[SCRIPT] Salvage Commands & NPCs v1.5 [2008-11-20]

[TSM]

Great Script, but would it be possible for salvaging ship to ask where to send claimed ships for instance my carrier is normally in same sector as the salvager, or in the case of some sectors I have a station

[mrscribbler]

Ok, I've found a bug. It seems that sector salvagers are trying to salvaging ship that either have Unknown Object as pilot. Not succeeding, mind you, but trying.

Otherwise, I love the script.

[mrscribbler]

Great Script, but would it be possible for salvaging ship to ask where to send claimed ships for instance my carrier is normally in same sector as the salvager, or in the case of some sectors I have a station

I second this, although I think it should just be based on the homebase of the salvager.

[TSM]

Great Script, but would it be possible for salvaging ship to ask where to send claimed ships for instance my carrier is normally in same sector as the salvager, or in the case of some sectors I have a station

I second this, although I think it should just be based on the homebase of the salvager.

i did not think of that

[ThisIsHarsh]

Ok, I've found a bug. It seems that sector salvagers are trying to salvaging ship that either have Unknown Object as pilot. Not succeeding, mind you, but trying.

So are these Unknown Object piloted ships active, or abandoned but for some reason still have a pilot? Are they xenon/khaak ships or normal race ships? Are you running any script that adds ships to the universe (besides this one of course)?


@mrscribbler & TSM: That is a good idea and not too difficult to add. I'll modify to have newly claimed ships move to homebase if the homebase is a ship, or shipyard otherwise.... OK? - I can imagine this being very useful if using Graxter's Mobile Ship Repairs script or tataku's Marine Repairs script, and using the repair ship as homebase.

[TSM]

Ok, I've found a bug. It seems that sector salvagers are trying to salvaging ship that either have Unknown Object as pilot. Not succeeding, mind you, but trying.

So are these Unknown Object piloted ships active, or abandoned but for some reason still have a pilot? Are they xenon/khaak ships or normal race ships? Are you running any script that adds ships to the universe (besides this one of course)?


@mrscribbler & TSM: That is a good idea and not too difficult to add. I'll modify to have newly claimed ships move to homebase if the homebase is a ship, or shipyard otherwise.... OK?

Fine with me your the brains

[mrscribbler]

Ok, I've found a bug. It seems that sector salvagers are trying to salvaging ship that either have Unknown Object as pilot. Not succeeding, mind you, but trying.

So are these Unknown Object piloted ships active, or abandoned but for some reason still have a pilot? Are they xenon/khaak ships or normal race ships? Are you running any script that adds ships to the universe (besides this one of course)?

Well, I know for sure of 2 instances. The bigger one is from the second (I think) OTAS mission. The one where you escort a convoy. It ended up spawning loads of Pirate Ospreys and Centaurs, and a few M3-6s, though they never turned red (possibly because every one of them spawned with 0 bravado rating). All of them seem to be piloted by Unknown Object, and all of them have a bravado rating of 0...I managed to cap about 300 mil worth of them before I got bored (that's just hulls -- I didn't bother selling their equipment yet). And I managed to cap most of them with 90+% hull.



Anyway, I just sent a Disco to start salvaging my caps when I realized that it was doing nothing of the sort. So I checked, and it was going after a still piloted and active ship.

Ok, second example is in Omicron Lyrae. I just set my Maggy to salvage, only to have her go after the (piloted) merc ships that seem to follow the Exterminator (I think). As such. I turned it off. Mind you, another time, I somehow managed to salvage a bunch of merc ships -- not sure how -- except that whenever their orders cleared, they went to idle. It was funny getting rid of them...in a frustrating kind of way.

@mrscribbler & TSM: That is a good idea and not too difficult to add. I'll modify to have newly claimed ships move to homebase if the homebase is a ship, or shipyard otherwise.... OK? - I can imagine this being very useful if using Graxter's Mobile Ship Repairs script or tataku's Marine Repairs script, and using the repair ship as homebase.

Sounds good. I use the Marine Repairs script myself, and the less I gotta micromanage for it, the better. That said, I wonder if you would include a strip equipment command to the ships themselves? Or maybe a way to sell a bunch of ships without sending them to the shipyard, so long as you pay a fee? Would mean that early on, people would of course baby the ships all the way to the yards, but later on fixing, stripping and selling and being done with them sounds way more appealing.

[mrscribbler]

Thisisharsh, something I forgot. How about make it so that, if the ship doing the salvaging is a carrier, any ships capable of docking dock, while all others are sent to the shipyard?

[ThisIsHarsh]

@mrscribbler: Thanks a lot for that feedback, extremely useful and detailed. I'll get this issue sorted out for the next version.

[smbh]

Jump in to a Xenon sector known to be trafficked by braindead NPCs , clean up, call your fast salvagers - LOTS of ships gained

By the way, it would be nice to have the option of the salvaged ships autonamed , it get hard to keep track of all Your <insert name> floating around .

[TSM]

any idea's on time frame for this update

[Kragma]

do the NPC salvagers "reserve" ships in advance of claiming them?

I had an odd issue yesterday with a station defence mission that sent a load of pirates at me - managed (with cycrows npc bail script) to get 2 M6's and an M8 to bail but I couldn't claim any of the ships.

The pilots definitely bail as I see them floating around in their tin foil suits, but the ship doesn't seem to empty correctly, when i click on the target i have the option to 'Scan' (as if it is still piloted) but not to claim.

Then I see there are 2-3 NPC salvagers making their way to the ships, they roll up and then claim the ships and fly off with my bounty.

I then reloaded the autosave at the station to try again - this time I managed to get 1 M6 to bail, hit the salvage hotkey immediately but same problem. It seems that the NPC salvagers somehow lay claim to the ship even though they are still several k away and I am unable to take control of them (using both the Salvage hotkey script and the usual eject from ship and close to 35m method).

Any ideas?

Not sure if this is just localised to the one sector as I havent seen this problem before and have yet to try another mission since.

[dragonsblade71uk]

New 1 for ya, although not sure you can fix this as seems to be related to the core game bug.
My salvager is running around chasing the BLUE Pirates in HOME of LIGHT.
I have got too that point where it seems the game will spawn pirates in sectors and they are BLUE (as in friendly).

This ofc means that the salvager is now totally useless as it will just spend it`s time trying to claim an active ship.

I tried cheat claiming the ship it was chasing and it just selected another ACTIVE Blue pirate in the sector.
As many of the sectors now have them, it will never claim actual abandoned ships.

[ThisIsHarsh]

do the NPC salvagers "reserve" ships in advance of claiming them?

. . .

The pilots definitely bail as I see them floating around in their tin foil suits, but the ship doesn't seem to empty correctly, when i click on the target i have the option to 'Scan' (as if it is still piloted) but not to claim.

Then I see there are 2-3 NPC salvagers making their way to the ships, they roll up and then claim the ships and fly off with my bounty.

No, they don't reserve ships, they simply fly to the sector then begin 'Sector salvager' command - exactly the same as if you used that command. You should be able to claim the dodgy abandoned ships using Salvage Claim Software still. However, in the next version of NPC Bail Addon I have prevented such unclaimable ships from bailing, so it shouldn't be an issue in future.

New 1 for ya, although not sure you can fix this as seems to be related to the core game bug.
My salvager is running around chasing the BLUE Pirates in HOME of LIGHT.
I have got too that point where it seems the game will spawn pirates in sectors and they are BLUE (as in friendly).

Yeah, this is already fixed for the next version, just not added all the features I wanted yet so been holding off on the upload. I'll probably upload a fix update for the weekend and add the new features in a separate update.

. . .

So yeah a new update due hopefully this evening if not tomorrow.

[corhen]

w8, so ships you wont beable to claim wont bail??
wont that massivly change the Bail rate??

[ThisIsHarsh]

w8, so ships you wont beable to claim wont bail??
wont that massivly change the Bail rate??

It will only affect certain mission ships and plot ships. So yes, in a way it will affect the bail rate, but only for mission critical ships, and only for some missions. E.g. I've never had a problem with patrol missions, but I (finally!) found a station defence mission where the ships are configured somewhat oddly and you can't claim them the normal way, so I disabled bailing for such weird ships since it can cause some unexpected behaviour and was obviously not wanted by the mission designers.

I may add an option to keep allowing such ships to bail, but with a disclaimer that it may cause unintended results...

[Kragma]

thx for all your work Harsh - same goes to all the scripters out there who help improve on an already awesome game!

FYI I restarted the same mission last night to test some things out, and it seems that something has slightly changed in how the salvage command works (think i re-initiated the script or uninstalled / reinstalled to test) and what happens now is I can claim the ships only if I fly into close range where pressing 'info' will bring up details of the ships loadout / cargo etc (think its less than 2k or 1.5k, something like that) - then it seems to be cappable.

Outside this range (between 2-5k) when i try to claim I get a voiceover telling me 'command rejected' or somesuch.

Any ideas? It's not a big deal really as being able to cap a ship from 5k out was a bit of a luxury!

[corhen]

this is a vote to allow it to be disabled!
about 90% of all the ships that bail in my game are uncapturable! so i would have to crank the bail settings to 100% before i got a decent bail rate.

I will wait until you enable that feature (an on/off switch) before DLing the new version

[ThisIsHarsh]

thx for all your work Harsh - same goes to all the scripters out there who help improve on an already awesome game!

FYI I restarted the same mission last night to test some things out, and it seems that something has slightly changed in how the salvage command works (think i re-initiated the script or uninstalled / reinstalled to test) and what happens now is I can claim the ships only if I fly into close range where pressing 'info' will bring up details of the ships loadout / cargo etc (think its less than 2k or 1.5k, something like that) - then it seems to be cappable.

Outside this range (between 2-5k) when i try to claim I get a voiceover telling me 'command rejected' or somesuch.

Any ideas? It's not a big deal really as being able to cap a ship from 5k out was a bit of a luxury!

You mean the Piracy menu "Claim ship" command? If that is what you are talking about then it has to do with Cycrow's Salvage Claim Software - used by this plugin, but a completely seperate plugin in it's own right. Could be that Cycrow has decided to modify the range. Check the Salvage Claim Software thread (link in OP or in sticky).

[Grimm Spector]

you really need to host your files somewhere else, the people that run this ugly site do not know how to configure a web server and it's really annoying to have to try 3000000 times to download the file...