Page 1 of 1

carriers

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:13 pm
by ilnar
thargoid carriers in normal space dont do anything,,, they sit there and watch me destroy them with a mining laser (just to see if i could),,, no retaliation, no launching, nada,

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:28 pm
by JensAyton
Conveniently, that Eric Walch posted earlier today about the cause of this problem. Perhaps the author of the Thargoid Carrier OXP will update it accordingly.

I know it’s not always clear what goes where, but this is an expansion pack issue, not an Oolite testing/bug issue, so I’m moving it to the Expansion Pack subforum.

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:35 pm
by ilnar
cant say fairer than that,,, downloaded and i just got flattend making a 7 lightyear jump into system with a carrier in it:)

why is my python so slow at rolling,,,,,

still the carrier didnt launch anything, although reading the thread im not sure if it should....

will keep trying

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 1:11 am
by Wolfspirit
I have yet to have a misjump or be pulled out of witchspace to be attacked by thargoids they are always waiting at the system i jump into or halfway to the planet im trying to get to

now i have the version 1.65 off the Oolite site so i guess im missing something cause i remember in the original Elite i used to get yanked out of witchspace inbetween systems and mobbed by thargoidsand if i didnt have the fuel to jump to another system i had to spen ALONG time limping to the nearest star

Re: carriers

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 10:30 am
by Captain Hesperus
ilnar wrote:
thargoid carriers in normal space dont do anything,,, they sit there and watch me destroy them with a mining laser (just to see if i could),,, no retaliation, no launching, nada,
That's peculiar. Last time I came up against a Thargoid Carrier, it dropped about half a dozen warships on me. Dude, it was one hell of a fight, me vs. 1 Tharg carrier, six Tharg warships and an increasing number of Thargons! I've never been so happy to have fore and aft Mili-lasers...

<EDIT> And it's not even like as if I sold them any trumbles.......

Captain Hesperus

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 12:30 pm
by Eric Walch
Capt. Hesperus wrote:
That's peculiar. Last time I came up against a Thargoid Carrier, it dropped about half a dozen warships on me. Dude, it was one hell of a fight, me vs. 1 Tharg carrier, six Tharg warships and an increasing number of Thargons! I've never been so happy to have fore and aft Mili-lasers...
Yes it could get a fight. The carrier has a max of 10 defenseships with role "thargoid". So it can eject up to ten thargoids, but I have never seen that many coming out. ( two at the most). But if you also have also installed Thorgon_threat you get stronger opponents. And all of the normal Thairgoids have their drones.

But the intelligence file is bad. As the author writes himself, he shamelessly copied the work of the behemoth carrier. But to use this behemoth AI you must alter something as the behemoth was specially designed to fight thargoids.

You must open the package and open the AI folder inside it. There you see two files tcarrierAI.plist and fcarrierAI.plist. the second is not used an can be deleted. Open tcarrierAI.plist with a texteditor and replace all occurrences of "scanForHostiles" by "scanForNonThargoid". Now the ship will be more aggressive. Completely rewriting of the AI would be better.

But you cann't blame Dave Hughes (the author) as how scanning worked was nowhere documented. And if you do not know how it works, scanForHostiles looks good. But actually it only scans for thargoids and ships that are aiming at him. So if you aim at him he should feel offended, and shooting him will definitely attract his attention. That he is not attacking you directly is how oolite works. He is attacking you but because of his shear mass, he becomes so slow that he can't follow you. The behemoth has the same problem. They need their defense-ships for their own protection. (The same is valid for a real-live carrier)

I spend some last time in analyzing how the different scan-methods work and updated the wiki with these results. I hope this will help future authors.

The OXP is written by Dave Hughes (Selezen), a member of this board.

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2007 1:14 pm
by LittleBear
Wolfspirit Wrote:-
have yet to have a misjump or be pulled out of witchspace to be attacked by thargoids they are always waiting at the system i jump into or halfway to the planet im trying to get to

now i have the version 1.65 off the Oolite site so i guess im missing something cause i remember in the original Elite i used to get yanked out of witchspace inbetween systems and mobbed by thargoidsand if i didnt have the fuel to jump to another system i had to spen ALONG time limping to the nearest star
It does happen randomly in Oolite as well (but perhaps it's less common than in Elite. If you want to force a misjump, pull back on the strick (or hold down the climb key) and keep it held down as the jump countdown passes 0 and engages the jump. You'll then find yourself sucked out of witchspace into interstella space. Thargoids will be about and (depending on the OXPs you have installed) you may find GalCop Navy ships doing battle with the Bugs!