Escape Pod Locator OXP

Overview

Escape Pod Locator 1.0 (28/7/11)

By another_commander further development by capt murphy - 2011

Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 : Please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ for more info.

Requires Oolite 1.75.2

Equipment Upgrade to the IFF Scanner and Advanced Space Compass that alerts players to escape pod launches occurring in the same system. Pods are marked on the Advanced Space Compass with an ‘E’ and show up as flashing white/green lollipops when in Scanner Range. Also introduces NPC Search and Rescue ships who actively search for pods.

Description

Standard Issue Escape Pods are fitted with a high powered distress beacon which broadcasts on a restricted channel. Until recently equipment to detect these distress calls were limited to Galcop vessels and licensed private Search and Rescue companies.

The authorities and private companies have proved to be less than effective at ensuring the safety of escape pods and a high proportion continue to fall into Slaver or Thargoid hands. Following intense lobbying by Amnesty Intergalactic, Galcop have agreed to license a civilian version of the equipment that can detect escape pod distress calls in an effort to encourage civilian pilots to rescue more pods.

The Escape Pod Locator is available from planets of tech level 8 or higher for 1250 credits, requires the Advanced Space Compass to be fitted and is restricted to pilots with a clean legal status. Galcop have also fitted fail-safes to avoid the equipment falling into criminal hands and it is automatically disabled if the ship it is fitted to is assigned an Offender or Fugitive legal status. It is re-enabled once the legal status is cleared.

The equipment will detect any standard issue escape-pod on launch, but pilots should be aware that some individuals who may not wish to be rescued by the authorities may have modified, disabled or removed their escape pod distress beacon and thus won’t be detected by this equipment.

This OXP also introduces Search and Rescue NPC’s which actively search for pods and scoop them. By default the Moray Medical Boat is used for this role, but if you have the Cobra Clipper SAR OXP installed both models will be used.

Technical

This OXP equipment works by removing newly spawned pods with a primaryRole of “escape-capsule”, and replacing them with one of a variety of pods with a custom role, beacon code and scanner colours. The replacement pods are piloted by an ‘Oolite-character’ of the appropriate type for the ship that originally spawned them so that scooped pods still give appropriate bounty/insurance payouts.

Pods spawned by other OXPs that have their own custom primaryRole will not be affected or detected by this equipment.

However any OXP that actively searches for pods with a primaryRole of “escape-capsule” may not be compatible with this OXP.

Pods are replaced with Griff models if Griff’s all-in-one is installed, otherwise by whatever model currently has the name “escape-capsule” (core model, or version from another shipset). The same goes for the Moray SAR boat.

The equipment can be repaired by auto repair facilities such as Thargoid’s repair bots.

Change Log

Version 1.0: 28/7/11 – Initial release.

Discussion & Download

Discussion topic can be found on the Oolite BB

Download disabled for time being due to some fundamental conflicts with other OXP's. New version to come shortly.