Oolite Bulletins

An idea for a first mission oxp is budding behind my fevered brow, but I want to know if the following pieces of equipment are possible before I waste time.

Thargon Identification Protocol: (TIP) A piece of equipment that fools Thargons into thinking you're one of them. Turns off if you fire on a Thargon. Used by navy scouts and very rich private individuals.

Witchspace Interruption Signal : Press it and for 30 seconds it prevents activation of Witchspaca Jumps. Useful for stopping enemies from jumping away. Can be used by npcs though, so be careful.

Independent Robotic Attack Ships (Gnats or IRAS): The Thargons have them, so why not the Navy (or the very rich). Taking up one ton of cargo space (or one weapon mount - whichever is best for game balance) they attack your enemies as you do.

Amen Brick wrote:

Independent Robotic Attack Ships (Gnats or IRAS): The Thargons have them, so why not the Navy (or the very rich). Taking up one ton of cargo space (or one weapon mount - whichever is best for game balance) they attack your enemies as you do.

I like this idea - even though it contradicts the manual, which states that the navy is working on the idea and hasn't had any success... My timeline thingy puts Oolite a few uears in front of Elite, so it could be possible that the Navy has managed to come up with something. Make it unstable though - a percentage chance of turning on its mothership... mu ha ha ha!

That's if it's even possible in the code.

"even though it contradicts the manual, which states that the navy is working on the idea and hasn't had any success..."

lol - kinda reminds me of the official line before they casually unveilled them at the Gulf War ~ "Strange triagular black aeroplanes? huh?"
war starts, reporter in the Gulf in front of a hangar, three parked behind him. military guy "oh yes, these are our Stealth bombers. thought everyone knew..."

Amen Brick wrote:

Thargon Identification Protocol: (TIP) A piece of equipment that fools Thargons into thinking you're one of them. Turns off if you fire on a Thargon. Used by navy scouts and very rich private individuals.

The way Thargoids (I don't think you're actually referring to Thargons only?) and everybody else identify and get identified is the scanClass of a ship.

So you can create a navy ship with scanClass CLASS_THARGOID. But that would not only fool the Thargoids, but everybody. So other navy ships would attack him.

What you can't do, I think, is to change the scanClass of a ship while in-flight. That means you also can't change that of the player.

So temporarily fooling the Thargoids won't be possible easily.

Amen Brick wrote:

Witchspace Interruption Signal : Press it and for 30 seconds it prevents activation of Witchspaca Jumps. Useful for stopping enemies from jumping away. Can be used by npcs though, so be careful.

Quite certainly not possible in the current game. E.g. you can't assign keystroke-commands in an OXP. And you can't script the functionality you're desiring here. So the engine itself would have to be altered.

Amen Brick wrote:

Independent Robotic Attack Ships (Gnats or IRAS): The Thargons have them, so why not the Navy (or the very rich). Taking up one ton of cargo space (or one weapon mount - whichever is best for game balance) they attack your enemies as you do.

Interesting idea. Could perhaps be done with a missile? Ramirez is your man if it comes to missiles. Probably he knows how to script one that effectively acts like a ship (because that's what it breaks down to, isn't it: a missile that acts like a ship).

If you're new to OXPing, I would generally suggest that you open and examine some existing OXPs in order to learn what can be done and how. And of course, there's tons of useful (and necessary!) documentation on the wiki, which you should read and understand: The Writing OXPs-section of the FAQ-page gives you an overview of the basic reading-list.

I had a go at making Captured Thargons (OXP is here:- http://www.box.net/shared/6kebrdgv2k). They can be bought and fitted on a missile pylon. When fired they'll attack the target you locked them on. The AI needs more work, as they're not really agressive enough and have a tendency to circle targets only taking the odd pot shot, but should be doable. As Commander McLane has said you can't with an OXP have equipment that can be turned on or off, but a 'jamming mine' would be possible, when deployed it targets all ships and steals their fuel stopping them jumping that way. Some techno-babble explanation could be that it projects some kind of field that destabalises the fuel making it inert. That would be doable with AI and script messages. To give the player a fake Thargoid ID, you could use script to switch the Thargoids to a custom AI that ignores the player (unless he attacks) when the mission is running. An item of Equipment could be displayed on the F5 screen, although the effect would be achieved by script rather than the equipment itself. Game play wise the effect would be the same, whilst the player has the equipment Thargoids ignore him.

LittleBear wrote:

To give the player a fake Thargoid ID, you could use script to switch the Thargoids to a custom AI that ignores the player (unless he attacks) when the mission is running. An item of Equipment could be displayed on the F5 screen, although the effect would be achieved by script rather than the equipment itself. Game play wise the effect would be the same, whilst the player has the equipment Thargoids ignore him.

I was thinking along the same line, but just wrote "temporarily fooling the Thargoids won't be possible easily", because IMO that's some pretty advanced scripting.

Of course I don't know anything about Amen Brick's scripting experiences, but I certainly wouldn't suggest something like you outlined here for the very beginning of somebody's OXPing-career.

Just saying.

Yeah, I'm a newbie with big ideas and little experience. Must not over bite. Must not overbite. Must. not. Overbite!

LittleBear wrote:

I had a go at making Captured Thargons (OXP is here:- http://www.box.net/shared/6kebrdgv2k). They can be bought and fitted on a missile pylon. When fired they'll attack the target you locked them on. The AI needs more work, as they're not really agressive enough and have a tendency to circle targets only taking the odd pot shot

Thats because they act like a missile, only theire AI never orders them to explode, when less than 25 meters away. and by random, sometimes the player enters the virtual crosshair of the captured thargoid, whereby the it is firering its gun.

i guees this happens when you call them EQ_something_MISSILE, MISSILE is needed for backward compatibility, which seems to indicate that the code needs that identification for something.. i would guees for treating it like a missile, rather than a ship/robot ship.

I would much rather see what happens when you designate the thing EQ_something_MINE, a mine should not be treated with special intercept abilties like i guees the missile is...

if the missile just crashed(without Detonation) into the ship its attacking, i presume that crash would be treated like a normal crash, and the mass and speed of the missile vs the mass and speed of the ship it is attacking.

Therefore when the object is designated "MISSLE" in its roles, i presume it gets special intercept abilities that more than normal ship prevents it from actually crashing into the ship its attacking, without detonating, where as instead of flying of a bit and then come back, it just keeps as close the its target as Possible....

But im not sure the mine type would inherit the target of the player, therefore some special AI would be needed to aqquire nearest ship that has the player as the target. i´m not even sure that is possible... i know of scanfortargetwithrole... in AI but have not heard or read of any AI command that can aqquire A Target´s Target role. which would be needed...

which is why you need some nifty java scripting, that searches for a ship that has the player as target, preferbly the nearest one, and whereby the robot ship aqquiers this ship as its target...

namely
(some nifty java scripting that searches for NPC ships that has a hostile target)
(some nifty java scripting that indentifies whether or not above ship has the player as target)

and then simply

This.target = NPCship.target

since i read this in the Code of oolite, latest linux trunk...

code omitting all the not so relevant stuff..

Hmm. I only tested it on 1.65 and used a slightly tweaked version of the incereptAI. The code seems to give a launched missile a player's target, so the Thargon should have the player's target as its one. On 1.65 they do fire at the taget and chase it, just not much! If I set autoAI to false and gave them a ship attack ship AI (basically like the Vipers launched from a station) it ought to work. Might have a fiddle with this, as robot fighters are quite fun!

Frame wrote:

i guees this happens when you call them EQ_something_MISSILE, MISSILE is needed for backward compatibility, which seems to indicate that the code needs that identification for something.. i would guees for treating it like a missile, rather than a ship/robot ship.

There is nothing special on the missile name. Just give them any role without the MISSILE. Look into the thargoid himself, that one also doesn't use missile. As far I know the suffix is only necessary for random selection of missiles by NPC ships. NPC ships have a 90% change of launching a plain missile and a 10% change of any ship ending on MISSILE. So when you use MISSILE it will also be fired by normal NPC ships what is undesired.

On the AI: look into missiles & bombs.oxp. There you see all "missiles" keep there AI and don't get a default one. And they all start with a target from their mother.

A “MISSILE” or “MINE” suffix is necessary for an equipment item to be mountable by the player, and the shipdata entry must have the equipment item’s key as its role.