Oolite Bulletins

Is it me or do the police in Oolite just not want to know if u get attacked inside the station radius?

Many times I have been heading towards a coriolis and been inside the S radius (with clean status) and have been attacked by ships and NO police appear whatsoever, they all munchin' donuts

Even coppers already launched dont respond.

What is with this please ?

ver1.73/pc

I have found that the police tend to take their time responding to you. Their response is kinda spotty. I think they are better in more stable governments, but that may also be me imposing preconceptions on to the game.

The reason your ship carries armament is because it would be too much of a burden to carry a Police ship.

Have you tried using an SOS beacon? Last time I had one I triggered it when carrying a consignment of firearms & narcotics (accidently) ! ! ! you never saw such a rapid response!

Commander Burton wrote:

Is it me or do the police in Oolite just not want to know if u get attacked inside the station radius?

Attacks must happen within the police or station's scan radius to be registered. The S radius is bigger and only means that this is the area that is seen by the station patrol police. However, there normally is only one ship patrolling around the station and he can't be everywhere

Commander Burton wrote:

Even coppers already launched don't respond.

That sounds as an AI bug to me. The returning police have no code to look for offenders when they return to base. I just added a few lines so the main station will send a groupAttack command when spotting an offence instead of only launching police ships. I just tested with a bunch of docking police: They now all went immediately after me when shooting a clean trader.

I've also been attacked right in front of the main station, and no police came.

I think the real problem is that the police does not react to an attack on the player at all. Never. They do react to attacks on NPC traders, but not to an attack on the player. The reason is that NPC traders can send a distress message in their AI, and both police and stations can pick that message up and react. The player can't send this message.

So the only way the police can intervene on his side is to recognize the attacker as a hostile ship by his bounty and go after him completely independent of what he is doing or not doing to you. And this takes the longer, the lower his bounty is. Below a certain bounty the chance is practically zero.

Isn't there some script combination that can see if the player got hit and then figure out who shot first (or has the larger bounty)?

Best wishes,
Oscar

Commander McLane wrote:

I think the real problem is that the police does not react to an attack on the player at all. Never. They do react to attacks on NPC traders, but not to an attack on the player. The reason is that NPC traders can send a distress message in their AI, and both police and stations can pick that message up and react. The player can't send this message.

I think this is incorrect. The player does send an OFFENCE_COMMITED message to all authorities present whenever they receive energy damage. That is what the method -broadcastHitByLaserFrom: takes care of. However, nothing happens if the player is already tagged as offender or worse. Only clean ships get to transmit the OFFENCE_COMMITED message. If there is indeed a problem with police responce (cannot test right now), then it will most likely be related to how the message is handled or the fact that low bounty ships might take longer before getting a reaction from police.

I think the result is the same. OFFENCE_COMMITTED doesn't let the police react immediatly. ACCEPT_DISTRESS_CALL would let it react, I think. But the player cannot trigger it. Which is basically what I wanted to say.

Commander McLane wrote:

I think the result is the same. OFFENCE_COMMITTED doesn't let the police react immediatly. ACCEPT_DISTRESS_CALL would let it react, I think. But the player cannot trigger it. Which is basically what I wanted to say.

The main difference between the two is that ACCEPT_DISTRESS_CALL is generated by an AI command so it will never be send by the player. It is received by all police and hunters.
In contrary the message OFFENCE_COMMITTED is send automatic without using AI commands but is only send to ships of class police and to the main station. It should be send when a ship hits a clean player. But the stationAI is not checking for OFFENCE_COMMITTED in all its states. It should, I think. Also sending a groupAttackTarget in that case should be there as it is possible since 1.73 for stations and this will bring docking police ships in action again.

OK, I have arrived at a station with a distress beacon, clean, and got attacked. I launched the sos baecon and 4 vipers turned up but I was shot up before they did anything other than fly around in tight formation with blue lights flashing

Next time I remembered to carry some cargo and got a more enthusiastic attack -- fired beacon -- this time a considerable battle ensued with 8 Vipers and me (I was thanked for the assistance) vs a Mamba (that I shot down for ¢174 bounty) and his insane cronies -- I did sustain some damage -- manual docking under heavy fire & still "clean" so I didn't hit any old ooze by mistake: the distress beacon seems to work fine
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distress beacon is here Missiles and Bombs v2.2.oxp
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(although this isn't exactly what's being discussed here, it does elicit the desired response and behaviour from vipers)

hope it's of some use to someone!