Scanning Missions

One thing I always remember about EVE online is the asteroid scanning tasks. So I've been trying to put together a way to scan for starters a comet in EV Nova. The way I went about it is to have a scanner as a planet type weapon that deals 1 armor damage and a comet as a planet type ship with 1 armor. The comet is destroyed allowing the game to throw a message to the player that Comet has been scanned, and then the comet escape ships another comet. The effect is supposed to be that nothing has happened to the comet but the player receives a message after the comet is 'scanned'. The problem I've run into is that the comet only uses its identical escape ship about half the time, and it needs to happen every time. I'll leave this here of anyone knows what might be going on with it, or can think of a better solution for a scanning type of mission.
http://corndog.frees...mages/COMET.zip

You could just set the mission objective to be observing the comet. Just enter the system and it's scanned. Since the player can scan everything else in the system as soon as they jump in, why wouldn't a comet work the same way?

Setting the ship event to observe would make a neat effect if there was a way to have the event's message be proximity dependent. Something more involving than jumping into the system alone or having the comet jump in. The problem with my solution might be graphical, like that a death delay of only 5 frames is not long enough for the escape ship to show up every time. Weirdly an escape pod will always appear if the ship is told to use one, even with such a short death delay.

I wonder if something could be done with a mission failure, actually? Give the player an invisible outfit, and set the ship to scan it instead? Set the mission to avoid getting scanned, and when it fails, give the text you want?

It's kind of a roundabout way to produce the desired effect, but so was my solution. So the player gets scanned after a moment of observation, and then the on fail triggers a new mission to start to complete the original mission. Great idea, why didn't I think of that?

I'm extremely rusty, but won't this only work as long as the player isn't scanned by any other craft?

I think you can set it to avoid getting scanned by a specific government, ala the Palladium run (don't get caught by the Feds.) So, you'd have to set the comet to have its own government. Not 100% sure if that's the case, you'd have to double check that.

Kruger is right. Give the comet its own gövt with its own scan mask that no other gövt uses, and only the comet will scan the player once they get close enough. You can even leave the Target Name field blank for its gövt so the comet in-game doesn't appear to belong to any faction.

It's quite ingenious really. Good job Kruger.

Give me a good job if it actually works. At this point, it's a theory, and I haven't broken out a copy of EVNEW or Mission Computer in years to be able to test it.

It works all right. But there is one thing to make it seem like the player is scanning the comet, not the other way around. Looking at the string resources for scanning, it's modular. So the entire message that the player sees when scanned is composed of several substrings. But the problem is every govt uses the same protocol, not sure if there is a way to change it for a single, in this case the comet, govt.

I just checked myself. The illegal scanning strings appear to be at entries 375-383 in STR# resource ID 2002, "misc strings". Nowhere can I find unique strings for any gövt. You would have the change those lines, or at least the ones used for scanning of illegal outfits, so the comet doesn't appear to be scolding the player. But then of course you'd have any ship that does detect illegal outfits on the player sound like they were scanned by you.

So it'll work, but to make it look perfect, you'd have to eliminate illegal outfits. At least we're closer to a working solution?

Decided to approach it from a different angle. So instead of the original idea of destroying the comet which then escape ships the same sprite, I'm using the chase out ship event instead. That way the scan complete message shows up after the comet jumps out. The effect is seemless if the comet has a high enough ship speed, fast jumping, the turn radius can be at most 3 or 4. Then the comet is given a basically silent weapon and has 'jump when out of ammo' set to true. The comet scanner is still a weapon with very low damage, just enough to get the comet to fire all ammo. There are different problems with the comet ship AI though. For one the comet sometimes takes a butt long time to jump out even after depleting all ammo, for some reason. Probably has to do with the very low turn radius.

It occurs to me that you might want to try adding an outfit with Fast Jumping (which I am almost sure is unrelated to the fast jumping ship flag) such as the Tunnelling Organ which allows you to jump without slowing down. I know most outfits don’t have any effect on AI ships but given that the cloaking outfits do, it is possible that it could be an undocumented feature (a quick search didn’t turn up anything at least). The fact that AI ships are equipped with Tunnelling Organs and there is no other way that I know of to create this behavior makes it at least seem possible. If it works it should reduce the jump delay you’re experiencing.

Well that was a silly mistake to make. Shows that you should never answer questions after being away for a while without re-reading the possibilities. What I was obviously suggesting is that you tag the ship “can jump without slowing down” which is a separate flag from Fast Jumping. Still the basic point was a valid one; if you haven’t already tried this it may solve some of your problem.

To get an effect of realistic inertia, the comet needs to have fast jumping turned on. Considering the comet ship has a turn very low turn radius, with fast jumping off it won't rotate before jumping like most ships; but it will pause before jumping. So yes to get a seemless effect when the comet jumps out (so triggering the on ship complete flag for the mission), the comet must have fast jumping checked.
This is all well and good for a reasonable solution graphically and logically, when it works at all. For some reason the comet sometimes will choose not to run out of the system, even though it a) is under attack and is out of ammo while c) the run away when out of ammo option is set. Which is maddening, and happens as often as not.

Do you have the comet's AI set to wimpy trader? Both in the ship itself and the düde resource you use to spawn it in the mission?

Yeh, ot could be an AI thing. I tried every combination of setting between the ship and düde but to no avail. As a wimpy trader the comet ran when out of ammo like it ought, but the problem was the wimpy trader attribute of hovering over spobs. The comet was somehow able to do that even with a 0 turn radius, although come to think of it that's something that would happen if a ship is inertialess. Eh, quickly discover that the solution is usually not so cut and dried as you think it is.

Does the comet have to appear in an inhabited system? If it was uninhabited, then there would be no spöbs to hover over.