Oolite Bulletins

I have just been wondering about an oxp which would allow a player ship to issue an SOS call to NPC ships. Possibilities could include:-

1) Requesting assistance from ships within scanner range (Possibly with a fee being offered/payable for the destruction of an enemy vessel by another npc ship).

2) Ships not initially within scanner range being spawned randomly so that it would be a lottery who if anyone would be attracted to your SOS. For example much of the time your SOS may be unanswered however police or bounty hunters could be alerted but also your calls could attract pirates seeing you as a easy target.

3) The type of npc ship attracted would be influenced by the type of system you are in i.e. in an anarchic system pirates would be much more likely to be attracted to any distress calls.

How would the player ship issue an SOS? There is currently no way players can communicate with NPCs (other than with lasers etc ).

Laser communication can be most effective...

Smivs wrote:

How would the player ship issue an SOS? There is currently no way players can communicate with NPCs (other than with lasers etc ).

To be honest at this stage I don't really know if this would be possible but thought that someone with more knowledge may know if this is a possibility or if it is just a non-starter.

 Cabal Common Comms offers ship2player and worldScripts2player communication.

Equipment version of the Distress Beacon from Missiles and Bombs OXP.

Rese249er wrote:

Equipment version of the Distress Beacon from Missiles and Bombs OXP.

Yes.

As a potential control method for ships to ship comms how about 'nested' N key activated equipment.

Activating the main equipment item (called Show Comms Options or similar) would 1) Temporarily remove other N key activated equipment and itself. 2) Install a whole set of Shift N/N equipment items giving more options to start communications. Depending on the outcome of comms equipment items could be removed or added on the fly to give further options for response and two-way communication. 3) One of the added equipment items will be a Hide Comms Options, which reverses the changes made at step 1.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

As a potential control method for ships to ship comms how about 'nested' N key activated equipment.

Activating the main equipment item (called Show Comms Options or similar) would 1) Temporarily remove other N key activated equipment and itself. 2) Install a whole set of Shift N/N equipment items giving more options to start communications. Depending on the outcome of comms equipment items could be removed or added on the fly to give further options for response and two-way communication. 3) One of the added equipment items will be a Hide Comms Options, which reverses the changes made at step 1.

What a ridiculous suggestion! Who would ever do anything like that?

Hopefully somebody will!

Rese249er wrote:

Hopefully somebody will!

Maybe somebody has.

One problem here is that once you start (I would imagine) you'd soon realize there isn't really much to say (problem 1). Most players are like Smivs, and let their lasers do the talking. Creating an interface for the player to use messages (problem 2) is relatively easy and the way Capt. Murphy describes is obviously superior to calling up a mission screen that blocks the player's view while in flight. The hard part is getting anything in the game to react to these messages from the player (problem 3).

In the real world ships use the "international code of signals" (google that, there are pretty flag images, an' all) to avoid the problems created by the absence of a universal language and the lack of a universal translator.

It could be like the Resisitance Commander OXP that player to ship communications can be used to talk to escorts and give them orders. But as Wildeblood said, I'm not sure what else you could get them to do. Maybe if you ask for help, they might not actually help just taunt you (which could be scripted in just to annoy players), or they could turn on you and join your attacker!

Capt. Murphy wrote:

As a potential control method for ships to ship comms how about 'nested' N key activated equipment.

This is exactly what CCL_Comms does. And it does it for multiple ships and worldScripts as every inserting entity/script has a own entry. Methods to add, remove and change entries are giving the possibilities for nested structures and when the mode switch key comes (it's in trunk already and CCL will switch when it's in a released version) it will be even easier. It doesn't need multiple EQs.

A very simple example for a ship2player comm can be found in [wiki]Cabal_Common_MaterialsFinder[/wiki] (see ccl_matfinder.js).

Pleb wrote:

It could be like the Resisitance Commander OXP that player to ship communications can be used to talk to escorts and give them orders.

The way in Resistance Commander is nice, but eats Pylons and has other weak points as it doesn't work for playerships with lower numbers of available slots. Another approach via overlays would only work on systems with shader support.

Thanks Svengali,

It's obviously time I properly got my head around CCL.

I have always thought this would be a good add-on. In the game as it is, NPCs can broadcast an SOS and it is up to you whether you answer it (I generally answer it so I can collect the bounty on the pirate(s) and perhaps some of his cargo).

Perhaps a primable piece of kit called a Distress Beacon, good for 10 uses, available from any decent tech level system near you. Surely, scripting-wise it wouldnt need much in the way of a communication, as it would effectively have a certain percent chance of assigning a nearby non pirate NPC to the role of 'escort' to the player's ship. Perhaps it would be good practice to let your rescuer at least go for the kill and collect the cargo that is dropped. You might get a message 'Hey! I saved your (not so) iron ass, how about some thanks and leaving me the cargo pods?' if you go trying to scoop up.