Partial Witch Space Jumps Using Spare Drive

[mandoman]

I took on a contract to haul a load of computers, and a passenger to two different systems that weren't that far apart. It looked like I could do it in very few jumps, except the third jump, or what I thought would be the third jump, was a 7.2 jump, so I had to turn around and find a much longer route. It would be great if we could set a system, that is just a hair out of jump reach, in the Jump Coordinate Computer, jump out to the 7.0 point, and then use the spare Witch drive to make the extra 1, or 2 distance. Is that possible?

[Disembodied]

I don't think so ... you need a destination system for the wormhole. You can't just jump to an empty location. A better solution would be to buy an [wiki]Advanced Navigational Array[/wiki], and plan your route in advance.

[Cmdr James]

I would see that as a bug. To me the 7LY limit is an interesting quirk of the game that makes things like trade routes viable... work arounds for longer jumps, and indeed extra fuel pods and similar things that may allow longer jumps in my mind detract from this. YMMV since I am a luddite.

[mandoman]

I don't think so ... you need a destination system for the wormhole. You can't just jump to an empty location. A better solution would be to buy an [wiki]Advanced Navigational Array[/wiki], and plan your route in advance.

Yeah, I didn't state that correctly. I meant that the system that is .1 or .2 past a full tank would be the target system, and the spare jump pod would be that extra push to get there. If it isn't possible, then it isn't. I just thought it would be a nice thing for such small misses.

[maaarcooose]

How about jumping to as close as possible and then using the torus drive to get you the last bit?

I'm sure I remember when playing elite on my bbc back in the day that I could use the torus drive to go from one planet to another that was fairly close.
Took a little while, but it worked.

I do remember that the other planet was visible as a small dot on the viewscreen, so locating and jumping to it was possible.
Does OOlite do this if you are in a system with another very close by?

!m!

[Disembodied]

I'm sure I remember when playing elite on my bbc back in the day that I could use the torus drive to go from one planet to another that was fairly close.
Took a little while, but it worked.

I do remember that the other planet was visible as a small dot on the viewscreen, so locating and jumping to it was possible.
Does OOlite do this if you are in a system with another very close by?

!m!

Don't take my word for it by any means – as far as I know most of the activity inside a computer could be the work of pixies – but I don't think there's any real, direct relationship between the large-scale map and flying about in the individual systems: when you're in one system, that's the entire universe as far as the game is concerned. I don't think the other systems actually exist "out there" simultaneously.

[Thargoid]

Does OOlite do this if you are in a system with another very close by?

No. The only way to get between systems (even when they are on top of one another) is by witchspace jump.

The 7ly limit is one of those few things that are hard-coded in and make up the foundation of the game.

[maaarcooose]

Does OOlite do this if you are in a system with another very close by?

No. The only way to get between systems (even when they are on top of one another) is by witchspace jump.

The 7ly limit is one of those few things that are hard-coded in and make up the foundation of the game.

Interesting, I might have to drag out an emulated version and have a go at torusing to another system.

!m!

[Commander McLane]

Does OOlite do this if you are in a system with another very close by?

No. The only way to get between systems (even when they are on top of one another) is by witchspace jump.

The 7ly limit is one of those few things that are hard-coded in and make up the foundation of the game.

Interesting, I might have to drag out an emulated version and have a go at torusing to another system.

There are tales told on this board indicating that this was indeed possible in 8-bit Elite (I think DaddyHoggy wrote about it once). You could head into the right direction and then leave your computer running for the night. However, Oolite's inner workings are different. They don't allow for connections between systems. Technically, only one system (the one you're currently in) exists at all. Jumping means to completely destroy that system and creating another one from scratch. So there are never two different systems existing at any one time. Therefore you can't fly between them.

[SandJ]

I meant that the system that is .1 or .2 past a full tank would be the target system, and the spare jump pod would be that extra push to get there. If it isn't possible, then it isn't. I just thought it would be a nice thing for such small misses.

A small miss of 1,000,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,000,000 kilometres

Wouldn't the range then be 7.2 LY instead of 7.0 LY, and the desire would be for jumps to allow for near misses of, say 7.4 LY, and so on?

I think the 7.0 light year jump drive limit is one of the immutable laws of the Elite polyverses along with overheating lasers.

[SandJ]

There are tales told on this board indicating that this was indeed possible in 8-bit Elite (I think DaddyHoggy wrote about it once). You could head into the right direction and then leave your computer running for the night.

Certainly not on the Spectrum version. I left that running over a weekend; it never left the system.

(And quite right too - a light year is a very loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way.)

[mandoman]

..............sigh......like I said, if it isn't possible, it isn't possible. That was the reason why I asked the question to begin with. I already knew that you can't get from one system, to another without using a Witchspace jump. I guess I was thinking that if the spare Witchspace pod would work when you are dragged into normal space by Thargoids, why couldn't it work to help make a 7.2 jump for a cargo run, but I got the answer. Too bad, though.

[Disembodied]

There are tales told on this board indicating that this was indeed possible in 8-bit Elite (I think DaddyHoggy wrote about it once). You could head into the right direction and then leave your computer running for the night. However, Oolite's inner workings are different. They don't allow for connections between systems. Technically, only one system (the one you're currently in) exists at all. Jumping means to completely destroy that system and creating another one from scratch. So there are never two different systems existing at any one time. Therefore you can't fly between them.

I find this incredibly hard to believe ... not that for a moment am I accusing people of lying, but this would imply that somehow B&B had managed to cram a full-size, actual, real, 3-D layout of all 256 stars in each galaxy into 32K along with everything else. It beggars belief, surely? Unless it's all part of the magic Fibonacci seed, but even then surely there's a limit to what it can hold ... I think maybe it's more likely that people have misremembered, that the immersion of the game has leaked into their minds and created a false memory ... I could be wrong but if so then why would Oolite be different in this respect?

[cim]

There are tales told on this board indicating that this was indeed possible in 8-bit Elite (I think DaddyHoggy wrote about it once). You could head into the right direction and then leave your computer running for the night.

Certainly not on the Spectrum version. I left that running over a weekend; it never left the system.

(And quite right too - a light year is a very loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way.)

At a very rough guess, systems separated by 0.0LY (call it 0.01LY before rounding) would actually be about 600,000 Oolite km apart, if we use sun-planet distance to get the scale factor (by far the most generous method). A fast ship on torus drive would make that journey in about half a day of real-time, I think.

The second-most generous method would use planetary radius to get the scale factor, and would place adjacent systems about 3*10^8 Okm apart, or about a real-time year at torus speed.

[mandoman]

This is an interesting conversation, though it doesn't really seem to be addressing the original request. I was told, most definitely, quite a while back, that it wasn't possible to make it to another system apart from Witchspace, simply because no other system exists in the game while you are in any given system. Only one system at a time can exist, period. I do find it hard to believe that a script can't be made that would plot a jump to a system just beyond 7.0, taking the mountable jump pod, made to help those that drop out of Witchspace suddenly, into account to use as a spring board to reach the system they plotted. The very fact that they can drop out of Witchspace in between systems suggests that such points ARE within a programmable parameter, and therefore could be done. I can not force the issue, though, as I don't have the talent/ability/whatever it takes to write such a script. The answer to my request is, if I'm not mistaken, "NO". It was just a question.