Oolite Bulletins

Would add a lot of atmosphere if whe had a small chatbox where we could:

Threaten other ships life and ask them to dump all their cargo (with a probability based on various factors to have them do so) - important feature

Ask them for some fuel If we are facing fuel shortage (like in the original sid meyers pirates! when it comes to food) - not as importante but fun

Insult/Taunt enemy AI - with any consequence the coder should think to be appropriate

NPC should be able to do the same (priates will requested from us to dump our cargo, helpless traders for fuel, etc... but this feature would come later.

I think interactif with NPC would add a lot of fun in the Elite Universe.

talking is done by laserfire.

Although there are no messages encoded in the beam, the message implied by unprovoked attack is clear: "Gimme your cargo!".

The diplomacy of the lance has an appealing unequivocalilty to it... still, it would be fun if the "surrender or die" had any effect.

frontier (etc) had commsmessages...
unfortunately the responces to these were barely functional.

Imperial Courier Ironass: "Surrender or die!"
solitary sidewinder: "Ha Ha Ha!"

hmm

not to mention the distresscall which would attract pirates 150LY from civilisation, but never any help even at Sol.

I meant an inteligent response!
<Lone pirate attacks 5 ship convoy>
Pirate: "Surrender or die!"
Convoy leader: "Ha, ha!"
<Pirate destroys 2 ships and is blasting away at a third>
Convoy leader: "Stop, please! We surrender!"
Pirate: "Then eject all your cargo for me to pick and choose. If I'm not satisfied, I'll just finish you off!"
Convoy leader: "Have mercy! All we have is 70 tons of food!"
Pirate: "You should have said so in the beguinning instead of wasting my time. Die!"

The request for mechanical help could result in a repair/tow ship being sent (even if for a stiff salvage fee), but as for the "Help! I'm under attack!" message, there isn't much to be done given the scale of the systems in FE2 and FFE.

Player: "Help! I'm under attack!"
Davies Colony Flight Control: "We have received your FDR data and identified the prepertators. They are now being charged with Piracy and Attempted Murder.
The nearest patrol ship will intercept your current trajectory in T-1day, 7hours, 24 minutes and 13 seconds, we recommend you to perform evasive manoeuvres until then or we may have to upgrade the charges."
Player: "Ohhh! Aren't you bastards a helpful bunch? Thanks a lot, really..."
Davies Colony Flight Control: "You're fined in 600Cr. for insulting a police officer. Have a nice day!"

Has my support. But I don't know if it's on Ahruman's list.

It’s on my internal “things that would be quite nice but which, realistically, I’ll never get around to” list.

That's not a nice list. How can we persuade you to put it at least on the "things that would be very nice and game enhancing, so I give it a try" list?

You can’t. Sorry. Find someone else to do it.

Preset commands like: Distress/Assist calls and Surrender calls, these are the only two I can really think of. Would be a good add-on.

OBese87 wrote:

Preset commands like: Distress/Assist calls and Surrender calls, these are the only two I can really think of. Would be a good add-on.

There are a couple of other things you could do. Have a look here for my suggestions.

I came up with the idea some time ago for players to reply to NPC comms, or possibly initiate them with either a positive or a negative pre-set comment.

So, in reply to "Help, pirates are attacking", you could have one button to reply with a message "Hold on! I shall come to your aid", and another which would trigger "Sorry, mate. you're on your own."
The options would become available when you pressed the comms log button.
Similarly, when the cops tell you to leave the system, you can reply with + button "Certainly, officer, happy to comply.", or with - button "You'll never take me alive, copper!"

I think this would be relatively easy to implement.
Having 'intelligent' coversations would require an engine for itself.

Vegastrike has a semi-intelligent comms implimented, simular to Wiggy's idea.

You can target a ship, open a comms channel, then you'de have a short list of messages to send to them which ranged from a nasty insult to seriously sucking up.
The messages you sent determined how the AI ship reacted: Nastygrams would get them to turn and attack, kissing up would cool their tempers so they left you alone.

Wiggy wrote:

I came up with the idea some time ago for players to reply to NPC comms, or possibly initiate them with either a positive or a negative pre-set comment.

...

I think this would be relatively easy to implement.
Having 'intelligent' coversations would require an engine for itself.

Well, I came up with this idea as well (posted the link twice in my above posts, won't do it again). And there were a couple of other possible communications/interactions as well.

The point is: I don't know how easy the implemetation would be, but it would need to be implemented in the code. It's not OXPable, as it would need keystrokes to be defined for the preset answers. And this can't be done with an OXP. Even the usual missionscreen-scripting with up and down and enter, can't be made usable for the comms log via an OXP.

Ahruman's view on working on this is quite clear. And I guess it won't be a good idea to have two or more people fiddling with different parts of the code at the same time. So that's for now the end of it, I'd say.

This would be a hack/compromise....but...

for comms inflight:
how about pausing the game and forcing view to mission_screen.
offer option, stuck in mission_screen untill a choice is made.

But this may lead to other problems....one that might crop up is the 'docked in interstellarspace, but arriving in target system' bug.
But only if gamepause and mission_screen are linked to STATUS_DOCKED.