Oolite Bulletins

Overview

This OXP replaces the AIs of police ships with a new AI that lets them patrol all main routes in a system. It also adds additional police, in order to compensate for the much bigger area that has to be covered by the patrols.

Notable Features

In the unaltered game police (and hunters) only patrol between planet and witchpoint, disregarding the other two main routes in the system, between witchpoint and sun, and between sun and planet. Even police that is added by script on one of these alternative routes, will abandon them in favour of the witchpoint-planet route.

This OXP changes the built-in police behaviour by replacing the default police AI (route1patrolAI) with the new totalPatrolAI, which covers all three main routes, and gives the possibility for police ships to either turn around and fly back, or switch to another route at each of the turning points. They still favour the traditional witchpoint-planet route, however, because it is usually most populated by traders and most prone to pirate attacks. Note that this OXP affects all ships with primary role 'police', including police added by other OXPs.

In another step the OXP adds additional police on the other two routes between witchpoint and sun, and between sun and planet. The additional police then also gets totalPatrolAI. Each ship will then travel in either direction on its current route, and possibly switch to another route at the end-point. The number of added police forces depends on the system government; Corporate States get most additional police, Anarchies get none.

All police ships also get a Heat Shield, enabling them to extend their patrols to the sun routes without getting themselves into danger.

The way police are doing their business, hunting down criminals and protecting the innocent, is not affected by this OXP. So, if you are a law-abiding trader, the Ooniverse will become a safer place. However, if you are a brigand and have specialised on sun-skimmers as your victims, your business will become more dangerous.

Minimum Requirements

Total_patrol.oxp now runs on Oolite 1.74.n. Please let me know here if it doesn't.

Download Location

This OXP is available for download via the Elite Wiki.

Installation

Move or copy the file total_patrol.oxp from this folder to the AddOns folder inside the Oolite main folder. Restart Oolite.

EDIT: new version 1.1

EDIT: new version 1.2

EDIT: new version 1.3

I actually think this should be implemented as standard into the game engine, as it makes perfect in-game sense.

Just my 0.2 Cr.

Judging from the overwhelming number of responses this is probably not a majority standpoint?!?

Eric's reason for suggesting it to be an OXP was not to create a lot of extra entities when the player usually wouldn't meet them anyway. I think it isn't that many entities, so it could go into the game as well.

But I really would like to get some more views on this.

Or perhaps I hammer out an OXP anyway and let people try it out, and then we discuss again...?

Commander McLane wrote:

Or perhaps I hammer out an OXP anyway and let people try it out, and then we discuss again...?

I`d assume that`s the pragmatic way to go

You could let people have a look at your oxp`ed solution and then make a poll on integrating (or not) the new routes into the core game, for example ...



L

As I said above: feedback, suggestions, more ideas are welcome!

Do the population with "this.shipExitedWitchspace", because an oxp like far.sun is moving the sun with the first handler. When using the second for populating it will use the new sun route.

And maybe on docking you could send a saveScripMessage to the station to launch a new police to keep the balance. (however, that ship than has the unaltered AI)

Total_patrol.oxp is now available via the Elite Wiki. See first post above for release notes.

Small improvement in version 1.1: The OXP is now correctly initialised if you start a new commander. Download link above.

Total Patrol v 1.2 is now available for download via its Wiki page.

No real changes, just makes the OXP working with Oolite 1.73.n.

Actually I finished it in the beginning of September; just completely forgot to upload it, until Tivva reminded me this morning. Thanks, Tivva!

If you want to try it out with the current trunk, you have to remove the max_version-key in requires.plist. However, this breaks warranty! (Read: I don't know whether it is going to work. )

Commander McLane wrote:

Total Patrol v 1.2 is now available for download via its Wiki page.

No real changes, just makes the OXP working with Oolite 1.73.n.

Actually I finished it in the beginning of September; just completely forgot to upload it, until Tivva reminded me this morning. Thanks, Tivva!

No problem Cmdr

Total_patrol v 1.3 released. It is now compliant with Oolite 1.74 and doesn't work with previous installations anymore. Download via the Elite Wiki.

Splendid!

Question: The new way of 'catching' spawned police vessels to assign them TP AI. Is there a potential conflict here with police vessels that may have been added (by OXP) for some specific purpose being hijacked by TP, or am I just being paranoid?

CheeseRedux wrote:

Splendid!

Question: The new way of 'catching' spawned police vessels to assign them TP AI. Is there a potential conflict here with police vessels that may have been added (by OXP) for some specific purpose being hijacked by TP, or am I just being paranoid?

"Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you."

Can you give an example for a police vessel added for some specific purpose? Total_patrol.oxp only changes the AI of ships that have primary role "police" and route1patrolAI or route2patrolAI as their AI. Right now I cannot image a ship which under these conditions wouldn't be happy with totalPatrolAI.

By the way: I've made a tiny little bugfix and re-uploaded the OXP. So for the twelve people who have downloaded it so far, it won't hurt to download it again. Sorry.

Commander McLane wrote:

Can you give an example for a police vessel added for some specific purpose? Total_patrol.oxp only changes the AI of ships that have primary role "police" and route1patrolAI or route2patrolAI as their AI. Right now I cannot image a ship which under these conditions wouldn't be happy with totalPatrolAI.

Well of course I can't! I just paint here...

I was thinking along the lines of vessels with a mission. Say the storyline was that the player had incurred the wrath of some people that it's really unwise to incur the wrath of. So unwise, in fact, that when they decide to remove the player from the picture, they don't send the usual rabble of assassins & bounty hunters, they send in a bunch of corrupt police. So the (presumably) clean player is suddenly set upon by police vessels, leaving two options: 1) Fight back, become an instant fugitive with all of the police in hot pursuit, or 2) Flee, and keep fleeing until mission is accomplished & conspiracy unmasked. Now to give the player a fighting chance, there is a slight delay between player arriving at witchpoint and the corrupt officers' arrival. If the AI of these were then hijacked by TP, the whole thing would suddenly become incredibly easy.

But as long as it only targets patrolling craft, I guess we're in the clear; my imagination, like yours, fails to come up with any conflicting scenarios for those...

Commander McLane wrote:

By the way: I've made a tiny little bugfix and re-uploaded the OXP. So for the twelve people who have downloaded it so far, it won't hurt to download it again. Sorry.

Gah! Will my work never end!?

For what it is worth: I, too, think that this OXP (TotalPatrol) should be part of the core game. It's a great OXP!

CheeseRedux wrote:

I was thinking along the lines of vessels with a mission. Say the storyline was that the player had incurred the wrath of some people that it's really unwise to incur the wrath of. So unwise, in fact, that when they decide to remove the player from the picture, they don't send the usual rabble of assassins & bounty hunters, they send in a bunch of corrupt police. So the (presumably) clean player is suddenly set upon by police vessels, leaving two options: 1) Fight back, become an instant fugitive with all of the police in hot pursuit, or 2) Flee, and keep fleeing until mission is accomplished & conspiracy unmasked. Now to give the player a fighting chance, there is a slight delay between player arriving at witchpoint and the corrupt officers' arrival. If the AI of these were then hijacked by TP, the whole thing would suddenly become incredibly easy.

The AI switching is instantly, the player won't notice. And total_patrolAI sends the police into attack mode just as route1patrolAI, so there's no difference whatsoever in their behaviour.

In order to go specifically for the player the "police" ships would need a custom AI anyway, and in this case wouldn't be affected by TP in the first place.

A clash will happen with any other OXP that tries to change route1patrolAI and route2patrolAI of ships with role "police" during the shipSpawned event. In that case it's up to chance which OXP will persist. But the other OXP could use a timer to re-switch the AI in its special cases, regardless what TP did, very much like the timed startUp events discussed elsewhere. TP is only for making a general change, any OXPer who wants to disable this change in a specific situation can circumvent it.

If there was another OXP that would change AIs of all police ships to doNothingAndDieAI or somesuch, it would be clear from the start that these are alternative OXPs, and the player would have to choose one of them to begin with. Like you can't have an OXP to make the screen brighter and an OXP to make the screen darker at the same time.