Oolite Bulletins

Posted: **Mon Aug 30, 2010 6:32 pm**

The Ships Systems Department of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation introduce their latest development - the HyperCargo system. This is a modernised and updated version of the cargo compression system famously used on larger ships like the Anaconda, now available for any ship (although fitting it to one without a cargo hold is fairly pointless).

Once fitted, it can be accessed by going to the manifest screen (F5 when docked, or F5-F5 when in flight) and then selecting the normal market screen (F8) from there. This will allow hold-space cargo to be loaded into the system, and unloaded again back to the normal cargo bay (if sufficient space is available). Whilst running the system continually draws a small amount of energy from the ship, so the recharging of other systems such as shields may be affected.

The system is reliable, although on rare occasions it has been known that cargo stored in it can be lost if a malfunction occurs during unloading. Also should the system become damaged, the stored cargo is invariably lost as the witchspace bubble in which it is stored collapses. It is an "all or nothing" system - the whole of the content of the cargo hold must be stored at once, and it is not possible to restore only part of a stored cargo manifest. As they are stored separately in the ship safe, valuables such as gold, platinum and gem stones are not affected by the HyperCargo system.

The maximum volume of cargo that can be stored depends on the size of the cargo hold of the ship to which the system is fitted, as it must be used as a staging post for loading and unloading the system. Also such cargo is non-transferrable between ships, and is not covered by escape pod insurance policies (as with normal cargo).

Also it should be noted that GalCop have insisted that all HyperCargo systems are scannable by them for illegal merchandise. Anyone caught leaving a GalCop station with illegal material stored in their HyperCargo system will be subject to the same penalties as if the items were stored in their regular cargo hold. It has been rumoured however that on occasions a software hack is available via the underworld on some of the higher-tech but less law abiding worlds which can mask this. Such modifications are deemed illegal by GalCop, and tend to make the systems run less reliably and malfunction more.

Requires v1.74 or later of Oolite. It will not run on older versions.

- - = = Download HyperCargo OXP here = = - -

Posted: **Mon Aug 30, 2010 7:43 pm**

Sounds almost like a sort of a cargo bay version of a "bag of holding". LOL

Ingenious. As a possible handwavium for the occasional cargo loss, maybe something passed too close by the location in witchspace that the storage "bubble" would correspond to?

Posted: **Mon Aug 30, 2010 10:14 pm**

Thanks for this Thargoid. It is ingenious. However, I'd like to be able to sell/remove it (perhaps via the Sell equipment OXP) too.

Posted: **Tue Aug 31, 2010 5:58 am**

Ganelon wrote:
Sounds almost like a sort of a cargo bay version of a "bag of holding". LOL

Or a lady's handbag

Posted: **Tue Aug 31, 2010 3:13 pm**

UK_Eliter wrote:
Thanks for this Thargoid. It is ingenious. However, I'd like to be able to sell/remove it (perhaps via the Sell equipment OXP) too.

Well, it "should" be easy to remove by simply adding another piece of Equipment that "sells" it, perhaps with a price penalty, since used stuff is allways cheaper..

Welcome to Wootta's Shop, parts found here for your racing mamba or trading Cobbi. discretion a must, 10000 hours guaranty for any part found here.

but may break when bought from shabby shop keepers no responding to hand vavium

Cheers Frame...

Posted: **Tue Aug 31, 2010 4:06 pm**

Yes such coding would be easy, but having tried it with an item or two in the past I don't really like the concept. Hence I don't normally code it into OXPs, as removing such items never seems to fit right for me. Especially this one, as it would have to be custom-fitted depending on the cargo bay size and shape (ie ship type), so a second hand resale doesn't make much sense.

Ergo whilst it could be done, I'm probably not going to. If you want rid of it, sell your ship

Posted: **Fri Sep 03, 2010 5:51 pm**

Silly question: Is Machinery not supposed to be handled by HyperCargo?

Also, it seems to me that an important time to check for HyperCargo failures is when you hyperspace jump. Hard to keep a link to it when your own ship is tearing holes through space/time/reality.

If the ship's badly in need of maintenance, then that also might raise the failure rate slightly.

I must admit, HyperCargo is quite a steal for 12k credits even with the chance of failure from ordinary use.
I've already started buying differently, buying up lower-value cargo first and putting it into the HyperCargo storage.
Currently, I'm using a Python with it, so I can move around 115tc at a time.

Posted: **Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:01 pm**

It is supposed to yes, only gold, platinum and gemstones are supposed to be ignored. I'll check on that one.

I was thinking about using witchspace jumps (1% cumulative chance per jump until you unloaded and reloaded), but it seemed excessively complex. The chance of failure was just added in to stop it getting too powerful and to give it an edge of risk.

Posted: **Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:40 pm**

Might be easier if you do have chance-of-failure on hyperspace jumps to only do a simply fixed percentage (1% or 5%) check.

The hack to allow hidden contraband...seems more trouble than it's worth. After ~20 uses of the HyperCargo, you've probably had at least 1 failure.

Posted: **Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:52 pm**

OK, version 1.01 now uploaded with the following changes:

1) Machinery is now stored correctly.
2) There is either a 1% or 5% chance per witchspace jump of the system failing (depending on whether your system is "under warranty" or not ).

If you update from v1.00 to v1.01, the stored cargo from alloys onward will not be correct (machinery is in the middle of the list, so everything will shift by one cargo type and alien items will be zero). So I would recommend to empty your hypercargo system before updating the OXP.

Posted: **Sun Sep 05, 2010 9:05 pm**

Ok, very bad things are happening...up to and including sudden death of the player's ship.

Consider the last change to add the missing cargo type (Machinery) here:
this.cargoNameArray = ["food", "textiles", "radioactives", "slaves", "liquor/wines", "luxuries", "narcotics", "computers", "machinery", "alloys", "firearms", "furs", "minerals", "alien items"];

And...this line here:
player.bounty += this.storedArray[3] + (2 * this.storedArray[6]) + this.storedArray[9];

For why I'm dying horribly and quickly...but only sometimes...when I leave the main station.

Posted: **Sun Sep 05, 2010 9:19 pm**

Well you will carry those illegal alloys

You are quite right, the [9] should be a [10]. I thought I'd changed that, but obviously I didn't. I'll upload v1.02 in a moment with that corrected, although you can just change the line in the script if you prefer.

Posted: **Sun Sep 05, 2010 10:21 pm**

I can change it on my own version.

I was bloody pulling my hair out trying to figure out what was going on that was making the police vipers around the station...sometimes...go nuts on me.

Didn't even cross my mind at first that it could be HyperCargo and alloys.

Quite a fun troubleshooting and debugging adventure...I discovered a couple minor things about other OXPs looking for possible causes to this.

Searching for "player.bounty" among ALL the OXP files was what finally allowed me to find it.

Strangely, FTZ doesn't use that to increase your bounty...and no doubt other OXPs are the same way. So finding other OXPs that mess with the player's legal status can be hit-or-miss using any particular search term.

Posted: **Fri May 20, 2011 2:31 am**

Should HyperCargo fail when not in use?

Posted: **Fri May 20, 2011 4:39 pm**

Yes, it's a random chance per witchspace jump, which grows with continued use. But just because you don't have cargo in it doesn't mean that the system is completely switched off.

Oolite Bulletins

HyperCargo OXP

HyperCargo OXP

Re: [Bugfix] HyperCargo OXP - v1.02 (needs Oolite 1.74)

Re: [Bugfix] HyperCargo OXP - v1.02 (needs Oolite 1.74)