Oolite Bulletins

Small polishment in  v1.5: planets are lockable within scanner range.

Hello Norby,

Often times, when I go on a Asteroid hunt. I target the Asteroid and shoot it.The targeting arrow then afterwards always points to the nearest ship , So after I have shot the Asteroid I then have to un target the nearest ship to then go on to target a boulder or splinter.

However in untargeting the afore mentioned nearest ship my very own ships orientation seems to be automatically drawn away from my current untargeted objective (boulder or splnter) and pointed close to the ship that I have just untargeted and have no interest in... Is there any way of stopping this irritating automatic re orientation towards stuff that I am not wanting to target please ?

Duggan wrote:

Is there any way of stopping this irritating automatic re orientation

You can comment out the 940. line of telescope.js by putting // before the ws.$Telescope_Steer(); call and I will make a better solution in the next version.

[wiki]Telescope[/wiki] v1.6 is done with:

- Fixed reorientation during Asteroid hunting, thanks to Duggan for report.
- Improvements for [wiki]FarPlanets[/wiki] OXP.
- Sun is added into the target list and got orange lollipop.
- Planet lollipop color is changed to lightgray, masslockborder also.
- Targets over $TelescopeSniperRange (30km) get tiny lightballs.

[wiki]Telescope[/wiki] v1.7 is out:

- Targets at far distances marked with dots for [wiki]FarPlanets[/wiki] OXP.
- Lock the nearest overlapping target within 0.5 degree.
- Black lollipops in red alert over 30km (adjustable in $TelescopeRedAlertDist).
- Reduced chance of hit timeLimit on slower machines.

Anthony wrote in email:

Selecting other ship targets and trying to line up, a grey circle bounces around the centre of the screen, but there is no fixed scope.

This is the sniper ring and you should hold in center by hand.
I know this is not so easy due to the target is moving, but you see any small movement highly zoomed to react as soon as possible. The main usage is with Military Laser against far targets near scanner range, and hold down the Ctrl key if you aim with keyboard to slow your turn rates. Yaw in horizontal arrow keys is better than roll in this case.
[wiki]SniperLock[/wiki] can help more if you dont consider it as too much help.

The nav. buoy, when selected as a target, _bottom half_ of the scope with the buoy zoomed within appears fixed at top of the screen.

I can view if you make a screenshot within the game by the "*" key and send me the newest file from oolite-saves/snapshots/ .

New Question: How to disable off-scope lollipops / golfclubs? Often the dim lollipops representing distance ship beyond scope range can be too many and confusing. Is there an option / menu to turn them off?

You can limit the number of tracked targets in the primed equipment menu within the game for example to 50 or even 20. The same if you reduce $TelescopeTargets=200; in the 30.line in telescope.js .

Alternatively you can replace the number 2 to 1 in 2367.line in telescope.js:In this case the dim lollipops will be black not only in red but yellow alert also.
You can change the color to [0.2,0.2,0.2] if you want dark grey ones.

In Telescope v1.8:
-Fixed the restore of lightball settings after load game, thanks to Anthony.
-Dark far lollipops in yellow alert except if weapons are offline.
-Virtual target model is within a ring by default with offline weapons also.
-Range extenders are separated into Telescope Extender+Gravity Scanner OXZ.

A small suggestion: since 1.80 is already out, might we get the improved models/textures instead of the old ones in the ring?

The rings in this tool (sniper ring and around the virtual model) are very narrow since v1.3 so I do not think a new texture can count a lot, moreover the ring model and texture in 1.80 are the same than before.
Or do you mean the masslock borders?

No, I mean the stuff (ships, usually) that shows within the ring at the top of the screen.

The new core ship models are supported a half year ago. If an OXP ship is not appear then please read the first three points in the wiki regarding this.

*headdesk*
I meant the buoy model, not the ships, they are indeed supported.

Well, I still have some problems.

1. The buoy model in 1.80 is the same as in 1.77.

2. OXP replacement buoys ([wiki]BetterBuoys[/wiki] and  Deepspace Ships) has the same problems as replacemet ships: I can not overwrite the definitions in my effectdata.plist nor detect and change these from js to make a solution which is working both with and without the OXPs. You must copy the shipdata.plist in these OXPs to a new effectdata.plist by hand to show the virtual models of your actual replacement set.

3. OXPs which use different dataKeys and the original roles to replace old models (Deep Horizon Navigation Buoy and  Shady Sungs) will place many errors into the log if I include these into my effectdata and the OXP is not installed: So the simplest solution is if you know which set is installed and you make a copy from the right shipdata.plist to an effectdata.plist.

I forgot I had an OXP which modifies buoy texture - Deep Horizon

An idea I just had - it'd be nice if the scanner messages (the ones which tell you distance and heading) showed up on an (hopefully scrollable) MFD so that they wouldn't get lost immediately. I like to glance back at them when writing Mara's log.