Oolite Bulletins

Capt. Murphy wrote:

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;
}

And when you don't like nuclear energy but, do like drugs, you probably want to change it to
{
Firearms = 1;
Narcotics = 0;
Radioactives = 2;
Slaves = 1;
}

Eric Walch wrote:

And when you don't like nuclear energy but, do like drugs, you probably want to change it to
{
Firearms = 1;
Narcotics = 0;
Radioactives = 2;
Slaves = 1;
}

That would certainly be a great option for someone wanting to role play cocaine sniffing treehugging hippie.

Capt. Murphy, thanks.
I’m aware of Vortex and Hypercargo already from your OXP thread.

I converted my commander to a stick man with Extreme 3D Pro. I feel noticeable improvement in combat and I think I will get even better with practice, so it is all good so far (well, except for the quality of this particular model – doesn’t look like it is going to last long, despite being marketed as “Extreme” and “Pro”).

The feature that I truly like on this stick with regards to Oolite is its precision mode. I was wondering, is there a way to make a precision mode for a keyboard?
As far as I understand the problem, to make it work there will be a need to have two sets of max_flight_pitch and max_flight_roll for each of player controllable ships in shipdata.plist(?) and a toggle key assigned to switch between them. Also, if that’s possible then player ships introduced by OXPs would need to have modifications too.

On unrelated note, I’m busy playing recommended OXPs. Impressed.

Ahruman wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

At which point your bounty goes up again, because in order to defend yourself you have to kill the cop.

That’s not actually the only option.

Very true. I one accidentally strafed a GalCop Viper for about a quarter of a second in the midst of a ten-ship furball when the odds started out as 8 Pirates vs 2 good guys (me and the Viper). By the time the last Pirate was space dust, I was feeling pretty damn pleased with myself, having only just got to a Competent combat rating by that point. After a few moments pause I heard a warning siren... the Viper had locked onto me in attack vector and was about to redecorate my thrusters! Drokk! I didn't actually want to kill a Cop, so all I could do was hit the fuel injectors to get the hell out of there. I got to the Coriolis Station only to find that they wouldn't accept my docking computer codes because, yes you've guessed it... I'd just been shot at by the Viper, so I ended up having to scramble to the sun (I wasn't going to wait for GalCop to send out a welcoming committee to greet me outside the station) and scoop some fuel to get out of dodge.

So, lesson learned - don't shoot Vipers if you can possibly avoid doing so... unless you actually want to have a Fugitive status, of course!

Tony Montana wrote:

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?

Let's put it like this: 50Cr is more profit than you'd get trading a single TC of Computers from a Rich Industrial to a Poor Agricultural system. It's a lot, although not as much as I've seen on some Fugitive ships with Bounties in 200 to 500-odd Credit range (when they sometimes attack a Seedy Bar from the Random Hits OXP). Liberators make such appetising targets in those circumstances...

Ad_Astra wrote:

Tony Montana wrote:

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?

Let's put it like this: 50Cr is more profit than you'd get trading a single TC of Computers from a Rich Industrial to a Poor Agricultural system. It's a lot, although not as much as I've seen on some Fugitive ships with Bounties in 200 to 500-odd Credit range (when they sometimes attack a Seedy Bar from the Random Hits OXP). Liberators make such appetising targets in those circumstances...

Yes, ever-increasing special NPC bounties is another OXP arms race which I am a little concerned about. Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about it other than hope for (or appeal to) the common sense of OXP creators (which is a shaky hope at best).

If you look at ships added by the engine itself, meeting one with a bounty over 50 is a pretty big deal. For normal pirates bounties of 3 or 7 are pretty common. Sometimes it goes up to the 30's, but that's pretty much where the range of bounties ends.

The player-bounty-reduction-if-you-help-the-police-and-receive-a-thank-you-message mechanism in Oolite 1.75 came alongside another new mechanism: each time a pirate switches its target during combat, its bounty increases. So, if you team up with a couple of police ships in hunting one pirate, making the pirate to switch between you multiple times, the pirate's bounty goes up into rather silly levels pretty fast. Personally I don't like this new feature, I think it's way over the top. Even if you come fresh to a scene where a couple of police ships are hunting one pirate, the pirate may have bounty well over 100 (even over 200) already at that point. This feels very out-of-balance to me.

Commander McLane wrote:

If you look at ships added by the engine itself, meeting one with a bounty over 50 is a pretty big deal. For normal pirates bounties of 3 or 7 are pretty common. Sometimes it goes up to the 30's, but that's pretty much where the range of bounties ends.

That is true for the initial bounty, but the bounty can increase much when a pirate is in combat with a police viper. (I think it needs target switching between two vipers but am not sure of that.) This increasing bounty is very noticeable when you have the bounty scanner installed. I remember a fight between a police and a pirate were I constantly saw the bounty rising. I didn't want to help immediately but waited till the bounty was over the 200 cr. At that level I didn't want to risk that the viper did kill it before me

Eric Walch wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

If you look at ships added by the engine itself, meeting one with a bounty over 50 is a pretty big deal. For normal pirates bounties of 3 or 7 are pretty common. Sometimes it goes up to the 30's, but that's pretty much where the range of bounties ends.

That is true for the initial bounty, but the bounty can increase much when a pirate is in combat with a police viper. (I think it needs target switching between two vipers but am not sure of that.) This increasing bounty is very noticeable when you have the bounty scanner installed. I remember a fight between a police and a pirate were I constantly saw the bounty rising. I didn't want to help immediately but waited till the bounty was over the 200 cr. At that level I didn't want to risk that the viper did kill it before me

I mentioned that in my last paragraph, and also wrote that I don't like it.

I can see the logic of a bounty increase when a pirate first gets involved with a police ship. It's like he was assaulting someone, and then also is resisting his arrest when the cops arrive; so now he is facing two charges. But I can't see the logic of more bounty increases after that point. Two stay in the comparison: there's one charge of resisting arrest, no matter how many individual policemen were involved in the arrest. In RealLife™ you don't get more charges or a higher punishment because while attempting to resist your arrest you were hitting policeman A first, then struggling with policeman B, then returning to your victim, and finally hitting policeman A again. That's not multiple unrelated crimes (at least I wouldn't see it so).

And I especially can't see the logic of multiple drastic bounty increases. The first attack on a trader is worth a bounty of 7. The first attack on a cop has always been worth a bounty of 71, which is already draconic by comparison. For me it doesn't need to increase further and further in large steps from there. I wouldn't mind further increases of 3 or 4 every once in a while during a prolonged fight with the police. But the current increases of 30 or 40 for each change of target seem clearly out-of-proportion to me.

Commander McLane wrote:

The player-bounty-reduction-if-you-help-the-police-and-receive-a-thank-you-message mechanism in Oolite 1.75 came alongside another new mechanism: each time a pirate switches its target during combat, its bounty increases. So, if you team up with a couple of police ships in hunting one pirate, making the pirate to switch between you multiple times, the pirate's bounty goes up into rather silly levels pretty fast.

This doesn't even seem to require a police ship nearby. I've seen a Fer de Lance bounty increase over 2000 credits due to getting it to pinball its target-of-choice between my ship and 2 NPC ships (presumably 1 trader, 1 bounty hunter).

IMO, OXP ships could have bounties as high as 1000 credits so long as they are considerably more powerful than Thargoid Warships. These would presumably be very few in number and often the "final target" of a mission or campaign. To kill one, you should be expected to use either multiple missiles and/or overheat at least 1 laser. An energy bomb shouldn't be able to kill a fresh one if it's bounty is over ~300 credits.

Switeck wrote:

This doesn't even seem to require a police ship nearby. I've seen a Fer de Lance bounty increase over 2000 credits due to getting it to pinball its target-of-choice between my ship and 2 NPC ships (presumably 1 trader, 1 bounty hunter).

You are right, it does not need a police. The police only deals a big bounty but has a maximum. The 'pinball' mechanism is independent of scanclass and raises the bounty on every switch with a random value between 5 and 20. 2000 credits would mean well over 100 switches, so you took your time when observing these switches.

I apologize for my unending complaints.

But can this get removed again for 1.76? I find this behaviour buggy, even if it is intended behaviour.

Alternatively, if complete removal is not an option, can the number of bounty increases be limited, or can the total bounty be capped somewhere in the region of let's say 100 or 120?

Or do I have to write bounty_cap.oxp for my personal use?

Commander McLane wrote:

But can this get removed again for 1.76? I find this behaviour buggy, even if it is intended behaviour.

What do you mean with 'again'. It is code that is present since at least Oolite 1.65. Without bounty scanner it was never that obvious, but bounty increase on target switch has always been that way.

Eric Walch wrote:

The 'pinball' mechanism is independent of scanclass and raises the bounty on every switch with a random value between 5 and 20. 2000 credits would mean well over 100 switches, so you took your time when observing these switches.

Actually, I arrived "late for the show", with the Ferdie already at >1200 credits bounty and increasing rapidly enough that it didn't take me long to realize that exploiting it would be a joke. This was during the "jousting" bug tests I was doing. These ships weren't going to kill each other anytime soon and because of their behavior actually made the high bounties MORE likely.

But even after the 1-hit-turn "jousting" bug was removed, bounties still skyrocket really fast if it's 3 vs 1 pirate. I even saw a Black Monks Monastery reach over 6000 credits bounty because a furball of a fight moved near it and it had a couple stray shots hit a Viper...which escalated from there.

No offense, this is effectively a game breaking bug.

Eric Walch wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

But can this get removed again for 1.76? I find this behaviour buggy, even if it is intended behaviour.

What do you mean with 'again'. It is code that is present since at least Oolite 1.65. Without bounty scanner it was never that obvious, but bounty increase on target switch has always been that way.

Really? I never noticed it before, and I've had a bounty scanner since it came out. I thought you introduced the feature together with the bounty-reduction-for-a-thank-you-message thing. Probably the bounty increase didn't actually work until recently?

Switeck wrote:

No offense, this is effectively a game breaking bug.

Although I am prepared to accept this as a bug, or at least a behaviour that requires some further discussion, given that it exists since at least v1.65 and it's being discussed just now, I would hardly call it game breaking.