Oolite Bulletins

Various things can make the player a target for assassins - doing parcel or passenger contracts in particular. Then, when you jump into a system you find a bunch of ships waiting for the player. Occasionally I've arrived in system to see a group of ships waiting at the witchpoint, but obviously not for me.

My question is, though, where in those ships data structure does it store the name of the ship they are waiting for? I'm assuming that, when they are waiting for the player, they are waiting for a ship with a particular registration and pilot name to appear. Is that stored in their AI somewhere?

phkb wrote:

My question is, though, where in those ships data structure does it store the name of the ship they are waiting for? I'm assuming that, when they are waiting for the player, they are waiting for a ship with a particular registration and pilot name to appear. Is that stored in their AI somewhere?

Nowhere. They sit around scanning for legitimate targets every so often. When they find one, they attack (if they somehow go from 0 targets to 2 on one scan, they'll pick one at random). A legitimate target is:
- an NPC with a primary role in the "oolite-courier" category (categories defined in role-categories.plist)
- a player with an equivalent role (as determined by the group leader picking one at random from player.roleWeights)
- a player without an equivalent role, but with high- or medium- risk contracts aboard (sometimes; there's a random chance per scan that this won't be noticed)

A little bit of work on the comms messages and it's easy to make them look like they were waiting for a particular ship, of course.

I have another question regarding assassins:
Yesterday I launched from a station, and there were 4 assassins hanging around in the aegis (all normal as expected), I was wanting to catch a ride on someones else's jump so I hung around waiting. The assassins buzzed me as they tend to (one even crashed into me and exploded ). It was then that I remembered that I'd launched with some illegal goods and was an offender (16 I think). I hung around some more, caught my lift, and as expected was attacked by the assassins that followed me through the rift plus those that were waiting at the other side . I then jumped to the next system and safety.

So my question: Why didn't the assassins attack me in the aegis? If I understand it right it should be OK to do so as I had offender status?

I'll let someone else answer your question, Venator Dha.

cim wrote:

Nowhere. They sit around scanning for legitimate targets every so often. When they find one, they attack

Ah. Perhaps someone could let me know if this idea is feasible then. My thought was to make the ship registration a strategic part of the game. Let's say you want to put off the assassins that are following you. It seems to me that one way of doing this would be to get the name of your ship altered, which you can already do with the built in ship registration screen. So, the player makes a decision to change the name of their ship. Then, for the next jump, they have a window of opportunity - the assassins are looking for a ship named "X", but the player's ship is now called "Y". The registry information has not yet propagated around the galaxy, so the assassins aren't yet aware of the change. Maybe the window of opportunity is only measured in seconds, but that might be all the player needs.

The flip side to this would be to add a small cost for changing the registration of your ship, say 100 credits. The player could, conceivably, change their registration with every jump, but they would also need to factor in the cost of doing so. On a long, cross chart run that could be thousands of credits, chewing into their profits.

Adding the cost for ship registration changes is the easy part - I've got that working. It's how to implement the "confusion" part. Do you think it's achievable? Would anyone be interested in such a tweak?

Venator Dha wrote:

It was then that I remembered that I'd launched with some illegal goods and was an offender (16 I think). I hung around some more...

I'm wondering why Vipers didn't attack you? Were there Vipers about?

phkb wrote:

Adding the cost for ship registration changes is the easy part - I've got that working. It's how to implement the "confusion" part. Do you think it's achievable? Would anyone be interested in such a tweak?

It's an interesting idea ... what sort of effect might it have on a player's criminal record? Might there be some sort of hack required - a bit like the service provided on a [wiki]Hacker Outpost[/wiki]? Maybe changing your ship registration would only be available in certain systems - perhaps based on a combination of high tech level and low government level?

I like the general concept (No idea as to how feasible it would be to do)

If I my suggest a few ideas:

I like the names I give to my ships and would not like to have them permanently changed (or to keep changing them back) - but would like the idea of a temporary change that lasted a certain time - say 50hrs to cover the longest jump, after which the ship reverts to its real name.
The change is somewhat dodgy and so has a chance not to work - no free ride all the time. Or a chance of success per assassin group.
The change can only be bought at rock hermits and perhaps stations in low security systems.
As it will generally only be needed at certain points make it cost more (say 1000 Cr).

Cody wrote:

Venator Dha wrote:

It was then that I remembered that I'd launched with some illegal goods and was an offender (16 I think). I hung around some more...

I'm wondering why Vipers didn't attack you? Were there Vipers about?

Yes, but there seems to be a value under which they just give a warning, then ignore me.

Venator Dha wrote:

Yes, but there seems to be a value under which they just give a warning, then ignore me.

Hmm... they used to attack me for single-digit bounties regularly. Perhaps something has changed?
As for assassins, they may simply be programmed not to attack in the presence of Vipers, regardless of the player's legal status?

I expect cim knows the answers...

I think the ship registration function is, at the moment, only available at main stations. At least, I couldn't see it when I docked at a ConStore or a Space bar. Obviously, I could create a completely custom ship rego change screen that could be available in any station, but I kind of liked the idea of using the existing interface which at present has no game value at all, to enhance a game mechanic. It makes sense in the game world for a registry change to take time to propagate and therefore create confusion. Maybe if a custom rego change screen was available from hermits or space bars it would have a different effect - as you say, more or less reliable, effect lasts longer, cost is higher.

Disembodied wrote:

what sort of effect might it have on a player's criminal record?

I don't think it would have any impact on the players criminal record. The change is being done by GalCop administration, at GalCop stations, so their records are consistent. They know who you are, and changing your name won't escape an offender or fugitive status, at least in the model I was imagining. Changing your ship name has a short-term benefit, lasting only as long as the next jump, and probably only for a short period of time after that.

I can easily scan all ships in range when you arrive in a new system, and start a timer that would control how long the confusion lasts. Then, for each ship with the role "assassin" that decides to attack the player, add a function to stop them attacking (setting their target to null) and send out a "No, that's not ship X." comms broadcast. If I keep track of all ships that fall into this category, then at the end of the timer I can tell them to attack the player again, with a "Hey, that really is ship X! He's changed his name!" comms boradcast. If the player has moved out of scanner range by this time then the player scores a win. The tricky thing is what to do with ships that follow the player through the wormhole. They aren't likely to be confused because they were in the system where the change too place, so their GalCop registry will be up to date. Is it possible to distinguish between the two types of ships? Is this even the right way of doing it?

phkb wrote:

I don't think it would have any impact on the players criminal record. The change is being done by GalCop administration, at GalCop stations, so their records are consistent. They know who you are, and changing your name won't escape an offender or fugitive status, at least in the model I was imagining. Changing your ship name has a short-term benefit, lasting only as long as the next jump, and probably only for a short period of time after that.

Fair enough ... there might be a bit of tactics involved, though, if the player got a longer benefit (or a greater chance of the ruse succeeding) if they changed their name at a low-TL system - on the grounds that it will take longer for low-TL systems to process and distribute the updated information (and on the more game-balance grounds that low-TL systems are less convenient places to visit, due to the lack of repair and rearm facilities on offer).

phkb wrote:

The tricky thing is what to do with ships that follow the player through the wormhole. They aren't likely to be confused because they were in the system where the change too place, so their GalCop registry will be up to date. Is it possible to distinguish between the two types of ships? Is this even the right way of doing it?

If ships that follow the player from the previous system are added after ships lurking at the wormhole, it might be possible to distinguish between them that way ... although I suspect it might be more complicated than that!

Cody wrote:

As for assassins, they may simply be programmed not to attack in the presence of Vipers, regardless of the player's legal status?

Correct. The reason: escape pods are always Clean, and trying to shoot down an escape pod right next to a main system station is not a sensible move.

phkb wrote:

It's how to implement the "confusion" part. Do you think it's achievable?

The way I would do this is to make the "confusion" itself fuzzy. Rather than trying to track to every last detail who knows what and why, when the player changes their ship and/or pilot name, reset some of their "player equivalent role" entries back to "player-unknown". If that happens to take out courier roles, then great. If it doesn't, well, you didn't fool them this time...

I'd make it take out the same entries each time - since you can set specific indexes in the list - so that changing the ship name twice in a row has no effect. (If you reset the first four entries each time, this also has the effect that the tactic gets less effective as the player's combat reputation increases - it'll be pretty likely to work for a new player, but becomes virtually irrelevant to an Elite pilot - as the higher your combat reputation, the more player equivalent role entries you have)

Should I set the entries back later, or just leave them as player unknown?

phkb wrote:

Should I set the entries back later, or just leave them as player unknown?

Not sure. I think it's probably fine to leave them and let them be refilled naturally, but you might feel that gave too much of an advantage.

cim wrote:

Cody wrote:

As for assassins, they may simply be programmed not to attack in the presence of Vipers, regardless of the player's legal status?

Correct. The reason: escape pods are always Clean, and trying to shoot down an escape pod right next to a main system station is not a sensible move.

Thanks for the explanation cim. I suspected there would be a good reason, just couldn't think of it

cim wrote:

The way I would do this is to make the "confusion" itself fuzzy. Rather than trying to track to every last detail who knows what and why, when the player changes their ship and/or pilot name, reset some of their "player equivalent role" entries back to "player-unknown". If that happens to take out courier roles, then great. If it doesn't, well, you didn't fool them this time...

I'd make it take out the same entries each time - since you can set specific indexes in the list - so that changing the ship name twice in a row has no effect. (If you reset the first four entries each time, this also has the effect that the tactic gets less effective as the player's combat reputation increases - it'll be pretty likely to work for a new player, but becomes virtually irrelevant to an Elite pilot - as the higher your combat reputation, the more player equivalent role entries you have)

Apologies if I am misunderstanding the mechanism. Wouldn't this only affect this scenario :

cim wrote:

- a player with an equivalent role (as determined by the group leader picking one at random from player.roleWeights)

but not this?

cim wrote:

- a player without an equivalent role, but with high- or medium- risk contracts aboard (sometimes; there's a random chance per scan that this won't be noticed)

So that for a courier carrying multiple packages there would be little difference, but a player whose delivered the odd package there would?
So of little use to the courier, looking to reset the odds more in their favour, but useful for a commander looking to change his profession?