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Npc ships

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:13 pm
by Cos
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

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:42 pm
by Charlie
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. :wink:

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 )

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 5:44 pm
by JensAyton
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. :-)

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:37 pm
by Cos
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 :( :?

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:50 pm
by Captain Hesperus
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 :D) 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?"

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:03 pm
by Cos
Ok so do I just keep increasing the energy number until I get more out of the ship?

Cos

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:16 pm
by Captain Hesperus
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

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:55 pm
by Cos
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

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:05 pm
by Captain Hesperus
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

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:08 pm
by LittleBear
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.

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:12 pm
by Captain Hesperus
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

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 7:03 am
by Commander McLane
@ 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.

Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:44 am
by TGHC
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!