Oolite Bulletins

As it stands, I think only NPC pirates are able to follow the player through their wormhole (is this correct?).
Shouldn’t this be possible for NPC traders, and most especially for GalCop Vipers when in pursuit of the player? It’s something I’d like to see, anyway.

El Viejo wrote:

As it stands, I think only NPC pirates are able to follow the player through their wormhole (is this correct?).
Shouldn’t this be possible for NPC traders, and most especially for GalCop Vipers when in pursuit of the player? It’s something I’d like to see, anyway.

Looking at the standard AIs, pirates will follow, escorts will follow but only if their mother has entered witchspace already, which really narrows it to pirate escorts only, and anything using interceptAI to attack will follow (which includes bounty hunters, police on patrol but not police defense ships, and anyone interrupted while docking). They'll all only follow the player if the player was their current target, too.

Traders won't usually follow, so their escorts won't either except in very unusual circumstances.

Thargoids will never follow, as far as I can tell, with their standard AIs.

Obviously anything with a custom AI can follow the player.

You can however sometimes trick an npc ship into "running into" a wormhole between it and you...if it's trying to attack you at the time. Hilarity ensues if you also conspire to make that wormhole a misjump that dumps them into a Thargoid battle.

IMHO Police ships should never follow the player - they'd be leaving their jurisdiction.

Pirates.. unsure. Perhaps only if they have a hyperspace motor to get back to their base. Otherwise they'd risk being stranded on somebody elses' (dangerous) turf.

Bounty-hunters, definitely.

Traders, possibly.

Amnesty-seeking fugitives follow the player (and the player can follow them) en route to a battle assignment. That's provided you have Anarchies.oxp installed and accepted the amnesty offer on a Behemoth.

Traders already exiting the system (exitingTraderAI.plist) should at least have a chance of using the player's wormhole if the player hyperspaces out near them. This will have the added bonus of providing the player with possible allies (and escape route) if they end up misjumping into a Thargoid fight.