Oolite Bulletins

JeffBTX wrote:

WHEN Griff's all-in-one reaches a complete state, then I might consider it, and hack it to make it ore-processor compatible (fortunately I have some programming experience, hacking OXPs doesn't seem to be difficult).

Thanks again - laters.

I just hacked the current version of Ore Processor to work together with griff his asteroids. Ore Processor (test for griff_asteroids). It worked in my preliminary tests. I won't make it an official version for now.

Eric;

Regarding Griff's ships; understand and agree... since they are in an un-final state. He might decide to change any number of things before it is in a final package. One thing that hit me, and something I noted to do "for later"; when Griff's all-in-one (plus the asteroids and rock hermit) are installed, they do not REPLACE the objects. For a player to have a nice, normalmapped Cobra Mk III (even in a new game), he has to cruise around and find one for-sale, or hack his savegame. I would be willing to cheerfully do either one... (After an Isocahedron Station has been added to the mix) ... but it WOULD be nice if some provision were made for a complete-replacement provision (I think that can be done in a ship overrides file, not sure).

ANYWAY....

I installed Asteroid Storm and Ore Processor. They work great now. I haven't tried the mission yet... presently I am operating with an older, developed savegame to use to try out different OXPs until I decide what I definitely want... and then I will start over with a new game. I will cruise down to the Lave area and try the mission out soon.

Eric Walch wrote:

I just hacked the current version of Ore Processor to work together with griff his asteroids.

Is there anything you'd like me to add into the splinters in my oxp Eric to make the ore processor work with it easier, some sort of role change or something for the splinters?

Griff wrote:

Eric Walch wrote:

I just hacked the current version of Ore Processor to work together with griff his asteroids.

Is there anything you'd like me to add into the splinters in my oxp Eric to make the ore processor work with it easier, some sort of role change or something for the splinters?

No. From your side there is little to do because the splinters need a script added to them. If you would do that, it will miss any future updates I make to Ore Processor.
I now just used a "like_ship" reference to your splinter templates. As long as you don't rename the templates or dat files, both will work in perfect harmony.
I did use the "griff_splinter" role, so as long your oxp is not present, nobody will summon those splinters.

I did add a "is_external_dependency" key for those splinters. This key suppresses any missing file warning when Ore Processor is used without your asteroids oxp. This key was introduced in Oolite 1.72 or 1.73 but apparently was never documented on the wiki. I just added the documentation.

talking about equipment + their prices in pm, I thought maybe answer here since I have 2 questions and a notion about ore processor (1.58) anyways; and maybe someone looking into this pricing thing for themselves can use my babbles.

My question 1 : Could this oxp be tweaked further to always give a "cargo hold full" message when this is so ?
As it is now, I get the message when the splinter filling the cargo hold is a mineral, but I do not get the message when a processed something is the one ton to fill the cargo hold.

2nd question : : My ore processor disappeared - not broken, but completely gone
I hardly ever get to read the messages during battle, so do not know if it disappeared that way (witchfuel drive and ASC got broken lately), or :
Shortly after that fight I scooped a (oxp-) pod that exploded and destroyed my fuel-scoop - can it be that on no fuel-scoop-present the ore-processor gets removed ?

The other thing : Maybe add a notice - but in which page(s) ? - in the wiki about incompatability with the icesteroids oxp ?
Icesteroids crack into ice-boulders, and those into 2nd-generation-ice-boulders - when I shoot the latter they usually just go "pouf", but sometimes an already-processed alloy remains (scarred metal fragment).
I am not sure if these alloys come from some strange interaction with oreprocessor, or are based in the icesteroids oxp itself ...

anyways, it makes the ore processor mostly useless.

Not quite sure, but the graffiti asteroids oxp did the same for me, at least as long as I had them installed together with the icesteroids.
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now some talking about equipment pricing :

Switeck wrote:

snork wrote:

And the equipment pricing - I want to raise prices and for some items also min.-TL
...

Equipment and ship prices I changed very little at least out of core Oolite. For add-on equipment OXPs, certain things had to be adjusted to feel balanced.

Ore Processor -- makes asteroid mining too profitable and how is it even fit into a presumably already-cramped ship? (reduced material recoveries for gold/plat/gems to 1 kg and 1-3 g per shard.)

I went back to mining to gather some stats, but as I was in SE corner of g1, only sold to main stations ranging from agricultural to mainly industrial.
On 8 mining raids with a Python, I thus had average profit of roughly 40 credits per scooped splinter (range : 29.4 to 47.9 credits/ splinter, only 2 raids out of 8 were above 40c/t).

With an assumed average of 40 credits per splinter, a player needs to scoop 75 splinters to just get back the money the ore processor did cost, so about 150 splinters to make a 100% profit.
I think that is more or less reasonable - consider the real-life-time it takes a player to get those 150 splinters and transport them to main station, plus the cost for witchdrive fuel.
I guess most players do not go mining in their Python or other big ship , but rather in their startup Cobra 3 (or even poorer ship).

Then there is the problem with a ship having limited cargo space and/or slow ship - with Zeke's Miner (12t capacity and 0.1 LY speed) it was way too tiresome to go to the main station every time the hold was full. So I sold most to the rock hermit in the vicinity, also bought a lot of fuel there - that made the ratio more towards maybe 120 splinters for the 3000,- that the ore processor costs.

So, all in all, I'll raise it's cost to probably 5000 credits, so it is roughly in line with the raises I have in mind for core-equipment.

snork wrote:

My question 1 : Could this oxp be tweaked further to always give a "cargo hold full" message when this is so ?
As it is now, I get the message when the splinter filling the cargo hold is a mineral, but I do not get the message when a processed something is the one ton to fill the cargo hold.

It is possible with a different approach of the splinters. I already played with the idea to completely change the way splinters are processed since we got new code with Oolite 1.74.

In the current version I even try to stay compatible with Oolite 1.65. That is the reason it is still in XML plists. Now we have a new stable release, it is probably time to remove all the old code and give it 1.74 as minimum.

Currently it is a scripted cargopod and before 1.74 those always disappeared after scooping. Since 1.74 we can set cargo by script to prevent it from disappearing after scooping up. Currently the pod entity disappears on scooping and when successful extracting, the player is awarded with a cargopod containing gold. On failure the player is awarded with a cargopod containing minerals. It feels a bit wrong this generating a pod out of nothing, but was the only way I could do before 1.74.

A much better way, possible since 1.74, is not letting the cargopod disappear on scooping, but start with filling it with minerals and keeping a reference to the object in the hold. Than, when successful extracting gold from the minerals, the player is not awarded with the gold directly, but the cargopod content is changed into gold. In the inventory it will look exactly the same, the code will be more straight forward, and hold full messages will be always correct.

snork wrote:

about incompatability with the icesteroids oxp ......
I am not sure if these alloys come from some strange interaction with oreprocessor, or are based in the icesteroids oxp itself ...

Oreprocessor uses like_ship references to griff's glowing asteroids, making it compatble with oreprocessor. For the icesteroids it would need similar like_ship references.

Eric Walch wrote:

A much better way, possible since 1.74, is not letting the cargopod disappear on scooping, but start with filling it with minerals and keeping a reference to the object in the hold. Than, when successful extracting gold from the minerals, the player is not awarded with the gold directly, but the cargopod content is changed into gold.

...And with that, alchemy gets added to Oolite.

snork wrote:

The other thing : Maybe add a notice - but in which page(s) ? - in the wiki about incompatability with the icesteroids oxp ?
Icesteroids crack into ice-boulders, and those into 2nd-generation-ice-boulders - when I shoot the latter they usually just go "pouf", but sometimes an already-processed alloy remains (scarred metal fragment).
I am not sure if these alloys come from some strange interaction with oreprocessor, or are based in the icesteroids oxp itself ...

I just downloaded this oxp to see if it can be implemented in ore_processor. But icesteroids oxp has no special splinters defined, so it can't be an incompatibility with ore_processor. It is a bug in icesteroids itself. It uses a circular reference that defines boulders as being the debris of boulders. Only when boulders explode, oolite gives the result a scanclass of cargo so they can be scooped. That means the second generation boulders are no longer rock but cargo and if they are massive, cargo can result in metal pieces.

I have not tried it, but I assume you can scoop the second generation of boulders