Oolite Bulletins

Announcing: Target Reticle Sensitive.

This new equipment changes the reticle colour from green into red when the laser is on target. It can be downloaded from:

Target Reticle Sensitive

To be precise: It does not add new equipment, but changes the enhanced target equipment. So you need that first. On request to add no more equipment, I coded it in a way it does not show as equipment in you inventory to keep the list from growing. (I store the purchase in a mission variable)

It will break together with the normal enhanced target equipment because it is a modification of that and not something separate.

The Target Reticle Sensitive is a new feature in 1.72, so you need Oolite 1.72+ to buy this.

Eric Walch wrote:

I coded it in a way it does not show as equipment in you inventory to keep the list from growing. (I store the purchase in a mission variable)

God bless you Eric!!!!

I detected an error in the equipment. At one place I used "player" instead of "player.ship". Despite this explicit changes I made in all the other oxp's, I fell back in the habit of using the old name here. This will not give a problem until 1.73 but I uploaded version 1.0.1 yesterday. (See link with my first message)

And before I get to much credits for this equipment:
It was Another_Commander that added this feature into Oolite. I merely switch it on. It was also A_C that added the handler that triggers code on buying something. And I needed this handler to script the equipment this way.

Yeeee Haaaaa

This really is a good piece of kit.

I tested it and have to say that I'm not so sure about its practical value. The colour seems already to change if the target is somewhere near the centre of the screen, so it is no indication that it's actually in the crosshairs. On my first test I managed to fire two full military salvos into a ship with a red reticle, without even scratching it.

That was the point when I de-installed it again.

Commander McLane wrote:

I tested it and have to say that I'm not so sure about its practical value. The colour seems already to change if the target is somewhere near the centre of the screen, so it is no indication that it's actually in the crosshairs.

That was also my first impression about it. But after longer use I start to like it more. Maybe it is even intentional that it get red before it is exactly "on spot". It would be to easy when a red cross-hair is a guaranteed hit. And it certainly means that green is off target. In hectic dogfight it helps a bit.

Eric Walch wrote:

Announcing: Target Reticle Sensitive.

This new equipment changes the reticle colour from green into red when the laser is on target. It can be downloaded from:

Target Reticle Sensitive

Thanks...just installed it...makes things MUCH easier than firing a very brief burst with the mil laser. Maybe too easy....as NPC ships miss so often, especially when they have an aft laser (which appears to be too seldom the case). They just fire...without hitting...and continue to fire without hitting.

There's something that could be an even bigger helper, especially if also installed on every navy ship: a safeguard (that can be switched off) which prevents from firing on "clean" ships, thus preventing to accidentally become outlaw. Of course, there ARE pirates that are "clean", so there has to be a possibility to switch it off...but I've been several times an offender just because of hitting the wrong ship in the heat of the battle. Luckily, the police forgets about that, when I continue bounty hunting, but I really do feel sorry for those poor bit-guys that are accidentally hit or eliminated

Maybe that would even help the condor crews. They very often sound as if they still believe to be official navy guys...when they are fugitive in fact.

Screet

Screet wrote:

Maybe that would even help the condor crews. They very often sound as if they still believe to be official navy guys...when they are fugitive in fact.

Oh, thanks, Screet. That one's a bug, and a quite obvious one, too

On my to-do list.

Screet wrote:

There's something that could be an even bigger helper, especially if also installed on every navy ship: a safeguard (that can be switched off) which prevents from firing on "clean" ships,

This add on already helps a little against friendly fire. When an other ship crosses the line between you and the target, the rectangle becomes temporary green again. It already helped me to stop firing the passing unknown ship.

A few weeks ago I updated the target-reticle.oxp for 1.73 to version 1.1. That makes use of the new oolite detection of player buying a new ship. I now noticed this 1.1 version will not be working in future versions.

So here is a new version of Target Reticle Sensitive 1.2 that both works with 1.73 and with the new trunk versions.

I've been doing some test flights in a Cobra III with limited upgrades, and something strange seems to be happening.

I set out from Lave as a new commander in a bog-standard Cobra III. The only change I've made is to hack the save file to give him plenty of money. I fly to Leesti, do a manual dock, then look at the Ship's Outfitting screen via [3]. Amongst the equipment for sale I see Scanner Targeting Enhancement at 450 Cr, but no Target Reticle (even though I have the OXP in AddOns).

I buy the Scanner Targeting Enhancement, and Reticle Target Sensitive is immediately added to the bottom of the list at a cost of 1750 Cr. I do not purchase it, however, but launch from the station instead. Targeting the next innocent trader who passes by, I'm surprised to see the reticle turn red when I get him in my sights.

Is it supposed to work this way? Do we get the Target Reticle functionality for free when we buy the Scanner Targeting Enhancement? If so, that seems rather odd, as the STE only costs 450 Cr -- and why then is the [3] screen asking for a further 1750 Cr?

As an additional complication, I see the wiki page is quoting 7500 Cr for Target Reticle. Can someone please enlighten me?

Albee wrote:

I buy the Scanner Targeting Enhancement, and Reticle Target Sensitive is immediately added to the bottom of the list at a cost of 1750 Cr. I do not purchase it, however, but launch from the station instead. Targeting the next innocent trader who passes by, I'm surprised to see the reticle turn red when I get him in my sights.

The sensitive reticle function can be switched on by the HUD file, as well as by javascripts like Eric's. Are you using the standard HUD?

I changed mine to be yellow, instead of red:-

Wildeblood wrote:

The sensitive reticle function can be switched on by the HUD file, as well as by javascripts like Eric's. Are you using the standard HUD?

In theory does the oxp check on startup if the current HUD has the equipment pre-installed. If so, it will not be offered for sale. Problem might be all those switchable HUDs that might start with a docked HUD that has it off by default.

Wildeblood wrote:

The sensitive reticle function can be switched on by the HUD file, as well as by javascripts like Eric's. Are you using the standard HUD?

No. I'm using NumericHUDv3.

Albee wrote:

No. I'm using NumericHUDv3.

That explains the problem. I starts with a hud without the reticle_sensitive, but on launch it switches to a hud that has it build in. It would be easier for other scripts if this equipment was defined for in all huds so it can be seen on startup.