Oolite Bulletins

Corny wrote:

Does anyone have some screenshots for the waiting time?

I only can point to the previous published screen shots for v2.3. For really see the full effect of the normal maps, you need a moving model so a static screen shots for V 2.4 does not add much.
And today the box gave me a new link to that file that does work so it should be downloadable now.

Well, the download works now.

I have this OXP but have yet to actually see one.

When the news comes up :recent battle, dredgers on way), what's the best way to find one ?

Chrisfs wrote:

I have this OXP but have yet to actually see one.

There are many ways to find one:

• 1) as per readme: just fly into deep space, immediately after loading a saved game. There will always be one after some time. (Actually a debugging feature I left in) In other systems there could be one in deep space, but in the first system there is always one!
  
  2) Buy a salvage missile and use it on a derelict. The derelict will find one for you then.
  
  3) On very rare occasions there will be one in the normal space lanes.
  
  4) Install bigShips.oxp. Dredgers are aware of this oxp and dredgers will be added more often in the normal lane.

Dredgers OXP v2.4.6 problems...

dsDredgersAI.plist seems to be missing a couple sections that were in v2.4.5!
A couple instances of:
"TARGET_FOUND" = ("sendScriptMessage: initiateMinerLaunch", "setStateTo: DOCKING_WITCHPOINT", "pauseAI: 120.0");
and
"TARGET_FOUND" = ("sendScriptMessage: initiateMinerLaunch", "setStateTo: DOCKING_PLANET");
refer to missing sections.

What's with the extra space after each ; at the end of a line? I see that in many of the AI.plist files.

Is "dsDredgersAI kopie.plist" called by anything? If not, it might be better to rename that to something like "dsDredgersAI.plist OLD.txt" so it shows up a harmless text file for documentation purposes.

In dredgerSalvageMissile.js, line 20 ends with ship.script.dammaged) ...was dammaged chosen to avoid possible name conflicts with damaged?

After over half a year of flying (and even owning a Dredger Trader for a while), I finally spotted my first Dredger proper in a rather fresh savegame near the station at Oresqu in G1. After docking my rusty Cobra Mk I with it and discovering its 300% upgrade prices, I had been planning to fly to the main station, check out the upgrades available there, save, and ferry food to the Dredger until I could afford any upgrades I had been unable to get at the station. Sadly, I was destroyed by pirates before I ever made it to the station, and when I reloaded and got back to Oresqu, I found no Dredger there anymore. I may just have to try that deep space trick. (Um ... by deep space, do you mean in-system or interstellar (misjump)?)

Switeck wrote:

dsDredgersAI.plist seems to be missing a couple sections that were in v2.4.5!
....Is "dsDredgersAI kopie.plist" called by anything?...

I finally found time to look at it. Both are related. Apparently I was busy to change the AI of the ship a bit and made a copy of the old AI. Than I forgot I was not finished with the changes.
Anyhow, the bug is rather harmless. The dredgers are supposed to stop when encountering an asteroid field and launch miners there. That part is now not happening. But this happening was rare in the first place.

To the rareness of the ships: When you want to see them more often, you can install the bigShips.oxp. When you install this, you explicitly allow big ships in your universe and the dredgers will be among them.

What script controls the 'npc abandons the ship when it's about to explode' feature?

I'm not seeing any derelict ship in the game (v1.76.1), thus making them impossible to salvage. The NPCs refuse to escape even when their ships are badly damaged. I think something was broken in the game mechanics since I last played Oolite (this was in 2009, I think).

Please help.

P.S. I just attacked the Boa trader ship. It just exploded when its hull integrity dropped to zero. Why had the pilot not tried to escape ship before the explosion? It worked in 1.73.4.

Escape pods should be working in general. If you're doing the last bits of damage very quickly they might not have time to use them (but lasers don't usually do damage that fast). Possibly the ship set you have doesn't give the ships escape capsules, or the escape capsule model is broken? Could you post your Latest.log, please?

cim wrote:

Escape pods should be working in general. If you're doing the last bits of damage very quickly they might not have time to use them (but lasers don't usually do damage that fast). Possibly the ship set you have doesn't give the ships escape capsules, or the escape capsule model is broken? Could you post your Latest.log, please?

Here it is: https://www.box.com/s/zeavm05sab2hhba3d9di

The escape capsules are seem to be working ok. But they eject right at the moment of explosion. Maybe I have some conflicting OXP installed?

Update: Looks like it working now. I restarted the game with shift key pressed. Sorry for bothering you.

Note that not every ship carries an escape pod. And even in those ships which do, the pilots don't always actually eject. That's just normal game behaviour. From my personal experience I'd say that for the big trade ships (both types of Boa and Anacondas) the ratio of ejecting vs. just exploding is about 1:4. So for each four ships that just explode, there is only one that becomes derelict.

Oolite itself generates the derelicts in fight as Cim stated above. The Dredger oxp just adds a few more at the start of the game, without any fight. I think about 50% chance of adding a derelict on entering a new system.

But they eject right at the moment of explosion.

That is the problem of using a military laser. When your intention is to 'harvest' pilots, you can better use a pulse or beam laser.

I'm not sure, if this OXP is the origin of this, but I had a Copperhead MK2 turn into an Serpent Class Cruiser (derelict) when I shot at it. I'm not even sure if it was blown up and had scooped the serpent cruiser or if it was supposed to become the derelict even though I saw no escape capsule (but as I do have a mil laser... ).
Looking at the log, I found nothing...

 Deep Space Dredger v2.4.7 is arrived into the in-game expansion manager, thanks to spara for the market conversion for Oolite 1.82.
Markets are not changed except the capacity is doubled in Super Dredgers, which is larger than a  Superhub.

An 1.3km long  Andromeda is about as large as a Coriolis station but looks like a small ship when dock into a  Super Dredger:

They appear somewhat too frequent if bigships is installed at least. Just had 3 directly visible after a jump when looking towards the planet and another one later on. All just on the space lane witchpoint-planet. On average there is at least one on the space lances. And it never happened that there was none so far.
The pirates like to suicide-attack them. Makes unsafe systems much safer.