Npc ships

Cos · Post by **Cos** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:13 pm

Can these be altered in anyway, I'd like the Cobra Mk I to have a little more energy, I think its too easy to destroy.

Cos

Charlie · Post by **Charlie** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:42 pm

search for shipdata.plist inside The Oolite directory & load it into a text editor ( I'd suggest something better than Notepad )
-Search for the name of your ship
-In the lines below the first instance of that name you'll see things detailing, speed, energy etc...

Have a gentle fiddle.

Save the .plst ( having made sure you backed-up the original )

Better still:
Take a trip to your local Benulobiweed.inc dealer & purchase 'a proper ship' tm.
Better than a POS Mk1 Cobra.

Regards

PS
If you're quite mad & don't want a B.inc ship there's a vast number of ships about packaged in .oxp form ready to copy into the Addons folder.
( New stuff & updated old stuff )

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:44 pm

Charlie wrote:
Better still:
Take a trip to your local Benulobiweed.inc dealer & purchase 'a proper ship' tm.
Better than a POS Mk1 Cobra.

He’s talking about non-player ship. Having to buy the pirates new ships to have something better to shoot at seems a bit much.

Fortunately, the more OXPs you have, the less Cobra 1s you’ll see. :-)

Cos · Post by **Cos** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:37 pm

Thanks for the advice, I tried gently fiddling with the energy and it made no difference? Not even to the cobra I that can be bought as a player ship.

Cheers

Cos

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:50 pm

Cos wrote:
Thanks for the advice, I tried gently fiddling with the energy and it made no difference? Not even to the cobra I that can be bought as a player ship.

Cheers

Cos

I think the energy banks are the ship's total energy divided by 64 or there abouts and (I believe, if not I'm sure I shall be hurriedly corrected

) any remainder is rounded up. Thus the Cobbie 1 has an energy rating of 150 / 64 = 2.3, rounding up to give three energy banks. On the same vein, the Cobbie 3 has a rating of 256 / 64 = 4. But the Adder on the other hand has Energy of 85 / 64 = 1.328125, but still only gets one energy bank, and that's where my logic falls down.....

Captain Hesperus
"Spelling, maths, is there nothing he can do right?"

Cos · Post by **Cos** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:03 pm

Ok so do I just keep increasing the energy number until I get more out of the ship?

Cos

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:16 pm

Cos wrote:
Ok so do I just keep increasing the energy number until I get more out of the ship?

Cos

Experimentation is the key, I guess. Try it with an energy level of 256 (like the Mk III) and see if that affects the player-ship.

Captain Hesperus

Cos · Post by **Cos** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:55 pm

Cheers Captain, I dont know what I'm doing wrong, I've tried what you said and It only has two energy bars which is normal for a Mk I.

Cos

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:05 pm

Cos wrote:
Cheers Captain, I dont know what I'm doing wrong, I've tried what you said and It only has two energy bars which is normal for a Mk I.

Cos

Well, I dunno then. Have you taken one on in combat? If you have, did it last any longer? Not being a coder, I don't really know how Oolite builds the HUDs or the energy bank displays, but altering the shipdata.plist normally has the desired effect. I made the Ixian Battlecruiser harder to kill by adding 15 Hardened missiles to it's weapons. Much more of a threat.....

Captain Hesperus

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:08 pm

Tis divide by 64 to get the energy banks, but Oolite drops any fractions, so 2.4 = 2 Energy banks. There is also a different entry for the "player ship" and the each of the npc ships. By default their enerfy levels are the same (but have different AIs and equipment). So if you change only the cobra1-miner entry you only boost the energy of NPC miners, not the pirate, trader, escort or player versions, if you see what I mean.

Captain Hesperus · Post by **Captain Hesperus** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:12 pm

Ah, that makes sense! So upping the energy of the pirate Cobbie 1 would make it a tougher proposition, while the trader, player, miner types would remain plain vanilla. Grand stuff!

Captain Hesperus

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 7:03 am

@ LittleBear: But interestingly not everything is the same. E.g. the cobra3-player's speed is considerably higher than of any NPC-version. Don't know why and don't know (haven't checked) if that is true also for the other ships.

TGHC · Post by **TGHC** » Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:44 am

That was probably programmed in by B&B to give the player slightly better odds. They thought it would be tough to get to Elite and didn't expect many of their postcards, indicating a player having achieved Elite status, to be returned!