Oolite Bulletins

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 2:24 pm

I ran the mission again a couple of times without doing whatever caused me to become a fugitive first time round. Same result. Blew up COMLR and Surveillance sat, no F5 update. Shot telescope for good measure. No change. Outcome, fugitive(66) with loss for mission. Should mention I'm using fuel stations, telescope, and teleport for enhanced fun, and to speed up testing.

There's currently a conflict with the Galactic Almanac and GalCop Missions. The Almanac is renaming a bunch of ships, and that renaming process breaks most of the satellite missions, because the mission script is looking for a specific text to be the satellite name. But because the Alamanc changes the name, the script won't find the satellites and then none of the mission script ends up running.

I've fixed this in the script for the next release, but maybe don't bother with any other satellite mission for the moment.

phkb wrote: ↑Sat Feb 24, 2024 1:44 am

There's currently a conflict with the Galactic Almanac and GalCop Missions. The Almanac is renaming a bunch of ships, and that renaming process breaks most of the satellite missions, because the mission script is looking for a specific text to be the satellite name. But because the Alamanc changes the name, the script won't find the satellites and then none of the mission script ends up running.

I've fixed this in the script for the next release, but maybe don't bother with any other satellite mission for the moment.

Ok. I'll bear that in mind, though I don't have Galactic Almanac installed.

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Sat Feb 24, 2024 2:02 am

Ok. I'll bear that in mind, though I don't have Galactic Almanac installed.

Oh! Err... ok, I'd better run some more tests, then!

So the forum gave us a couple of days off... More time to play, and break stuff

Mission description issue.

Read quickly it almost makes sense. Read slowly, carefully, exactly as written, and it's almost funny. Channelling Stanley Unwin maybe?

Cargo recovery
One of our trade ships pilot in the Enlaus system, somewhere behind the witchpoint from the sun, resulting in the captain having to flee and the vessel can. However, the captain has notified us that the cargo was dumped in an asteroid field before the vessel head there, which gives us a chance to recover it. Your scoop them is to journey there, find the 11 missing cargo canisters, gather them up and return them here.


Pirate mission observations.

Total barrels required are shown in F5, also number acquired so far. This is nicer than the decrementing quantity on many other missions where one could easily forget how many there were to start with. A better sense of task proportion, scale of achievement etc.

On one mission, I needed 28 barrels, and the mission seemed to continue to claim them according to the toasts, at one point I had "37 units in hold"..

Shouldn't all the rest be my swag? If they are, that should be apparent. There's another layer of fun to be had by that.. scoop all the low value stuff for mission and gather the high value stuff for personal swag!

This kind of mission does not give F5 clues/reminders where to return to register completion until you dock and check the BB.

Wouldn't it be neat to be able to read email in flight?

I was hoping that an F9 option might be included in the nightlies, allowing access to this sort of thing- the on-board relevant chunks of the F4 docked ship-station interface (e-mails, GalCop Almanac, GNN news, Visa expiration times, etc.). Alas, my persuasive abilities failed utterly...

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 7:43 pm

I was hoping that an F9 option might be included in the nightlies, allowing access to this sort of thing- the on-board relevant chunks of the F4 docked ship-station interface (e-mails, GalCop Almanac, GNN news, Visa expiration times, etc.). Alas, my persuasive abilities failed utterly...

I feel mission status/destinations etc. should always be clear in the terse F5 summary. I've already touched on completion outcomes being shown rather than just emailed, which I'd hope to be very easy to fix. If everything is clear without email, then in-flight access is potentially less important.

That said, and at the risk of restarting a battle I had no former part in, perhaps anything which could be available in-flight without major issues could/should be in a third page of F5 or F8 all along? I'd argue that email is an obvious candidate. Skin-side, I've been able to read my email while walking to the shops for well over a decade!!

I can read maps, check cargo, see local market prices, and verify my accessories in-flight.

One other point promoting email in-flight... some missions gained through encounters in space have text which scrolls off the MFD before it can be read. Here, email in-fight would be very handy indeed.

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 8:11 pm

I feel mission status/destinations etc. should always be clear in the terse F5 summary. I've already touched on completion outcomes being shown rather than just emailed, which I'd hope to be very easy to fix. If everything is clear without email, then in-flight access is potentially less important.

In the latest Oolite trunk version, mission screens can now be shown in flight, which means I can get to email while in transit (and on my local version of the Email System, I can already do that). But I take the point that the F5 summary should be clearer. I'll have to work through the missions that have regular updates to F5 and adjust. Might take a little while!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 7:43 pm

I was hoping that an F9 option might be included in the nightlies, allowing access to this sort of thing- the on-board relevant chunks of the F4 docked ship-station interface (e-mails, GalCop Almanac, GNN news, Visa expiration times, etc.). Alas, my persuasive abilities failed utterly...

You haven't failed. The potential now exists to allow mission screens in flight, so a user-driven "F9" screen could be created right now, without any need for core code changes. I've just been busy doing one or two other updates to get to this yet.

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Wed Feb 28, 2024 7:20 pm

Cargo recovery
One of our trade ships pilot in the Enlaus system, somewhere behind the witchpoint from the sun, resulting in the captain having to flee and the vessel can. However, the captain has notified us that the cargo was dumped in an asteroid field before the vessel head there, which gives us a chance to recover it. Your scoop them is to journey there, find the 11 missing cargo canisters, gather them up and return them here.

Um... I'd like to claim it was a COVID issue, but I did those descriptions well before that excuse was a thing. Maybe...

Oh, look, over there! In the screenshots thread! Something shiny! Quick, run!

*hastily bashes offending description in the ground while no one is looking*

In a fit of foolish bravado, I took a couple of missions with the same destination.

• 1: Find damaged escape capsule in Tiveorso within 17 hrs 51 mins.

• 2: Deliver special computers to a ship in Tiveorso within 17 hrs 51 mins.

The description for '1' hinted that the capsule would be found "somewhere behind the witchpoint from the star"
The description for '2' gave no clue about who/where/what other than target system.

Computer delivery
We have a vessel currently in the Tiveorso system, awaiting the delivery of some specialised computer equipment. However, because of the nature of these computers, and their intended purpose, you cannot dock at any GalCop-aligned station while you have them on board. If you do, the computers will be discovered and confiscated, and the assignment will be terminated.

I went directly there, flew away from the star with the witchpoint at its centre, and scooped up the capsule. Mission status changed as expected. Flew around a while looking for any lone ship, keeping an eye on the comms MFD for any change per-target, on the telescope for any oddly named ships, flipped my compass around a few times, shrugged, left the Ooniverse for the night and went to the pub.

Today, I re-immersed. Went to the target system. As I arrived at the witchpoint, my scanner was infested with red targets, a load of miscreants with ill-intent. 26 kills in, and three derelicts ripped apart on my towbar, I set course away from the star.

During the battle, some on-screen toasts had counted down the life expectancy of the capsules' unfortunate occupant. On approach, the on-screen info was that it was an escape capsule with no life signs (1t machinery). I still had over an hour of mission time left so thought that a bit odd. The capsule was scooped as a ton of machinery, and importantly, mission status did not change. I flew around the system a while looking for the computer customer, again to no avail. On return to the originating station, the mission status for the computer mission was cleared on entry, the escape capsule mission was still on the list, status showed as:-

No time - mission time expired!
** Close to expiry warning

That second line is a bit bizarre.

Summary

The escape capsule mission has some borken-ness in-flight if you leave it too long, without f5 updates, and some odd status on return.

The computer delivery mission seems impossible, as there's no clue how to find or identify the target ship.

I have saves of before departure, in flight a while after scooping the lifeless escape capsule, and just after return to station if you want them.

Typo or similar... "aundefined" crops up in the middle of this one.

An unusual set of circumstances has happened with one of our shipments. The captain has declined to enter our system largely due to having called a local politician aundefined snake. So instead, they have deposited the cargo in the Maonxedi system, in an asteroid field somewhere between the main planet and the sun. We require a captain to fly there, find the 8 ditched cargo pods, pick them up and return it here.

In the readme.txt:

When you is aimed at and targeting

Obvs. grammar fumble.

Recommended OXP's: Snoopers is deprecated so should probably point to GNN unless there's some subtle benefit to the former.

OT-ish. I wandered into the Smugglers wiki page, where I spotted these:

around a 25-40% change of being detected

s/change/chance/

One now need to keep

s/need/needs/

I'd tweak them myself, but despite the Wiki inviting edits, only those in group 'user' may do so, & I can't see an obvious way to get an account.

Hacking the witchpoint beacon

GalCop only provide the transit data on an semi-regular basis,

Just came back from a Thargoid scrap mission.

19 tons wanted. 19 tons 'handed in', mission complete.

Still have 19 tons of alloys aboard that wasn't there before the mission. Perk!

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2024 4:02 pm

Just came back from a Thargoid scrap mission.

19 tons wanted. 19 tons 'handed in', mission complete.

Still have 19 tons of alloys aboard that wasn't there before the mission. Perk!

Now that's what I call a win-win situation!

The GalCop scientists just wanted to examine the alloys, so, after doing all their scans, they handed the alloys back.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it!

At least until I find the bug…