Oolite Bulletins

I just joined a battle between GalNav and Thargoids, one GalNav came into my line of fire, got his left eyebrow singed, and made me an instant fugitive. Sort of like a spanish referee who hands out yellows and reds for harmless actions that just happen while the going gets tough...

Is there a way to make this a little more forgiving? Kind of like the Hacker Viper who tells you to stop shooting the GalNavs could send a gentle curse about friendly fire over the CommLink and only if you seriously damage one (e.g. make it loose equipment and certainly if you kill one) as opposed to scoring a single stray hit make you a fugitive.

What do you think?

Hopefully the oxp maker will make the appropriate changes asap!

maik wrote:

I just joined a battle between GalNav and Thargoids, one GalNav came into my line of fire, got his left eyebrow singed, and made me an instant fugitive. Sort of like a spanish referee who hands out yellows and reds for harmless actions that just happen while the going gets tough...

Is there a way to make this a little more forgiving? Kind of like the Hacker Viper who tells you to stop shooting the GalNavs could send a gentle curse about friendly fire over the CommLink and only if you seriously damage one (e.g. make it loose equipment and certainly if you kill one) as opposed to scoring a single stray hit make you a fugitive.

What do you think?

Hi Maik,
This has been covered before here. You'll need to go about halfway down the page, and look at Commander McLane's answer to my comment on this subject. It's very informative.
Cheers,
Smivs

Thanks Smivs, seems we're after the same kind of "fix" there. Of course I understand the explanation of the game mechanics, but in the interest of the game feeling right to me (very subjective, I am aware) I still suggest to ease up on this.

In the referenced post Commander McLane wrote:

LittleBear, for instance, has developed special AIs for his OXPs, in order to avoid this last kind of friendly fire incidents (instead of automatically turning against the "attacker" for every hit, the ship or station first checks who fired the shot; if it was a ship from the own group, the hit is ignored). These measurements haven't yet been incorporated into Oolite itself.

Is there a chance that these measurements will be incorporated into Oolite?

Cheers,
-Maik

i'm wondering if a lot more overhauling/upgrading of the AIs should be a feature of the next Release? we're all pressing on w/ big graphic/shader advances etc but maybe gameplay itself would be improved by removing little niggles like this?

+1

The graphics are already far beyond what I expected when I wanted to find a way to play Elite on my Mac. Not that I don't like eye candy (and the usual suspects in the Oolite community are doing a fantastic job here!) but coming from the 80s era of computer games, gameplay is still king for me. Mind you, the game is very enjoyable as it is, I'm playing it for way longer than any recent game on Xbox360, PS2, Wii, iPhone already, but in case someone can't decide whether to spend his time on improving the graphics engine or the AI I'd vote for the latter.

Cheers,
-Maik

G’Day Commanders,

I have my own story of becoming fugitive very fast with up to 100cr bounty. I have IIF military scanner upgrade, which shows status of the ship instantly on the scanner with flashing colour. So I was in multi-government system delivering passenger at their final destination. Along a way I scooped a dozen of escape pods without even fighting anyone. Felt like some heavy fire fight was in the area. Then about 1/3 of the remaining way to the station I came across a group of 20 something Fugitive ships plus another group of 5 fugitive ships so I was right between these two groups and all of them charged at me! All I could do is hit injectors and run as fast as I could in my old slow Python Commander. Splashed two of the pirates with my aft laser, others pooled off damaged, but not killed and I managed to get to the station with heavy hull damages. That’s not all. At this point my status was still clean. I decided to have a look around what is going on in the system as I never seen so many pirates at the same time and got myself a Q. cascade mine just for a case if I get in pack of ships like that again. On my way to the witch point I saw distant laser fire in the asteroid area and there I met about 14+ pirate-ships and released a bomb right in the middle of the pack. After finishing with watching the fireworks I checked status and I was fugitive! Why? Is mass killing of pirates is bad thing or I missed a police or navy viper as they tend to be of the same magenta colour on the scanner, but not flashing with brown? Well now, I need to find a way to clear my status and be more careful with use of mass destruction toys. And also, I did not see ‘Right on Commander!’ message even thought that blast took out 12 ships.

Cheers,
V-SFC

You ought to be careful with Q-bombs. GalCop don't take the death of one of their own lightly. Killing police personnel will always make you a fugitive. It doesn't matter if it's just "collateral damage".

You only get credit (or punishment, for that matter) for the kills caused by the initial Q sphere, not the cascades, so unless the pirates were arranged very unfortunately, you'll probably only have got a few from that.

In answer to the original question of the thread... yes, good idea. Something of that sort is in 1.79.