New missiles, bombs and equipment

[pagroove]

I've downloaded it. Excellent. I'm looking forward to use it, although the price is a bit high for my average commander atm. Still have to earn more money

[Cmdr. Maegil]

Would my missile variations deface your OXP too much? If not, please feel free to merge it (mind the anthill, though ).

[Ramirez]

Sorry, Maegil, what missile variations are those?

[Cmdr. Maegil]

Erm... sorry, check out this thread to see what I was talking about.

[Ramirez]

Just a heads up to say that Missiles and Bombs has been updated to v1.0 - this is now compatible with Oolite v1.71.2, but otherwise the features are pretty much the same. If anyone's using earlier Oolite versions (especially pre-1.70) they should continue to use Missiles and Bombs v0.5, which is still available at the link below.

[Ramirez]

I've made a further update to M&B with the following changes:

- I've reinstated the anti-missile system; this never worked very well in v1.65 but seems to be more effective in 1.71.

- the electronic override missile now causes random system failure to both players and NPCs

- the anti-thargoid warheads will target both thargoids and thargons in the area

[Commander McLane]

Something seems to be wrong with the Remote Detonation Mine. I see it launched from time to time by an NPC (thanks to the Missile Analzyer), but it doesn't do anything. It flies and flies and vanishes behind my scanner reach, but I have never seen it explode.

Has anybody else?

[LittleBear]

Think it needs an ECM pulse to detonate it, so NPCs won't make sensible use of it.

[Commander McLane]

Ah! So I could try to blow it up myself at a convenient place (e.g. among my enemies )?

[Ramirez]

Slight error on my part - the remote mine has a secondary role of missile so it may well be launched by an NPC but won't necessarily be detonated. It's hard to see from a distance but when the a red light on top begins to flash, the weapon is armed. Press E and it will explode.

I did think of making this a cascade bomb for better visual effect but I thought that would be too uber. Instead, have some fun by leaving one just outside a station and wait for some police ships to launch...

[TGHC]

[Commander McLane]

Hi, Ramirez!

Missiles and Bombs needs a small update for 1.72, namely in the override-script.js, because parts of 'player.foo' have changed to 'player.ship.foo'.

By the way, I always was wondering where the strange equipment-failure message came from, that I'm getting from time to time. I simply didn't relate it to Missiles and Bombs.

So I didn't only make the small changes required, but also changed the commsMessage to make it clear what's happening. And I renamed the script to override-missile-script.js. This is to help me remember in which OXP the script is located, in case I should get any error messages in my log again. Because the log-warning that something is wrong with 'override-script' unfortunately doesn't give me a clue where to find the script.

Therefore you may even consider changing its name (and all other file- and entity-names in the OXP) to something more unique and identifiable.

Anyway, my customized script now looks like this:

Code: Select all

this.name = "override-missile-script";
this.author = "Ramirez";
this.copyright = "June 2008";
this.description = "Randomly damages a ship's systems when a Violet Flax is detonated";
this.version = "1.0";

this.damageSystems = function() 
{ 
	var list = ["EQ_ADVANCED_COMPASS",
				"EQ_DOCK_COMP",
				"EQ_ECM",
				"EQ_FUEL_INJECTION",
				"EQ_TARGET_MEMORY",
				"EQ_SCANNER_SHOW_MISSILE_TARGET"] 
	var equipment = list[Math.floor(Math.random() * list.length)] 
	if(player.ship.hasEquipment(equipment)) 
	{
		player.ship.setEquipmentStatus(equipment, "EQUIPMENT_DAMAGED") 
		player.commsMessage("Warning: Missile caused System Failure", 5);
	}
}

and is now called 'override-missile-script.js'. Don't forget to change the script-entry in shipdata as well, if you also like to rename it.

Again by the way: You can also specify the type of system failure in the commsMessage, if you like. Just change the message to:

Code: Select all

		player.commsMessage("Warning: Missile detonation caused failure of " + EquipmentInfo.infoForKey(equipment).name, 5);

[Thargoid]

One comment I would like to make about this suggestion for script naming. In this case it would be OK, but more generally could I council that people think very carefully before changing script names please.

As OXP-writers are getting more proficient and scripts are getting more complex, some people (like Eric and myself that I know of, and probably several others too) are setting things up that one script checks for the presence of another to do things (e.g. Eric uses his to see if certain OXP ships are available, and if not drafts in alternatives, and I use this kind of check in RepairBots so they can fix certain bits of OXP equipment). If the script names get changed, then this kind of linkage will not function and problems may then result.

I would fully support though the recommendation about scripts and files having unique and identifiable names, but please be careful about doing it retrospectively on already existing OXPs. In this case it shouldn't cause harm, but in others it might.

[Ramirez]

Thanks for those. I'm happy with all the suggesions - I always intended to have the equipment name being displayed but didn't think it was possible with the script at the time, hence the rather generic message. I'll do an update when I have a moment.

Fair point on the script name. I suppose a good convention would be to make sure that a clear reference is made right back to the OXP name, as each author is bound to make use of a whole load of internal names (not least M&B's collection of rainbow codes) which players aren't necessarily going to make sense of when going through the error logs.

[Ramirez]

I've updated M&B to Version 1.2. This fixes the bug noted above and includes a more descriptive console message for the Violet Flax.

I've also incorporated Commander McLane's Status Quo Q-bomb OXP into the cascade missile. In this case, if the missile attempts to detonate too close to a planet or sun it will just explode harmlessly.

Version 1.2 is available at the link below.