Oolite Bulletins

I just attacked a Woma Fuel Transport with four escorts. Usually I go for the escorts first, but this time I targeted the Woma first and killed it while the escorts started firing at me. They couldn't prevent me from killing their mother, and I took them out afterwards.

But while doing so I found it remarkable how fiercely they continued to attack me, even after their mother was already dead. Obviously it was something personal, they wanted revenge. Well, they paid the price.

But it made me think: not all escorts will do their job for personal honour. At least some will be in for the money. After their mother is dead nobody is going to pay them anymore. So wouldn't it be rational for them to break up the fight and leave me alone? I hadn't fired a single shot on any of them up to this point.

I think there should be a probability for escorts to simply flee when their mother dies. When out of range of the fight, they could start to seek for a new employment. Not all escorts, not in all situations, but a probability.

I see where you are coming from, but loyalty reputation is vital, you won't get the work if you keep losing your mothers and the perpetrators get away with it

Regardless of who the escorts are, I really only expect 2 possibilities:
(1)Fight to the death or (2)immediate flee on death of mothership they're escorting.
Pirates are more likely that others to flee, using injectors (of course ) if they have them.
Not like once the mothership is dead they'd be left alone anyway...

Switeck wrote:

Not like once the mothership is dead they'd be left alone anyway...

True. But if there are six escorts all fleeing in different directions, chances are that at least some of them will make it. Keeping on fighting on the other hand will result in certain death for everyone of them.

Commander McLane wrote:

certain death for everyone of them.

Yes, I can see how that could affect their future employment prospects!

On the other hand, there's "heat of the moment" to consider, as well as the fact that the escorts paid money for fuel and maybe missiles in anticipation of being paid. Or being hired again, if one assumes all escorts are paid in full up front (which might not actually be the best policy if you want them to act fiercely loyal).

Seriously, haven't you gone after a ship that "made you waste" a missile or two, even though the injector fuel you go through isn't likely to be paid for by the few canisters of cargo you'll get? I certainly have. LOL It's part of where the fun is.

The escorts may also have had personal friends or family aboard the mother ship, in which case, no quarter is likely to be asked or given.

Yeah, yeah.. The other ships in the game don't actually think or have an emotional response, they're just a few lines of code. But the game is no fun as a game if you think of it like that while playing.

Ganelon wrote:

The escorts may also have had personal friends or family aboard the mother ship, in which case, no quarter is likely to be asked or given.

Yeah, yeah.. The other ships in the game don't actually think or have an emotional response, they're just a few lines of code. But the game is no fun as a game if you think of it like that while playing.

Your reasoning is perfectly fine. That's why I suggested that only some escorts would be leaving the place sometimes.

Ok, I can see where there could be a base chance that some of them would bail out at the first sign of trouble, and some might scamper after the mother gets taken out. Maybe their AI type could change to bounty hunter in some cases, and whatever "fraidy cat" might be as an AI type in other cases.

The way many players seem to play, with rapid system hops, they might never encounter those ex-escorts that would go on wandering that spacelane. But it could be a nice touch for those who do tend to spend a fair bit of time in a system occasionally. Maybe up the ante a little bit by having it so if the fleeing escort survivors make it to the station, the attacker's legal status is affected? "Dead men tell no tales.."

Well, you wouldn't recognize escorts of mothers you killed, because they would be no different from escorts whose mothers were killed by other NPCs. Actually the normal player meets a fair lot of them. If you inspect all those lone ships flying along the corridor, you'll see that a good part of them have escort as their primary role, and route1patrolAI. These are ships that started out as escorts, got their mothers killed, survived the fight, looked for another mother, didn't find one, and finally settled on a new career as bounty hunters. So this kind of thing already happens all the time.

I am merely musing about the special case described in the first post of this thread. I am attacking a mother and killing it while completely disregarding its escorts. Yet, after the mother is already killed and there is nothing to be gained by the escorts, all of them continue to attack me and die. I am merely suggesting that in this special case at least some of them could run away.

Commander McLane wrote:

If you inspect all those lone ships flying along the corridor, you'll see that a good part of them have escort as their primary role, and route1patrolAI. These are ships that started out as escorts, got their mothers killed, survived the fight, looked for another mother, didn't find one, and finally settled on a new career as bounty hunters. So this kind of thing already happens all the time.

In trunk I added code to the route1patrolAI that those ships start looking for a new squadron leader after a fight. For ships without "escort" as their primary role, this will lead to rejection and nothing has changed. But, former escorts might start escorting again when they find a new leader after a fight. I already noticed it happening sometimes.

@ Eric: on a side note, is it possible to make the Woma's tanker-plea dependent on its subentities? During the attack described above I managed to destroy both fuel tanks first, and then killing the 'bare' Woma. Nevertheless, they told me 'Moron! We're carrying fuel'. I thought 'no, you are the morons, you're not carrying it anymore'.

Would it be possible by scripting to detect whether there is at least one tank subentity left and set a different death message, if there isn't?

Would the addition of to the ATTACK_SHIP state of interceptAI do what I want? Or would it have the unwanted side effect that ships which are no escorts and use interceptAI also get the NOT_ESCORTING message and break up the fight unexpectedly?

Commander McLane wrote:

Would the addition of.... to the ATTACK_SHIP state of interceptAI do what I want? Or would it have the unwanted side effect that ships which are no escorts and use interceptAI also get the NOT_ESCORTING message and break up the fight unexpectedly?

You already answered it. It will work for any ships without a mother and therefor also affect single ships using that plist.

To the fuel tanker: Custom messages would be quite easy. I have a look at it. The ship already has a script of its own. One could make the used message dependent on : "this.ship.subEntities.length".

If you have message suggestions, post them here and I'll add them.

The only minor point would be that now a targetCommsMessage is used. 1.74 can only broadcast messages to all ships in range with JS. 1.75 will have the JS equivalent of a targetCommsMessage, but currently I don't want to make it a 1.75+ oxp.

Eric Walch wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Would the addition of.... to the ATTACK_SHIP state of interceptAI do what I want? Or would it have the unwanted side effect that ships which are no escorts and use interceptAI also get the NOT_ESCORTING message and break up the fight unexpectedly?

You already answered it. It will work for any ships without a mother and therefor also affect single ships using that plist.

Yeah, I just tried it out. Not only escorts of dead mothers, but also hunters are breaking up fights randomly. Which could even be a nice touch, but I'd have to make it much rarer, especially as they go through the routine every couple of seconds.

On a side note, there is again a pseudo-random problem. Having a ship with four escorts in my test, after the death of the mother all four rolled a 3 first, and a 2 afterwards. On the third roll they got three 1s and one 2. Looks like they all will produce the same pseudo-random numbers, and I don't know what got in the way of the third roll. Perhaps the next decision by ships 1-3 changed the result for ship 4?

Hmmm, once I killed a python with escorts but instead of them turning and firing they continued in formation leaving me to scoop the cargo and make a nice profit while the escorts continued as if it never happend...

why?, I tried to repeat it but I can't get it to work again...