Oolite Bulletins

If I install a new ship by OXP, how is the galaxys ship population affected by that? If the game generates 100 ships in a system Is the probability of a new ship in the core code? Equal for all? Is ist defined by the OXP?
I downloaded Pitviper MKII yesterday and suddenly, the galaxy seems to be full of them. Quite skilled pilots in them too. Almost every pirate group I stumbled across had a Pitviper in it... (All Anarchy Systems, so it could be Random Hits ships, though I think RH uses PV MK I? )

OXP ships are added by the system populator based on their role weight which is specified in the OXP (in the shipdata.plist). For example, if it has a role of 'pirate' it will go into a pool with all the other role-pirate ships and when the game spawns a pirate it will pick one at random from the pool. This frequency can be reduced by reducing the weighting, so a ship with the role 'pirate (0.1)' is only going to be available a tenth as often as one with the role 'pirate'.
It is a common problem with OXP ships I'm afraid, probably because the author likes to see their handiwork and so gives them a high weighting. It sounds like the Pitviper might suffer from this and perhaps needs its weighting reduced.

Smivs wrote:

It is a common problem with OXP ships I'm afraid, probably because the author likes to see their handiwork and so gives them a high weighting. It sounds like the Pitviper might suffer from this and perhaps needs its weighting reduced.

I don't know much about politics, Smivs, but that sounds like communism to me.

<chuckles>

Smivs wrote:

It sounds like the Pitviper might suffer from this and perhaps needs its weighting reduced.

Not so much that, I think. The Pitviper II OXP defines four variants, which collectively have hunter(1.2), pirate(1.0), escort(0.8) - hardly unreasonable numbers.

It may be more the additional roles that are used with 1.80 onwards - those three roles are the most common of each type used, so there's a fair chance that any decent-sized pirate or hunter pack, or freighter escort will contain one - and it's quite a big ship for that sort of thing: just one in a pack is noticeable... If it was instead hunter-heavy(1.2), pirate-heavy-fighter(1.0), escort-heavy(0.8) then it would only be appearing in the rarer cases the game wanted a large fighter, and there wouldn't be as many of them about.

So the chance is equal for all pirate role ships? If a pirate group consists of 7 ships and I get 2 pitvipers out of 3 groups, 2 of 21 ships, then I assume there are 10 pirate role ships available?
(don't nail me to the numbers, I have no significant statistical data yet, just two short system visits)

€: some jumps later... There seems to be a pitviper everywhere. By far the most common ship now. More PV than every thing else. A civil non pirate group of just three? A PV in it. Nasty bugs. Very hard to kill, the simply turn around and run away on injectors, surviving a full laser blast from cold to overheat.

Yesterday I hat a group of three Pitvipers twice. Nothing I could cope with. After every short laser sequence, the PV angled up and injected, extremely difficult to hit, whenever I was close to the kill, it injected out of scanner range in no time. The speed and manouverability is impressive. Also impressive is their ability to turn around 90 Deg. and hit me with the first shot, while I still try to adjust my aim after a 10 deg angle up to follow the PV. A bit unbalanced. While playing cat and mouse with PV no. 1, the two others got me from somewhere. Press Space Commander.

The second encounter was in the aegis of a station, it was fun to watch 5 GalCorp fighters and three Pitvipers following each other on injectors. GalCorp did not prevent the PV to kill me, which is OK, it was me who started the fight agaist the three offendors who were just peacefully hanging around.

I'll reduce the appearance probability somewhat.

ralph_hh wrote:

... whenever I was close to the kill, it injected out of scanner range in no time...

Remember, if there is nobody else around (ie you are not mass-locked), you can use Torus drive to persue them. You'll soon catch up, and they will still be quite weak when you do catch him/her/it.

Yea, I did this with the constrictor, I do this to close up to cargo containers. But if there are three Pitvipers, usually you are mass-locked

Hardheads can be useful as well, albeit at a price but if your neck is on the line...
Target one or two with a missile and basically scare them away, leaving just one or two to deal with. Those fleeing the missiles might return after a while, but if you've dipatched the first one or two you'll be ready for them.