Oolite Bulletins

This appears in the shipdata.plist:

no_boulders

With older versions, scripted asteroids had no boulders by default. Starting with 1.70 all asteroids produce boulders when hit by a mining laser. no_boulders can overwrite this to emulate the old situation. By chance factor, or true/false.

Example:

"no_boulders" = yes;

And in the Oolite JavaScript Reference: Ship wiki page

isMinable

This property was added in Oolite test release 1.79.

isMinable : Boolean (read-only)

true if the ship will break up usefully when hit by a mining laser, false otherwise. By default this is true for anything with "asteroid" or "boulder" in its role list - if you need to add anything which miners shouldn't be shooting at to those roles, give it "no_boulders" = yes; in its shipdata.plist.

Neither entry says what this property actually does.

Does it make the asteroid object just destruct/transmogrify into alloys if hit? Or does it prevent it being destroyed at all? Or does it do something else?

Typically, a mined asteroid breaks into 'boulders'.
Boulders are too big to scoop but can be further broken into... 'splinters'.

Splinters can be scooped (as minerals), so why have boulders in the first place?

Because the size difference between an asteroid and it's splinters is pretty big. Having boulders as an intermediary stage makes that same difference rather more platable.

Redspear wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 6:32 pm

Typically, a mined asteroid breaks into 'boulders'.
Boulders are too big to scoop but can be further broken into... 'splinters'.

Splinters can be scooped (as minerals), so why have boulders in the first place?

Because the size difference between an asteroid and it's splinters is pretty big. Having boulders as an intermediary stage makes that same difference rather more platable.

Aaah - sorry, I was not explicit enough... this is not my question!

What actually is the in-game effect of "no_boulders"?

"no_boulders" prevents spawning debris when an entity with an asteroid or boulder role is destroyed.

The second effect is that isMinable method always returns false if "no_boulders" is true, and as a result, standard NPCs will no longer treat the entity as a mining opportunity even if it has an asteroid role, (but I suspect they still can if it has a boulder role, because that check seems to not take into account the property).

Might be amusing to set some ships or stations to...

"no_boulders" = no;
isMinable = yes;

Rock Hermits for instance?

Switeck wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 7:59 pm

Might be amusing to set some ships or stations to...

"no_boulders" = no;
isMinable = yes;

Rock Hermits for instance?

How about the pirate bases in Galaxy Navy?