the standard Oolite behaviour since version 1.74. (In my first post I had mistakenly written 'since 1.75'; I just wanted to correct this error.) This only means that the change was made a little earlier than I had first thought.

Bottom line: if you're running the latest version of Oolite (1.75.2) you will get the occasional bounty reduction if you help a cop, without any OXPs at all.

I see, well, thanks for clarification. To be honest I don’t know now why I was reading 1.75 was somehow excluded, though I blame me trying to multitask.

Commander McLane wrote:

The bounty reduction was purely randomly, with a 16% chance per kill of a criminal, and it would depend on the bounty of the ship you killed.

and

Eric Walch wrote:

Its 20% reduction of the bounty. It seemed somehow stupid to thank a ship but do nothing in reward. . But, after the police is ready it will scan for offenders again and still will find you. Adding special code to exclude such pilots from being found in the next scan was a bit to much trouble.

Alright, so…from 1.74 onwards PC helping GalCop has

16% chance to reduce bounty by 20%?
and then be attacked by the very same GalCop. How much time PC has before police will scan again?

In any case this is not good, not good at all from criminal point of view.
I tested how much one GalCop’s head would cost me and ended up with 71cr bounty. With such little bounty station already refuses (BTW is there a number set for this?) to give clearance for docking.

Hmm, given situation at hand, I think my options are:

1. become one of many goody two-shoes (where’s fun in that? no, seriously?)
2. ignore blood thirsty GalCops and bounty hunters, or keep killing them; forget the idea to reduce bounty on my head; also get used to docking manually
3. get an OXP that fixes all the problems with PC wanting to be an outlaw

Something like: GalCops will ignore Offenders but will try to shoot Fugitives on sight. Bounty hunters will still try to get you even at Offender status.
Stations will allow auto docking to all but Fugitives (just like now?).
Extend Offender bracket from 1-50 to something more manageable, like allow PC buy one of one time maximum amount per station (99t?) available of illegal goods.. let’s say narcotics, followed by 3 jumps / docking, before getting into Fugitive.
So that would be around 371.25cr bounty if my math is correct. Murder crime then need to be adjusted too to put even PC with Clean status into Fugitive for committing one.
4. learn how to code and make my own OXP (don’t like that last one)

I’m opened to suggestions (hoping for that OXP, really).

Number 2 sounds like fun to me . Manual docking under injectors with vipers blasting your shields. Although it's often followed by a period of 'Attitude Adjustment' once docked - (annoying but at least your Clean again).

Secret to successful smuggling whilst keeping relatively Clean is not to buy your contraband at main stations but in OXP added dockables as their is no penalty on launching from them. Places where bounty hunters hang out tend to keep a lot in stock......I think they must grow their own on those Seedy Space Bars as a bounty-hunter would never actually engage in smuggling (or would they?)

And why do the police get so upset when you buy all the narcotics from their main station - it's because it drives the local street prices up, they can't afford their fix and they are flying cold turkey.

Some of the simplest mechanisms can make for good gameplay. Maybe a simple way to deal with Galcop behaviour would be to just use reaction time.

After a player ship comes within scanner range of a Galcop viper, the time before they become hostile could be inversely proportional to the players bounty. The logic would be that fugitives with big bounties would perhaps have their IDs already circulated among the police, they're basically on the "most wanted list". They'd also obviously be a bigger score for a bounty hunter and be more likely to be a name the bounty hunter might recognise..

An offender, on the other hand, would be less of a high profile individual where it might take time for a records check to turn up whatever has earned them their record. So one might need to hang around the vipers for a while before they'd go red on you.

That way if the player is a definite "baddie", there would be the illusion that as soon as the Vipers get around to ID-ing them, it's "Consider extremely dangerous! Shoot on sight!". But a mediocre criminal or minor miscreant, well, they might not actually get around to checking the records and attacking until they might have passed out of scanner range, in which case, the player has "sneaked by". As a player cleans up their record, the police would gradually appear to lose interest, but if they have been on a crime spree, the Vipers would be very aggressive.

It could give the AI some illusion of there being a decision making process and a bit of bureaucracy at work, rather than acting in a 100% predictable automatic fashion.

Another thing I'd suggest is that there be a chance that any Viper that goes hostile on a player might transmit a "Be on the lookout for Commander _____!" or has called for backup. So all Vipers in that system would be hostile very fast after being encountered. Maybe something like a 20% chance checked every 30 seconds while in an encounter between player and police Vipers, so the only chance of sneaking by would be to take them out quickly.

But manual docking at full throttle and thrusters is one of the *fun* things in the game, even if you aren't a criminal...at the moment.

Tony Montana wrote:

2. ignore blood thirsty GalCops and bounty hunters, or keep killing them; forget the idea to reduce bounty on my head; also get used to docking manually
3. get an OXP that fixes all the problems with PC wanting to be an outlaw

You will need to learn how to dock manually anyways, even at full speed and with fuel injectors as others already suggested. There are some missions that make you a fugitive and you will have to reach the main station despite GalCop trying to rid the system of you.

Regarding OXPs: I use Commander McLane's excellent [wiki]Anarchies OXP[/wiki]. On the one hand it extends the time needed to become clean just from jumping from system to system, on the other hand it gives you multiple new ways to clear your status: hacker outposts (in somewhat tech savvy anarchy systems) and corrupt store clerks in all anarchy systems that sometimes offer to hack the system for a fee to get you clean again are the ones that I typically use. Just keep on visiting the equipment store until you are being offered this service.

Tony Montana wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

A) The bounty reduction was purely randomly, with a 16% chance per kill of a criminal, and it would depend on the bounty of the ship you killed.

and

Eric Walch wrote:

B) Its 20% reduction of the bounty. It seemed somehow stupid to thank a ship but do nothing in reward. . But, after the police is ready it will scan for offenders again and still will find you. Adding special code to exclude such pilots from being found in the next scan was a bit to much trouble.

Alright, so…from 1.74 onwards PC helping GalCop has

16% chance to reduce bounty by 20%?

No. A was (as in: it doesn't exist anymore) what you got with Anarchies.oxp before Oolite 1.74. B is what you get without any OXP since Oolite 1.74.

Tony Montana wrote:

In any case this is not good, not good at all from criminal point of view.

Interesting point of view. It never occurred to me that the world has to be organized in a way as to be 'good from a criminal point of view'. Would you subscribe to this view for RealLife™ as well?

Tony Montana wrote:

I tested how much one GalCop’s head would cost me and ended up with 71cr bounty. With such little bounty station already refuses (BTW is there a number set for this?) to give clearance for docking.

What gives you the idea that 71 cr is a 'little' bounty? Look around you at the bounties typical pirates have on their heads. Few of them exceed 40 cr. With more than 50 cr you are a fugitive, and fugitives are not getting docking clearance.

Tony Montana wrote:

3. get an OXP that fixes all the problems with PC wanting to be an outlaw

This OXP doesn't exist, and I doubt that it can be created. The docking clearance issue for instance is hard-coded. That's a programmer's way of saying: it cannot be changed through an OXP.

The closest you can currently get to it is the already-oftentimes-mentioned [wiki]Anarchies OXP[/wiki].

Ganelon wrote:

Some of the simplest mechanisms can make for good gameplay. Maybe a simple way to deal with Galcop behaviour would be to just use reaction time.

After a player ship comes within scanner range of a Galcop viper, the time before they become hostile could be inversely proportional to the players bounty.

Huh? This is exactly how Oolite has always worked. The less bounty a criminal has, the longer he is ignored by the police. With a bounty of 255 and above, the criminal is guaranteed to be found in the first scan cycle. With a bounty if 1, it takes an average of 255 scan cycles to find him. (The relation is not strictly inversely, because Oolite operates with random and probabilities.)

Commander McLane wrote:

Huh? This is exactly how Oolite has always worked.

LOL Cool! I never knew that. Thank you.

Commander McLane wrote:

No. A was (as in: it doesn't exist anymore) what you got with Anarchies.oxp before Oolite 1.74. B is what you get without any OXP since Oolite 1.74.

According to your post, in (early) Anarchies the amount reduced depends on the bounty of the ship destroyed; I thought Eric Walch (look again at how it’s written) was saying that that amount is now fixed to 20% of your bounty and assumed (doing that too often) the developers recycled your 16% chance for this to happen. If this isn't the case, what is the amount then? Bounty of the ship?

Commander McLane wrote:

Interesting point of view. It never occurred to me that the world has to be organized in a way as to be 'good from a criminal point of view'. Would you subscribe to this view for RealLife™ as well?

Haha. Ok, well.. yes.. in Brazil for example, oh… never mind, it’s a game.

Commander McLane wrote:

What gives you the idea that 71 cr is a 'little' bounty? Look around you at the bounties typical pirates have on their heads. Few of them exceed 40 cr. With more than 50 cr you are a fugitive, and fugitives are not getting docking clearance.

It’s small from even beginner’s criminal point of view. I did look. Not sure how all these fugitive even survive. Most of them ain’t capable to arrive to their own kitchen unharmed, not to mention manually dock with fuel injectors on. Are there any big fish?

Commander McLane wrote:

The docking clearance issue for instance is hard-coded.

At 51?

Commander McLane wrote:

The closest you can currently get to it is the already-oftentimes-mentioned Anarchies OXP.

Yes, I clearly need to try that; also Illegal goods tweak and Random Hits OXPs to check what my options are.

Tony Montana wrote:

Yes, I clearly need to try that; also Illegal goods tweak and Random Hits OXPs to check what my options are.

If you're just looking to trade in controlled goods, you could try installing Your Ad Here, too – the Convenience Stores it adds in at the witchpoint (in sufficiently stable systems with a population of more than 4 billion) sell everything, and it's no crime at all to buy up their narcotics and ship them to the main station. The quantities on offer can be low, but the profit margin can be enormous!

Tony Montana wrote:

According to your post, in (early) Anarchies the amount reduced depends on the bounty of the ship destroyed; I thought Eric Walch (look again at how it’s written) was saying that that amount is now fixed to 20% of your bounty and assumed (doing that too often) the developers recycled your 16% chance for this to happen.

You're correct, except that the 16% chance wasn't recycled.

As I explained earlier, you now get the bounty reduction whenever a police ship broadcasts a "thank you for your help" message to you. This makes it easily visible on your screen.

I have no idea what the conditions and chances for broadcasting this message are, though. Only one thing is for sure: you have to help the police first.

I think to get the thank-you message from the police you need to get a pirate that is attacking them to switch targets from the police to you. This only works once per pirate though.

Also I believe police scans are far more efficient in better organised systems, ranging from "they'll never spot you" in an anarchy to "don't bother helping the police if you've got a bounty yourself, they'll be after you in a heartbeat" in a corporate state.

A couple more thought -

Thargoids Hypercargo (an equipment OXP) is a smugglers friend. Once you've bought the standard version in certain systems you can get it hacked and then any Contraband stored in it is immune from detection on launch (or dock if you are using my Illegal Goods OXP). Thargoid also released a ship called the Vortex that uses a similar technique and contraband stored in one of it's 'multibays' is also immune from detection.

Both can be found via the Wiki....http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_List

And if you really wanted to alter the penalties for launching with narcotics you can.

In the main apps configuration files you'll find a small file called illegal_goods.plist containing the following:

{
Firearms = 1;
Narcotics = 2;
Slaves = 1;
}

On my windows machine it can be found in C:\Oolite\oolite.app\Resources\Config\

Copy this file and drop it into a folder like this

C:\Oolite\AddOns\TonyMPersonalPenalties.oxp\Config\

and then use an appropriate text editor (not Windows Notepad - something like Notepad++) to edit the Narcotics down to 1. Increase in bounty will then be 1 credit for every ton of Narcotics rather than 2. I've just tested and it appears the values do have to be integers i.e. Narcotics = 0.5; doesn't give any penalty at all.

However if you do this be aware that some OXP's (including mine and the Thargoid ones I mentioned) do assume the Narcotics penalty will be 2 in their code so you may have some inconsistencies, but should be nothing game breaking.