Oolite Bulletins

In order to give myself a more challenging start, I started a new commander, chose a name, saved it, and then went and edited the save file, changing my ship to a Griff normalmapped Adder (the player variant - was careful to make sure of that.) The only thing I edited was that particular ship reference, didn't touch anything else.

So, the weird glitch in the title: whenever I fire a laser, I go to "red alert": the 'under attack' alarm sounds, and my status indicator flashes red. It doesn't drop me from a Torus-jump, but does make the noises and flashing lights of the alert state. Any ideas what might be causing this?

Yes, i can confirm this happens for me too, i haven't been able to work out why though, it's been a 'feature' of the adder oxp since it came out, i haven't been able to fix it, i've tried all sorts of tweaks, maybe i should try re-exporting the model to dat again - prehaps split the gun to a subentity

Might this be connected to the old "shooting yourself" bug? Does your rear shield take a hit when you fire your laser?

Hahaha - ok, so it's a known thing. It's not much of an issue - rather lends the little shiplet some character (Though I doubt I'll miss this "feature" when I change ships hehe) Oh, and seeing as I have you here, Griff: stunning work on your normalmapped objects! Beautiful stuff!

@ Disembodied: No, I don't so much as scratch myself in the process - I think maybe the Adder is just so nervous about combat that it scares itself when it shoots!

i too thought it might be the laser position causing you to hit yourself when you shoot but it doesn't seem to be, it's odd, you just go to red alert for a few seconds whilst firing your gun, i can't see why the adder behaves differently to the other ships in the normalmapped shipset, they are all essentially copied & pasted from each other with just different models and texture files listed in the shipdata.plist

myst.RAVEN wrote:

I think maybe the Adder is just so nervous about combat that it scares itself when it shoots!

Ha, yes! I'd prefer the ship didn't do it, but i do like this explanation!

I think I just figured it out. The same thing happens when I fire off ECM, and keeps happening until the energy bank is fully recharged. I think the 'red alert' status is triggered whenever a player dips into his or her last energy bank - and seeing as the Addie only has the one bank...

It also means the Adder can't use an Ore Process (OXP), at least not without hacking it to not shut off when dipping into the last energy bank!

When you're at it, also hack a bigger cargo bay for adder, so there actually IS some use for ore processor

I loaded a Griff normalmapped Adder - it has an extended cargo bay by default, increasing cargo to 17. Not sure whether that's entirely "by the book", but at least the shiplet is playable Hmmm, must check the Cobra I - maybe that one's also been enhanced...

myst.RAVEN wrote:

I loaded a Griff normalmapped Adder - it has an extended cargo bay by default, increasing cargo to 17. Not sure whether that's entirely "by the book", but at least the shiplet is playable Hmmm, must check the Cobra I - maybe that one's also been enhanced...

hmm, that doesn't sound right, according to the shipdata.plist for the player adder it's max cargo is '2' and in the shipyard.plist the "EQ_CARGO_BAY" isn't listed as valid optional equipment so it shouldn't be buyable, i wonder if by hacking the save file to change the ship to an adder there are still some cargo settings for your last ship still being remembered and are being applied to your adder?

incidently, does anyone know why the NPC adder has a cargo capacity of 5,whilst the player adder is 2, is this just so there's more chance of the NPC adder leaving cargo behind when it's blown up?

Griff wrote:

myst.RAVEN wrote:

I loaded a Griff normalmapped Adder - it has an extended cargo bay by default, increasing cargo to 17. Not sure whether that's entirely "by the book", but at least the shiplet is playable Hmmm, must check the Cobra I - maybe that one's also been enhanced...

hmm, that doesn't sound right, according to the shipdata.plist for the player adder it's max cargo is '2' and in the shipyard.plist the "EQ_CARGO_BAY" isn't listed as valid optional equipment so it shouldn't be buyable, i wonder if by hacking the save file to change the ship to an adder there are still some cargo settings for your last ship still being remembered and are being applied to your adder?

Yes, of course, because all the equipment installed on the player ship is also recorded in the save-game. So, if you start out with a Cobra with a large bay, then hack your save-game to convert it into an Adder, the result is not a virgin Adder, but an Adder with all the equipment you had in your previous ship (including the large cargo bay). If you want a virgin Adder, you have to change all the lines concerning equipment in your save-file as well.

Note: Editing your save-file isn't a recommended way of changing your ship, and if you do it, you should exactly know what you are doing.

Sarin wrote:

When you're at it, also hack a bigger cargo bay for adder, so there actually IS some use for ore processor

Griff wrote:

incidently, does anyone know why the NPC adder has a cargo capacity of 5,whilst the player adder is 2, is this just so there's more chance of the NPC adder leaving cargo behind when it's blown up?

My mod here:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=8212
...Does just that. You can pay 400 credits to give the Adder 5 tons total cargo capacity just like the NPC Adders have. The player Adder's cargo bay extension adds 3 tons to the 2 ton starting capacity.

Commander McLane wrote:

Griff wrote:

myst.RAVEN wrote:

I loaded a Griff normalmapped Adder - it has an extended cargo bay by default, increasing cargo to 17. Not sure whether that's entirely "by the book", but at least the shiplet is playable Hmmm, must check the Cobra I - maybe that one's also been enhanced...

hmm, that doesn't sound right, according to the shipdata.plist for the player adder it's max cargo is '2' and in the shipyard.plist the "EQ_CARGO_BAY" isn't listed as valid optional equipment so it shouldn't be buyable, i wonder if by hacking the save file to change the ship to an adder there are still some cargo settings for your last ship still being remembered and are being applied to your adder?

Yes, of course, because all the equipment installed on the player ship is also recorded in the save-game. So, if you start out with a Cobra with a large bay, then hack your save-game to convert it into an Adder, the result is not a virgin Adder, but an Adder with all the equipment you had in your previous ship (including the large cargo bay). If you want a virgin Adder, you have to change all the lines concerning equipment in your save-file as well.

Note: Editing your save-file isn't a recommended way of changing your ship, and if you do it, you should exactly know what you are doing.

That's odd - because, as I mentioned, I had just made a new character, so my Cobra III had nothing on it but a pulse laser - ie. the Adder had nothing to inherit from it (well, except said laser). All I did when I edited the file was to replace cobra3-player with the Griff normalmapped equivalent, player version, no other changes... The new ship came with the x-cargo-bay, a fact I actually only noticed later when remembering that the Adder wasn't supposed to have double-digit capacity.

myst.RAVEN wrote:

That's odd - because, as I mentioned, I had just made a new character, so my Cobra III had nothing on it but a pulse laser - ie. the Adder had nothing to inherit from it (well, except said laser). .

Not odd as when you edit the saved game you should edit all relevant info. e.g. "max_cargo"
When you load a game, Oolite is not recalculating this value that can be changed by large bays or passenger cabins. Instead it trust this value to be correct. And it is always correct when not editing by hand.

Ah, thanks Eric, I will take a look, then. What I still find strange is the fact that an extended cargo bay was actually added to my ship (it's listed in the manifest), even though a Cobra Mk III does not start with one.