Oolite Bulletins

I have just upgraded to 1.75.1 and I'm flying a Supacobra.

Has something changed regarding maintenance overhauls? I seem to be needing one every 4-5 jumps even if I have avoided combat. I would expect the cost to be higher for a Supercobra but it seems a bit frequent to me!

I don't think that anything has changed. Does this happen also with just the Supercobra OXP installed? Does it happen with the standard Cobra MKIII or any other ship too?

Hmm come to think of it I changed how I was doing it. I'm using Griff's normal Cobra III which I tweaked to be a supercobra by adjusting the stats (That was after I had actually bought a 'proper' Supercobra so I didnt actually cheat).

So do you think the Supercobra oxp could be affecting it?

It could be an OXP, but at the moment I am trying to see if this could be a core game thing or not. I asked you to check with the Supercobra only, because you need this OXP to be installed anyway if this is the player's ship.

OK I'll have to check that tomorrow now. Although as I mentioned technically I suppose I'm not flying it because of the oxp now. Originally I did buy one, and then when I saw Griff's normal mapped Cobra III (Player version) I adjusted its stats and name and used that instead. I left the supercobra oxp in the game so I could still see the odd one floating about.

I think Thargoid has nailed it.

You say that what you're actually flying is a Griff Cobra, which has subentities. Also, at least some versions of Griff Cobra player ships are frangible by accident, meaning that parts of the ship can be shot off, although that's not how it's supposed to be.

As you have already tweaked the shipdata in order to give the ship Supercobra-stats you probably won't mind making another tweak by adding the frangible key and setting it to no. This will remove the frangibility, and therefore the need for frequent maintenance overhauls.

I don't know if I am adding any relevant info to this problem, but here is my log of my recent overhauls.

Maintenance Overhauls
Game-Date Cost Duration Interval between overhauls
2084627 22000 3 days
2084636 16500 2 days 6 days later
2084643 22000 2 days 5 days later
2084649 22000 2 days 4 days later
2084654 22000 2 days 3 days later
2084656 44000 5 days 1 HOUR LATER!!

There seems to be a pattern, I presumed some inner game mechanism that behaved like real life and old cars. So I bought a new ship at this point.
I was flying a Falcon (frangible?), and was doing some combat, so I wasn't terribly surprised at first.
But it became too much and I thought of this log. At that point I would panic in RL. so did the equivalent in game.

If it is not part of the game it is awfully like real life with an old motor! I know.

Malcul

How do you normally dock? If you scrape the walls on your way in, subentities can be destroyed easily, and that means a new overhaul, even if just had one 5 minutes before!

! I normally dock without bashing my bumpers, using the quick dock method.
However I was on a Gal Navy session, interacting with aliens, so I would have collected one or two knocks!
... but would it have produced the pattern as shown, with regularly decreasing intervals?

Never having experienced it before, I wondered about the sneaky injection of reality into 1.75.1 with the increase of mishaps, breakdowns and service charges with the onset of older ageing ships.

Not that I'm paranoid at all, at all.

Just as Thargoid mentioned with bits getting shot off. With the Caduceus it can happen too often for the Black Monk account. So I set them to -no-. I realized soon with 1.75 I was needing an overhaul far too often, but not now.

With more and more sub entity models now and hopefully many more to come, perhaps there ought to be a body repair shop option at a lower cost rather than include them in a more expensive maintainence overhaul.

TGHC wrote:

With more and more sub entity models now and hopefully many more to come, perhaps there ought to be a body repair shop option at a lower cost rather than include them in a more expensive maintainence overhaul.

I would say that when a full engine was blown off, that would be more costly than just a bit of maintenance. That is the price of flying ships with frangible parts.

The idea of requiring maintenance overhauls for lost parts makes sense, but it clearly conflicts with preexisting ships. I think we should disable this for 1.x. OXPers who want this kind of behaviour can damage equipment in response to subentity damage instead.

Ahruman wrote:

The idea of requiring maintenance overhauls for lost parts makes sense, but it clearly conflicts with preexisting ships.

That's what I was thinking, you have clearly identified the issue, as opposed to my poor attempt at solution hunting.