Oolite Bulletins

Hi,

I fell behind on a loan (though I should have had plenty of time), and trying to fight off the Black Monk patrol ship was insane. The thing survived an energy bomb. The save game was such that, I launched from the station, it was right there, I fought it, got shot down very quickly (with mil shield enhancement), load game, launched from station and repeat.
I finally resolved the situation in a dramatic sort of way. (I yanked Black Monks from the OXP folder). My apologies to the original author for this rant. I do like the basic idea. I think it's brilliant.

The frustration has inspired me to learn a bit more about Plists and OXPs.
Gunships were at 1400 max energy!!!
Compared to 450 for an anaconda, no wonder the darn thing wouldn't die!

So I'm going to tone down the gunships to a realistic level (but still bad ass),which I expect is quite easy
and then I'm going to try and take a wack at the timing mechanism and hopefully make it similar to the passenger/cargo timing mechanism , which I expect to be harder.
If I like the results, I'll make the new oxp available to others, assuming the original author is ok with that.

Yeah I threw out the OXP because of the overpowered gunships, too.
I never borrowed money from them, so the OXP wasn't to me that important in the first place, but it irritated me that the turned a bunch of police vessels into dust as easily as the ships of the borrowers...
I would've no problem with a gunship that turns new Jamesons who don't pay back into space debris. But imho you should be able to destroy them with a fleet of police vipers or with a very well equipped fighter (military shield enhancement, naval energy unit, military lasers... or at least a Q-Bomb.)

Chrisfs wrote:

Hi,

I fell behind on a loan (though I should have had plenty of time), and trying to fight off the Black Monk patrol ship was insane. The thing survived an energy bomb. The save game was such that, I launched from the station, it was right there, I fought it, got shot down very quickly (with mil shield enhancement), load game, launched from station and repeat.
I finally resolved the situation in a dramatic sort of way. (I yanked Black Monks from the OXP folder). My apologies to the original author for this rant. I do like the basic idea. I think it's brilliant.

The frustration has inspired me to learn a bit more about Plists and OXPs.
Gunships were at 1400 max energy!!!
Compared to 450 for an anaconda, no wonder the darn thing wouldn't die!

So I'm going to tone down the gunships to a realistic level (but still bad ass),which I expect is quite easy
and then I'm going to try and take a wack at the timing mechanism and hopefully make it similar to the passenger/cargo timing mechanism , which I expect to be harder.
If I like the results, I'll make the new oxp available to others, assuming the original author is ok with that.

Little Bear wrote Black Monks (a fantastic addition to the Ooniverse) when Legacy scripting was the norm and doing things like calculating time and loan duration were difficult (impossible) - its an OXP that deserves and would be improved vastly by conversion to JS.

I use to entertain myself by taking down black monk ships.

It's great to have something that puts up a little resistance.

That makes sense and my original post was fueled by some exasperation, so I may have overstated some things. I don't know if I can upgrade the whole thing to JS, but will see what I can do. It would be nice to have loan timing in sync with passenger timing.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Chrisfs wrote:

Hi,

I fell behind on a loan (though I should have had plenty of time), and trying to fight off the Black Monk patrol ship was insane. The thing survived an energy bomb. The save game was such that, I launched from the station, it was right there, I fought it, got shot down very quickly (with mil shield enhancement), load game, launched from station and repeat.
I finally resolved the situation in a dramatic sort of way. (I yanked Black Monks from the OXP folder). My apologies to the original author for this rant. I do like the basic idea. I think it's brilliant.

The frustration has inspired me to learn a bit more about Plists and OXPs.
Gunships were at 1400 max energy!!!
Compared to 450 for an anaconda, no wonder the darn thing wouldn't die!

So I'm going to tone down the gunships to a realistic level (but still bad ass),which I expect is quite easy
and then I'm going to try and take a wack at the timing mechanism and hopefully make it similar to the passenger/cargo timing mechanism , which I expect to be harder.
If I like the results, I'll make the new oxp available to others, assuming the original author is ok with that.

Little Bear wrote Black Monks (a fantastic addition to the Ooniverse) when Legacy scripting was the norm and doing things like calculating time and loan duration were difficult (impossible) - its an OXP that deserves and would be improved vastly by conversion to JS.

Just keep in mind that (1) Black Monks Gunships have their max_energy on purpose, because you are not supposed to get away with not re-paying your loan, and (2) tying the loan duration to time instead of jumps doesn't require JS, but is perfectly doable in legacy (actually it's done, you just have to find the script snippet in the OXP's thread).

I'm not making them weak, they will still be the toughest thing around but in a game world where you can trade in slaves and narcotics and shoot down cops, a loan collector should not be nearly omnipotent.

OOoh there's a snippet somewhere. I'll have to look for it, or figure a way out myself.

Commander McLane wrote:

Just keep in mind that (1) Black Monks Gunships have their max_energy on purpose, because you are not supposed to get away with not re-paying your loan, and (2) tying the loan duration to time instead of jumps doesn't require JS, but is perfectly doable in legacy (actually it's done, you just have to find the script snippet in the OXP's thread).

Monks aren't that hard, you just have to keep your distance and use the injectors frequently to outrun the missiles.

You can probably do it with an ordinary beam laser, but a military laser definitely helps.

Lucidor wrote:

Monks aren't that hard, you just have to keep your distance and use the injectors frequently to outrun the missiles.

You can probably do it with an ordinary beam laser, but a military laser definitely helps.

I have yet to shoot down a single one.

They can't steer round stations. They take a direct route, you won't get the kill but then some sights are worth their weight in comedy gold.

The Black Monk Gunship was a good benchmark for Far Arm Titan.

The Titan has a certain max_energy dictated by the reference material (Space Rogue manual), and I gave it certain equipment and so many turrets - I balanced the turret's weapon_energy so that a Titan can take on a Black Monk Gunship and survive the bout about 3 times out of 4.