Oolite Bulletins

I'm late in this conversation, but here is my opinion:

- I too don't like the idea of an indestructible hermit, when they are blown up that easily in vanilla. It might be possible to make them indestructible in OXPs (and it is a very good measure taken as a place holder of a later implemented feature), but its a matter of personal taste and I for my part don't like it. Spara already strengthened them with shields? Sounds good.
- Suddenly returning back to life is just silly. Spara's Idea of a delayed respawn is the best concerning this matter.
- Respawning it at a different location sounds logical as there were reasons why it blew up at the old location. I wouldn't rebuild my station there. This is a nice feature, but not important IMO. Spara, you mentioned a simple way to implement it. Go for it, but if you hit a wall, you are excused (by me at least XP) to implement other elements.
- In case you implement the delayed respawn countdown, just an idea: You could delay it further in stable systems, like coperate or democratic systems, as building a new pirate base there might be tougher.
- Concerning the length of the countdown overall, I wonder (storywise in oolite) how hard it is to find a usable asteroid, how long it does take to hollow it out and how advanced the insides are. Griff's hermit model looks, well, expensive and as if it took quite a while to build. What if we ignore that look and say: The pirates sought and found a stable asteroid, enwrapped it with a stabilizing but yet thin net, you don't see under the dust, hollowed it out, than parked a stolen boa, maybe two or three on the inside and connected them to each other to form the bases make shift interior. Then they installed a few landing pads in the inside, but in vacuum, and a few airlocks for person and cargo transfer.
I could see such a base getting operational within very few weeks, maybe even only within one. I you wanted an excuse to respawn them within a week, here you would have one.

EDIT:

Option 2. is more complicated and might produce some compatibility issues, for example systems without hermits. I'm tempted to test the second option.

The pirate hermits were destroyable in vanilla, therefore every stable OXP should check if there currently is a pirate hermit or not, while ingame. The only thing I can think off, how hindering the respawn might break something, is that they respawned instantly after entering a system or reloading the state. If something in vanilla IS dependent on the presence of a pirate hermit, this >something< might not second guess the hermits existence. But I can't think of anything like that. I also don't know of any OXPs, that would be dependant on this. A contract with the hermit as endpoint would be something like that, for example.

Maybe the others know of some OXPs, that might give you trouble.

EDIT2: Is there anyway to calculate, if there is a pirate hermit in a certain system form some other system? If there isn't, this is good news, as it would make it more unlikely something like a pirate cove being a target of a mission. (There is still the danger of a list of hermits being hardcoded.)

Is it possible to pass the role of the pirate hermit to a chaotic hermit (or another type in this system) for as long the rebuild takes place? Maybe by creating new types of hermits and exchanging a chaotic/neutral/mining one with one of that types, to catch missions involving the p.hermit. This type would be a pirate one ingame wise, but on the outside wouldn't launch pirates, wouldn't be targeted by GalCop (do police vipers even attack real pirate hermits?) or other enemies and has the other (non-pirate, for example neutral) market. But it wouldn't attack pirates either. The pirates lost there base and so long they don't have a new one, they do there non-standard business over here. (On the other side this might trigger all other OXPs, that would have behaved and stayed quite until the real deal this there again). Well, its just an idea, if you were looking for one.

Cody wrote:

if someone started shooting-up the hermit Commander Rockingham is based at, there'd be trouble!

You are auto-launched from a base if it is destroyed while you are docked. It happened recently to me while docked at a pirate cove. Outside was a Navy Class Carrier, the cove went down almost instantly. They didn't shoot at it while I wasn't docked yet for some reason. Sometimes at least police or hunters shoot at bases, if they have a bounty.
This also means that action continues in some way at least while the player is docked.

Thanks to all for commenting. I decided to go with the moving hermits idea. It sort of keeps the core untouched, just moves the hermits and hermitages around the system at the populator phase. Should not break things. Much . New version (0.4) to test.

* Star-jelly repelling to prevent those poor creatures from destroying hermits. Just after the population phase, all jellies that are in a scanner range of any hermit get pushed farther.
* The markets of pirate hermits have been doubled. Capacity is 31 for salvage and 15 for other loot.
* Destructed hermits are now relocated. If a hermit gets destructed, the next time the system is populated, the destructed hermit gets a new life in a new place. Even saving at the relocated hermit seems to work!

Download: https://app.box.com/s/kiblfqp8bundjb6nz83z6imvqzhad7zh

Any ideas for spicing up chaotic hermits? I see them as miners who have struck a few shady deals to get more income with shady persons who see the business opportunities with an "unofficial" market place.

How about standard hermits? Nothing shady there, I suppose. Mining Contracts oxp should help fellow miners to actually make some credits from mining. I'm quite content with these TBH.

Three OXPs already using H (five using R) - but I ain't too keen on the lower-case h. Time to tinker, methinks.

Cody wrote:

Three OXPs already using H (five using R) - but I ain't too keen on the lower-case h. Time to tinker, methinks.

Thanks, those were only for debugging and I forgot to remove them. Fixed in version 0.5.

https://app.box.com/s/bmbklwrizunj4tto1y6bdwuf9vhl77a7

<chortles> Thanks! It's harsh out there - quite a few perfect tens, including a Gecko, which is a first.

I don't understand the R H problem, but I chose to install version 0.5 anyway...

The Laxema Jelly has been moved. That's good because fighting around it was like doing a gunfight in a warehouse filled with barrels of nitroglycerin...

This time I was attacked when I was quite near the hermit already. But they weren't very very determined about it and kept fleeing and returning, so I could dock almost without being hit.

But then, only some seconds after docking, the hermit exploded around me, inflicting severe damage to my ship and my cargo, and injuring three of my cats. I assume, the pirates really started firing at me after I had already docked...

Edit: The strange thing is that the nearby Jelly seems to be gone too. Did they hit it, and the hermit was destroyed by a secondary explosion?

Fritz wrote:

I don't understand the R H problem, but I chose to install version 0.5 anyway...

When debugging, I put beacons to all hermits so I can monitor them. I forgot to remove the beacons...

Fritz wrote:

The Laxema Jelly has been moved. That's good because fighting around it was like doing a gunfight in a warehouse filled with barrels of nitroglycerin...

Great.

Fritz wrote:

This time I was attacked when I was quite near the hermit already. But they weren't very very determined about it and kept fleeing and returning, so I could dock almost without being hit.

But then, only some seconds after docking, the hermit exploded around me, inflicting severe damage to my ship and my cargo, and injuring three of my cats. I assume, the pirates really started firing at me after I had already docked...

Currently the Pirate Hermit takes four consecutive full military laser bursts to kill it. The pirates around the station should only have beam lasers, if they are core ones. And still it gets destroyed . That worthless pirate scum just can't shoot straight, I suppose. Maybe I'll just double the energy of the station. Recharge ratio is quite high already.

Did you see the edit of my previous post? Maybe it was still the Jelly, because there wasn't even the time to kill the hermit with military lasers, and they weren't shooting at me while I was in the docking corridor.

Perhaps you should write the reason of destruction into the log file for debugging.

Fritz wrote:

Did you see the edit of my previous post? Maybe it was still the Jelly, because there wasn't even the time to kill the hermit with military lasers, and they weren't shooting at me while I was in the docking corridor.

Perhaps you should write the reason of destruction into the log file for debugging.

Ah. That's possible. The explosion is cascading after all. It could easily spread to the station jumping from ship to ship. Let's observe it for a while so that we'll see how common it is. I trust you keep reporting . If it's rare, then it not bad. It would just be one of those things that could happen.

I'm already on my way for the next visit!

If I was running a pirate hermit, I'd not allow any jellies in the cluster (not that Rubic's Auger has any rocks or 'roids). I use a shipdata-overrides.plist in my personal Config folder to enable the BGS tunnel effect, which this OXP is overriding - where would I insert script_info = {bgs_tunnel_shape = "2.0";};?

I just stopped inside the docking tunnel and noticed that there are two Jellys in scanner range, but both very near the limit. While I was doing this, a Krait fired on me, hitting mostly the hermit. "Control" complained, but the hermit stayed intact.

Hm. Taking cover in the tunnel while being attacked by around 8 ships is good for protection, but not so good for the hermit... but that's ok.

Cody wrote:

If I was running a pirate hermit, I'd not allow any jellies in the cluster (not that Rubic's Auger has any rocks or 'roids). I use a shipdata-overrides.plist in my personal Config folder to enable the BGS tunnel effect, which this OXP is overriding - where would I insert script_info = {bgs_tunnel_shape = "2.0";};?

You need to put it into every station definition in shipdata-overrides. I'll add it to the next version.