Oolite Bulletins

Two bank holidays and lots of proper work in between equals not much Oolite action. However, here's an updated version of the Guerilla War test that uses the Shift-N function to activate/de-activate the squadron command system. You'll be given the equipment when you first sign up to the resistance or later whenever you agree to undertake a mission.

Guerilla War v0.2

do you still need at least 6 missile slots? or does the shift-n overide that?

You still need x missile slots in total, since the squadron interface uses the missile bays slots to implement its magic.

When pressing n, however, your hud will switch from showing your missiles to showing the squadron interface.

I don't want to tell you what to do with your oxp, but in case your looking for inspiration or another game in addition to Oolite, here is a game similiar to what you are trying to do in Oolite. Arvoch Conflict

I have had some time to think on your oxp. I think it has great promise, but I felt like I didn't do that much. I targeted and destroyed a few of the asps and ordered my wingmen to engage a couple others, but the wingmen didn't do much. Only one got a kill and another got killed, the enemy asps just sat around until I attacked them, then they fought back briefly and fled way beyond the station's aegis. The enemy ai was not that great, I assume that the ai is just filler for a custom ai suited to this purpose.

It's very hard to get ai ships to attack escort type ships. The escorts generally won't attack them unless their mothership orders them to.

Thanks for comments so far; here's what I've been up to.

For the base defence test mission I've now given the enemy a proper AI that makes them actually attack the Coriolis station. Previously I'd just given them a standard trader AI which is why they didn't attack.

More importantly I've been tweaking the squadron AI further in a bid to make them more effective. It seems no matter what I do they just don't seem to want to fight sometimes, even though they're using the standard performAttack routine used to great effect by police interceptors. It does seem that they're far more animated when pitched against ships that actually defend themselves. In contrast, when attacking a slow moving trader the tendency is to fire a few laser bursts (often missing in the process) before wheeling away to prepare another attack.

As a test I tried adding a fixed turret to the mambas and that seems much more effective. I was always going to have at least one ship amongst the selection with turrets of some sort, but I may expand this to some of the smaller ships as well if it makes the gameplay better. (I've noted some of the comments in the 'Accidental Fire' thread re turrets and if I do go down this route I'll be reducing the weapon energy or increasing the enemy's ship energy to balance things out properly).

I was going to work on some of the other mission types but I got sidetracked into developing the scoring mechanism, which after all will underpin the whole OXP. In turn that led me to create a nifty 'balance of power' graph to show how the war is going. This info needed a home so I created a new Ops Room screen, which also summarises total kills/losses sustained over the course of the campaign, as well as a news feed reporting any relevant intelligence. For the moment this is just there for a bit of flavour but I might have a more functional use for it in future. Will post some pics once I've done some cleaning up.

Added to the WIP section of the [wiki]OXP List[/wiki].

Thanks for the add, maik.

Here's a quick screenshot of the ops room:

That looks great now Ramirez, I can't wait for the full oxp to come out.

I can only echo Staer9's opinion...

Another question: in the loadout selection screens I'd like to shift the ship display model into the top right corner rather than having it in the centre. I got the impression that mission.displayModel can be used to change position and orientation but I don't quite know how to go about this - something to do with frame callbacks?

Simply setup your screen with the model:or Then set position and ortientation The question is if you want it to be rotating and if you want to control the rotation. spinModel:false gives you the possibility to control it on your own. Then you can use frame callbacks or timers to let it rotate. Advantage of a frame callback is that the rotation is really smooth.

Another approach is to use a control entity (like in Snoopers). Here the control entity scans for it and uses "safeScriptActionOnTarget: performTumble" in it's AI. This leads to random rotations, based on the shipdata declarations for max_flight_pitch and max_flight_roll.

But then the next tricky thing pops in - finding and correcting the right position based on users screen resolution...

I'm pleased to be able to post a further update to this work in progress. Once again, focus is on building the mechanics which I then hope to re-use for different missions, etc. Here's a bit of a changelog:

• Moved ship displays to top right of loadout screen (thanks, Svengali!)
• Altered the ship selection menu to cycle through available ships rather than selecting them through mission choices. This leaves more of the screen available to display the ship specs
• Added some background art to various screens
• Added an assault mission type that involves hyperspacing out of the current system (not I'm just using a rock hermit as a placeholder model)
• Modified mission destinations so they're within 15ly or so of the resistance base - we don't want the player to have to cross the galaxy with their squadron in tow
• Added mission summaries (kills, casualties, points) on debrief
• Implemented an Ops Centre (see previous pic) with campaign summary, intelligence feed and overall score
• Units now carry out a routine comms check after exiting witchspace
• Improved in-flight squadron communications
• Fitted Mambas and Kraits with low-power plasma turrets to improve combat effectiveness
• Player is now assigned a specific squadron command with number and type

Stuff that's on the way:

• Scripting for remaining mission types
• Rank and promotions system for squadron units
• All sorts of balancing tweaks to make the OXP fun!

Guerilla War v0.3