Oolite Bulletins

Last night I sped towards a seedy bar (the Blue Parrot, Esmain system, G5) with a bunch of pirates burning holes in my aft shield. As expected, the inhabitants of the seedy bar didn't take long to emerge and engage with the aforementioned scumbags, while I limped into the bar's dock for fuel and missiles.

When I left the seedy bar, the usual inhabitants (sheriffs, bailiffs, deputies, hunters, etc.) were firing on the seedy bar itself.

Is this normal? Are these boys just bored? Has anybody else seen this?

(If I could remember the key-combo for taking a screen-grab, I would have done so...)

i´v seen some real weird behavior that might or might not be related to this...

Thargoids in witchspace attacking eachother

Thargoids that launch targlets (The robot fighters), and then the thargoids starts to attack theire "Mother"...

might be a bug similar to this...

Frame wrote:

Thargoids in witchspace attacking eachother

Thargoids that launch targlets (The robot fighters), and then the thargoids starts to attack theire "Mother"...

might be a bug similar to this...

For the record, this has a very easy fix and is already in the fixed-list for v1.72.

If the Space Bar used its turrets on the pirates and hit one of the hunters, the hunter will return fire on the bar. It doesn't happen very often as the bar will only use its turrets if it is itself attacked. In a big battle though a pirate or hunter may miss its foe and hit the bar instead, causing the bar to open up and possibly hit other hunters in the area. ATM there isn't a way of telling a ship to disregard "friendly fire", as far as its AI is concerned and attack is an attack whoever the attacker is.

EDIT : HHM actually I could use Java to to test for the attacker of the bar or hunter using this.beingAttacked and then send an AI message FRIENDLY_FIRE if the role of the attacking ship is police, spacebar or random_hits_patrol. In the ATTACK state I'd just have a "FRIENDLY_FIRE" = "setStateTo: LOOK_FOR_TARGETS" so it breaks of an attack on a friendly and scans for bad guys instead.

Thanks for the explanation, LittleBear.

Often when I'm in the vicinity of the seedy bars, other friendly ships will put a missile lock on me for a split second - it always spooks me and makes me check that I really do have a 'clean' status...

LittleBear wrote:

If the Space Bar used its turrets on the pirates and hit one of the hunters, HHM actually I could use Java to to test for the attacker of the bar or hunter using this.beingAttacked and then send an AI message FRIENDLY_FIRE if the role of the attacking ship is police, spacebar or random_hits_patrol. In the ATTACK state I'd just have a "FRIENDLY_FIRE" = "setStateTo: LOOK_FOR_TARGETS" so it breaks of an attack on a friendly and scans for bad guys instead.

Thinking along this line, you could rename all AI messages "ATTACKED" to "REAL_ATTACK". This way the normal attacked message never reaches the AI. And in your JS script you analyse the target and when it is not friendly you send a this.ship.reactToAIMessage("REAL_ATTACK") to your AI. This way you cover al the locations were there was original an attacked message in one go.