Oolite Bulletins

Hi,

I recently tested the Thargoid Carrier OXP...and was a bit frustrated. The ships appeared very often, but only at the W buoy - and if they did launch anything at all, it was a single ship without chance. The carrier itself proved defenseless and all it took was rotating (forward, starboard, aft -> kaboom) for a pretty high bounty.

I guess those ships should launch a whole attack fleet within seconds and at least have some little defense like anti-fighter guns? Is there a version/oxp conflict, or do they really hesitate to launch enough defenders?

Screet

Screet wrote:

I recently tested the Thargoid Carrier OXP...and was a bit frustrated. The ships appeared very often, but only at the W buoy - and if they did launch anything at all, it was a single ship without chance. The carrier itself proved defenseless and all it took was rotating (forward, starboard, aft -> kaboom) for a pretty high bounty.

Yes, the ship is quite a bug, but Commander McLane has adopted this oxp and is already some time busy to put this carrier in a new oxp. I think it will be great than and very dangerous.

I ran into a bug with it and the Bounty Scanner OXP. The Scanner lists the bounty for the carrier at just short of 10K. But upon blowing the bugger up, bounty was only 2K...

Commanders don't like big, flashy harlots who don't put out as advertised....

Cmd. Cheyd Vlos'Olplyn wrote:

I ran into a bug with it and the Bounty Scanner OXP.

Bounty of thargoid ships can not be read by script. I already suggested Frame to use the word unknown for thargoid bounty as it is impossible to read a thargoid bounty by script.

Technical stuff: The real problem it that what the scrip reads in as bounty is in reality the legal status and not the bounty. For all ships both are the same except with thargoids were the legal status is related to a ships mass. And this mass is big for the carrier!
It is also an oolite bug to call this bounty while it is in reality showing the legal status to the script. Legal status has influence how fast police start to attack it and bounty is what you get as reward.

Eric Walch wrote:

Screet wrote:

I recently tested the Thargoid Carrier OXP...and was a bit frustrated. The ships appeared very often, but only at the W buoy - and if they did launch anything at all, it was a single ship without chance. The carrier itself proved defenseless and all it took was rotating (forward, starboard, aft -> kaboom) for a pretty high bounty.

Yes, the ship is quite a bug, but Commander McLane has adopted this oxp and is already some time busy to put this carrier in a new oxp. I think it will be great than and very dangerous.

Too much honour for your humble servant, sir!

Truth is, I did some re-scripting, but not as an adoption. It was rather on behalf of Selezen (the Thargoid Carrier's 'father'). The ball is since in his corner again, as he also wanted to do some new modelling.

As usual with Sel, better don't ask him for a release date.

Yeah, I know, my after sales service is lacking.

I'm trying to get back into the Oolite modelling frame of mind again, but with the new job and having to relearn VB6 again it's kind of dragged me away from the Oolite coding area...sorry about that.

If anyone wants to take over the OXP then feel free to rescript it. If you need or would like a new carrier model I could work on one if desired!

I always liked the old model, but I always thought it just needed weapon systems (thargoid lasers, plasma turrets, maybe the ability to launch Tharglets).

Captain Hesperus

Selezen wrote:

If anyone wants to take over the OXP then feel free to rescript it. If you need or would like a new carrier model I could work on one if desired!

Errmm..., I thought the rescripting part was what I already did?

Okay, not yet the shipdata. I surely could soup it up with lasers. Turret placements (or to be precise, their correct orientation on the different planes that make the shape of the carrier) however give me a headache. The quaternions just don't do what I want them to do...

Might be worth remodelling it to add some flat planes to add turrets to.

Just mount thargoid lasers on the usual four points, (would Thargs need turrets when their lasers are on gimbal mounts?) and rescript the AI so that it launches Thargoid warships when attacked.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

Just mount thargoid lasers on the usual four points, (would Thargs need turrets when their lasers are on gimbal mounts?) and rescript the AI so that it launches Thargoid warships when attacked.

Thargoid lasers can only be mounted at the usual two points (no NPC can have side lasers). But it doesn't matter, as they are turreted anyway.

And it does launch warships when attacked (I think always has). The only problem being that due to some problems with the scanForThargoid/scanForNonThargoid-routines in previous versions of Oolite they would go after each other instead of the attacker.

But fear not. I've taken it up and am in the process of making the Thargoid Carrier into a vicious fighting machine. So, actually, I take back the first sentence in this paragraph. Fear!

NOOOOOO! If they become more powerful, don't make them show up at every witchpoint, please!

I haven't yet spent much thoughts about how often you would encounter them. I guess, however, that I'm going to make them rarer as they are currently.

And the witchpoint won't be their primary target anymore anyway...

Commander McLane wrote:

I haven't yet spent much thoughts about how often you would encounter them. I guess, however, that I'm going to make them rarer as they are currently.

And the witchpoint won't be their primary target anymore anyway...

Yes please if you see the conditions in the script when you become dangerous or elite their appearance ratio near the witchbuoy is annoyingly high