Fuel & roles & more

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:20 pm

Some of the settings for the various standard ships seems to be not so logical... I listed some under various subjects here...

Subject Fuel
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Mamba & Mamba-escort
---------------------

Both the Pirate and the Escort version does not have fuel, i would argue that while i can understand why the Escort version does not have fuel, the Standard Pirate mamba should have fuel since if we go by the wiki, it was sort of a replacement favoured insted of the Krait, and the Krait does have Fuel, fuel injection, same speed & better Acceleration. and the ability to carry shield boosters and shield enhancers...

I would suggest to give the Mambas some fuel...

Viper &Viper-pursuit
---------------------

While they do not leave the system they where spawned in, its again some what unrealistic that they do not have the ability to make a jump

So i would suggest that we give them some fuel, this change is quite trivial and prolly will not break anything.

---------------------------
I admit that it ATM will prolly only benefit the Fuel Collector, but i would argue that it would benefit future OXPs that are messing around with the fuel...
---------------------------

Subject: Roles
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Escorts
-----------------

While Escorts usually follow the escorted vehicle, they sometimes are left marooned.. i dont think it is very likely that they would escort either an Adder or an Orbital Transport shuttle down to the surface ( where they usually impact), if the code was changed to have them land on planet, it would make the system want to launch shuttes from the surface instead.

So Escorts should not look for business when a ship is a "shuttle", "miner" or "scavenger". they should only look for doing business with Traders that have at least 10 tons of cargobay like the Cobra MK I being the smallest ship able to have escorts. lets jsut say Ships with smaller cargo bays cant make a profit if they have to pay off the escorts

Adder in the roler of hunter
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The Adder has the possible role of Hunter...

This makes absolutely no sense, unless you wanna commit suicide, since there is no weaker ship in the role of a pirate, and one is blown away in matter of mili-seconds with a military laser.

It is also not able to carry a shield booster and its ECM probability is 0.01
while the ECM makes sense, cause who want to waste missiles on an Adder..

I would argue that either the role "hunter" is removed from the adder or it is given the ability to carry a shield booster and a Fuel injection device.

Maybe even an additional entry in the shipdata.plist with an adder-hunter entry where it nearly allways have the shield booster and the fuel injection device. and the role hunter removed from the original adder entry.

If an extra Entry is added the hunter version of the adder should have

Code: Select all

"adder-hunter" =
	{
		aft_eject_position = "0.0 -4.5 -23.0";
		ai_type = "pirateAI.plist";
		auto_ai = yes;
		cargo_type = "CARGO_NOT_CARGO";
		energy_recharge_rate = 2.5; //similar to the krait
		exhaust = ("-5.75 0.0 -22.5 6.0 4.0 4.0", "5.75 0.0 -22.5 6.0 4.0 4.0");
		forward_weapon_type = "WEAPON_BEAM_LASER";
		fuel = 70;
		max_energy = 170; // double that of the standard adder
		has_shield_booster = 0.9;
		has_shield_enhancer = 0.8;
		has_fuel_injection = 0.9;
		has_ecm = 0.1; // most would disregard this with its weak energy bank..
		has_scoop = yes;
		likely_cargo = 1;
		max_cargo = 5;
		max_flight_pitch = 2;
		max_flight_roll = 2.8;
		max_flight_speed = 260; // a little better than the standard adder
		missile_launch_position = "0.0 -2.5 16.0";
		missiles = 1;
		model = "adder_redux.dat";
		name = "Adder";
		roles = "hunter oolite-adder-hunter";
		thrust = 30;
		weapon_position_aft = "0.0 0.0 -22.5";
		weapon_position_forward = "0.0 0.0 22.5";
		weapon_position_port = "-15.0 0.0 -14.5";
		weapon_position_starboard = "15.0 0.0 -14.5";
	};

This would make the hunter version a though little bugger;-)

Cobra mk III Traders
---------------------------------
None of these have the chance of having shield boosters or military shield enhancers. Not so logical from a players point of view, these should be relatively succesfull, and the pirate version does have the chance. i think they should have a minute chance of being hunters that are now traders.. with a probability of 0.05.. (5%) and therefore have the same probability to carry the shield booster and the military shield enhancer.

End of suggestions

And god, this takes so long to write... lol

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:59 pm

Hi Frame - thoughtful and thought provoking.

Will be interesting to see what the rest of the commoonity has to say.

Gareth3377 · Post by **Gareth3377** » Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:40 pm

Hmmm

I like your thoughts about the Adder.

Why would a pirate need one
What would his or her reasons be for piloting the adder?

In it's current state I agree with you. It's just cannon fodder. But changing it's role so it's more of a poor man's FDL - now that's a good angle.

Cmdr. Maegil · Post by **Cmdr. Maegil** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:26 am

Gareth3377 wrote:
Why would a pirate need one
What would his or her reasons be for piloting the adder?

Being 16 and no cash to buy a proper ship before hitting convenience stores along with the rest of the gang could easily do it.
Or, it's only got basic alarms for intruder protection, so it's an easy ship to steal?

We could rationalize it in a hundred ways, which is a hundred more than the ways to explain flights of four unarmed light fighters trying to commit Piracy and Murder (and ending the same way as training drones, or simply splattered on your windscren) on FE2 and FFE!...

In it's current state I agree with you. It's just cannon fodder. But changing it's role so it's more of a poor man's FDL - now that's a good angle.

Though I agree that some configurations could be tweaked, I'd also like to remind you all that the game still has to be playable by young Jamesons. Please don't do anything that may increase the basic game's difficulty.
If you're going to do it, use an OXP.

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:48 am

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:
I'd also like to remind you all that the game still has to be playable by young Jamesons. Please don't do anything that may increase the basic game's difficulty. If you're going to do it, use an OXP.

Its Green Jamesons, they dont have to be young...

Anyway...

Green Jamesons that attack hunters are bound to be wasted...

i cant tell how many jamesons i killed during my first 100 flights, not until i got a beam laser and a ECM device did i start to tackle pirates and hunters.

you cant be expected to hop into your skint metal, and taking on the worst the universe has to offer..

the learning curve is usally

Die, try to do the fun things(combat) and die
now learn how to trade, get Equipped...
now do the fun things and survive...

..

On the C=64, There where no forgiveness, if you screw up, you where screwed, no nice police to help..

i´m sort of fed up without having a really strong opinion about it by having to take into account Green Jamesons. Green Jamesons that travel in the main witchpoint to the planet will get killed many times over...

That is a process in their learning curve, avoid the space lanes...
Avoid battles with groups of pirates..
dont attack lone traders until you have the muscle to cope with them...
learn to trade, get equipped, now do all the things you wanted when you could not..

there is really no other way of doing it..

Cmdr. Maegil · Post by **Cmdr. Maegil** » Sat Jun 28, 2008 3:04 am

Frame wrote:
i´m sort of fed up without having a really strong opinion about it by having to take into account Green Jamesons
Cmdr. Maegil wrote:
use an OXP.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:30 am

I agree with DH: thoughtful. And to me the proposed changes make sense.

Just one question about the fuel: If there is no entry, does it default to 0 or to 70? That should be taken into account.

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:24 pm

Commander McLane wrote:
I agree with DH: thoughtful. And to me the proposed changes make sense.

Just one question about the fuel: If there is no entry, does it default to 0 or to 70? That should be taken into account.

it defaults to 0. A gecko for example will never carry / reward any fuel, i had a runtime scanner/Targeting device telling me of the fuel amount in the ship´s tank. Same goes for the Standard Viper and Viper pursuit..

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:25 pm

Hmmm. I would say, however, that Vipers do use their injectors. Or is it all false memories?!?

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:34 pm

Commander McLane wrote:
Hmmm. I would say, however, that Vipers do use their injectors. Or is it all false memories?!?

Thats the Viper interceptors, incidently they also got 16.0 ly of fuel on board when spawned, but can´t be refueled above that 7.0 ly mark

Post by **Eric Walch** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:52 pm

Frame wrote:
Commander McLane wrote:
Hmmm. I would say, however, that Vipers do use their injectors. Or is it all false memories?!?
Thats the Viper interceptors, incidently they also got 16.0 ly of fuel on board when spawned, but can´t be refueled above that 7.0 ly mark

For some reason the fuel-adding commands check always for the 7 LY limit, but data from shipData is just copied. That way a NPC ship can have more fuel than the 7 LY limit. Also the performHyperspace jump does not look at this value. A NPC ship with 20 LY of fuel could select a destination 20 LY away. (At least that is what I think) And when the player followed him, he will also jump that far. Only is 20 LY not much further than 7LY because of the exponential fuel consumption with distance.

Only traders are filled up till 7 LY on adding when they had 0 fuel. All other ships default to 0 Fuel. I saw in the code that Ahruman put a question-mark at this value: "why not make 7 LY as default?".

Post by **another_commander** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 5:10 pm

@Eric: The performHyperspaceExitReplace method may not check the actual fuel value of a ship, but no destinations further than 7LY can be selected, because [UNIVERSE nearbyDestinationsWithinRange], which is called by performHyperspaceExitReplace, rejects destinations with distances to current position bigger than 7.0LY (Universe.m, line 6099 of the 1.71.2 source).

Post by **Eric Walch** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:02 pm

another_commander wrote:
which is called by performHyperspaceExitReplace, rejects destinations with distances to current position bigger than 7.0LY .

Good to know the limit 7 LY stands. I just didn't look far enough.

---
Reason to not give fuel by default to pirates is that when their cargo hold is full, they try to make a hyperspace jump. When not possible to jump (insufficient fuel), they turn into traders (with a bounty and full cargo holds).

Taking into account that pirates with a full cargo hold are interesting for the player, it is better to keep them in the system. However, when they jump and the player jumps to the same system, the player still has a chance to shoot him down.

And I just don't know how often it happens that a pirate fills up its holds till the max. It's probably rare.

Frame · Post by **Frame** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:55 pm

Eric Walch wrote:
Reason to not give fuel by default to pirates is that when their cargo hold is full, they try to make a hyperspace jump. When not possible to jump (insufficient fuel), they turn into traders (with a bounty and full cargo holds).

hmm had not thought about that, it also means when you come across a krait, you can be sure it is one of two things, a hunter or a pirate that has not filled its hold yet...

While i endorse variation, game play wise, pirates leaving the system, is not exactly player freindly, its like an invisible factor the player never feels. An invisible feature so to speak...

But to keep variation I think there should be a roll of the dice, can´t recall if we can factor in distance to planet / station somehow in the AI, but the lesser chance of that dice roll, should be leaving the system. To me it is just not logical that pirates would go hunting with no fuel in theire tanks.

The way i would go about it is..

check 1: Are we in a safe system, anarchy and feudal systems would be relatively unsafe for traders so unsafe, since the pirate becomes a trader. while this can´t be done in AI, Afaik, it can certainly be done in a javascript..

check 2: roll the dice, check 1 decided wheter to stay or leave the system gets the favouarble odds...

Post by **Eric Walch** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 9:19 pm

Frame wrote:
While i endorse variation, game play wise, pirates leaving the system, is not exactly player freindly, its like an invisible factor the player never feels. An invisible feature so to speak...

Not completely invisible. When a pirate (or trader) hyperspace jumps out of the system, a new ship with role pirate (or trader) is added at the current witchpoint, and the jumped ship is at the witchpoint entrance of a system nearby. Only that the new ship in the current system is almost empty of cause.

No mater how much earlier than the player the original ship jumped, it will be there at the witchpoint when the player chooses that system. It is just a matter of chance the player selects the same system. In the case of a pirate with hold full it will have role pirate but with a trader AI. It therefor will not attack the player, unless provoked, despite its bounty. In theory you should be able to recognise such a filled pirate with trader behaviour. Problem is only that some oxp's also generate normal traders with bounty.