Oolite Bulletins

History:

The Taxi Galactica Corporation was founded in the late 2800s by Rufus Skywelder, a reputable businessman from Isinor. He envisioned a network of ships ferrying people around the Galactic Co-Operative of Planets, and making a tidy profit from every single passenger. By 2943 the Skywelder family had expanded their business to cover five of the eight galaxies, and by the end of the century they had a Taxi Station in every system that was ruled as a Corporation (this was due to licensing agreements and safety issues).

Recruiting:

Occasionally, the Taxi Galactica Corporation will ask pilots to work part-time for them. Those pilots with a good enough reputation should visit their local Taxi Station and apply today!



Version History:

v1.0 - Changed models for Taxi Adder and Taxi Station to ones Griff designed with textures by dertian. Also moved Taxi Station to planet and added billboard buoy. Also when leaving galaxy script will check to see if on a contract and if so will now cancel contract and remove passenger. Removed Frigate from this release due to formatting issues. Also rewritten script to conform to stock script layout and merged scripts into one file for ease of editing/viewing, also commented lines of script to give detail on what does what.
v0.6 - Fixed bug where fuel was not awarded at end of mission and also fixed bug where redocking with Taxi Station would display "Welcome blah blah... supposed to be delivering Enitno Thmaat to the 2 system". Now displays correct system name not just a number. Also added first special mission which is available after five normal missions have been completed.
v0.5 - Complete overhaul of OXP, Taxi Station available in corporate systems in all galaxies. Changed the scripting to JavaScript to make OXP compatible with newer version of Oolite. Changed mission requirements back to delivering passengers from the Taxi Station to the Main Station, but will now select any system within 40 light years. Rankings have been removed for now, may add them back in at later stage. Each mission has a difficulty setting which relates to how many pirates will be waiting for you.
v0.4 - Changed mission requirements: you now take passengers to the Taxi Station in the required system. It made more sense this way, as you have to start at the Taxi Station anyway. Also added Taxi Cabs to the traffic in Galaxy 1. Rankings have been added, as well as a Pilot Stats board viewable a the Taxi Station. The more contracts you complete, you eventually go up a level. Each level determines how many pirates may be waiting for you. Also added the excellent logo designed and created by Disembodied to the Taxi Station.
v0.301 - Fix added for multiple destinations appearing all over the place. The mission intro text, the objective text and the system locator all match, as does the passenger name in both the intro and objective texts. Also added a fix for multiple Taxi Stations being created every time the player launches from a station in a corporate system in Galaxy 1.
v0.3 - Complete restart, Taxi Station now only in corporate systems in Galaxy 1. Rebel Frigate and Rebel Viper removed from OXP, including mission. Taxi missions are now offered at the station, to take passengers to the Main Station in other corporate systems in Galaxy 1. 2000 credits per journey, provided you make it there in less than 50 jumps.
v0.201 - Fix for Rebel AI causing mass jamming of the comms. Also improved on minor script errors/mishaps.
v0.2 - Mission added to take a war criminal of the Galactic Navy to naval captivity, without getting blasted by the Rebel Frigates and Rebel Vipers.
v0.1 - Taxi Station and Taxi Cab in game. Taxi Station in every Corporate, Democratic and Confederate systems.

Download:

Taxi Galactica v1.0

Nice to see an update! Do you still have your Wiki password to update  its page and the [wiki]OXP List[/wiki]?

I've updated the wiki page and OXP list now, thanks. Some work is needed on how much is paid out for fares and perhaps whether or not to have part of the money up front, like with the normal passenger contracts But I wanted these to be slightly different from that, in that nothing is required other than a free passenger berth.

Pleb wrote:

I've updated the wiki page and OXP list now, thanks.

Great, thanks.

Nice to see you back Pleb87

I installed v0.4 a while ago and for a couple of trips, taking taxi fares was my favorite thing to do.
I however did one long (& my last trip) only to discover i could not evict my passenger and collect my fare. So i had to remove the OXP.
This bug has been described by others on this forum as the "Taxi Galactica Delivery Issue".

Has the changes that you made in v0.5 fixed this bug?

If so i will glady downloaded it.

Yes the script has been completely rewritten in JavaScript and fully tested this time before release. The only two flaws with this code is the fact that the taxi fees are not based on distance, but rather the difficulty of the mission, and the fact the difficulty setting spawns random pirates who may or may not attack the player. This can make easy missions harder and less profitable. I intend to try to fix these issues before making another release.

It seems a missed opportunity for the commodities menu to be lacking anything for sale AND unwilling to buy anything (for more than 0 credits anyway). Was this done due to the difficulty of creating a commodities.plist or design choice for the Taxi Station?

A combination of both, the commodities.plist file is very complicated to get my head around, and also I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to have a market on the Taxi Station, and certainly thought it out of context that if it did that it should be different from the rest of the system. This could be changed, but I'm not sure how you would explain there being a different market on the Taxi Station than the system's Main Station.

Rock Hermit stations prices are considerably different than main stations and they have few items for sale, basically only what they can extract from mining asteroids. They buy nearly anything at generally reduced prices, since they're already hauling cargo to the main station anyway...and they have their own supply demands to maintain their operations. Machinery, food, liquor/wines for instance might be slightly higher price than the main station to encourage selling there.

A Taxi Station might need to buy small amounts of food at roughly equal prices as the main station, though it would probably never have any excess food for sale. Likewise, Liquor/Wines might be bought there for the same reason. People waiting for a ride have to be entertained somehow, so a restaurant isn't too far out of the question. Low profit margins (like 0.4 credits per ton greater than the main station's price) on food and liquor/wines would only encourage enough arriving to keep the station supplied.

It's pretty much a stretch for anything else to be bought there and likewise a big stretch for anything to be sold there.
The station probably doesn't have scavenger npc ships that scoop any nearby cargo pods, so it wouldn't be accumulating unwanted cargo that it needs sold off.

Maybe tiny amounts of Gold, Platinum, Gem-Stones might be bought/sold by passengers at very close to main station prices if only because those are in kg or g amounts rather than tons...but there's really not much reason for that. Gold/Platinum/Gem pawn shop?

Switeck wrote:

Gold/Platinum/Gem pawn shop?

<chortles>

El Viejo wrote:

Switeck wrote:

Gold/Platinum/Gem pawn shop?

<chortles>

That fits. Like that idea. And while you are there people try pawning strange items to you that you would have to find a market for or they would tell you where it goes for a good price or they might try to trade other things for rides like information or a potential reward from thier loved ones and desperate passengers could make for interesting missions with unusual plot twists.

Big badda boom!
http://youtu.be/iOhBdDi_2iM

taxi chase
http://youtu.be/IJhlD6q71YA

I like the ideas raised here by Switeck and CommonSenseOTB. The commodities.plist will be edited accordingly in thenext release, and I have already begun working on some scripted missions to go with the randomly generated ones. I have already begun replacing the randomly spawned pirates with AIs that specifically hunt down and try to destroy the player to ensure that the difficulty is increased, and added formulas to make their appearance more random. I still need to figure out a way of charging fares based not only on difficulty of mission but distance also.

I noticed an error in version 0.5 Culprit is a missing semicolon in the line: That probably only affects Mac computers.

Eric Walch wrote:

I noticed an error in version 0.5

Code: Select all

[plist.parse.failed]: Failed to parse /Users/ericwalch/Library/Application Support/Oolite/AddOns/Taxi Galactica.oxp/Config/missiontext.plist as a property list.
Unexpected character { at line 1

Culprit is a missing semicolon in the line:

Code: Select all

4EXPLORE = "Explore Station"

That probably only affects Mac computers.

Being a PC user I was unaware of this error. I will make sure it is fixed for the next patch/release.

When viewing the 3 contracts, it would be nice if "?" went to the galactic chart like it does when you are viewing normal cargo jobs.

I am sure it promised me a free full fuel tank - but did not deliver!

Two of the three contracts went to Leleer; but I was only allowed to take 1 - you don't get the chance to take another. Why not?

On re-docking (to see if I could get that other Leleer contract) I was told "Welcome blah blah... supposed to be delivering Enitno Thmaat to the 2 system".