Oolite Bulletins

It's always seemed a bit odd to me that (a) Rock Hermits have a "dockedPolice" value of 8 (which is the default you get because "max_police" is not set in shipdata.plist), and (b) even if you set the "max_police" value to 0 for Rock Hermits, if you dock with scooped escape pods that have a bounty they will still get processed, including police taking them away.

The suggestion I'd like to make is that, if a station has no docked police, then it is not able to process offender-type escape pods. Insurance ones would still be OK anywhere, but bounty ones should only be able to be processed where there is a definite police presence. And if this was linked to the dockedPolice value, then any OXP stations can apply the same logic easily.

As a secondary part to this suggestion, if it was implemented and Rock Hermits got a "max_police" value of 0, I'd also suggest increasing the number of "max_defense_ships" for each of the different roles, maybe 6 for chaotic RH's and 10 for pirate ones.

The first suggestion is something that made me wonder too. To make the game more variable, there should be as much differences as possible between rock hermits and stations, and this is one of the things I would change. Realistically, the player should be able to decide if he wants the insurance pay or sell the captured pilot(s) as slaves, but the price for slaves is usually too low to think about it, and it has no consequences in the game if the player frees a captured pilot or if he turns him over to the police.

PS: Something completely different: The wiki says "Rock Hermits do not rotate.". That's obviously wrong.

Fritz wrote:

Something completely different: The wiki says "Rock Hermits do not rotate.". That's obviously wrong.

It was correct - Griff introduced rotating rock hermits in his shipset, which kinda became the core shipset.

Fritz wrote:

PS: Something completely different: The wiki says "Rock Hermits do not rotate.". That's obviously wrong.

They never used to...

Perhaps only some of them should rotate, at different speeds, and perhaps some clockwise and some anticlockwise. This would create more variability, but it would need to be pseudo-random so that a rock hermit remains the same on every visit.

phkb wrote:

The suggestion I'd like to make is that, if a station has no docked police, then it is not able to process offender-type escape pods. Insurance ones would still be OK anywhere, but bounty ones should only be able to be processed where there is a definite police presence.

Seconded (- or is it thirded)?

I feel guilty when an escapee gets take off me at a pirate cove, and I then blow up the pirate cove. For that escapee will still be aboard the hermit!