Oolite Bulletins

I've been scouring threads looking for this, as I'm sure I've seen it somewhere, but I just can't find it: is there any way to cycle cargo, so that I can eject selected items?

R (that is shift-r)!

edit: I hope! I'm all over the place atm!

Ah, thank you, sir.

edit: that does it.
Regards.

In Oolite, will pirates sometimes leave you alone if you ditch cargo? I know sometimes AI players drop cargo if you attack them, but I don't remember if it works the other way around.
And isn't it possible to kill a ship by using your scoops to catapult a TC at someone? I remember someone here having demonstrated that...

Among Captain Hesperus' many claims to fame (and infamy) is the feat of using a container of food to destroy his enemy in ship to ship combat.

That's not infamy. We refer to that as "EPIC WIN". But anything about sacrificing cargo to pirates?

wackyman465 wrote:

In Oolite, will pirates sometimes leave you alone if you ditch cargo? I know sometimes AI players drop cargo if you attack them, but I don't remember if it works the other way around.
And isn't it possible to kill a ship by using your scoops to catapult a TC at someone? I remember someone here having demonstrated that...

Good question. I dont know what the AI currently does, but my guess is it ignores cargo dropping. It should be easy to change it to have say a 5% chance of changing behaviour each time you drop something. Could copy the probability code from the hard head missile AI.

I am sure I remember reading in the elite manual that droipping cargo is sometimes enough to get rid of pirates, even though it wasnt possible to do.

This change would get my vote - the pacifist in me always dropped cargo and ran away (as per the original manual) - wondered why it never worked!

Small change, big atmospheric gain, plus an additional ingame option to get rid of pirates.

I second that

Noted for after v1.73.

Thargoid wrote:

From a quick look at pirateAI.plist under 1.72.2, it only scans for loot when a target is lost or destroyed. But as you say, it wouldn't be too difficult to implement such a change.

Even when the player cloaks the pirates don't start scooping. A cloaked player it found initially but than immediately lost. But than it restarts looking for targets instead of proceeding with looking for cargo.
It can easy be changed and if a majority likes it, I'll come up with a changed AI for 1.74. (Or an test oxp that only will working with 1.73)

The purpose of pirates is to plunder cargo and when they can get it without fight, it would only be logic they go for it. By change as some will still go for the kill to get all the cargo.

On second thought: it is not that easy with AI alone. When you do every 10 seconds a scan for cargo during fight, the scan will also find previous floating cargo. Pirates will start breaking of attacks, even when not ejecting cargo. To do it proper we need a code change in the dump cargo routine that sends a "CARGO_DUMPED" message to all nearby vessels.

This would definitely be a welcome change to the game, but it would make sense to apply to some vessels and not others. Pirate vessels with no cargo or little cargo capacity, shouldn't be incentivised to stop an attack because there is cargo floating around in space. This would give pirate AI some variety and you'd know that some ships would be more likely to be relentless in assault than others.

By comparions, a pirate Python Class Cruiser or Imp Courier or similar large cargo bay vessel would be able to scoop and therefore break off an attack to do so.

The trick would be for those large cargo vessels that have a fighter escort to display consistent behaviour. So once the Sidewinders/Asps/Mambas etc have forced the player to drop cargo, the large cargo ship they are escorting ceases to be aggressive and starts scooping. When that ship stops being aggressive, so do the escorts, until something sets off their aggression flag i.e.player attacks.

Another thing to consider would be whether it is worth adding a cargo scanner equipment item to the game. Something which tells the player (and NPCs) how much cargo a target is carrying (although not necessarily what it is). NPC pirates with an interest in a target cargo would then attack the player of the Cargo value was > than X and cease an attack once the cargo value was < than X. I have no idea how complex that behaviour would be to script, just throwing the idea out there.

Not sure that I agree. A pirate in oolite is pretty much by definition only interested in the cargo. Pirate escorts are admittedly an exception, but as you say they should probably give up the chase if the group decides they have got enough dumped cargo. This sounds to me like a case for a pirateAI and a pirateEscortAI, but Im pretty ambivalent. I think what has been discussed above is good enough.

A cargo scanner might make sense, but I am not certain, it raises questions about police perhaps scanning ships for contraband, and therefor changing the legal framework in-game?

Sendraks wrote:

This would definitely be a welcome change to the game, but it would make sense to apply to some vessels and not others. Pirate vessels with no cargo or little cargo capacity, shouldn't be incentivised to stop an attack because there is cargo floating around in space. This would give pirate AI some variety and you'd know that some ships would be more likely to be relentless in assault than others.

That are some very good suggestions. Currently we have a command to check the odds for an attack. Pirates use it to compare its own group size against the victim group size. For cargo I would use the same check again and go for the cargo when the odds are bad.

Your remark about cargo bay size makes much sense. In 1.73 we can better check this with AI than before. In current 1.72 pirate escorts just start bounty hunting when the mother dies. I future 1.73 such escorts will check their hold. When they still have some room left, pirate escorts start pirating themselves.

One thing that is not working good to my opinion is the command to deploy escorts. This command is designed for fleeing traders. It only deploys a random number of escorts. The remaining escorts keep escorting to make sure the fleeing trader keeps some escorts for a second attack. When not fleeing but attacking, it looks stupid that some escorts just keep escorting during attack. Probably a ship should deploy all when in attack mode.