Oolite Bulletins

Hi,

player ships can have a maximum of 16 missiles. (In RS, a ship with 16 missiles will be 340% as expensive as a comparable ship with 4 missiles due to this fact).

My question is, can NPC ships via
... have X>16 missile racks?

This would enable a few ... interesting ... strategical developments to torture players

Can someone who knows the internal workings of the core game please have a look or knows already - tell me?

Thanks in advance

L

Lestradae wrote:

player ships can have a maximum of 16 missiles. ...My question is, can NPC ships via... have X>16 missile racks?

As far as I know there is no limit to the number of missiles. Above that, ships with more missiles are also more likely to fire them.

It is up to the programmer to give them a realistic amount.

Hi!

Good news ... that`s one possibility to give big carrier and trader vessels a dangerous note they didn`t have before ...

Is there a way to give NPC ships specific missiles, i.e. not the standard ones but for example some of those from "Missiles & Bombs" oxp?

Yes by adding in shipdata:-

<key>missile_role</key>
<string>EQ_HARDENED_MISSILE</string>

In this example the ship will always have hardheads. If you wanted a custom missile (or one from missiles & bombs) then you need to put its equipment role here. This would mean the player would need M&Bs OXP installed as well though. If you do not specify a missile_role then Oolite randomly picks one from all the missile types from any OXPs the player has installed, but with the odds rather weighted in favour of a cheap missile. Once you specify a missile_role key though the ship always has missiles of that type, rather than the variety you get with leaving Oolite to pick one itself.

Lestradae wrote:

Good news ... that`s one possibility to give big carrier and trader vessels a dangerous note they didn`t have before ...

Take note that regular traders with an escort will never fight back. They send the escorts after the attacker and always flee themselves. I think they do send a missile away when they have a minimum amount on board.

Once you specify a missile_role key though the ship always has missiles of that type, rather than the variety you get with leaving Oolite to pick one itself.

Take note that regular traders with an escort will never fight back. They send the escorts after the attacker and always flee themselves.

OK, both noted.

My idea is to install big and really dangerous missile racks on battleships anyways, everywhere else they would not make a lot of sense.

The trader (can it be termed to be one?) I had in mind was the Dredger - it could make sense to give that one of the extremely large cargo bay and sitting duck persuasion something to strike back with.

A Condor Flagship that, once attacked, fires thirty missiles at the player just to be nuked by activating ECM all at once is not the ultra-fearsome enemy I have in mind for it to be ...

Thanks for the infos, most helpful

L

Lestradae wrote:

My idea is to install big and really dangerous missile racks on battleships anyways, everywhere else they would not make a lot of sense.

Don't forget about missile gunships - anything between 20 to 50 tons of cargo and a decent prime mover could be fitted with a military missile reloader and fire several murderous barrages, one after the other...
(if refreshing the missile racks in-flight is possible at all, code-wise
And, of course, you'd have to be able to store the missiles on the cargo hold, only to dispense them at the proper moment - IIRC, the cargo handlers are quite limited)

The trader (can it be termed to be one?) I had in mind was the Dredger - it could make sense to give that one of the extremely large cargo bay and sitting duck persuasion something to strike back with.

A Condor Flagship that, once attacked, fires thirty missiles at the player just to be nuked by activating ECM all at once is not the ultra-fearsome enemy I have in mind for it to be ...

As above, giving them a limited rack and a reloader could make them fire waves of only so many missiles at a time, but still give them a nearly inexhaustible supply.

I know it's possible to make subents that fire lasers, and turret subents packing plasma cannons.
I wonder if it's possible to make missile launching subents? If so, someone can make one heck of a missile frigate, with multiple subents throwing swarms of hardheads and plasma rounds.