[Release] Trophy Collector

[JazHaz]

Those who are using this oxp, now is a good time to make suggestions and throw in opinions about this change. There will be a new version coming out at least with the bug fix and possibly with this modification.

A) Is it a worthy addition or does it tilt the emphasis too much to the bounty hunting?
B) Should it be configurable through a variable or oxpconfig?

A) Yes very worthy.
B) OXPConfig if possible, otherwise a variable would be ok.

[Wildeblood]

Is it a worthy addition or does it tilt the emphasis too much to the bounty hunting?

Is there a relationship between ship type and bounty? You want to know how much of your fortune came from trading, and how much from bounty-hunting, so there is definitely a case for a continual log of bounties. But with trading you want to know which commodities are most lucrative, to guide your future trading. Does knowing that a particular ship type had a high bounty the last time you saw it have any predictive value? For me, this would suffice:-

Code: Select all

this.shipKilledOther = function(victim)
{
if (victim.bounty) missionVariables_totalBounties += victim.bounty;
}

There is a number that says how much of the player's fortune came from bounties, if the player is interested to know that. Anything more seems like an interesting scripting exercise, but not actually useful. Unless, of course, there is a relationship between ship types and bounties?

That's not meant to disparage Walbrigg's contribution. Interesting scripts are interesting. But not every interesting thing is useful and ought to be propagated.

[Walbrigg]

That's a fair point - it's the total bounty that's really interesting, rather than per-ship-type.

On the other hand, for the in-flight trophy collector screen, where it shows you your kills since your last docking, the breakdown is a bit more useful. I tend not to take in the bounty messages in the heat of battle, so it's nice to be able to look at the F5-F5-F7 afterwards and see "That python was 29, the cobra I was 14, the Fer-de-Lance was 40".

Logically, though, that means the in-flight screen should show a list of kills, not summed by ship type at all. I might even try that.

As an aside, is there a consensus on sensible size of mission variables, or of what constitutes damaging bloat of the save file? If I took it into my head to persist a list of all kills (which of course isn't necessary for what I was suggesting above, since that would still summarize after docking and before saving), would that be seen as completely unworkable? I was wondering about that in connection with the "real-life economics" oxp that was put forward a few months back: stuff that does that kind of thing well is likely to build up significant per-system entries in the savefile.

[Wildeblood]

On the other hand, for the in-flight trophy collector screen, where it shows you your kills since your last docking, the breakdown is a bit more useful. I tend not to take in the bounty messages in the heat of battle, so it's nice to be able to look at the F5-F5-F7 afterwards and see "That python was 29, the cobra I was 14, the Fer-de-Lance was 40".

Logically, though, that means the in-flight screen should show a list of kills, not summed by ship type at all. I might even try that.

That sounds much better.

As an aside, is there a consensus on sensible size of mission variables, or of what constitutes damaging bloat of the save file? If I took it into my head to persist a list of all kills... would that be seen as completely unworkable?

No, I was going to do that for my abandoned* Criminal Record OXP. (Well, not all kills, all kills of ships with no bounty.)

If it's purely for player nostalgia, and not actually being used in game, you can dump the record to the latest.log when it reaches excessive size, and reset the mission variable after the player confirms in game they've copied the latest.log to their blog or whatever.

* Not completely. One day, I'll go back to it.

[spara]

Logically, though, that means the in-flight screen should show a list of kills, not summed by ship type at all.

Now this in an excellent idea . Why haven't I thought of that ? That will be well worth implementing, although it requires a bit of rewriting. Thanks a million for the idea .

[Diziet Sma]

Is there a relationship between ship type and bounty? You want to know how much of your fortune came from trading, and how much from bounty-hunting, so there is definitely a case for a continual log of bounties. But with trading you want to know which commodities are most lucrative, to guide your future trading. Does knowing that a particular ship type had a high bounty the last time you saw it have any predictive value?

Not that I've ever noticed..

A) Is it a worthy addition or does it tilt the emphasis too much to the bounty hunting?
B) Should it be configurable through a variable or oxpconfig?

A) Yes very worthy.
B) OXPConfig if possible, otherwise a variable would be ok.

Agreed. And if it can be enabled/disabled, then it doesn't tilt the emphasis except for those who actually want the feature. (one of whom would be myself)

[Diziet Sma]

On the other hand, for the in-flight trophy collector screen, where it shows you your kills since your last docking, the breakdown is a bit more useful. I tend not to take in the bounty messages in the heat of battle, so it's nice to be able to look at the F5-F5-F7 afterwards and see "That python was 29, the cobra I was 14, the Fer-de-Lance was 40".

Logically, though, that means the in-flight screen should show a list of kills, not summed by ship type at all.

Agreed. That would be quite helpful. Post-docking though, I think a summary such as we have now would suffice. (with bounty totals optional, of course)

[Walbrigg]

Logically, though, that means the in-flight screen should show a list of kills, not summed by ship type at all.

Now this in an excellent idea . Why haven't I thought of that ? That will be well worth implementing, although it requires a bit of rewriting. Thanks a million for the idea .

It would be quite easy really, you just have to remove the search for matching entries when you add a kill. The merge into the all-time list would work without any change.

If doing that, I would keep the current game time as well. Then you can show the time on the list (probably as how long ago - "2 mins", "38 mins" etc.).

[spara]

New version (2.0) is up. After a series of experiments and some serious pondering I decided that only a small change is in place. The in-flight list is changed to a kill log that shows kills made after the launching from the main station. The bounty awarded is behind the ship's name in brackets.

I ditched the time logging idea after several tests (like showing time to kill and the time kill was made) as they just didn't feel right, they were only taking precious space from screen.

I also ditched the cumulative bounty per ship idea, because as Wildeblood said, it really isn't very interesting data. After all, bounties are pretty much randomly generated. I think that the kill count is sufficient.

If someone want's to make a simple oxp, the cumulative bounty could be shown in the manifest screen. There could even be some ranking involved, like in Explorer's club or marketObserver. You could call it Bounty Hunter's club .

There was a bug that let some BigBosses etc to slip to the trophy list. I have hopefully now fixed this bug and there should be no more new BigBosses. If something strange still is added to the trophies, let me know.

[JazHaz]

I also ditched the cumulative bounty per ship idea, because as Wildeblood said, it really isn't very interesting data.

That's a shame, I think it IS an interesting idea. I would love to know how much I'm earning from bounties, compared to trading.

[spara]

Sorry all. When I start tinkering, I just can't stop . A new version (2.1) is up. Now it feels right . I promise I'll cool down with updating now. Unless bugs need to be squashed, of course.

Changes

* Collection can be viewed in any station or dockable.
* When in flight, you see a trophy log, showing ship type, bounty and the system it was collected at. Log holds 38 entries.

I also ditched the cumulative bounty per ship idea, because as Wildeblood said, it really isn't very interesting data.

That's a shame, I think it IS an interesting idea. I would love to know how much I'm earning from bounties, compared to trading.

As I said, I think it's best to write a different oxp, that shows the total bounty collected in ship's manifest. I see no point in mixing it to the Trophy Collector. It would make a nice first oxp to someone interested.

[Wildeblood]

When in flight, you see a trophy log, showing ship type, bounty and the system it was collected at. Log holds 38 entries.

You mean displays a maximum of 38 entries, not holds 38 entries, yes? As in no messing about with paging if the player has logged more than 38 kills since docking, not data is discarded after 38 kills?

[Diziet Sma]

That's a shame, I think it IS an interesting idea. I would love to know how much I'm earning from bounties, compared to trading.

As I said, I think it's best to write a different oxp, that shows the total bounty collected in ship's manifest. I see no point in mixing it to the Trophy Collector. It would make a nice first oxp to someone interested.

In which case, it ought to track Random Hits payments as well, if possible, since those are bounties too..

[spara]

When in flight, you see a trophy log, showing ship type, bounty and the system it was collected at. Log holds 38 entries.

You mean displays a maximum of 38 entries, not holds 38 entries, yes? As in no messing about with paging if the player has logged more than 38 kills since docking, not data is discarded after 38 kills?

There are two lists saved, in-flight log and trophy collection. In-flight log is capped to 38 entries. 39th is discarded, oldest must go. I wanted to keep the in-flight log in only one page to avoid paging and not bloating the save-file. Trophy collection is as before, not limited in any way. There's a big change in logic compared to the original.

[spara]

In which case, it ought to track Random Hits payments as well, if possible, since those are bounties too..

And should bounties from escape pods be counted too? I would keep it simple. Only Galcop bounties from kills.