Oolite Bulletins

The SolarWing is a bounty hunter, though it also has an escort version. It is equiped with a cloak, and several planetary systems have purchased them to use as police ships. The SolarWing has two massive engines (for it's size), which take up about a third of what would normally be cargo space. This makes it a very fast ship, and when loaded with all the equipment goodies available, it's true nature as a bounty hunter comes through. In test flying this ship, I found that fighting one, or two ships (depending on the ships) was relatively easy, and cleaned them up pretty fast. When confronting more than four ships, the odds of winning went down sharply. That was when the speed advantage came in handy, especially with retro rockets. The ships I had the most problem killing were the ones in the SolarWing's own speed range, and faster. The hardest two ships to kill were the Merlin, and the SunBatMkII. When I put all of my skills as a pilot into use, which includes common sense, I was usually able to come away victorious from a confrontation with multiple Offenders. If I let my guard down in a tight dog fight, I was lucky to get away, especially against those nasty little bullet ships that blow up like a Querium Cascade Mine at it's own demise. There are ways to handle those little suckers, but you will have to figure out your own methods. All in all, this has become my favorite of my own ships, taking the place of the SunBat, and SunBatMkII by a hair. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Specs.:

Max Speed = 550
Max Energy = 400
Energy Recharge Rate = 4.5
Thrust = 45
Max Cargo = 15 tons


Author: mandoman
Completed: Sept., 2012

Special thanks to Captain Tricky for his contribution of the solarwingAI.plist, and solarwing.js. With his script, and AI, he gave the SolarWing what was needed to fully take on it's intended identity of "Bounty Hunter". Also thanks to Smivs for taking a look at my AI attempt, and just generally putting up with me.

https://www.box.com/s/xb6v4eaf35yay6o3ssrh

mandoman wrote:

Also thanks to Smivs for taking a look at my AI attempt, and just generally putting up with me.

No worries. I'm still learning this stuff myself so I'll help where I can (which is not very often) or offer sympathetic support when I can't.

Smivs wrote:

No worries. I'm still learning this stuff myself so I'll help where I can (which is not very often) or offer sympathetic support when I can't.

I just wanted you to know that I really do appreciate it.

mandoman wrote:

Special thanks to Captain Tricky for his contribution of the solarwingAI.plist, and solarwing.js. With his script, and AI, he gave the SolarWing what was needed to fully take on it's intended identity of "Bounty Hunter".

Glad you like it. It's not perfect and probably could do with a lot of improvement. It is in fact based loosely on route1patrolAI.plist with a modified interceptAI.plist added in. For simplicities sake I merged the 2 together.

The AI and Javascript are fully commented so can be modified to your liking.

What kind of population could I expect to see? It might be nice to see some speedy bounty-hunting mates out in the dark.

nice concept and design.. you should take away poly of the triangulation and spend it on detail search in the options of the wings3d exporter and disable the triangulation same works for almost all the exporters... you save some memory that you can use for other things... otherwhise i found this a very good and clean design...

Tricky wrote:

Glad you like it. It's not perfect and probably could do with a lot of improvement. It is in fact based loosely on route1patrolAI.plist with a modified interceptAI.plist added in. For simplicities sake I merged the 2 together.

The AI and Javascript are fully commented so can be modified to your liking.

I looked through it, and guess I see the similarities to the other AIs, but it really looked like an individual to me. I've never been able to make an original AI of my design work, and I've messed up at least one that someone else was kind enough to make for me (thanks again Smivs ), so I don't think I'll be doing anything to the one your made. If someone else wants to dabble, though, that would be fine with me, as long as I get a copy to try myself.

Rese249er wrote:

What kind of population could I expect to see? It might be nice to see some speedy bounty-hunting mates out in the dark.

I have the chance set to 0.5 on the market, so they won't be overwhelming in presence. I suspect the game engine will slip one in now and then, though, so you need to keep your eyes open. I was even contemplating taking my test SolarWing out, and see if I can find one of the NPC versions in action. I think it should be able to handle itself pretty well against most challengers.

commanderxairon wrote:

nice concept and design.. you should take away poly of the triangulation and spend it on detail search in the options of the wings3d exporter and disable the triangulation same works for almost all the exporters... you save some memory that you can use for other things... otherwhise i found this a very good and clean design...

You are speaking above my head, now. I have to admit that I've never learned how to take away the poly of the triangulation. I use Blender, not Wings, so maybe I'll ask Staer9 about it. It would be nice to clean it up more, for sure.

mandoman wrote:

commanderxairon wrote:

nice concept and design.. you should take away poly of the triangulation and spend it on detail search in the options of the wings3d exporter and disable the triangulation same works for almost all the exporters... you save some memory that you can use for other things... otherwhise i found this a very good and clean design...

You are speaking above my head, now. I have to admit that I've never learned how to take away the poly of the triangulation. I use Blender, not Wings, so maybe I'll ask Staer9 about it. It would be nice to clean it up more, for sure.

In fact it's not possible, as far as I know. Oolite needs triangles, at least that's how it used to be. Therefore the last step of each ship design always has to be triangulation. And usually the automated triangulation in either Wings or Blender does not produce more triangles than there absolutely have to be.

mandoman wrote:

I have the chance set to 0.5 on the market, so they won't be overwhelming in presence. I suspect the game engine will slip one in now and then, though, so you need to keep your eyes open. I was even contemplating taking my test SolarWing out, and see if I can find one of the NPC versions in action. I think it should be able to handle itself pretty well against most challengers.

Huh. Maybe I'll just do some tinkering with my old personal escort OXP and put them in...

Rese249er wrote:

mandoman wrote:

I have the chance set to 0.5 on the market, so they won't be overwhelming in presence. I suspect the game engine will slip one in now and then, though, so you need to keep your eyes open. I was even contemplating taking my test SolarWing out, and see if I can find one of the NPC versions in action. I think it should be able to handle itself pretty well against most challengers.

Huh. Maybe I'll just do some tinkering with my old personal escort OXP and put them in...

I sense a misunderstanding lurking here.

The chance on the market (chance-key in shipyard.plist) determines (as one of the factors) the chance for a ship to appear in the shipyard-screen (F3-F3) as buyable for the player. (It also determines the chance for optional_equipment to be installed, by the way.) So it tells you how likely it is for you to fly the ship.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the chance of seeing a ship as an NPC. The player is not an NPC (short for non player character). The roles-key in the non-player entry in shipdata.plist is responsible for that.

So it won't be any more common than any other ship of the roles it fills, right?

Mandoman - As Commander McLane says if you want to make a ship less likely to appear you need to amend the roles key.

For example if you wanted a ship to be spawned in a hunter role say 20% as often as a normal hunter but wanted it to appear as often as a standard trader you would use the following code: -
This is similar in openstep however I do not have my notes to hand - Perhaps someone can provide the openstep equivalent.

In openstep

Misunderstanding, Commander McLane? Me, misundertand? LOL!!!

Good info here. I've seen in the oxpHowTo Wiki that method of determining the percentage of NPC versions to spawn, but never have used it. Maybe I'll make this one the first, though I really wasn't trying to keep the game from spawning the SolarWing any more, or less than other ships of the same role.

In that case just omit the 'chance number', so By the way the 0.2 in the example in the previous posts does not make a fifth of all hunters Solarwings. The way it works is that when a hunter is called by the game populator, any ship with role 'hunter' could be called. A quick count through the shipdata.plist shows eight ships which could possibly be called as hunters, so there is a one in eight chance of any particular core ship being called. Adding an OXP hunter makes that a one in nine chance, and so if you have several OXP hunters in your game the chance gets longer with each one.
The 'chance number' influences how often a ship goes into the 'pool', so a chance of 0.2 as in the example above means that in only one fifth of the times the game calls a hunter your ship will be considered, and then it's still got odds of one in nine against it. In other words it will be very rarely called.