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Factions OXP (Update, version 1.11/1.12)

Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 11:34 am
by m4r35n357
Version 1.11, URL in signature.

Changes in latest version (scroll down for full changelog & docs):
- Mercenary immersion enhancement: the various participants might just recognize you in future battles if you annoy them enough
- Reduced the default odds of a battle to 25%, tune to taste


Factions/Multigovernment OXP , Version 1.11, © 2011, 2012 m4r35n357 (Ian Smith)


Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license


Dependencies:

* Oolite 1.75 or later
* Cabal Common Library v1.2 or later (for random integer fuction)
* Anarchies, Commies, Dictators, The Feudal States, Galactic navy

Optional:
* OXPCOnfig, latest version (can't remember exactly when my OXP was "registered")

OK, what is this OXP? Well, multigovernment systems exist in a dynamic ooniverse; things change, and the government type is merely a label, representing nothing more than a snapshot in time. In practice some multigovernments might be relatively stable, others might be spiralling towards anarchy, and yet others are shortly about to attain the nirvana^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrelative stability of outright communism, dictatorship or feudalism. This OXP scenario is just one of many possible mechanisms of making that transition.

Or . . .

Do you harbour secret annihilation fantasies, or perhaps even fancy your chances as a mercenary? Step up commander, 100CR bounty for each of these vermin, it will be well earned!


The Warring Parties

At higher techlevel systems, the only factions with the means & motivation to take on Galcop are the Communists & Dictatorships. At lower tech level systems the cost of entry (level of Galcop resistance) is lower, allowing Feudal & sometimes even local warlord militias to participate. The warring parties have already infiltrated the system and are waiting somewhere near the space lanes for all their enemies to turn up. Therefore they have more important things on their minds, and will all ignore you, unless you become an irritation or worse . . . On the other hand, there is a reasonable bounty available, so if you have previously toyed with the idea of becoming a mercenary, here's your chance. Be warned though, they are professionals and will robustly protect each other from ambitious part-timers . . .


The Galactic Navy

Obviously the Navy need to nip this kind of behaviour in the bud (they prefer these things to be done via the "official" channels), but will prioritize their efforts on defending high tech level systems so at the lower tech level systems their presence might be nominal at best. The Navy contingent, on learning about the imminent unrest, will enter at the witchpoint and make their way towards the planet (frequently hindered by pirate activity). Whether they make it in time and in sufficient numbers is down to chance (and you!).


Pirates

This is a multigovernment system, so don't think you can run & hide from pirates amongst the melee; they will still hunt you down like a dog. There is an outside chance they will attack the warring parties, but don't rely on it. They will also slow the progress of the GalCop task force, so your behaviour towards them can influence the result of the conflict.


You

Well, you can treat this as a tourist attraction or as assisted suicide, the choice is yours! Make full use of the colour-coded scanner displays and the ident/targetting info and choose your response wisely. How many factions do you want to tangle with? A friendly suggestion: zero or one . . . ?


What this OXP does, in English:

The idea is to add a point of interest to Multigovernment systems, since they have been a bit neglected ;) The whole shebang unfolds in real time, creating up to 30 mins of fighting time until the eventual confrontation with GalCop, if they get that far! You have time to dip in, fly through, dock & return if you want to . . .

1 Teams from each of: anarchy, feudal, dictatorship & communist systems approach the midpoint of the space lane and start fighting, They only fight with ships of opposing factions (!).
2 Each team member can call for assistance when its energy is low, this depends on how occupied the other team members are at the time.
3 The player being may opt to express its political views by attacking ships from one or more of the factions, they will remember this for the duration of the run only. Whether you pay the ultimate price depends again on how busy the particular faction member are.
4 If you kill one of them (or their father), prepare to die!
5 There are funky colour-coded scanner displays to help you sort out who is whom.
6 That's it, I think.


Other uses:

During play testing it also occurred to me that this code would be useful for ship combat/uberness testing too, eg. a team of stock NPC cobras vs your brand spanking new ship. There are lots of good stats available from the extensive debugging I've built in too, you like match reports?. Anyway, here's the code, you need the systems dependencies (or you can edit shipdata.plist to taste) and CCL. I use colour coding for the scanner so I know what's going one, see script.js for colours. Logging is enabled, and script.js has some other config points to look at.


Danger level:
This OXP does not in itself add to the danger level, that is purely up to the player. Of course, you will be in a multigovernment system so the danger level is already fairly high!


Changes:
Version 1.11
- Mercenary immersion enhancement: the various participants might just recognize you in future battles if you annoy them enough
- Reduced the default odds of a battle to 25%, tune to taste
- Anarchy faction renamed to Local Militia

Version 1.10
- even better confinement of combatants, really nailed it this time, honest ;)
- a couple more ship types for commies & dictators, should reduce number of escorted ships on average & make sides more even
- fixed silly bug where player enemy status was remembered until game exit
- fairer starting conditions, dictators can't race to start & ambush everyone now!

Version 1.9
- better confinement of combatants
- easier to use uber mode

Version 1.8
- fix obscure escort bug
- remove automatic flee response, but let non-ecm ships still flee

Version 1.7
- Various AI tweaks, add a GalCop task force

Version 1.6
- Add comms messages to other faction members when the player attacks
- Eliminate possibility of "friendly fire" incidents between plasma-equipped ships
- Number of participating factions (2-4) now depends on tech level
- Somtimes there is no battle, but hopefully not often enough to be annoying ;)
- Various default shipdata.plist changes, edit these if you don't like my choices!

Version 1.5
- Removed unused shipdata.plist entries

Version 1.4
- Commies now have Giant Rays available
- Galcop can now have a Transport or Behemoth instead of the Frigate

Version 1.3
- Start factions further away from battle site to allow player more time to see the early stages

Version 1.2
- Add licence to README
- Add Danger level to README

Version 1.1
- Raise faction membership to 16 (+ any escorts)
- Make it more dangerous to kill a faction member

Version 1.0
- Botched first release

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 8:35 am
by m4r35n357
Release 1.4
- Commies now have Giant Rays available
- Galcop can now have a Transport or Behemoth instead of the Frigate

http://www.box.net/shared/ylx6ryk28q

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 8:39 am
by Staer9
I am getting a huge line of errors in my log due to like_ship problems, which extra oxp do I need?

Code: Select all

 14:09:24.675 [shipData.merge.failed]: ***** ERROR: one or more shipdata.plist entries have like_ship references that cannot be resolved: hofd-nellie, intercept-argus, intercept-atlas, intercept-bolverk, intercept-Colossus, intercept-geryon, intercept-gog, intercept-goliath, intercept-grid, intercept-loki, intercept-magog, intercept-nimrod, intercept-surt, intercept-talos, intercept-tethys, intercept-titan, intercept-ymir, navy-argus, navy-argus-battlegroup, navy-atlas, navy-atlas-battlegroup, navy-bolverk, navy-bolverk-battlegroup, navy-Colossus, navy-Colossus-battlegroup, navy-geryon, navy-geryon-battlegroup, navy-gog, navy-gog-battlegroup, navy-goliath, navy-goliath-battlegroup, navy-grid, navy-grid-battlegroup, navy-loki, navy-loki-battlegroup, navy-magog, navy-magog-battlegroup, navy-nimrod, navy-nimrod-battlegroup, navy-surt, navy-surt-battlegroup, navy-talos, navy-talos-battlegroup, navy-tethys, navy-tethys-battlegroup, navy-titan, navy-titan-battlegroup, navy-ymir, navy-ymir-battlegroup, picket-argus, picket-atlas, picket-bolverk, picket-colossus, picket-geryon, picket-gog, picket-goliath, picket-grid, picket-loki, picket-magog, picket-nimrod, picket-surt, picket-talos, picket-tethys, picket-titan, picket-ymir

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 8:40 am
by Smivs
Looks like Behemoths to me.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 8:43 am
by Thargoid
And maybe Galactic Navy.oxp as well iirc.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 8:56 am
by m4r35n357
To confirm: this OXP depends on ALL the other systems OXPs.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 9:00 am
by Smivs
From the 'Helpful Links' department.

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Category:Systems_OXPs

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 9:03 am
by m4r35n357
To clarify further, I am referring to the Systems OXPs in http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_List. You do not need Realistic Shipyards ;)

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 9:19 am
by Smivs
Realistic Shipyards is listed as a systems OXP. I have raised this point on the appropriate thread.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 10:16 am
by Eric Walch
m4r35n357 wrote:
Release 1.4
- Commies now have Giant Rays available
As far as I know are "Giant Rays" already part of Commies and are intended to be only available in interstellar space. It would be bad to ignore the intentions of the author by making them available in normal space.

Code: Select all

have like_ship references that cannot be resolved: hofd-nellie,
"hofd-nellie" is a special mission ship from gal-navy. I don't think anybody should make references to mission ships. They should stay exclusive for the oxp that uses them.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 10:30 am
by m4r35n357
Eric Walch wrote:
m4r35n357 wrote:
Release 1.4
- Commies now have Giant Rays available
As far as I know are "Giant Rays" already part of Commies and are intended to be only available in interstellar space. It would be bad to ignore the intentions of the author by making them available in normal space.

Code: Select all

have like_ship references that cannot be resolved: hofd-nellie,
"hofd-nellie" is a special mission ship from gal-navy. I don't think anybody should make references to mission ships. They should stay exclusive for the oxp that uses them.
Yes, I just added them to shipdata.plist and gave them a new role. FWIW I have contacted the authors by PM and have received no indication that they disapprove. If you are one of them (I checked the OXP list for authors) then please accept my apologies for not consulting you, and I will be contacting you by PM.

I am perfectly happy to withdraw this OXP if it causes problems.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 12:55 pm
by m4r35n357
Smivs wrote:
Looks like Behemoths to me.
I would guess that too. Since that is a dependency of Galactic Navy and (optionally) Anarchies, I didn't include it in the explicit list. I'll rectify that in the next version.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 7:44 pm
by m4r35n357
m4r35n357 wrote:
Smivs wrote:
Looks like Behemoths to me.
I would guess that too. Since that is a dependency of Galactic Navy and (optionally) Anarchies, I didn't include it in the explicit list. I'll rectify that in the next version.
Already fixed on wiki, thanks to maik.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 7:53 am
by Eric Walch
I now downloaded the oxp. You have no reference to the hoft-nellie at all, so the above reported missing link is not from your oxp.

The way you use the giant-rays seems no real problem with the original intention. You create a clash between system types. Than it would be logical for the commies to deploy their Giant Ray there. However, it is a carrier and your used AI is not suited for carriers. When one defender requests docking, it will become a sitting duck.
But the original AI of the Giant Ray has a similar problem because in the attack state it also can't handle docking requests. I think it now, in commies.oxp, uses a very, very old verion of the route1patrolAI.

Re: Factions OXP

Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 8:01 am
by Commander McLane
Eric Walch wrote:
I think it now, in commies.oxp, uses a very, very old verion of the route1patrolAI.
I guess so, given that Commies is around virtually unchanged for ages, while at the same time you have really pushed forward Oolite's AIs. :D