Oolite Bulletins

OK, so I can't make beautiful textures or model striking ships, but I can write a bit of javascript. So I was wondering what I could do with that, and then I was inspired by the final act of the Long Way Round mission.

Civil War

But first I wanted to check if anyone else had done anything similar, and get input from more experienced scripters as to what was possible and what wasn't.

So the basic idea is this:

Many planets in the galaxy are in a state of civil war (I have only checked the first two galactic sectors, but there are 24 in gal1 and 20 in gal2)

All sorts of governments and tech levels are involved (strangely, corporate states and democracies seem to be the most vulnerable!).

Such planets may be

Scourged
Cursed
Ravaged
Plagued
Beset

by civil war, and the war itself can be

Deadly
Dreadful
Frequent
Occasional
Unpredictable

(please let me know if I've missed any)

So I want to create new roles for some ships that may or not spawn in the system. The exact names for the ships will vary by government, economy and tech level (e.g. they may be Maoists or Counterrevolutionaries in Communist systems, Ecoterrorists or Anticapitalists in Corp State systems etc. Multigovernment and Feudal systems may have multiple factions) but the roles fall into these main groups:

Terrorists - attack anyone (presumably the pirates role will do)
Resistance - attack only System Ships, leave civilians alone
Factionalists - attack only other factions

None of this would require new ships, and should allow compatibility with the various system flavour OXPs (Commies, Dictatorships etc.)

I'd also like to see civilian ships flagged as refugee transports. Maybe rock hermits tagged as "refugee camps" etc. Dictatorships could have "resettlement camps". Maybe a mission to destroy the guards, dock and rescue the prisoners....

Future functionality could include the player choosing a "side", fighting for it, and maybe ending the civil war entirely, or even changing the government type of the system! (is this possible?)

Is all of this

a) of interest to anyone
b) possible
c) within the ability of someone who isn't an uber-scripter?

Sounds good! I don't know how much is do-able in terms of 'Core' elements like changes of government etc, but someone here will.
Much of what you suggest probably can be done, and the concept is certainly worth exploring.
I'm the opposite to you, I think, I can't script for toffee, but like to think I can do a decent re-texture, so...

Sounds exciting! I don't script nor do I do fancy graphics or models, but I sure like to play!

You're probably right. If I'm to learn a couple of new scripting systems in order to make it work, I'm better off starting small rather than trying to change the whole Ooniverse in one go.

Although not technically in civil war, Arexe in has always struck me as an interesting place:

"The world Arexe is fabled for its exciting sit coms and its inhabitants' ancient loathing of sit coms."

So I will try a little proof of concept, adding "pro-Sitcom" and "anti-Sitcom" factions, who hate each other's little rodent guts, to Arexe.

I'll have a look at the wiki for information on AIscripting. Any tips for beginners?

Ragged wrote:

I'll have a look at the wiki for information on AIscripting. Any tips for beginners?

You've got your first tip right there, read the wiki.

Then select a few OXPs that are along similar lines to your one and look at their scripting. See how they work and how the bits hang together (don't forget the trunk mission scripts too).

And if all else fails, ask here

Ragged wrote:

I'll have a look at the wiki for information on AIscripting. Any tips for beginners?

When you are familiar wit JS, the AI scripting might give you biggest headache. It takes some time to fully understand the detailed working. Specially for complex scripts, the code can blow in your face.

After you read the relevant bits in the wiki, you probably should analyse the execution of known scripts. This is done with the console. Target a ship and set the AI logging for that ship on by typing "player.ship.target.reportAIMessages = true" (see: reportAIMessages. All the executed AI commands and their responses are now written to your log. I always found this helpful when ships behaved different than expected. (I assume you are on windows as the mac version of the console has some extra features that are very helpful in following running AI scripts.)

This idea certainly gets my vote!

I love this idea.

Ragged wrote:

Although not technically in civil war, Arexe in has always struck me as an interesting place:

"The world Arexe is fabled for its exciting sit coms and its inhabitants' ancient loathing of sit coms."

So I will try a little proof of concept, adding "pro-Sitcom" and "anti-Sitcom" factions, who hate each other's little rodent guts, to Arexe.

I'll have a look at the wiki for information on AIscripting. Any tips for beginners?

I had an idea for a Revolution! OXP, then I never got around to doing (because I would have to learn JS first) where a Corp planet suddenly has a revolution and X number of ships engage in battle against Vipers from the station. The player must make a choice. Aid the current regime or aid the revolutionaries.

Aid the winners and you get money and your criminal rep wiped clean.
Aid the losers and you're a fugitive.
If the revolutionaries win, the planet becomes Communist (they need to come from somewhere...),
If you destroy both sides, the planet falls into Anarchy.

Just as a matter of personal preference, I'd only want this to happen at a world already reported as being in a civil war. Might be a bit too rude a shock to discover otherwise -- getting killed by extremely organized "pirates" and not know why.

Multi-governments are already prime locations for civil wars -- their different factions could be fighting in space for complete control of the system. So...are there any multi-gov systems already explicitly stated as in a civil war?

In Galaxy1 alone there are four Multi-Governments in civil war:

# 6. Rabedira
The planet Rabedira is well known for its inhabitants' ancient loathing of sit coms but ravaged by dreadful civil war.

# 70. Regeatge
Regeatge is reasonably well known for its great dense forests but scourged by frequent civil war.

#125. Encereso
Encereso is cursed by dreadful civil war.

#253. Rateedar
Rateedar is cursed by dreadful civil war.

Hmm, sit coms do seem to be implicated quite a lot. I admit I too have felt homicidal at another bloody series of "My Family".

My eventual plan is that the scripts would scan the system description, looking for the string "civil war", and then spawn combatants, with the frequency depending on whether the civil war is "occasional", "frequent", "deadly" etc.

Those all seem unlikely to be visited while doing cargo runs, unless they happen to be the destination. Whether any of their violence is severe enough to spill over into neighboring systems...depends on how bad the civil wars are.

I had this plan that the Corporate State Worlds would actually be in the control of one of those hundreds of companies from YAH, and occasionally they would descend to Anarchies while a "hostile take-over" happened, before the system settled back to being a (newly rebranded) Corporate State from a different company.

But I can't script and I have no time, so the idea resides only in my brain (and now here too!)

Clever idea, DH... and all too plausible.

El Viejo wrote:

Clever idea, DH... and all too plausible.

Thanks EV - I've decided that I'm just an ideas man (and of course a bit of fiction, internally and externally to the game to enrich it as best I can), so as I now freely admit that I have neither the skill nor the time to implement what I'd like to see, I thought I'd best put it out there, just in case somebody else wanted to run with it.