Oolite Bulletins

Been away from Oolite for a while, partially due to a major HDD fault (yes I backed up the game...phew). I made what I thought a perfectly good suggestion to this board. There was some chit chat about it, but I'm deafened by the silence overall. I'm not a programmer by any means, but I really do think the Pirate Mothership could open loads more avenues of adventure, missions and conspiracy to Oolite. These ships could be constructed in anarchy systems where even the (space) mafia can buy off the cops. A hijacked Dredger could preform the function pretty well too!

Well, suggestions are ... errrmm ... exactly that: suggestions. People can take them up or leave them. I'm sure there are hundreds of suggestions that have been made here. Some of them have been cheered and incorporated into the game itself, some of them have made it into an OXP, a lot of them have been widely discussed and finally have been turned down. And a lot of them still wait for a scripter to take them up and do something with them. Our resources are limited and a lot of us are working on several projects at the same time.

If you really, really long for your suggestion to become a reality, then I propose you learn some plist-scripting and start on it yourself. It's really not that hard to take an existing script for an existing ship and modify it a bit to your liking. Although I somehow would not suggest using the dredger as a model. I find it hard to imagine that a gang of pirates in an anarchy system could manufacture something like that (the ship is bigger than even a behemoth!).

If you feel completely unable to do this, then at least you could do some more thinking on your suggestion: How do you imagine your pirate-mothership to be? How many and what pirate-ships should be attached to it? What happens to the player, should he dock with the mother-ship? What's the price-level and what gadgets could he probably find on it? Where should the player meet it with what probability? Should there be other ships in the vicinity, e.g. a behemoth or a leviathan? Shall the player see epic battles between pirates and police/military? Would you like to have a mission going around it? If yes, what kind of mission? Outline its plot. Perhaps someone of the scripters catches fire and you develop something together?

Or else you'll have to wait until somebody feels committed enough to your idea to sit down and produce something. And this is the more likely to happen the more your idea fits into someone else's thoughts or a project that's in progress anyhow. After all, this board is not a machine where you throw in a suggestion like a coin and take out a ready-made OXP like a can of soda. Even in a vending-machine there is a lot more going on than meets the eye, if we are to beleive last winter's Coke-campaign.

Interesting reply, many thanks. I do see this as a big step forward in Oolite, afterall the police and the thargoids do have mother ships and I can see an OXP where in some high TL anarchy systems such ships could be built for the purposes of mass piracy, mass trading in illegal stuff and mass action with the police. I do envisage this being a large vessel (similar to the levaithan or dredger) and be capable of housing several Anaconda, Oo-Haul & Boa type ships (for the trade runs) and being able to launch several attack ships similar to the cobra, sidewinder, griffinII in order to defend itself. It should also be well armed & shielded but ultimately destroyable. It should also be capable of whichspace travel. Missions should be largely of the trading nature to those players who have sufficent cargo capacity and a well armed ship prehaps with escort ships available to them (something else missing to the player at the moment - many Anaconda/Boa type vessels travel with 4-5 escort ships). The missions should be highly dangerous and very illegal with large rewards for running the risk with the authorities. Prehaps we need another galaxy to run this in..... Your criminal status would only be wiped by a Galatic jump! The idea of there being well organised and funded groups figures well in Ionics and Assasins missions. Pirates or a consortium of pirates could also be this well funded in an OXP. NB this ship should be very expensive and available to the player once a certain level is reached in game play.
I repeat I'm not a programmer, but I will look into it. Sadly I've also run through Oolite and although I'm running through again with all OXP's installed I still feel something is missing. Something on the large side that you'd want to burn all your fuel off escaping. Time I need more time

Commander McLane wrote:

Or else you'll have to wait until somebody feels committed enough to your idea to sit down and produce something. And this is the more likely to happen the more your idea fits into someone else's thoughts or a project that's in progress anyhow.

I was intending on using a renegade version of the Dredger as Spartan flagships on late appearences, and include epic battles. The player would have the chance to become friendly - or growingly hostile to the Spartans before the big ships appear, recce for one of the sides and eventually join in a massive battle on an anarchic system between the flagship-backed Spartan fleet and a very unlikely defensive alliance between slavers, pirates and... the Galcop!

Unfortunately this is all temporarily on hold as I've got too much on my mind to worry about improving my programming skills enough to do all that I thought of. Sorry, but I'll get around to it... eventually!

BTW, we could create a OoF (Oolite Fiction) tag or even a sticky thread to incentivate some more writing.

I think the Doc did a pirate version of the Behemoth (normal model with a new texture). Its posted somewhere on the boards. Expect he'd be fine with you using it if you ask him.

LittleBear wrote:

I think the Doc did a pirate version of the Behemoth (normal model with a new texture). Its posted somewhere on the boards. Expect he'd be fine with you using it if you ask him.

Anh, it wouldn't work. The idea would be to take the Behemot's weapontry and fit it on a dredger, complete with the same camo skin, insignias and markings as the rest of the Spartan fleet... and I have to do that with a lot of ships.

So far I've modified a few renegades and the Courier, created a set of Spartan AIs, had a lot of wild ideas and came up with a plotline. End. Sorry, that's about all I actually did on the OXP...

I have read again the original thread, where Killer Instinct proposed a pirate mothership for the first time. There were a couple of objections. You can follow the discussion or refresh your memories here.

I posted there a new idea as well, as far as the model for the mothership is concerned. It's to use the Leviathan instead of a Dredger or Behemoth. After all the Leviathan already has fallen into Renegade's hands. Why shouldn't they eventually (a good time after the player has finished Military.oxp) be able to build another one from the blueprints they have managed to take? Of course it would be a modified model, more to their specs.

As for a dockable pirate-entity, there are Renegade Stations in Anarchies.oxp (which still is awaiting its final release; I am waiting for the next release of Oolite where some necessary but broken methods are fixed), which are only dockable for the player if he has a legal record himself (Well, technically they are dockable at any time, but at your own risk! ) and then offer some nice bargains. From a scripting point of view it wouldn't be a major task to incorporate some delivery- and other types of missions in them. That could even be done in a seperate OXP, provided the player has installed Anarchies.oxp as well.

the dredger thing sounds like a good idea, but it should be a slightly remodelled/reskinned version. if they're deep-space craft they'd be well away from civilisation and help, and therefore prone to attack/problems. a determined group of pirates could shoot one up until the crew was dead/flees, then take the ship and convert it. or, it could run into other (mechanical? Life support failure? hit by rogue asteroid?) probs and have to be abandoned, whereupon the pirates might snag it bfore the salvagers. to be true and sensible, i think the attack thing might not be realistic : the cops might "tolerate" normal pirating activity but if concerted attacks like taking out a dredger happened, i think huge bands of Vipers would hunt it down and destroy it. same as kitting it out : if they use it as a big mobile trading port i think it'd be okay, but if they tried to kit it out w/ turrents and lasers all over, turn it into a battleship in effect, i think the military/cops would take it out.
which could lead to a separate OXP mission group. hunt it down, take out the fighter escort, have to dock to plant a bomb, get out.

Well in terms of unused models, sitting on my hard-drive, may I present the Mantis from Ramon Security Ltd. Might fit the bill for either role. Its a big well armed ship, but you would need to add a docking port. Its Ramon's work, but if you PM him and ask I'm sure he'd be fine with anybody using it.

(Ramon and Griff were my main partners in crime on the assassins project. These Ooliters love building cool ships, but hate scripting. Sure they'd be flattered if sombody wanted to take one of their ships and use it in a cool OXP.

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Nice!

Definitively looks like something that would fit to my vision of a pirate mothership.

Still would need some more precise and practical ideas on what exactly it would be doing. Not all of Killer Instinct's ideas presented above seem scriptable to me.

Commander McLane wrote:

Nice!

Definitively looks like something that would fit to my vision of a pirate mothership.

Although, I'd change the Ramon Security Ltd's 'Bull's Eye' on the side into something a little more piratical......

Captain Hesperus

Captain Hesperus wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Nice!

Definitively looks like something that would fit to my vision of a pirate mothership.

Although, I'd change the Ramon Security Ltd's 'Bull's Eye' on the side into something a little more piratical......

Captain Hesperus

Oh, I just thought that would be a little help for the bounty-hunter in me.

"Aim. Fire! Hit!!!"

pirate mothership? someone has to model captain harlock's ship for the mother ship! i'll force myself to learn how to model if noone else will do it!!!

LittleBear wrote:

I think the Doc did a pirate version of the Behemoth (normal model with a new texture). Its posted somewhere on the boards. Expect he'd be fine with you using it if you ask him.

I had almost forgotten that one. I don't think that it worked very well though, since it was my very first attempt at tinkering with anything oolite. The thread seems to vanished now.