Wolfwood's Cobra Rapier

[Poro]

I'm not sure how regularly Wolfwood signs in, so rather than PM him, I thought I'd ask for general opinion.

I've just bought myself a nice Rapier, and after customizing the texture (red scales, more scuffing on the hull, mild panelling) I've noticed a couple of things. As well as a few mesh anomalies (which I can correct when I'm familiar with Wings3D) I see that the Rapier does not mount Fuel Scoops (shipyard file).

Now given that the ship comes with heat shielding installed as default, is regularly described as a 'combat/light trader', and even has a 'Scoop Cam' set as one of the external viewpoints - is it right that it cannot mount a fuel scoop? I'll probably alter the shipyard file to allow it, but I want to play the ship as close to what the author intended it to be.

I rejected a lot of other ship OXPs because they seemed unbalanced (although having said that, the Rapier is only 150,000C), so I thought maybe the Rapier's thin profile might have been the reason that the FS was 'disallowed'. What'dya think?

[Disembodied]

I doubt that the fuel scoop was deliberately excluded. Being able to gather up cargo is pretty much a fundamental part of the game. And the presence of a "scoop cam" is a bit of a giveaway!

[Killer Wolf]

Maybe you can't fit it cos there's a camera in the way!

[Poro]

Ha! Pass the scredriver and I'll disconnect it.

[Wolfwood]

Ok, that's a second bug that's been thus far reported in the oxp. I'll try to release a new version this weekend!

[Poro]

Thanks Wolfwood. I may as well mention those mesh issues I alluded to, in case you want to rectify them (not as quick as editing a plist file though )

1) When switching to the Starboard cockpit view a thin 'spike' of ship can be seen. I checked the view coordinates, and they are symmetrical with the left view, so I reasoned that it must be the model - but in Blender the model looks fine. Haven't looked into that much though.

2) The port side rear facing (just to the left of the engine) has an extra edge that shouldn't be there. This means that the facing displays too much of the texture - which is fine if it is transparent, but not if there is any colour near the texture edge.

Wings3D and also in Blender.


3) [Deleted] I thought that the top-side radiator panels were not sunk down properly (it doesn't show up enough in starlight) but I can see from viewing the model again that they are.

4) [Subjectve] I thought the engine trails were a bit further back than they should be, so I bumped them up closer to the engines.

[ouklos]

Hello Wolfwood,
Your variants.oxp is very nice. I especially like the Rapier and the Drake MkII.
But since you plan to update it, I have a few suggestions and requests :

For all ships :
- Are the 'set' bounties really necessary ? (since lot of ships have 'hunter' and 'pirate' for their role) Wouldn't be better to let the system populator deal and assign bounties ?
From the wiki Role page : "Just adding roles to the same ship data entry means you get Clean pirates and Offender police ships if the bounty key is included"

- I would set all ships with a Pirate role

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<key>has_scoop</key>
<true/>

instead of

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<key>has_scoop</key>
<real>0.80</real>

for the Drake MkII, for example. All Pirates should have Fuel Scoops.

- Could you add after weapons ? It's nice to see NPC ships firing on you when you are on their 'six'.

- mk1asp, drakemk2
I would lower the fuel from 70 to 50, to avoid 'kamikaze-injectors-always-on' fights.
Funny, but the various Couriers and Rapiers with 'fuel 70' don't have this problem.

- asp_explorer
It has "hunter pirate asp-pirate" as defined roles, but IMHO it shouldn't be a pirate ship at all. It's a luxury ship (like an Ophidian Yacht), and is quite expensive (like the FdL) Furthermore, it has no cargo.

Again, from the wiki Role page : "Also don’t give a ship with no cargo bay the role pirate (as it will never do any pirating). The pirate AI checks its hold. If full it switches AI stops hunting and heads for the station. In this mode it won’t attack unless attacked and usually runs for the station. This makes sense as from a pirates point of view there’s no point fighting if he cannot grab the goodies. If you give a ship with no cargo bay the pirate role, its hold is always full so it doesn’t really behave properly."

- drakemk2-player
In shipyard.plist, minor mistake :

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<key>weapon_facings</key>
	 <integer>4</integer>

should be :

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<key>weapon_facings</key>
	 <integer>3</integer>

- drake
I would change the roles here : from

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hunter pirate drake-pirate

to

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 hunter(0.2) pirate(0.5) drake-pirate

The Drake MkI is too weak to be a common Hunter or Pirate, IMHO.

- wolfmk1
In shipdata.plist, I think these lines should be deleted :

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<key>conditions</key> 
		<array> 
			<string>mission_wolfpack equal COMPLETED</string>
		</array> 

Otherwise, it never appears !

- wolfmk1-player
In shipyard.plist, could you tweak down the chance :

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<key>chance</key>
		<real>1.0</real>

It's annoying to ALWAYS see a Wolf MkI in the shipyards.
I set it to 0.4 in my copy.

- In the demoships.plist, the missing

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cobra3courierSE

should be replaced by :

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cobra3courierSE-trader 

Well, these are minor points, except for the 'permanent' Wolf MkI
Thanks for these wonderful ships !

[Wolfwood]

Excellent list of corrections, thank you!

Indeed, the Wolf Mk I was originally meant to appear only after the completion of a mission and then only on a couple of planets (which is why it had an absolute appearance chance). Only, I never finished the mission as RL considerations got into the way.

Oh, and those model facet problems were caused by an old version of obj2dat.py (you don't know for how long I tried to hunt down the problems until I realised that it was the conversion script that destroyed the model). I'll have to dig around to see if I can still find the original Wings 3D save... :/

[Eric Walch]

Again, from the wiki Role page : "Also don’t give a ship with no cargo bay the role pirate (as it will never do any pirating). The pirate AI checks its hold. If full it switches AI stops hunting and heads for the station. In this mode it won’t attack unless attacked and usually runs for the station. This makes sense as from a pirates point of view there’s no point fighting if he cannot grab the goodies. If you give a ship with no cargo bay the pirate role, its hold is always full so it doesn’t really behave properly."

I fully agree that a pirate should have a cargobay and scoops because it can't do piracy without.
Lucky enough the AI is scripted in a way that is won't really break because it only checks its holds after it scooped something. When it than is full it first tries to jump to an adjacent system (fuel permitting) to dock there if not enough fuel it will dock in the current system. For letting this really happen the cargo bay should never be to large, otherwise it will never fill in a reasonable time. As a consequence you only see the smaller pirates on their way to sell their loot.