Oolite Bulletins

pagroove wrote:

I thought it said 'slave hunter'. But you could be right.

The term is actually just "slaver": someone who engages in the slave trade.

A slave-runner would be someone who smuggles slaves past border / duty controls in cultures where slavery is legal.

A slave hunter would be someone who goes out specifically to get free people to turn into slaves, which I presume is done in Oolite by scooping escape pods. These days we call this "human trafficking".

Hmm. Now I'm confused. In my RealWorld™ existence, I find the concept abhorrent, but with my Oolite head on, should the game be imposing value judgements on the player about slavery when the game also permits gun-running, drug trafficking and murder?

Does the "You don't like slave-hunters ..." message only appear when one is Clean? Now I might just have to go Fugitive for a bit and see if the message still comes up.

SandJ wrote:

but with my Oolite head on, should the game be imposing value judgements on the player

Nope. Definitely an AFGNCAAP violation there. (Is it in the core game, though?)

It's not always the big ones that are the worst: a cautionary tale.

I was poking around the far south-eastern corner of Chart 1, and decided it was time to get back across to somewhere more central. I stopped off at the space bar on Isdibi to see if they had anything I could do on the way, and the one that best fit with my plans was to take out the petty criminal Ensign Smedley, holed up at Ceedra.

Easy enough. Just some loser in a Drake Mk I. After a stop-off at Tibecea to refuel, I jump to Ceedra and start flying in-system, and before long the bandit is taking serious damage from my military laser.

At which point, not surprisingly, they jump out to Diquxe. And then to Tibecea. And then to Sori. And then back to Ceedra again. I follow them through that wormhole too, line up to retarget, and ... Ensign Smedley (Drake). Clean.

Sneaky little amphibian...

Ceedra is the local GalNavy Sector HQ, so the spacelane, which Smedley calmly cruises down, is absolutely full of cops and military convoys. Not fancying a fight with a Navy Frigate, I slowly follow them, finally reaching a point in the spacelane with no cops about. Line up ... open fire! Naturally Smedley uses his new clean status to call for help and look like the wronged innocent.

Fortunately, by this point, they're out of fuel, and their Drake satisfyingly explodes. Unfortunately, it looks like the local cops heard the distress call - and although none of them have shown up yet, my status is Offender, and a local bounty hunter in a Dragon SE is now picking away at my aft shields.

Rather than get into further trouble by attacking them too, I jump back to Diquxe with my remaining fuel, and manage to get to the in-system fuel station before I run into any cops. When the cops do show up, it's another jump to Zaleriza where the local authorities are a little looser and will allow me to dock and get my payment.

But definitely time to lay low for a while, I think.

cim wrote:

Naturally Smedley uses his new clean status to call for help and look like the wronged innocent ... my status is Offender, and a local bounty hunter in a Dragon SE is now picking away at my aft shields ... But definitely time to lay low for a while, I think.

Quite right too. Try telling all that to the local magistrates and they just won't listen.

Shoot, kill and run away,
Live to trade another day.

Taking a long cruise across the seventh, meandering my way slowly towards the Great Rift, I made the run from Maraus to Edoned without too much trouble, ‘trading’ hard all the way. Having had Rolling Thunder overhauled and re-ordnanced, I bought a holdful of computers and jumped to the zero-distance double system of Dicelaso/Zaanxege. Due to the mysteries of witchspace though, Dicelaso is closer to Edoned so I went there first, then immediately jumped on to Zaanxege which is a 'nice' juicy av/ag/an. About halfway in-system, I got jumped by two large groups of bandits and things began to turn nasty... 'time to run', I thought fiendishly! I quickly laid-in a jump back to Dicelaso but deliberately misjumped into interstellar space... sure enough, a whole load of bandits followed me through. Then ensued a frantic firefight... me, about eight or nine bandits and four or five Thargoid warships... plus four wormhole jammers, of course! Pure combat chaos! Between dogfighting for my life, I picked-off the jammers one by one... as the last one blew, my wormhole was restored and I headed straight for it, only to see another two wormholes appear as well. Curious, I came about and dived into one... and went straight through it. One of the quirks of wormholes in interstellar space between double systems, but it meant that my own wormhole had by now disappeared. However, I still had enough fuel for a normal jump, so I finished-off the last two bandits then jumped back to Zaanxege to sell what remained of my cargo of computers. I had plenty of damaged kit and no missiles left, but I was lucky as the cruise in-system was uneventful... I reckon most of the bandits had followed me into interstellar space and got a right shock for their trouble. I laughed all the way to the bar!

Great story EV and brilliant tactics

It is a shame it is difficult to record such battles so you could watch it back later.

cim wrote:

At which point, not surprisingly, they jump out to Diquxe. And then to Tibecea. And then to Sori. And then back to Ceedra again. I follow them through that wormhole too, line up to retarget, and ... Ensign Smedley (Drake). Clean.

Sneaky little amphibian...

Not being an official bounty hunter, I can't comment if this is usual behaviour. I can say, though that I'm sitting here in wonder at the behaviour that the Oolite engine is displaying. If this is emergent behaviour from the AI then this is really, really cool.

I would not have expected a mark to make itself Clean in order to foul a bounty hunter's objective.

I almost don't want to look under the hood of Oolite to see if this was scripted or emergent behaviour...as a matter of fact, I probably won't.

cim wrote:

At which point, not surprisingly, they jump out to Diquxe. And then to Tibecea. And then to Sori. And then back to Ceedra again. I follow them
through that wormhole too, line up to retarget, and ... Ensign Smedley (Drake). Clean.

Sneaky little amphibian...

Jumping betwen systems is not only making the player clean.
If you were following a randon hits mark, there will be another surprise: somehow there will always be a police ship at the witchpoint were the target becomes clean. If you don't notice that, it is no longer the mark that has a problem.

Bugbear wrote:

cim wrote:

At which point, not surprisingly, they jump out to Diquxe. And then to Tibecea. And then to Sori. And then back to Ceedra again. I follow them through that wormhole too, line up to retarget, and ... Ensign Smedley (Drake). Clean.

Sneaky little amphibian...

Not being an official bounty hunter, I can't comment if this is usual behaviour. I can say, though that I'm sitting here in wonder at the behaviour that the Oolite engine is displaying. If this is emergent behaviour from the AI then this is really, really cool.

I would not have expected a mark to make itself Clean in order to foul a bounty hunter's objective.

I almost don't want to look under the hood of Oolite to see if this was scripted or emergent behaviour...as a matter of fact, I probably won't.

It's simply Oolite. Oolite's mechanism for dealing with bounties is very simple. Jumping halves a ship's bounty, for player and NPCs alike (note, however, that extensive NPC-jumping was not originally envisioned in Oolite, therefore the case of NPCs becoming clean through multiple jumps was almost certainly not foreseen). The result is then rounded down.

Thus it's simply a matter of how high the bounty originally was. For any offender it takes a maximum of six jumps to become clean: 50 (maximum bounty for offender status) -> 25 -> 12 -> 6 -> 3 -> 1 -> 0 (clean). With a starting value below 32 it takes only five jumps, below 16 only four, below eight only three, etc.

In my tests, I've seen Thargoid warships (with a modified thargoidAI.plist) become clean from chasing me through my many wormholes. I've been told it'll be fixed so that doesn't happen at least for Thargoids.

Switeck wrote:

In my tests, I've seen Thargoid warships (with a modified thargoidAI.plist) become clean from chasing me through my many wormholes. I've been told it'll be fixed so that doesn't happen at least for Thargoids.

There will never be peace with the Thargoids with that attitude.

Assuming all Thargoids are alien scum to be killed on sight - including any Thargoid ambassador or peace envoy or peacenik or renegade runaway - will ensure they fight us to the death.

Doesn't our humanity allow us some space for understanding and forgiveness? Surely if a Thargoid is so desparate to clear their record, we should give them the benefit of the doubt? Can't we all just get along?

He/she/it probably just wanted to be your friend.

El Viejo wrote:

About halfway in-system, I got jumped by two large groups of bandits and things began to turn nasty... 'time to run', I thought fiendishly!

I must be playing the game wrong. Have not had to hyper out of a system on account of pirates. Seriously though, I should try your tactic sometime, EV. Lure them into interstellar space! What a devious commander indeed!

CaptSolo wrote:

What a devious commander indeed!

Devious? Moi? You might think that... I couldn't possibly comment!

How long does an NPC escape pod last in interstellar space? If the player ejects in IS, he lasts about ten seconds (?), then it's a 'life-support failure' and 'Press Space'!

El Viejo wrote:

How long does an NPC escape pod last in interstellar space? If the player ejects in IS, he lasts about ten seconds (?), then it's a 'life-support failure' and 'Press Space'!

Would the game support a super-pod via OXP? Very expensive (is your life worth it?) high TL, needs regular maintenance, and too big to be fitted to small ships (and possibly a constant power drain as its specialist quirium condensor is constantly charged from the main engine ready for ejection and subsequent jump) but similar to my micro worm hole generator mine in "Snake Charming" story - given the tiny size of the pod relative to the ship it's ejected from - the pod can make a jump of up to say... 3 LY... (enough to get to most systems providing you haven't been clever with your misjumps).

As ever, I'm just an ideas man...