ship is empty when you return to it).
This means that there needs to be a way to manually add and remove
- pirates - but there isn't. I think this could probably be added by
- someone who could be bothered to replace the `sleep 1' in the main
- loop by something which looked for keyboard input.
-
- However it will notice that a pirate is on board if they abandon a
- duty station (in circumstances where the game reports this in the
- log, which doesn't seem to be all the time) or you give them a
- stationing order, and from various other messages that might occur.
+ pirates. This is as follows: send or receive a message on the crew
+ officer chat, or send (not receive!) a private message, of the
+ following format:
+ /a <pirate>... /d <pirate>...
+ /a <ship>: <pirate>... /d <ship>: <pirate>...
+ <pirate> and <ship> can be in any case and will be converted to
+ the proper mixed-case form automatically. <ship>, if it is not
+ provided, will be assumed to be the one you're on (so officers
+ shouldn't send these runes unless only one ship is out). If <ship>
+ is supplied it may match the full ship name, or only the second
+ word. You can put `*'s in <ship> which will match anything.
+
+ For example:
+ /a haddock: aiah
+ /d aiah
+ /a smart sunfish: copperkatie
+ /a s* sunfish: anaplian
+ These are actually sent by typing in the chat box things like:
+ /o /d plonker
+ /off /a hypiscles
+ since other formulations interpret the scraper command as a YPP
+ chat command. This is deliberate and makes it harder to invoke by
+ mistake.
+
+ These messages can also be sent by some other officer in your crew
+ while you are off the vessel (although currently a bug means that
+ if you board some _other_ vessel then these messages for the vessel
+ you come back to may not be properly recorded).
+
+ The program will notice that a pirate is on board if you give them
+ a stationing order or they abandon a duty station (in circumstances
+ where the game reports this in the log, which doesn't seem to be
+ all the time), and from many of the other messages that occur.
+
+ Matching for ship patterns in /a and /d commands picks the first
+ of the following which applies and is not contradicted by any
+ name or partial name specified in the command:
+ - The ship we think the person telling us is on board
+ - The ship we think we are on board
+ - Any other ship we know about, if at least a something was
+ specified, and provided that is not ambiguous
+ - The specific ship name if it is completely specified,
+ possibly recording this as a new ship
Other things to mention:
until after the duplicated hour has passed) as that writes a new
date record to the log and starts a new series of timestamps.
+ * You have to enable the chat log for the ship-aid mode.
+
Ian.