Oolite Bulletins

I learned the hard way last night that ECM-Hardened Missiles (thanks for implementing my suggestion for that, Giles; we miss you) do not appear as blue dots on radar, but rather as yellow dots. I figured this out when I destroyed a pirate Cobra at about 20 k with my laser. I heard a missile coming in, so I hit the ECM. I started moving in towards his wreckage/cargo, and noticed that it looked like he had company. I kept closing, wondering why I couldn't see the other pirate ship at 15 k, 10 k, 5 k. Then I think I see it -- maybe a Hatchling BoyRacer or a SpearHead or something else really small burning a long trail of witchdrive fuel. Wait; that's no BoyRacer. I frantically hit ECM a couple times as I watch it snake up and down towards me. Yep, that's definitly a missile, and because my ECM didn't stop it, it must be hardened. Well, BLAMMO, game over! (I should've cloaked.) Well, that serves me right for suggestion ECM Hardened Missiles -- I got a strong taste of my own medicine. Hmm, come to think of it, I think I remember Aegidian mentioning how "Hardheads" are considered ships and not missiles in order to render ECM inneffective. Hmm, are Hardened Missiles included in the base v1.65, so should I just toss the special-missile.oxp? Hmm? Oh, hi, I'm back.

That's definitively strange.

There was a bug-report for 1.70, that missiles had turned to yellow dots. But I am not aware of anything like this for 1.65. My best guess is that it wasn't an ECM-hardened missile at all, but some other missile from an OXP, which accidentally has the wrong scanclass? (Have you probably an old version of Ramirez' Missiles and Bombs.oxp installed? That's where I would start to look.)

General information: Hardheads (ECM-hardened missiles) are around since before 1.65 (have a look at the ReadMe, they were modified in 1.63) and are part of the trunk. They are (see ReadMe) not ECM-proof, so continuously hitting E will catch them eventually (at the expense of your ship's energy, of course). They look like normal missiles and fly like normal missiles, and they have the same identification on your radar as normal missiles. So their dots are not yellow. In fact you recognize them only, because unlike normal missiles they don't explode when you hit your ECM. (And of course if you target them with your scanner enhancement installed, it will read "ECM hardened missile". But generally missiles are hard to target.)

They are included in the unexpanded game on 1.65 (and show as blue on the scanner). However Giles did a test version of the Hard Head (which shows as yellow) and included it in one of his OXPs on Oosat1. I can't remember which one it is, but I suspect your yellow hard heads are coming from there.

Yes, I had this a while back. There's an aegidian-special OXP which contains ECM-hardened missiles. This was done before they became part of the game. If you have the OXP in a later version of Oolite that also contains the missiles, then they appear as yellow, not blue blips.
Remove the OXP and all will be well.

Took me ages to work this out! No fair! What killed me?

Just deleting the equipment.plist from the OXP or the entry in the OXPs shipdata should do it. Then you can keep the ships from the OXP and lose the yellow hardheads.

Done, and done. Oh, btw, in retrospect, it might've been a Nuclear Torpedo (or somesuch) that was a yellow dot. And, yes, I am familiar with ECM Hardened Missiles, having been the one to originally suggest them in the first place (pats own back); that was back in the days of 1.41, I reckon.