Oolite Bulletins

Stupid idea for a mission, but the thought of it makes me laugh.

Before I begin with the mission, an explanation of Leeroy Jenkins if you don't know who it is. Watch the Warcraft vid.

A bunch of WoW players (Pals For Life) discuss going into an area filled with dragon eggs and other nasties. You can't just go in there and start slashing at the eggs because they hatch and you have dozens of baby dragons attacking you, so you need to decide how you're attacking, and make sure your team sticks together.

Leeroy Jenkins just sits at the bottom-left as this long-winded tactical talk goes on... until he screams "OK chumps up, let's do this. LEEEEROY JENKIIIINS!!!". Complete disregard for everyone, Leeroy just goes in where angels fear to tread. And gets everyone killed.

So that's the basis for the mission. A new pilot, Captain Leeroy Jenkins, decides that he wants to fly to an anarchy that's 3ly away so he can brag to his friends how hard-ass he is. He's the son of a rich trader, so there's a lot of money in it for you because daddy doesn't want his pride and joy floating home. Unfortunately, he's as dumb as a stump.

Your job is to keep him alive until he notices that he has enough fuel to hyperspace back to safety. In the hour the mission lasts, Leeroy is going to do some really stupid stuff. Testing his shields by flying into asteroids, looking for pirates to take down with his shiny new Constrictor, inviting death-by-missile at every opportunity.

He'll zoom ahead, looking for something to brag to his friends about, and you have to mop up the mess he makes. Shoot the asteroids before he kills himself. Keep the pirates off his back. EMP those missiles. And try not to kill him yourself as he accidentally fires his three missiles at you instead of the enemy. Sure, Leeroy Jenkins is not long for this Universe; but if you can keep him alive for just one hour, it's worth your while.

Nice idea, missions tend to be deliver a package/seek and destroy/carry a passenger etc. it would be an interesting change to have to protect someone rather than kill them!! lots of possibilities.

The Hand

Sorry, I couldn't manage it. I mean I'd have to Q-bomb him slowly just for being a proper a$$. I have a really low b.s. tolerence.

I regularly ram BoyRacers to death. And laugh about it. A lot.

Captain Hesperus
"'Old Timer', eh? Well let's see how funny you are plastered across my armoured nosecone."

Probabley do-able, but that would be one hell of an AI to have to write!

Would an escort type role work?

No, as it is the player that needs to do the escorting (and NPC escorts would only defend him against attack, they wouldn't stop him flying into an asteroid as the asteroid is not attacking the mothership).

A lot of different AI states (one for each of the stupid things he does) might work with a D number choosing which silly thing he did next. Perhaps with a comms-message thown in, to give the player a bit of warning as to what he is going to do. Eg:-

Define an ASTEROID_CRASH state with a scanforshipwithrole: asteroid, Target found = sendcommsmessage "Hey man that asteroid looks cool!" (crib some stuff from dockingAI here - so he'll try to dock with the asteroid with inevitable results! - eg set desiredrange to 0, setspeed to 1.0) would do for one silly thing.

The difficultiy would be the timing (although that could be done by having the mission only complete when he docks) and making him do a variety of silly things! And making him stop doing silly things when the time is up.

Well, if you can reckon you can do it, then I say go for it - it sounds a real challenge!
If you ever played 'Wing Commander', then the most difficult missions in that were the ones that you had to escort an essential transport to a safe point.
It normally consisted of desperately trying to stay close enough to deter the next hostile before they obliterated the helpless vessel, making it difficult to pursue and destroy them, so gradually increasing the number of attackers!

Bit OXPed out after Assassins, so hoping someone else would have a go!

Working on a Asteroid Storm mission ATM, but this dosen't need any new AIs and is a bit different from typical missions - A hugh asteroid storm is approaching the Station, will you help the Vipers shoot down the approaching asteroids and save the station. Or just watch them pound the station to bits and witchspace out?

Making a ship do one particular task in AI is faily easy, but making him do multiple things would be very tricky, or least without using a switchAIto, which woudn't work here as once his AI was switch he woudn't do another silly thing.

Don't overdo it matey, you are such a major contributer, Assassins has moved Oolite up another gear, along with some of the amazingly detailed and creative ships that are being OXP'd, Grifs Santa Claus and reindeer escorts for example. Your scripting knowledge is a source of inspiration to peeps like me who haven't a clue, plenty of ideas, but not the ability to put them into practice.

/me goes to the Wiki and looks at scripting again, this could take a long time!