Second Wave OXP

[Thargoid]

To go alongside the new larger Thargoid ships introduced by various other OXPs, I thought it would be nice to have some variants on the existing basic Thargoid Warship and Thargon (or Tharglet) Robot Fighter. Download from the link below, or via my wiki page.

So I would like to introduce Second Wave OXP, which brings in some new variants of both to give some different in-game experiences. I shan't give details here of what the new ones are, but suffice it to say that some are stronger, some are weaker and some are just different. And some have a surprise or two for the unwary Commander.

== Second Wave download ==

For those who really want to know, look in the OXPs wiki page.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

I watched a remixed Griff Boa with two Dragon M escorts, and a small wing of Vipers trade fire with a couple of these. It was a hell of a fight to watch.

[Thargoid]

Indeed, I had a few such combats in testing of them (usually engineered via the JS console, but once or twice dynamic ones when I accidentally spawned the Thargoids too near the station).

The red, blue and yellow warships (without giving too much away) can give the Galcop ships some interesting fun...

Glad you're enjoying them anyway

[Simon B]

Without models? Presumably you are using the existing models, different skins, and, from the sound of things, a modified script?

The True way to into new ships is with new behavior. That's much harder than what I've been doing!

[Thargoid]

Spot on. Variants on existing ships (using the trunk models for the Thargoid Warship and the Tharglet/Thargon), with new skins (mostly just recolourations so you can identify them) and new AIs for all of them to give them different characteristics (they all behave differently due to the AIs, have a play with them and see what you encounter ).

Two also have new scripting attached to them as they needed to do things a little outside the AIs capabilities, or to overcome the reported bug about scooping spawned Tharglets. It was the new behaviours that was the point of doing the OXP, as for me the current Thargoids aren't as much fun as the original Elite ones. This OXP should go some way to balancing that back again.

[Commander McLane]

SecondWave does one thing on my system that I don't understand well. It re-skins even Thargoids which are called with their unique role 'oolite-thargoid'.

Also, I have created a shipdata-entry with a like_ship to the trunk thargoid-entity. However, if I spawn my ship, it has randomly one of the SecondWave-skins.

I am puzzled, as I don't see how this could happen. SecondWave does not contain a revised model with randomized textures, and it does not overwrite the original thargoid-entity.

*****

And another issue which may spoil big battles between Thargoids and Navy: The mineTharglet's role-probability is already set pretty low by default. However, in big battles with a lot of released Thargons it gets increasingly likely to have one of them. At which point the battle is over, as one cascade is usually enough to make tabula rasa out of the whole battlefield. This can be extremely disappointing from a mission-OXP perspective, as it can make the mission unplayable. For the upcoming Cataclysm.oxp (soooooon!; it's 99% ready, except for solving problems like this) I've resorted to disabling all cascading devices at certain points. But Random Hits and Assassins are affected as well. Currently the Minesweeper doesn't work against mineTharglets: todo for LB. But any OXP that features battles against Thargoids can suffer from this.

For a start I would suggest to reduce their role-probability even further (ATM I have it down to 0.005; and still get problems sometimes).

I am reluctant to say it, but I would probably like them to be taken out altogether. Do the Thargoids use quirium in the first place?

[Screet]

And another issue which may spoil big battles between Thargoids and Navy: The mineTharglet's role-probability is already set pretty low by default. However, in big battles with a lot of released Thargons it gets increasingly likely to have one of them.

...

I am reluctant to say it, but I would probably like them to be taken out altogether. Do the Thargoids use quirium in the first place?

I must admit that I like those ones, but that they blow up space bars very frequently in the test version where the probability for a Thargoid attack is set to 100 and I also had them several times end the navy-fleet action almost in the beginning, which was the time when I suggested in that thread to make them only use this weapon if almost their whole fleet has been shot down...then this could give things some nice turn I just don't know if it's possible to check things like the amount of other Thargoids in the area.

Screet

[Commander McLane]

Would be possible. It's up to Thargoid to decide how sophisticated he wants to make them. In the OXP as it is now, just randomly one in a number of Thargons will be a cascading one, which is the most basic way to add them without any checks at all.

I'm just raising the issue (and have PM'd LittleBear, so that he can update the Minesweepers' software ). In the end Thargoid as the OXP's author will have to decide what to do.

[LittleBear]

The test (274) version of RH updates the minesweepers to target cascade thargons and also broadcasts a warning message, but due to a typo in script the test 274 version doesn't add any sweepers near the bar! . Fixed for the next version.

[Commander McLane]

Oh, and the Blackmonks Minesweepers would have to be upgraded, too. Or have you done that already?

[Screet]

The test (274) version of RH updates the minesweepers to target cascade thargons and also broadcasts a warning message, but due to a typo in script the test 274 version doesn't add any sweepers near the bar! . Fixed for the next version.

Does this also help with fleet battles? I've just had another one of these...and shortly after both fleets were fighting: "We boom...". Funny thing is that they had a countdown problem, as apparently multiple cascade fighters were being launched at the same time: "5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4...." and only one managed to get to "kaboom". Was one shot down or did those two countdowns interact in some way?

I did start over, went there again...and I got again that cascade one, however only once, but effective enough. I only was able to shoot 2 Invaders and 4 Thargons (active)...and that was it.

If the navy minesweepers also can stop those cascade ones, at least with a certain probability, it might help...

Screet

[LittleBear]

Updating the Navy Minsweepers AI would help protect the Navy Flees. There are two distinct forms of ani-mine technogies in operation though in the Oonivese:- the static Sentinal (guarding Bars and other stations) and the mobile Navy MineSweeper. The static version is almost infailible at defusing mines, but of course has the big disadvantage of only providing an ani-mine zone to a fixed 25km area. The Navy Minesweeper is less efficent in defusing mines, but has the big advantage of being able to move with a fleet and so provide continuious protection. Another option would be to have the Navy Ships do a peroidic scan for the cascade thargon and if found flee on injectors from it. They woudn't all detect it in time, but most of the fleet would injector away from it and the go back to bug hunting mode.

[Screet]

Updating the Navy Minsweepers AI would help protect the Navy Flees.

I do hope that either the Thargoid fleets behaviour or the Navy's behaviour does get updated soon. I was *so* upset about the whole fleets being destroyed in the initial stages, that I finally went to using a cascade missile on their fleet myself. Only one invader escaped, no navy ships hit

However, up to now I have been thinking that someone else must have scored my kill on all those invaders I shot down in the past days, even though I did not see any other lasers...as sometimes they are not so easy to see. This time, I was ALONE in scanner range and still did not get the kill for the invader!?!

Could it be that the Invaders are either missing the bounty or have some other bug that prevents the player from scoring?

Screet

[Thargoid]

I'll give it some thought, although I don't see why Thargoids can't use Q-bomb equivalents. It balances things up again, it's always seemed a little one-sided in that respect.

But I take the point about it can ruin some of the big set-piece battles. I'm sure things can be sorted a little better though, give me a little while to ponder it a bit (I want to get the next version of Planetfall out first).

Given the low probability I gave them, they do seem to be turning up a little often though. No idea about McLane's experiences with the "oolite-thargoid" though, they're deliberately designed not to touch that key (as with all oolite- entities).

[Thargoid]

OK, given it a quick tweak, and a new version is available. This has the following changes:

• The cloaked Thargoid ship has a better energy recharge, make it a little tougher.
• The mine Tharglet has a lower chance of appearing (0.001 instead of 0.01).
• The mine Tharglet now has a new AI. It will only go kaboom if there are no motherships around, or if it is attacked (and then there's only a chance it'll go boom).

Should make for a more interesting mass fight Let me know what you think...

== Second Wave v1.10 download ==[/color]