How do Dredgers work?

[Chrisfs]

I have the Dredgers 2.2.3 OXP.
I did something that might be unorthodox.
I was fighting a llama and it had the sparky exhaust starting to come out,
I turned my attention quickly to an other ship, When I can back to it, the llama was just floating aimlessly in space. Although it didn't say 'derelict', I fired a salvage missile anyways to see what would happen. The missile hit and took ouver the Llama, which on the Ident system now says Llama escort (auto pilot) and it flew off in a direction.
I followed, and I have been following it for the last 45 minutes. It alternates between going at top speed and going at basically nothing. But although we get regular messages from the GSS Asimov dregder that it's awaiting the Llama escort, we don't seem to be getting anywhere.
Is this normal (since dredgers keep to the edge of the system and I shot it near the main station), Or could the pilot somehow 'regained control' of the ship and the caption (auto pilot) is simply not removed by the OXP..
Can anyone tell me whether this is normal or a bug?

Much Thanks

[Eric Walch]

Hello Chrisfs,

This is not normal. When that missile hits your target, it scans the area until a distance of 300.000 meter for an existing dredger. If there is one, it sends the ship in that direction. When no dredger is present one is added in a random direction at 200.000 meters distance. Again the derelict is send in the dredgers direction but now the dredger is also send in the derelicts direction.

Normally you can find the dredger when looking in the direction the derelict is flying. It does take some time to reach that position, but not as long as you had. I never noticed that during testing. There are two groups of pirates added in between the derelict and the dredger. In normal cases the derelict has flown a big part of that distance by the time you killed all the pirates.

[Chrisfs]

Thanks Eric!

So what happens if a salvage missile hits a ship that is not officially a derelict?

[Screet]

So what happens if a salvage missile hits a ship that is not officially a derelict?

You get an error message fromt he missile and nothing else happens

Screet

[Cmdr James]

What happens if you salvage a photon torpedo that went dead, or an inactive thargon.

Or something you already salvaged?

Sorry, I know I could read the release notes, or the code, I just started wondering about these things at workj, and I dont have time to look into it.

[Eric Walch]

So what happens if a salvage missile hits a ship that is not officially a derelict?

You get an error message from the missile and nothing else happens

Screet

As street writes. Originally I only wanted it to work with the in-game created derelicts. But that could not work with 1.72 so I added derelicts with the label "derelict". Since 1.73 all ships can be salvaged. So probably I should reduce the change of adding derelicts by script. Actually are the once without the "derelict" label the official once as those are created by the oolite engine itself.

But small ships like the Llama ship in your first message are not worth salvaging, only the bigger ships are.

[Chrisfs]

As long as it knows where it is going. I thought that was the way it worked, but after a while given the situation, I began to wonder if I had reade the Read Me wrong and it's AI simply kept it close to me while I needed to know where the dredger was.

Thanks for the OXP.
I have yet to actually see a space dredger, but sure to eventually.

Hello Chrisfs,

This is not normal. When that missile hits your target, it scans the area until a distance of 300.000 meter for an existing dredger. If there is one, it sends the ship in that direction. When no dredger is present one is added in a random direction at 200.000 meters distance. Again the derelict is send in the dredgers direction but now the dredger is also send in the derelicts direction.

Normally you can find the dredger when looking in the direction the derelict is flying. It does take some time to reach that position, but not as long as you had. I never noticed that during testing. There are two groups of pirates added in between the derelict and the dredger. In normal cases the derelict has flown a big part of that distance by the time you killed all the pirates.

[JensAyton]

Wibble split to Lost in translation.