Oolite Bulletins

And now for something completely different...

I mentioned earlier that I have taken the two large asteroid from Asteroid Storm and added a docking slit, to make them into bases for Hackers and Salvagers. And I thought it worked. But in fact it doesn't. I would have to take away the faces above the docking slid, or it's invisible. And as I pointed out earlier I neither am a modeler nor have even the necessary software.

So a request to Charlie or anybody else interested: Would you like to design two more asteroids? I imagine both to be bigger than the rock hermit and I envision both Hackers and Salvagers to live within the asteroid, in caved structures, but with some visible signs of their presence outside.

The Hacker Outpost should be fairly sophisticated, but in a do-it-yourself way. After all they are outlaws.

The Salvage Gang rips off stranded ships (remember, they are living in Anarchy systems only) looking for usable parts, and when they see a nice ship flying by they surely could do something to make it strand. So also the visible technical structures on their asteroid should reflect that.

If you're interested please post here or pm me. Thank you very much!

Very short reply, (I'm in a rush). (add to it later)

the script_action are what is called when an entity does something, what specifically is hardcoded I guess.
for cargo it is being scooped, for carrier/stations apparently launching an entity or docking one.

I can think of multiple ways to create an asteroid field, but the quickest would be to spawn them together with the hermit.
I'd have to look more closely to see what wen wrong in your code.

another way would be to spawn a second thing at almost same location, have that target hermit and performscriptontarget the asteroids around the hermit.
then make it jump away or explode.
! better: asteroid with custom AI, that does that stuff, then switches to dumbAI

okay.

first off, dont' use script_actions.

Try to spawnt the asteroids together with the hermit or is that fails, give the hermit AI a 'JUST_SPAWNED' state, that just does spawn: asteroid 10 (or performScriptActionOnTarget: AddShipsWithinRadius xxx, but each hermit would need its private AI with coords)

Thanks, Arexack, but I have given up the idea of multiple Hacker Outposts, because IMO it would be a bit over-the-top to have everything multiple: shipdata-entries, AIs, I-don't-know-what. And it still wouldn't work, because the basic problem is: Which method can I use to create an entity at a random location?

If I call the Outpost with spawnShip, it is called with entity-name, not with role. So right here I get stuck. I can call only one possible Outpost (because the entity-names in shipdata have to be unique), that has one possible location only.

If I use any other addShip...-command, that would work with role, so could randomly call one of a couple of shipdata-entries, I have to call it with the precise location. So again one possible location only.

I don't see a way around that. So I gave up on that random thing. But I moved the Outpost from behind the witchpoint to a not-so-easy-to-find location.

you don't need to.

the henchman can be the one that is random. and you can randomise them by calling to role.

For now forget about it. but I'll think on it later.

"The Salvage Gang rips off stranded ships (remember, they are living in Anarchy systems only) looking for usable parts, and when they see a nice ship flying by they surely could do something to make it strand. So also the visible technical structures on their asteroid should reflect that. "

there was a group doing this in a "Firefly" episode, their base looked pretty good, might be worth checking out for inspiration.

@ Arexack: Of course, why didn't I think about that?

BTW: Have you got any suggestions for alternative locations of the Outpost?

---

And there is a question I wanted to ask you for a long, long time, but never dared to: Isn't there a typo in your location? "scoured"? Sorry if I'm missing something here.

Done it! Now there are four clones of the henchman and four clones of the Hacker Outpost, created in different locations. A nice exercise in c&p and like_ship.

But not yet playtested.

So the next question: what about new models for the inhabited asteroids?

---

And another related question: I'd like to give the Hackers and the Salvagers one or two specific defense-ships. Now there are a lot of ships out there, and many of them haven't yet been used for special OXP-purposes. Any suggestions which of them could be incorporated for Hackers or Salvagers (with permission by the respective designers, of course)?

i could take a crack at the hacker asty if you want, since i kinda helped w/ the initial concept. might take a few days tho, would that be a prob. hopefully have it done by monday tho. i could model the thing and skin it up, leave you to do the shiplists etc.

I am in no hurry whatsoever and any modelling I'd take on would probably run into weeks, even months, of development.

Actually I'm stressing over stuff in RL, which is distracting me from the fun stuff of Oo-life.
---
Should the random locations still not work, I'd suggest handling it all in a missionscript.
---

#my location...
I hate typos. (a real pedant) But my english is mostly autodydactic (by now), so I can make the occasional mistake. (being a scatterbrained scientist is no help there). My thought was scouring is what a 'scourge' phenomenon. You are right though: the planet is scourged (eg being flailed severely), not scoured (eg being scrubbed severely).

Well, a good cleaning with religious strife never hurt anybody.

@ Killer Wolf: Please go for it! Next week should be no problem at all! Thanks a lot!

@ Arexack: The random locations are working now, with only one small problem: I didn't get the Outposts pointing at the planet, although I used facing_position pwm 0 0 0 in all of them. Can have something to do with the cache not cleared, because I did a typing mistake the first time I tried. But even restarting the computer didn't help. Perhaps the facing of a spawned object is non-trivial if the object has coordinates in the systems pwu, psu and spu? Anyway, for now I've given up on forcing them to face toward the planet. So I could return to calling them by role with just the four different locations in four cloned henchmanAIs. (Funny enough the one at wpm 0 0 -150000 still faces to the planet; a facing along the witchpoint-planet axis seems to be the default.) That also spared me to have four Outpost-clones with different names, which makes i easier to run the missionscript, because I only have to insert the condition dockedStationName_string equal hacker-outpost, instead of querying four different station names. So I'm fine now.

As for the location: never mind, you can just correct it. Nobody will notice that something has changed.

And my honest and sincere congratulations to have become a DSE!

Sorry Commander McLane, i'm getting nowhere testing my docking ports etc i need to playtest the model. once i can get teh bugger to work i'll start straight away on the asteroid, but if you can't wait and want someone else to work on it, that's cool.

<some time later!>
aaaaand you can ignore that, as per my other thread. i've knocked up a test rock hacker asnd it seems ok, i'll get on skinning it tomorrow.

@McLane: about location. Or where you refering to the Arexack vs Axerack spelling error? That IS intentional as the FFE papers got that wrong, causing even more strife by instigating the creation of the Pedantic Order of Journalistic Accracy.

Commander McLane, i've sent you a PM...