Telescope
Telescope is an incredibly versatile and horrendously complex OXP. Telescope, laser-target-locker, identifier, & Torus Drive mass-lock avoider.
The station in front has been targeted beyond the 25km boundary, as Telescope allows, and it is duplicated in the sniper ring at the top of the viewscreen
Contents
[hide]Overview
Incredibly powerful and versatile, Telescope is also horrendously complex. A telescope, laser-target-locker, identifier, & Torus Drive mass-lock avoider.
Not only that, the current version is not yet on the in-game Expansions Manager. See Downloads, below.
Quick start as Bounty Hunter
- Copy the .oxp folder to the AddOns directory, and then hold down the Shift when starting the game for the first time after copying it.
- Buy the Telescope with the Extender in F3 'Ship Outfitting' or load the included savegame "Telescope demo.oolite-save". Your demonstration bounty-hunting ship will also have Witch Fuel Injectors, ECM, Fuel Scoops, Military Laser and Scanner Targeting Enhancement.
- Undock (F1). You should be able to see a magnified visual target in the top center position of your viewscreen.
- If you bought Gravity Scanner then stop near the station, toggle your weapons off with underscore (_) and wait then for the telescope scan results.
- Turn your ship towards where you see lollipops at the edge of your IFF scanner. The Panorama targeting will continually move your targeting box to the most centered target.
- Choose an enemy for the strength of your ship: start with a small ship flying alone.
- Use Injectors (i) to fly into scanner range where you can see a Red light-ball (which signifies a visible ship with a bounty award for obliterating it). Do not hunt Yellow light-ball traders or Purple light-ball police ships if you want to remain in clean status.
- Manoeuver with the Ctrl+arrow keys to put your target into the middle of the crosshairs: this will turn on the sniper ring which magnifies the difference from the correct line-up for shooting.
- Toggle on your weapons (_) and fire (a). You can try to hit with a Military laser over normal scanner range (but within 30km) and a stopped target will turn when successful. If your target is too small then fly to within 25.6km of it where the reddening STE targeting box indicates the correct line-up.
- Press ident (r) to lock the most centered target if there are more. Press ident (r) again to start auto-targeting/steering or to lock another if it's more centered than your current target.
- Telescope can be primed (Shift+N) and then activated (n) to lock the nearest target. Mode (b) changes the function of the activate (n) key.
- If a missile is coming at you then a Cyan ball warns you: start ECM (e), or target it (t), or try to avoid (i) or shoot it (a).
- If you win and the pilot is ejected, then you can shoot down the derelict ship to get the bounty, and then fly after the small White balls and scoop up the Escape Pod, metal fragments and cargo pods.
- Fly back to the station and dock to get the reward for the pilot and sell cargo (F8). Congratulations, you are richer. :)
Telescope Equipment
This OXP realizes some of the requests for an extended scanner described in this topic (2013).
Telescope can determine the direction, distance, orientation and legal status of all visible ships.
The detection range is equal to the scanner range if you use it without the Telescope Extender (still or willfully). It has the following features:
Visual targeting
The virtual model of the target ship is displayed and a console message shows the name, range and direction. The console message shows direction marked with <^ or v> symbols (reads faster than words such as Port Up or Down Starboard). The ranges and directions are calculated continually to enable turning in line towards and seeing the decreasing range while traveling to the target. The orientation of the magnified visual target model is that of the target itself if you centered it (you can spin the model if you turn around your ship). You can set the size of the model with the $TelescopeVSize variable in the Scripts/telescope.js.
Lightballs
Distant targets are given coloured lightball markers in the view - and lollipops with darker colours near the edge of the scanner.
- Red: Hostile ship with bounty (pirates and thargoids),
- Pink: Tharglet until active and Drones with bounty on them HardShips OXP,
- Yellow: Neutral ship with clean status (traders etc),
- Purple: Police,
- Cyan: Missile or Mine,
- Green: Buoy or Station,
- Blue: Derelict (Wormhole too for Oolite v1.79 and later),
- White: Cargo, Escape Pod or Sun,
- Gray: last known position for a lost target (moved out of telescope range),
- Lightgray: Planet or Moon (Moon is a bit darker than a Planet),
- Orange: Gravity Scanner detected ship too far to be visible,
- Brown: Gravity Scanner detected ship under 130t mass (less dangerous, especially with ShipVersion OXP),
- Black: lollipops in red alert over 30km: this is to help focus on nearer targets.
Beacons are identified everywhere within the entire solar system due to their transmitted radio signals.
If a ship transmits a beaconcode then it's detected everywhere but coloured as a ship turned to orange if too far away to be visible.
The current target is also marked with a gray "shadow" lollipop at the edge of the IFF scanner also to help determine the direction, especially at close range, to avoid zooming the scanner.
If the target is closer than 1000m then the lightball will be removed (as the ship almost covers the ball and cargo pods are large enough to detect with your eyes) but the shadow lollipop still remains. You can set the minimum distance with the $TelescopeVMarkMinDist variable in the file Scripts/telescope.js.
Targets within the range of the Military Laser (30km) are marked with a larger ball and a normal (not a darker) coloured lollipop. You can use this feature to determine exactly where you can open fire on the target if it's large enough to stand a chance of being hit.
You can disable the lightballs of the ships by setting $TelescopeLightBalls to false, but non-ships with Blue, Cyan, Gray, Green and White colours will remain to help find these. Auto targeting functions can still lock far targets - there seems to be an empty box but the ship is in there.
You can restrict lightballs in Red Alert to 10-30km if you set $TelescopeRedAlertLimiter to try to save a few CPU cycles but this is worthwhile on slow computers only.
Sniper ring
If you have almost lined up with a target between 10 and 30km distant then a ring will appear. The movement of this ring magnifies the variance to the correct line-up, to help you fine-tune your aim. You can hit if the target box of the Scanner Targeting Enhancement switches to red.
Snipers can use the distances between 25.6 and 30km to fire before the enemy can see the attacker on its scanner. This was possible without Telescope also, but the size of the ball gives another aid to knowing when the target runs out of range: and the ring can guide your aim without the STE's red box (which only works within the normal scanner range).
If you think this is a cheat then fire only when the target can also see you (ie is in the red box) or set the $TelescopeSniperRange variable to 25600 which will shorten the appearance of both the ring and the largest ball (but there's no way to shorten the range of the Military Laser).
Auto steering
With the Telescope primed (Shift+N), the activate button ("n") can steer towards the nearest lightball-marked target, which is useful for picking up cargo from the near field (rather than zooming the scanner to find it). Now you can just press activate ("n") instead of hitting zoom, locate, turn and unzoom.
Auto-steering starts only if your ship flies in a line (not turning) and stops instantly if you touch the controls. It will stop steering before a perfect line-up so as not to aim for you.
In Red Alert the activate button steers to the nearest attacker. You can disable this by turning off the weapons, in which case you can lock and steer to any nearest target regardless of the alert condition.
This can lead to major issues if you are running ILS!
Auto scanning
Telescope checks for new targets every second and performs an autoscan if it finds one: simple light sensors can see new dots in the whole sky without using energy but must zoom with the main scope to determine the ship type which needs 2 energy points.
The autoscan can be turned off if you set $TelescopeAutoScan false in the telescope.js file but it's usually worth the energy cost to get new information immediately.
Far target locking
You can also 'lock' distant targets which are not shown within the normal scanner range (beacons and planets are always lockable).
If you have STE loaded (as in the screen shot to the right, where the witchpoint beacon has been target-locked despite being 429,786 km distant!), the distance is shown before the name of the ship under the Scanner Targeting Enhancement's targeting box. The second line down shows the range of the virtual marker (which is always near the edge of the IFF Scanner).
This peculiar double-line workaround with the virtual marker is used because the core game does not allow locking onto a target outside of normal scanner range. So the locked marker coincides with the lock of the target (this can only be sorted out inside the core game programme's code).
If you cannot see a ship on your scanner, then it may have been destroyed, or jumped out, or flew farther than the visible range; or it has a Military Scanner Jammer and you do not have a Jammer Filter (which would enable you to lock on your target).
When a target flies too far and is lost, the telescope renames it as 'Lost target' until the next scan.
Telescope has again placed the beacon in an invisible sniper ring at the top of the viewscreen.
See Tweaks below concerning potential conflicts with ILS.
Telescope MFD displays the nearest targets
The built-in MFD (Multi-Function Display) shows the 10 nearest targets: ships are listed first, then other bodies.
The distance is given first, then the ship type, and then angle and the direction (using the ↑ → ← ↓ markers).
* indicates a "red" target (pirates and thargoids).
- See the cobra on the MFD list to the right
! indicates a Hostile (targeting you!).
- See the Sidewinder and Mamba on the MFD list
[ ] indicates your current target
- See the python on the top of the MFD list
See MFD for details on their use.
If Combat MFD is installed, then the newest detected target is displayed on the last line inside the Combat MFD (the left-hand MFD in this screenshot).
Masslock borders
In green alert you will see circles around detected targets where these can block your Torus Drive. Without a Telescope Extender these are shown around planets and stations only, but if you buy one, it allows for detection of ships that you can see with your Mark I eyeball (escort ships at 2x, traders near 4x scanner range) and you will then get circles around all the ships before you.
Until you enter these circles you will stay in condition green, but cloaked ships can cause surprises.
The colour of a masslock border is the same as the lightball in the middle (see Lightballs above).
To get the shortest route, you can safely go forward near the largest circle without touching it or going inside. Imagine this is the border of a sphere so if you fly direct to the center then you will be masslocked sooner than if you flew to a point of the circle. If you steer just a little outside the circle, you will fly forward as near as possible without masslock.
These are also a good indicator of the distance to the ships because the radius of the circles represent exactly one scanner range for the ship at its center.
Planets have rings that are double its radius as they can masslock you within this range.
The sun also has a large masslock field but this is not displayed by rings - it is less important and mainly a distraction.
You can also turn on masslock borders in non-green alerts also if you turn off your weapons.
You can turn off all circles completely with the Telescope primed to the Lightballs menu (see below).
Keypress functions
The ident button ("r") is given a new feature by Telescope: it can lock onto the most centered target even when it's not shown on the screen!
The next "r" press will start auto steering to the target if the most centered target is the same target, otherwise it will lock onto the new target; a third "r" press will unlock it.
In Red Alert it will not narrow the locking to the attackers; it can still lock any "target".
Works only if there was a locked target beforehand, due to the triggering of the shipTargetLost event, so if there's no target it won't get called. Press "r" again or get something into the crosshair or use equipment buttons to lock a target. (Usually only an issue when leaving a station, exiting witchspace or Torus drive.)
If you turn off the weapons with the underscore button ("_") then a scan happens and you enter into "Navigation Mode", where autolock helps you to see through targets (called Panorama targeting): continually relocking to the most centered target.
This "_" button should be chosen to avoid unwanted fire if you have turrets.
In Red Alert you can lock any target and see distant targets if you turn this mode on.
The Ident "r" button presses can turn Panorama targeting on and off when in Navigation Mode.
With the Telescope primed (Shift+N), the mode button ("b") cycles through the functions of the activate ("n") button:
Commands: Nearest target Rescan Step forward in the target list Step back in the target list Functions: Lightballs: off / navigation only / ships / masslock borders / large Sniper ring km: off / 5-25.6 / 10-25.6 / 15-25.6 / 5-30 / 10-30 / 15-30 Steering: off / nearest target only / both nearest and step in the list Targets: 20 and limitation in red alert / 50 / 100 / 200 Visual target: off / weapons off / no ring / no station / no question mark / all Visual target size: 1-8
The first 4 functions are actually commands which happen instantly when activated. The "Step forward" and "Step back" will rescan if you step over the end of the target list. The Target list contains hostiles first (if any), then all ships in normal scanner range (25.6km), followed by Cargo & Escape Pods, and finally ending with ships which are beyond the normal scanner range.
The last 6 functions are some of customizable properties in the telescope.js file, which you can change during flight.
Your settings are stored into missionVariables and saved when you save your game after docking.
The 20-200 telescope items is an internal list to work with, for example to show lightballs over ships in space or step through the target list with mode and activate buttons.
If the core game ever provides more equipment buttons, a back button could step back to the previous function (maybe Ctrl+"b").
With a second equipment button (maybe Ctrl+"n") the settings list could be separated from the commands list.
Cost: 500.0₢ Techlevel: 5
Station Options
Cag's oxp, Station Options allows you to customize every property via the F4 ship-station interface page.
Telescope Extender
You must install Telescope Extender+Gravity Scanner OXZ package and buy this equipment separatedly to confirm you want step over the rules of the standard game.
This will increase the detection range based on the size of the target so you can lock onto it when the core game sets it to isVisible and shows at least a dot in the sky.
For example you can see:
- Adder at 32 km,
- Viper and escort ships around 50 km (2x scanner range),
- Anaconda, Boa, Cobra MkIII and Python about 100 km (4x scanner range),
- Rock Hermit in almost 500 km (if not visible from the Main Station then fly around),
- Coriolis Station at 1000 km (right from the witchpoint).
Need a ship with at least 30t mass so can not install on Adder (16t), Gecko (24t) and Sidewinder (25t). Constrictor also below the mass limit (28t) but Constrictor SG is a bit heavier (42t) so can hold it.
Cost: 500.0₢ Techlevel: 5
Gravity Scanner
You must install Telescope Extender+Gravity Scanner OXZ package to use this and the following über-ranged equipments.
If the mass of your ship is more than 130t (Cobra MkIII and above) and there is a station within 5km, you can then extend the detection range of Telescope using a mass detector, which scales by third power of distance:
the mass of the target in kg must be larger than d*d*d/100 where d is the distance in km.
Detection of the player ships and the Hard versions in HardShips OXP:
t km Hard t km Adder 11 52 23 66 Moray 40 79 81 100 Cobra Mk I 47 84 94 106 Fer-de-Lance 51 86 102 108 Asp 59 90 118 114 Cobra Mk III 186 132 371 167 Boa 192 134 385 169 Python 222 141 445 177 Anaconda 430 175 1289 253
Beacons are detected in the whole system and Rock Hermits usually as well (from 900km).
A station needs to be near as the largest parts of the gravity scanner system are fitted into the stations, which broadcasts some important data and it needs a large mass (at least 10.000t, the station itself) nearby as a reference to refine the results. Mobile bases can scan anywhere.
It takes 4 minutes from undock or hyperjump to reach the maximal detection range when your ship is on the move. The detection progresses 4 times faster when your ship is stopped, needing only 60 seconds to finish.
The mass is scaled with the elapsed time: an Anaconda is detected at half time as its half mass (215t) would, which means 140km, and needs more time to detect it from the maximal 175km.
When the gravity detection is done and you remain at maximum speed until docking or jumping, the computer only needs to calculate in the new area coming into range from travel and not the whole sphere.
The Gravity scanner works only when you turn off your weapons with underscore ("_") button, otherwise only visible targets are displayed. You can define a more comfortable key in the Oolite/oolite.app/Resources/Config/keyconfig.plist file.
The auto-relock feature will continually change your target to the most centered one, so the box will jump during your turn; your ship helps browse the many targets. The ident ("r") button can lock the same target only in this mode, it cannot step to the second centered target.
Gravity scan consume 8 energy points (visual scan uses only 2). You can hear the sound of the Gravity Scanner at work, which is to remind you of the energy usage.
Orange and Brown lollipops and lightballs marks the detected targets out of the visible range. Brown if the ship is under 130t mass which means small ships, usually escorts - avoid Orange ones and target single Browns while your ship is not very strong. The mass usually cannot tell if a ship is pirate or not, such coloured identification needs visual contact.
If you see a lighter ball then there are two or more ships in the same place. The smallest orange and brown ball means the target is farther than 150km, these get dark orange and dark brown lollipops.
The Gravity Scanner cannot determine the orientation of the target ships. If the target is not visible then the view position of the virtual model will be a fixed view from the top.
There are no passive gravity sensors so AutoScan will happen only if a new target arrives into the visible range. When you undock or arrive at a new system, the telescope scan is performed automatically but if you want to scan the final frontier then you must turn off your weapons. Beware: aliens can sometimes can detect the signal of a Gravity Scan, so if your ship is not strong then do not use it often (and pay for the full repair if it gets damaged!).
Cost: 10,000.0₢ Techlevel: 5
Secondary Gravity Scanner Equipment
Cuts in half the time needed to get the full detection range and works as a single scanner if the primary one is damaged.
Can only fit into ships over 400t mass (Anaconda and heavy OXP ships).
Cost: 20,000.0₢ Techlevel: 5
Small Dish
Detects ships from one third farther out (for example an Asp at 120km) but can only fit onto ships over 130t mass (from Cobra MkIII) due to the size.
Needs a Gravity Scanner: the dish is just a piece of metal.
Fast CPUs can draw 200 targets without relevant FPS drop, slow systems draw it also but with some drop (tested on Intel Atom netbook). In this case scan for Gravity targets only when needed and turn it off when Telescope range is reached.
This is not a primable equipment (there are no buttons on the pure alloy) and it is a passive extension - so will not increase the energy usage of the scan.
Cost: 5,000.0₢ Techlevel: 5
Large Dish
Detect ships from double the range (an Asp at 180km) but can only fit into ships over 400t mass (Anaconda and over) due to the size.
Small Dish will not increase this range further so you can refund it when you buy a Large Dish.
Ships over 1000t (Hard Anaconda and big OXP ships) can use their hull mass to refine the gravity signals to reach 4 times range without the Large Dish.
Will only show the nearest 200 targets to save CPU and avoid serious FPS drops in systems with many ships.
Cost: 10,000.0₢ Techlevel: 5
Cheap Repairs
You can buy cheap repairs for 1/10 the cost of the new equipment instead of the normal 1/2 price, but the following drawbacks will be applied:
Telescope: one gets back the lightballs but the cheap repair will not fix the virtual model display, auto steering and sniper ring.
Gravity Scanner: cheaper spare parts can interfere with the hyperdrive and thus often cause misjumps.
Small and Large Dishes: uses less durable alloys and can break during hyperjump.
After a cheap fix you can still buy the full repair which costs the difference between the cheap and normal repairs: 2/5 of the full price.
You can only get a refund for fully repaired equipment.
Technical Information
Requires Oolite v1.77 or later. No shaders needed.
Tweaking
Rather than bother ripping open the OXZ, try Station Options which allows you to 'tweak' in an in-game manner via the F4 ship-station interface page.
One of the issues with Telescope is the locking-on to distant targets which can add a lot of excitement and near-death experiences to docking whilst using ILS. You target a Rock Hermit to dock with it, and Telescope then picks up on a distant ship and aims for that instead! Press Space, Commander! This can be prevented by judicious tweaking: set the default value of the $TelescopeGravLock variable in telescope.js to 0, which mean totally disabled, or to 1 which reduce it greatly but leave a minimal 1 degree cone around crosshairs to be able to lock distant targets. See How to tweak OXZ's for more information if needed, or use Station Options instead.
Instructions
Unzip the file, and then move the folder name ending in ".oxp" into the AddOns directory of your Oolite installation. Savegame included: put the "Telescope demo.oolite-save" file into the oolite-saves directory to load it.
The Dark Arts
License
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License version 4.0. If you are re-using any piece of this OXP, please let me know by sending an e-mail to norbylite at gmail.com.
ScanSound source: http://soundbible.com/878-Martian-Scanner.html
Downloads
- Version 2 is now on the in-game Expansion Manager. Look here for what's new.
- Telescope 2.1.4
- Telescope Extender+Gravity Scanner 2.1 - if you want über equipment which detects beyond the range of your scanner.
- To keep Telescope up-to-date with you oxp selection, the collect_shipdata utility can be downloaded here:
- Python 2/3 script this file is also included in Telescope oxp
- Windows 32-bit executable due to its size (4.15 MB), this is a separate download
- This utility is now much easier to use!
- It locates Oolite's folders and the Telescope installation and outputs the revised effectdata directly into your Telescope oxp/oxz.
- All you have to do is run it after you've settled on a new suite of oxp's.
- (If you have multiple versions of Oolite installed, make sure to run it from any folder within the Oolite version you've just modified.)
- uses new Station Options feature: Station Options 1.1.1
- If you have not tried it, Station Options is rather like the cream needed for the Blue Mountain coffee of Telescope 2.0
- Version 1
- Telescope 1.15 (927 downloads).
- Telescope Extender+Gravity Scanner 1.0 (4712 downloads) - if you want über equipment which detects beyond the range of your scanner.
- Telescope Station Options 1.0 - adds rudimentary Station Options support.
Old versions:
- Telescope 1.11 (4955 downloads).
- Telescope 1.9 (432 downloads).
- Telescope 1.8 (1357 downloads).
- Telescope 1.7 (355 downloads).
Changelog
2023.12.01. v2.1.4 Added code to make the mode of the primable equipment visible to 3rd parties. 2023.11.13. v2.1.3 Removed monkey-patches for HUD Selector, as it was conflicting with updated version (phkb). 2022.02.21. v2.1 cag's re-write is finally launched! 2017.06.24. v1.15 Further speed improvements by cag. 2017.06.20. v1.14 Serious speed improvements and a fix for targeting boulders by cag.
Quick Facts
Both Version 1.15 & 2.1 are on the in-game Expansions Manager
| Version | Released | License | Features | Category | Author(s) | Feedback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.1.4 | 2023-12-01 | CC BY-NC-SA 4 | extended targeting and scanning | Equipment OXPs | Norby, cag | BB-Link |
| Version | Released | License | Features | Category | Author(s) | Feedback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.15 | 2017-06-24 | CC BY-NC-SA 4 | extended targeting and scanning | Equipment OXPs | Norby | BB-Link |
| 0 |
Gameplay and Balance Indicator
Telescope
When you know how to use it, this enables you to identify possible enemies, avoid mass locks, identify stations from afar, etc. It will need tweaking if you run it with ILS
Telescope Extender
When you know how to use it, this enables you to identify possible enemies from afar, in addition to the above.
