Arrivals and departures

[phkb]

...that trade convoy which they passed half way down the spacelane on the way in will still only be starting to approach the station.

That is definitely a problem. I guess I could monitor the ships the player sees (that is, come in range of the player ship), and then remove them from the system and add them to the dock list. Is it possible to tell if a ship's destination is the station, or the witchpoint?

[phkb]

Also, do the ships in system move at all during a time adjustment?

[Wildeblood]

During startup I populate the initial list of docked ships in all stations that have NPC traffic (actually it's a little more complicated that that, but just to keep this simple...). That works fine for the most part. It will undoubtedly need to be tweaked over time, but for the moment I have a nice long list of docked ships.

I'm misunderstanding something. Didn't this start out as, "Wouldn't it be cool if, while you were docked at a station, you could see a list of other ships docked at the same station?" or words to that effect? Why do you have to do anything for other stations?

[phkb]

Why do you have to do anything for other stations?

Mainly because, based on the way the system populates, I can't just take over the station launch control for a single station. It's all stations in system, or none.

Edit: Having said that, I'm sure there's multiple ways to skin this cat. That's just how I decided to do it.

[cim]

Is it possible to tell if a ship's destination is the station, or the witchpoint?

If it's using JS AI and intends to dock, asking the AI controller for controller.getParameter("oolite_selectedStation") will tell you where, at least for core AIs.

In other circumstances, ship.destination should let you tell the difference between station and witchpoint, at least.

Also, do the ships in system move at all during a time adjustment?

Only at their normal unadjusted rate.

[phkb]

Some WIP screenshots
List shows ship type, ship name, and current status. You can select an item to reveal more details, like destination system and pilot information.





Comments welcome!

[Disembodied]

Wow, phkb, that looks pretty amazing! One thing: at 31 pages long, is this standard? Or an extreme test?

[Norby]

Nice work! My ideas:
-Destinations should be shown in the main list for hitchhikers.
-Should be many unknown destination and/or launch time, who do not want to tell or not decided yet. Even more from the second page, soon most of them.
-Many ship should go to the current system (planet/other station/hunter/etc).
-Some can change his mind anytime about the destination or launch time.
-A "wait for this ship" button can be handy when the next ship to the desired destination launch a few days later only. The time forwarding should stop if the pilot change his mind meantime.

[phkb]

at 31 pages long, is this standard? Or an extreme test?

I'm not sure yet! At 16 ships per page, that would mean about 500 ships - it's probably a bit high so I'll need to tweak it a bit, but not by a lot. Given our estimates on how many ships would be at berth, 300 would certainly be a fair number, and 500 might be possible at SuperHubs. I may end up being limited more by memory - I haven't started on the memory footprint yet, but I imagine I'm going to hit a limit at some point.

Should be many unknown destination and/or launch time

What I didn't show in those screen shots is the long list of ships with a status of "Docked". When a ship docks it moves through a number of stages before ending up with a departure time. The last stage before that is docked, and there is a long list of those.

Many ship should go to the current system

There should be a mix of in-system destinations in there.

Some can change his mind anytime about the destination or launch time

Good idea.

A "wait for this ship" button can be handy when the next ship to the desired destination launch a few days later only. The time forwarding should stop if the pilot change his mind meantime.

Interesting. I'm not sure of the implications of this, but it's certainly a cool idea.

Destinations should be shown in the main list for hitchhikers

Yeah, I'm kind of running out of room, but I'll see what I can do. I might be able to squeeze some space somewhere.

[Diziet Sma]

Wow.. lookin' good, phkb!

[Wildeblood]

I'm sorry to say this, phkb, but I'm getting the same yeah, but nah, "So close, but so wrong", vibe that I get from randomshipnames and market observer... OTOH, your email system looked a bit iffy at first and that has turned out really well. Unfortunately it's just a vibe at this stage so I can't offer any useful criticism... except for one thing I am sure of: 31 pages is 29 pages too long.

BTW, it seems as though the error template on your website contains a stray dot.

[phkb]

Progress...
Now showing the destination on the main list. Also visible in this shot are two "Inbound" ships - ships currently attempting to dock with the station.
I combined the ship type and name into one field, so it's more consistent with the rest of the game. You can still sort the list by either name or type, though.

[phkb]

31 pages is 29 pages too long

I can make the list that short, but then there would be hardly any ships launching from the station. I guess an option could be to limit the viewing list to only show 2-3 pages, even if there were 30 pages of data, and have a "full list" option to show everything.

Edit:

BTW, it seems as though the error template on your website contains a stray dot.

Hopefully fixed now.

[phkb]

More thoughts about the length of the list: A lot of it comes down to why you want to look at the list in the first place. If all you want to see is who might be heading in your direction in the next hour or so, then a couple of pages is all you need to see. Some other reasons may not exist yet - I've got plans for an OXP that would require you to search for a ship to see if it was docked at the station. In that case the full list would be useful. There might be other reasons as well that I haven't thought of.

[another_commander]

Great job so far phkb. A couple of comments:

- Number of pages shown: Indeed, too many. I believe you can make it look like an airport board. You don't need to show all flights of the day, just the ones that are, say, from now to six hours ahead. This is just an example - I don't know how much in the future you are currently looking at on page 20 or 25, but the idea is: queue everything, display only what's coming up in the near future.

- The title Shipping News strikes me as somewhat weird. English is not my native language, but when I see Shipping News on the title I expect more something like a Snoopers article announcing something related to the world of Logistics rather than the arrivals and departures table. I would probably feel more at home with something like "In-System Traffic Status" or "[System Name] Traffic Control Monitoring".

- I guess the time shown in the Status column is time remaining to departure, right? What about being able to display ETAs for the inbound vessels too? I understand this might be quite complicated, but on the positive side they would be just estimates and not necessarily accurate.

Looking forward to trying this out when ready.