Oolite Bulletins

Not sure if this is a bug or not, so I'll put this here for now...

Doing a few of the parcel deliveries, every so often I get ambushed at the witchpoint by people who don't seem to like the client. So far so good, I like having the opportunity to keep my combat reflexes up to scratch.

One thing I notice though, the would-be assassins almost always appear to be in legal status "Clean", so no bounty for stopping them and woe betide me if the police happen to be around - is this intentional or is it a bug? (Do my client's enemies have the number of assassins who haven't managed to show up on GalCop's radar or something?)

To my knowledge I'm not running an OXP that should affect this (unless the Display Reputations does something like that?)

You have made powerful enemies, who have long memories - welcome to the life of an interstellar courier, amigo! Assassins are always clean, which can be tricky - but there are various ways to deal with them! Wait 'til they start bothering you in a station's aegis - great fun!

Aha! Good to know it's an actual mechanic not something I've managed to corrupt in the game's config...

edited to add: they try to assassinate you in the aegis?!

Not quite - they may try to tempt you, to nudge you perhaps, and will follow you wherever you may go. Once beyond the aegis, well...

I actually managed to get a couple of assassins to attack me while within the aegis. I laughed with glee when they started crying out in frustration from the police attacking them.

My personal favourite is when on the Thargoid plans mission I get jumped by Assassins & Thargoids and I can leave them to sort out their differences between themselves

Do you have Communications Pack A installed? I think the "you picked the wrong client" stuff and quite a lot of the other banter comes from that, it's parsing your contracts and status etc. including endless variations on "You shouldn't work for xxx yyy" and others, such as "Here comes the famous Captain Rowland without any escort!" or words to that effect. The attackers would probably be there anyway, this just makes it feel more personal.

So if a commander destroys these clean assassins in self defense, will the commander be marked as a fugitive?

Imaginos wrote:

So if a commander destroys these clean assassins in self defense, will the commander be marked as a fugitive?

If there are Police around to see, and if you are seen to have the first hit.
So:

• if you are attacked by a clean assassin and there is no police then both you and the assassin remain clean.
  if you are attacked by a clean assassin and their hit is seen by police (before you hit them) then they will be offenders and attacked by the police. You can now attack them without any problems with the law.
  if you are attacked by a clean assassin and your hit is seen by police (before they hit you) then you will be offender and attacked by the police.

ffutures wrote:

The attackers would probably be there anyway, this just makes it feel more personal.

But if you are not a courier (or have not been recently) they will ignore you (if you are clean) - there is no contract on you.
Note: Being a courier greatly increase the chance of assassins being generated.

Thanks for answering my question Venator Dha. I've recently encountered this situation for the first time and was unsure if it was safe to shoot at a clean vessel. I decided to make a run for it but was unable to outdistance the attackers and was blasted to smithereens.

The dilemma a courier can sometimes face is when you find a bunch of assassins attacking a fellow courier, whilst ignoring you.
Do you welcome the distraction, slip quietly past, and make your delivery - or do you go to the aid of your fellow courier?

Venator Dha wrote:

Imaginos wrote:

So if a commander destroys these clean assassins in self defense, will the commander be marked as a fugitive?

If there are Police around to see, and if you are seen to have the first hit.

What gets more complex is if the police show up to a fight in progress (because the assassins won't usually initiate a fight if there are police around). In that case various reputational factors determine who they believe.

ffutures wrote:

Do you have Communications Pack A installed? I think the "you picked the wrong client" stuff and quite a lot of the other banter comes from that, it's parsing your contracts and status etc. including endless variations on "You shouldn't work for xxx yyy" and others, such as "Here comes the famous Captain Rowland without any escort!" or words to that effect. The attackers would probably be there anyway, this just makes it feel more personal.

No, I guess that's why the only thing they seem to say is "you picked the wrong client"...

cim wrote:

What gets more complex is if the police show up to a fight in progress (because the assassins won't usually initiate a fight if there are police around). In that case various reputational factors determine who they believe.

Heh, Oolite has definitely become a lot more complex since I last played! It's become scarily addictive, almost tempted to dust off the joystick again to play properly (though at the moment there's no space on my desk...)

Communications Pack A is highly recommended!