Discussion Commanders log manual and data sample

Becky · Sep 5, 2017

Along with faction pending and recovering states, can we please have their system specific global state as well (if applicable)?
eg:> GlobalState { [Pending|Recovering], War|Civil War|Election|Expansion|Retreat, SystemName }

This information is available, but you either have to dock (not journalled) or hunt through navigation map (not journalled)... or visit every system for every faction that shares as system with our faction (journalled)

We need this information for all the factions that share systems with our faction> that's a prohibitively large list of systems to visit every day.

Can we have it on location/fsdjump please.

GravitusMaximus · Sep 5, 2017

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, and I'm not sure how to even explain this properly but I'll try - I know the ship's voice announces when you are being fired upon, is there a way to get this into the the companion log as well?

I'm not terribly worried about when other ships get that status, only when my ship does. I'd like to be able to shape an alert from the Companion App to VoiceAttack to be able to fire an event to provide a warning to the pilot that will add some immersion to their experience on this (i.e. - play like an alert klaxon, or a wav file that warns them of impending doom, etc.).

I know that Frontier is really watching what information is available to this app, and I can definitely understand the ramifications on this if not controlled properly. Just an honest request....

Again, if this has been already mentioned and answered, I humbly apologize for this.

Becky · Sep 7, 2017

Please add StationType to "event":"DockingGranted".

Clicker · Sep 10, 2017

Hiya,

Looks like the Event "Location" has a "Docked" boolean written at startup in the log but the document doesn't reference this and I cannot find any reference in my written journal for "StartLanded"

I was looking for a way to initialise my HOTAS to ensure the "Gear Down" LED is lit and thought I could use this...unless you know a better way?

Cheers
Clicker

Labanden · Sep 11, 2017

Page 11 of v13 of the document.
[h=2]1.1 Location[/h]When written: at startup, or when being resurrected at a station
Parameters:
· StarSystem: name of destination starsystem
· StarPos: star position, as a Json array [x, y, z], in light years
· Body: star or planet’s body name
· BodyType
· Docked: (bool)
· Latitude (If landed)
· Longitude (if landed)
· StationName: station name, (if docked)
· StationType: (if docked)
· SystemFaction: star system controlling faction
· FactionState
· SystemAllegiance
· SystemEconomy
· SystemGovernment
· SystemSecurity
· Factions: an array with info on local minor factions (similar to FSDJump)
·
If the player is pledged to a Power in Powerplay, and the star system is involved in powerplay,
· Powers: a json array with the names of any powers contesting the system, or the name of the controlling power
· PowerplayState: the system state – one of ("InPrepareRadius", "Prepared", "Exploited", "Contested", "Controlled", "Turmoil", "HomeSystem")

Becky · Sep 11, 2017

Why limit it to just people that have pledged?
The galaxy/system map, and station services have all the information; you don't need to be pledged to find it out.
Just dump it into the journal regardless.

Athan · Sep 11, 2017

Becky said:
Why limit it to just people that have pledged?
The galaxy/system map, and station services have all the information; you don't need to be pledged to find it out.
Just dump it into the journal regardless.

Likely because the client doesn't retrieve the info unless you're pledged, and the journal code isn't designed to trigger retrieval of extra information.

grendell · Sep 19, 2017

Becky said:
It's in the v13 journal docs.

Ok forgive my ignorance (i'm VERY new here). If i'm reading this correctly, this indicates that we will be able to tell the number of bodies when scanning a NavBeacon. Why can this info not be available when we use the system scanner as well? At present, when i use my advanced discovery scanner, I see a display showing how many objects, (if any), were found. As an explorer, i'd like to have access to this information via the journal.

I hope you will be able to implement this change - once again, it would be of huge help to explorers.

thanks,

Tkael · Sep 19, 2017

Would it be possible to write the status of incomplete missions to the journal at startup, much as is currently done with loadout? This would be a great help to anyone writing mission tracking scripts.

Becky · Sep 19, 2017

grendell said:
I hope you will be able to implement this change - once again, it would be of huge help to explorers.

I really wish I could sadly i'm not on the frontier dev team

Genar-Hofoen · Sep 20, 2017

grendell said:
Ok forgive my ignorance (i'm VERY new here). If i'm reading this correctly, this indicates that we will be able to tell the number of bodies when scanning a NavBeacon. Why can this info not be available when we use the system scanner as well? At present, when i use my advanced discovery scanner, I see a display showing how many objects, (if any), were found. As an explorer, i'd like to have access to this information via the journal.

I hope you will be able to implement this change - once again, it would be of huge help to explorers.

thanks,

I too pondered this very thing on the EDCD Discord a few days ago.

It seemed like a reasonable thought - obtain extremely basic body data after an ADS Honk, including counts. After all, you see this data in the system map after an ADS honk.

I came to the conclusion that it's not practical in a gamplay sense - you'd be giving away for definite some rather large hints at what a planet type is, for example. Sure, in the system map you can see that a planet might just be an Earth-like World - but you're not 100% sure of that until you either use the 'audio listening method' (whereby you can highlight the suspected ELW icon and you can hear a very distinctive piece of ambient audio denoting an ELW - or some other piece of ambient audio indicating otherwise), or you actually go and detailed surface scan the suspected ELW.

If you had an AdsHonk Journal event which supplied such details, then all the surprise has been removed from the game.

Therefore my conclusion was; it's not practical.

Regards

Athan · Sep 20, 2017

Genar-Hofoen said:
Therefore my conclusion was; it's not practical.

I believe Grendell was only asking for a count of the number of bodies discovered by the honk, no further detail at all.

Having said that I can see this being a little more useful if the count were broken down into number of stars, number of belts/clusters, number of planets, number of moons. Again, no detail beyond that, just something so you could quickly judge if you even need to open the SMap in order to make a decision on surface scanning anything. If the system contains only stars, move on, for instance.

Genar-Hofoen · Sep 20, 2017

Athan said:
I believe Grendell was only asking for a count of the number of bodies discovered by the honk, no further detail at all.

Having said that I can see this being a little more useful if the count were broken down into number of stars, number of belts/clusters, number of planets, number of moons. Again, no detail beyond that, just something so you could quickly judge if you even need to open the SMap in order to make a decision on surface scanning anything. If the system contains only stars, move on, for instance.

Mmm. Maybe.

I just glance at the top right corner HUD right after the ADS honk and it tells you the number of bodies discovered. I'm trying to think what use such an AdsHonk event - even with a breakdown on the body types as you describe - could be to Captain's Log or EDDiscovery or similar, and I can't off-hand think of anything useful to do with such minimal data

madbilly · Sep 25, 2017

Thanks Howard for adding star luminosity class to the scan event, this allows us to much more easily track the distribution of stars we find in the HR diagram. It also automates the cataloguing of which luminosity classes we find, which previously had to be done entirely manually (or with screen-scraping).

AlSki1 · Oct 4, 2017

Hi Howard,
Is there any chance that EngineerApply could be extended to say where the upgrade is applied? Possibly by including the slot?

Thanks in advance

8.9 EngineerApply
When Written: when applying an engineer’s upgrade to a module
Parameters:
• Engineer: name of engineer
• Blueprint: blueprint being applied
• Level: crafting level
• Override: whether overriding special effect

Becky · Oct 7, 2017

>>MISSIONS<<

I'm trying to create a mission helper for people to aid them in managing their missions and there are a few things missing in the journal.

A Complete Active Mission List
After loadgame can we have the following?

{ "timestamp":"2017-10-07T06:06:01Z", "event":"ActiveMissions", "Missions":[
{"Faction":"HIP 10012 State Corporation", "Name":"Mission_Courier_Boom", "LocalisedName":"Boom data delivery", "TargetFaction":"Kureinji Exchange", "DestinationSystem":"Kureinji", "DestinationStation":"Weill's Pride", "Expiry":"2017-10-08T06:05:43Z", "Influence":"Low", "Reputation":"Med", "Reward":20656, "MissionID":221724587 },
{"Faction":"HIP 10012 State Corporation", "Name":"Mission_AltruismCredits", "LocalisedName":"Donate 25,000 Cr to the cause", "Expiry":"2017-10-07T09:48:12Z", "Influence":"Low", "Reputation":"High", "MissionID":221724621 },
{"Faction":"HIP 10012 State Corporation", "Name":"Mission_AltruismCredits", "LocalisedName":"Donate 50,000 Cr to the cause", "Expiry":"2017-10-07T09:25:26Z", "Influence":"Low", "Reputation":"High", "MissionID":221724643 }
]}

This way if a commander crashes to desktop and reloads I don't have to scan multiple journals to get the active mission list.
This way when I see loadgame I'll be able to clear down the active missions and reload it.

nb: the content could be the same format as "event":"MissionAccepted" minus "timestamp" and "event".

Combat Mission Kills

For massacre or CZ missions it's straight forward to find out what ships count. Because you can monitor bounties and combat bonds for the target faction.
But for all the other combat missions it's impossible to tell - one example was "kill trading ships for faction X". Firstly, they're all clean so no bounties or bonds apply. Secondly, I'd have to guess which mission the murdered ship applies to.

Can you please
#1 add MissionID in to existing bounty and combat bond events to say which mission that mission target was assigned to on death (and/or)
#2 create a new "NPCMurdered" event for mission targets with the missionID

Becky · Oct 19, 2017

{ "timestamp":"2017-10-19T07:56:44Z", "event":"DataScanned", "Type":"TouristBeacon" }

This needs MissionID when associated with a tourist mission.

And can we have a json array in MissionAccepted for the tourist beacons rather than this mess?
"DestinationSystem":"LP 244-47$MISSIONUTIL_MULTIPLE_INNER_SEPARATOR;Marki$MISSIONUTIL_MULTIPLE_FINAL_SEPARATOR;Moanza"

Something like this would be helpful:

"TouristDestinations":[ { "SystemName":"LP 244-47", "BeaconName":"LP 244-47 Tourist Beacon" } , { "SystemName":"Marki", "BeaconName":"Marki Tourist Beacon" } , { "SystemName":"Moanza", "BeaconName":"Moanza Tourist Beacon" } ]

Setting "DestinationSystem": to the next system in MissionAccepted and then the next on the list after each scan with MissionRedirected.

Kith000 · Oct 30, 2017

I'm sure it's been brought up before, but 3rd party developers are in desperate need of a way to reliably access ship state. Even something like including a ship state object as part of the base event type that's logged in the Journal. Yeah that would make the journal files larger but it would enable so much better tooling.

Duke · Dec 11, 2017

I would like a small change to the "Screenshot" event:

The information about the longitude and latitude only appears after a
quite low altitude (far below orbital cruise) in the journal.
It would be nice if the information would appear as soon as the entry into the orbital cruise height. Or as soon as the cockpit display shows the coordinates (already above the orbital cruise height).

These coordinates can be used in 3rd-party software to calculate a course to specific target coordinates. At the moment you have to fly very close to the planet, although the coordinates are already shown in the cockpit.

Thank you, Duke Jones

PS: A statement in the journal about the current altitude would also be very nice.

Becky · Dec 12, 2017

Requests for changes outstanding>
1. Commander name sooner in the journal. We start seeing friends online before we know who's friends they are
2. "End of journal" event when the client exists.
3. Faction global conflict states "ConflictState": { "systemname": "sol", "state":"War" } in Location and FSDJump for each faction that's at war somewhere else in the galaxy. Same for pending and recovering conflict states.
4. force windows notification of journal updates when journal is flushed to disk; so changes are picked up automatically by filewatcher without having to do crazy things to trick windows into triggering changes.
5. add MissionIds to combat kills for mission targets (civilian/pirate/cz etc).
6. for merit giving valid power play kills (eg enemy faction, controlled system) add "powerplay_voucher":"30"; into murder event.

Image for #3 (taken from a different system)