Oolite Bulletins

A couple of minutes ago I was frying a boa with a military laser, and I saw it's shields go down, and it started spewing cargo all over the place. Is this because the pilot wanted me to leave it alone or were the ship's systems damaged? How can I do this again?

Sometimes ships will start to leak cargo when fired on. You can guess for yourself whether this is because you've blown the bay doors off, or if the pilot is attempting to save his ship by jettisoning his load (after all, pirates are more interested in the contents of ships than in racking up kills, most of the time). Simple merchants -- good, honest folk who haul cargo across the spacelanes to put food on their families' tables -- are probably more likely to do this than pirates...

Meh... Thanks

and I saw it's shields go down, and it started spewing cargo all over the place. I..

I only saw it once or twice. It is intended behaviour. Probably last try to shake off the attacker in the hope he goes for the cargo and breaks off the chase.

I think it only works if the ship has actually scooped that cargo before and not with cargo he had when entering the system. But I am not sure as a boa is normally not scooping cargo and with me it was also a boa that spiralled out his load.

I think ejecting cargo to distract an attacker probably works, too... I've been in fights where pirates have ignored me to go off and scoop some cargo that's bobbing around out there.

Captain Hesperus discovered a different way to use cargo ejection in a combat situation: see this thread for details...

Eric Walch wrote:

I think it only works if the ship has actually scooped that cargo before and not with cargo he had when entering the system.

I don't think so. It's normal behaviour of e.g. Ixian Freighters and Armoured Transports. In both cases I think usually they arrive with their cargo. At least I wouldn't assume that just by chance all Ixian Freighters I've ever blown up had scooped more than 10 cannisters before. Probably you have overlooked something in the code?