Removing Station Dock Control and GalCop's Most Wanted

[phkb]

Apologies for being away for so long, but I'm back now, and slowly picking up the threads of where I left off. My list of topics to read is.. well, lengthy.

I'm posting this new info here, in a new thread (rather than one either of the OXP threads), because the reasoning behind the change is the same. While I like both of these mods (SDC and Most Wanted), I'm almost 100% confident they are behind some of the stuttering that players experience when there are lots of mods all trying to get their stuff done when a new system is populated. And rather than keep these mods in the general mix, I've moved them, hopefully temporarily, to my "Experimental" section. If you have them installed, nothing changes. You can still use them. And if you really want them, you can still grab them from the wiki. But they won't be offered up by the in-game expansion manager, or via OoliteStarter.

I have plans for both to hopefully get better versions created that aren't so resource demanding. But it's going to take me a bit of time to rewrite them. SDC is the more problematic of the two, as it's replacing the core population routines that would normally launch ships from stations. The core game isn't worried about state or consistency. If you were to follow a ship into a station, that's the last you would see of that particular ship. It disappears after docking. The ships that are launching are created randomly only moments before they appear.

One of the goals I set for SDC was to give the game that level of immersion, where you could follow a ship in from the witchpoint, watch it dock, then go to the F4 screen and find the ship somewhere in the dock. If you hang around long enough, you could watch the ship launch again. I was really happy that I got it working, and I learned a lot about the Oolite scripting model in the process.

But, the job of prefilling all the stations with ships takes a long time. I've tried spacing things out (not doing all stations at once, but having a delay between each one), but the root cause at the heart of the problem is that generating a list of random ships at a single station takes time. And that time causes stutters.

And the thing is, I doubt anyone is regularly checking out the consistency the mod gives to the game. Does anyone actually follow ships into the station, dock, and look that ship up in the F4 screen? My gut tells me it's a very small number of players, if any. So, for all the realism it adds, it's pretty much useless. There aren't any true game mechanics tied to the docks, and so there is no reason to view it. So a completely random list of ships, created just moments before you view them, would work just as well.

Anyway, feel free to chime in with your thoughts.

[Redspear]

And the thing is, I doubt anyone is regularly checking out the consistency the mod gives to the game. Does anyone actually follow ships into the station, dock, and look that ship up in the F4 screen? My gut tells me it's a very small number of players, if any. So, for all the realism it adds, it's pretty much useless. There aren't any true game mechanics tied to the docks, and so there is no reason to view it. So a completely random list of ships, created just moments before you view them, would work just as well.

Brutally honest and... dare I say it... perhaps even wise.

I don't use the oxp but was always interested in it. You can perhaps guess some of my thoughts but here goes...

Suppose ships all reported 'false' info AND the player were enough of a detective to regularly test such in order to be aware then their may be another explanation:

Everyone's playing the game and to get by in pirate infested spacelanes a bit of false reporting might be necessary from time to time. GalCop could even be complicit in such.

So if it doesn't present info for the player to exploit (and therefore require some accuracy) then is it really even a problem?

Does the utility of knowing another trader's business extend to knowing where that wormhole leads (in which case there's an equipment item for that ) and potentially what their manifest is (if there isn't a scanning oxp then perhaps their should be)?

[Captain Beatnik]

While I like both of these mods (SDC and Most Wanted), I'm almost 100% confident they are behind some of the stuttering that players experience when there are lots of mods all trying to get their stuff done when a new system is populated. And rather than keep these mods in the general mix, I've moved them, hopefully temporarily, to my "Experimental" section. If you have them installed, nothing changes. You can still use them. And if you really want them, you can still grab them from the wiki. But they won't be offered up by the in-game expansion manager, or via OoliteStarter.

It's such a shame, but given the circumstances described, it's a consistent and reasonable step that I can fully understand and support.

[cbr]

I really like SDC for it's 'immersion', I use it to search for 'particular' ships ( follow ) and to look for ship destinations i can hitch a ride to...

I usually install oxz/oxps manual so that is not a problem, in time will look forward to a new version SDC-light...