Moving the sun further away

Post by **dajt** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 11:27 pm

The system size in Elite/Oolite has been starting to bug me a bit so I changed the code last night to put the sun 10x further away than normal (don't panic - didn't check it in!)

It was probably still too close, but it did look much better. If we had some blurring or lens-flares it might look better too, but I'm no GFX programmer.

The planet was almost invisible when I got to the sun.

It took 10 minutes to get to the sun from the witchpoint using jumpdrive so this reduces playability a bit, just taking time for no good reason.

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 5:18 am

I would not mind this one bit. In fact, I would welcome such a change. The sun could be put even further away if we have more than one planetary bodies in systems at some point in the future.

drew · Post by **drew** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 7:04 am

I suppose it would make 'fuel scooping' a bit more of a chore. Perhaps the price of fuel would need to go up too!

Wish I could fuel scoop unleaded!

Where would the witchspace marker be? Still in the same place?

Cheers,

Drew.

jonnycuba · Post by **jonnycuba** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 7:06 am

This would be great if there was also more dedicated sun bound traffic, i.e. tankers going to skim etc.

lucabu · Post by **lucabu** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:34 am

I wish to have sun more distant too... It's too easy to scoop fuel compared to reaching the station. Having the sun 10 minutes away, and putting some hostile ship in the middle, whould make me feel like I've earned the fuel I'm scooping

Hum... And what about placing a kind of 'scooping station' near the sun? It may be something like a rock hermit, that continuously scoops fuel from the sun. You sould also buy fuel to sell it in normal stations. This will allow inter-system commerce too.

What do you think about this idea?

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:09 am

lucabu wrote:
Hum... And what about placing a kind of 'scooping station' near the sun? It may be something like a rock hermit, that continuously scoops fuel from the sun. You sould also buy fuel to sell it in normal stations. This will allow inter-system commerce too.

What do you think about this idea?

I like your thinking! This should be pretty easily achievable as well.

Of course, in some systems it might be illegal to scoop your own fuel without a special permit and the only way to get some would be to buy it from the "scooping station"...

Post by **dajt** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:12 am

lucabu wrote:
Hum... And what about placing a kind of 'scooping station' near the sun? It may be something like a rock hermit, that continuously scoops fuel from the sun. You sould also buy fuel to sell it in normal stations. This will allow inter-system commerce too.

What do you think about this idea?

I think that's a cool idea. With the sun further away and having a platform out there it might make if feel like there are a few different "places" in the system.

Post by **dajt** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:19 am

drew wrote:
Where would the witchspace marker be? Still in the same place?

The witchspace marker is always in the same place - 0,0,0. The planet gets put some distance 'x' directly down the Z axis at 0,0,x, and then the sun is placed something like 15 - 25 times the planet radius away, and at some system-specific angular displacement on all 3 axes.

All I did was change things so it was 150 - 250 times the planet radius away.

It would be easy to make this parameter settable from a config plist so people could move the sun as far away as they liked while others could keep the default value.

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:33 am

How would the lighting effects change if you move the sun - is there a danger that it will become almost impossible to spot a ship by eye?

Odo987 · Post by **Odo987** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:45 am

Moving the sun away sounds good to me too.

I don't think it would affect game play much, after all fuel scooping never makes sense. Flying to the station to buy fuel is cheaper since there is _always_ money to be made trading precious metals. It's as quick as sun skimming (even with a close sun) and the profits from this invariably far outweigh the cost of fuel.

It would be nice to make the sun be a useful destiation, but I can't think of one. So moving it away would have no impact and would make the game's topology less 'cartoony'.

lucabu · Post by **lucabu** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:34 am

Odo987 wrote:
It would be nice to make the sun be a useful destiation, but I can't think of one.

As I told in my previous post, the way to achieve that is to start thinking about inter-system trading or some kind of operation that can be done travelling from usal station to 'Solar stations'.

This will obviously change the way original Elite logic is implemented in OOlite.

Roberto · Post by **Roberto** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:12 pm

The scooping station sounds kinda cool - I'm envisaging something like a small Cloud City - but I really wouldn't want to have to wait ten times as long to reach the sun by jump drive. I think for that kind of distance, a jump-drive boost would have to kick in (not so quickly that it would happen between the witchspace marker and the planet) to get you there before you left the room out of boredom

Basically, a higher level of jump drive that is *very* susceptible to mass-lock, so it's only viable when you're deep in the black...

ArkanoiD · Post by **ArkanoiD** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:24 pm

Wow, it is possible to have "fuel source" in some systems! That explains where all that Quirium come from!

A scooping station and Woma traffic between it and primary station, some Woma's witchspacing out to systems that do not have its own scooping stations etc etc.

I think there should be one for a cluster of systems in 7ly range?

Post by **dajt** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:25 pm

Roberto wrote:
The scooping station sounds kinda cool - I'm envisaging something like a small Cloud City - but I really wouldn't want to have to wait ten times as long to reach the sun by jump drive. I think for that kind of distance, a jump-drive boost would have to kick in (not so quickly that it would happen between the witchspace marker and the planet) to get you there before you left the room out of boredom :) Basically, a higher level of jump drive that is *very* susceptible to mass-lock, so it's only viable when you're deep in the black...

I've been trying to think of solutions to this... have the jump drive go further each step the longer it is on, etc, but that would possibly unbalance things if you were skipping large distances you might miss pirates, etc. depending on how the checking happens.

It doesn't need to go faster either - if it is possible to just blank out time intervals that would be okay, but I think that is even worse than the above given everyone else in the system has to keep doing whatever they're doing.

Post by **dajt** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:27 pm

Star Gazer wrote:
How would the lighting effects change if you move the sun - is there a danger that it will become almost impossible to spot a ship by eye?

It had no effect on the lighting - the sun's light seems to be constant strength throughout the system regardless of how far you are from it.