Oolite Bulletins

After the third mission involving delivery to a near-sun space station, I was given the task to retrieve black boxes from ships that were destroyed due to heat shield failure. There are 6 boxes in total, but as they drift towards the sun they eventually get destroyed.

I managed to retrieve two boxes, came back and was paid for them. However, the mission is still listed in my mission list!

Is this a bug? How should I edit the save file to make sure I can continue to get similar UPS missions?

Using Oolite 1.71.2 (mac).

Interestingly, roughly at the same time, my Mosquito Trader's external views no longer work. Could this be related, somehow?

hircus wrote:

After the third mission involving delivery to a near-sun space station, I was given the task to retrieve black boxes from ships that were destroyed due to heat shield failure. There are 6 boxes in total, but as they drift towards the sun they eventually get destroyed.

I managed to retrieve two boxes, came back and was paid for them. However, the mission is still listed in my mission list!

Is this a bug?

It is a bug I discovered a while ago. It is probably introduced with the JS conversion of the script. However, it is harmless. The message will disappear when you get a new solar mission. It does not block any new missions. It will be solved in the next release.

For the boxes itself it is almost impossible to retrieve them all. Just hurry to get as much as possible.

Inside information: When you enter the system, 8 spaceships always head for the sun, fill up their thanks and go back to the station. Depending on the suns radius they are more or less likely to survive this trip. Every ship that dies increases a counter for the number of black boxes there are. When you had to retrieve 6 of them, there were 6 real ships that burned in the corona. The larger the number of boxes, the more hostile is the sun and the more difficult it probably is to retrieve most of them.

Ah, thanks! Solved the external view problem too. Turns out it's the common problem that older OXPs do not define them, and that as long as you don't quit Oolite, after trading in your ship, the old ship's external view configurations are still being used.

hircus wrote:

Ah, thanks! Solved the external view problem too. Turns out it's the common problem that older OXPs do not define them, and that as long as you don't quit Oolite, after trading in your ship, the old ship's external view configurations are still being used.

Indeed, that's it.

So, do you feel like adding external views to your current ship? It's quite easy. Find a ship of same (or similar enough) size in the basic set, and c&p the custom_views-array from its shipdata-entry to the one of your own ship. Restart. Voilà!