Oolite Bulletins

In an unknown quadrant of the Galaxy there existed a race called the Teeesssseeeeerrr. These beings were remarkable in their likeness to the birds of old Terra. A few years back, Mandotech Industries was approached by, not one, but two factions of the Teeesssseeeeerrr. It seems that there were two definite races of the species, each occupying one of the only two massive continents of their very large planet. They both wanted ships with which to fight off an attack of aliens from outside our own Galaxy. Fleets. They already had there own types of ships, but saw that the ships from our worlds were better. However, before the two factions could claim their ships, the aliens attacked. The war ended quickly, as the Teeesssseeeeerrr had anti-matter weapons, and a few stray missiles strayed into their sun. The result was the total annihilation of both the aliens, and the Teeesssseeeeerrr. Consequently, Mandotech Industries is now stuck with two half fleets of really strange ships, the approximate design of which came for the extinct birds. Mandotech is now offering up these ships to naval, and police forces. They are war ships, afterall, and it would not be right to offer them to the general public. No doubt, some will still end up there. We have changed the names of these ships to those understandable by our society, and based upon birds of old Terra.

Link: https://www.box.com/s/bn347jmrip3i7azk9ff8

Stats are as follows:

-Lightningbird-
max_cargo = 10
max_energy = 350
energy_recharge_rate = 3.0
max_flight_speed = 450
max_flight_pitch = 1.6
max_flight_roll = 1.8
max_missiles = 5
weapon_type = Military Lasers
thrust = 50







-Terrorbird-
max_cargo = 25
max_energy = 350
energy_recharge_rate = 3.0
max_flight_speed = 480
max_flight_pitch = 1.2
max_flight_roll = 1.4
max_missiles = 6
weapon_type = Military Lasers
thrust = 50







-Thunderbird-
max_cargo = 55
max_energy = 600
energy_recharge_rate = 5.5
max_flight_speed = 450
max_flight_pitch = 1.0
max_flight_roll = 1.2
max_missiles = 12
Weapon_type = Military Lasers
thrust = 40







-Roc-
max_cargo = 45
max_energy = 400
energy_recharge_rate = 3.0
max_flight_speed = 500
max_flight_pitch = 0.9
max_flight_roll = 1.2
max_missiles = 8
Weapon_type = Military Lasers
thrust = 40

Wow..

Nice work, Mandoman.. somewhat darker (mood-wise) than your usual work.. I like.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Wow..

Nice work, Mandoman.. somewhat darker (mood-wise) than your usual work.. I like.

Thanks Diziet Sma.

I never thought of it that way, LOL!!! I noticed something that I don't know if it should be changed, or not, about the Thunderbird. Even though I have "frangible = no" in the shipdata.plist, the ball turrets still get blown off of the ship in a fight. That didn't use to happen, so I'm supposing it has to do with some of the changes in V1.77. I've tried putting the "frangible = no;" in the ball turret description, but haven't tested it yet.

mandoman wrote:

I've tried putting the "frangible = no;" in the ball turret description, but haven't tested it yet.

It should only be in the main entity's description, but should work there.

Well I took it out to test the "frangible = no" theory in the ball turret description in shipdata.plist. I found a total of one pirate to experiment with, LOL!!! He got in several hard hits on my forward shields before I could take him out, though. Last time that happened, I lost all of my forward ball turrets, before I made the plist edit. It may have worked, but I'm going to take it out to an anarchy system to really give it a shake.

UPDATE

I can now confirm that one can prevent the frangibility of ball turrets, and other subentites I suppose, by simply stating in the subentity description "frangible = no;".

mandoman wrote:

I can now confirm that one can prevent the frangibility of ball turrets, and other subentites I suppose, by simply stating in the subentity description "frangible = no;".

That's odd, because that's not how it's supposed to work. At least until Oolite 1.76.1 the frangible key was only meant to be used in the main entity's definition, and would then apply to all its subentities.

Thus a quick question for the developers: has this changed in Oolite 1.77? If so, a clarification of the documentation may be in order (but that may be in order anyway, as the documentation doesn't state explicitly where the key belongs either way).

Commander McLane wrote:

mandoman wrote:

I can now confirm that one can prevent the frangibility of ball turrets, and other subentites I suppose, by simply stating in the subentity description "frangible = no;".

That's odd, because that's not how it's supposed to work. At least until Oolite 1.76.1 the frangible key was only meant to be used in the main entity's definition, and would then apply to all its subentities.

Thus a quick question for the developers: has this changed in Oolite 1.77? If so, a clarification of the documentation may be in order (but that may be in order anyway, as the documentation doesn't state explicitly where the key belongs either way).

That's not what's supposed to happen, no. The key belongs on the main entity, and the key on the subentity shouldn't matter.

I took a couple of NPC Thunderbirds out to shoot at last night and couldn't get any turrets off them unless I commented out the line in the main entity.

There are two relevant bug fixes now in trunk which will be in 1.77.1, when that's released:
- frangible player subentities are protected by the shields
- non-frangible subentities do not take heat damage.
Neither seems likely to be relevant in this case, and both of these bugs have been around since well before 1.76. I'll check through the code again, though.

Okay, if you say so, cim, but I came back from my first trial battle mission with the Thunderbird with no ball turrets. I had to fight my last two conflicts of that mission with lasers and missiles only, which wasn't bad, but not the effect I was looking for. The Thunderbird is huge, and a little sluggish in the pitch, and roll categories, and also in thrust. I'll try it again without the line in the ball turret subent. description.

There could be a bug in the player-only code for subents handling, then. I'll take a closer look at that.

Having tried the player version out, I couldn't personally get any subentities to mysteriously disappear. But: hits through shields on the player ship raise the hull temperature in proportion to the damage done by the hit, so probably in 1.77 and earlier the bug which was causing subents to take heat damage even if non-frangible was then causing them to be destroyed when the heat (briefly) reached critical levels.

A missile hit against an unshielded target with no added insulation will pile a few hundred points of heat on, probably enough to destroy all the subentities before you cool down - but in a ship with that many energy banks, it won't also destroy the ship. So I think that's what's happening, and it should be fixed when 1.77.1 is released.

I took the line out of the ball turret description section, but left it in the main ship description section, and tested again last night. After several blazing battles, every turret was still intact. I'm not totally sure I understand what you just said, but it's sure a puzzle to me why they got blown off that first time. Must have been the heat build up?