SOTL Exploration v0.4 [WIP, 1.83 required]

[Cody]

I planned way more than that

Only a few minor improvements/additions planned then. Pity they never came about.

[maik]

Ha, I planned way more than that I just never got round to it.

Welcome back!

[Cody]

Does this not work with later versions of Oolite?

[Cholmondely]

Does this not work with later versions of Oolite?

I think it does. One presumes that the wording on the wiki page dates from when it was written: when only the nightly version was out - and only the nightly version was compatible.

[Cody]

Hmm... it's not coming up as an option when I launch Oolite (1.91). I've probably done something wrong. I'll try again later.

[Cholmondely]

Hmm... it's not coming up as an option when I launch Oolite (1.91). I've probably done something wrong. I'll try again later.

It seemed to work fine on 1.88 & 1.90. Admittedly I never managed to play for too long before being turned inside-out when my witchspace journeys reached an excruciating finale...

My SOTL hyperspace skills give my Oolite combat skills a good run for the money!

[Cody]

Re-installed 1.91 and now it works - strange. <scratches head> Threw a few errors, but hey!

My SOTL hyperspace skills give my Oolite combat skills a good run for the money!

You on keyboard only or joystick, Cholly?

[Cholmondely]

Re-installed 1.91 and now it works - strange. <scratches head> Threw a few errors, but hey!

My SOTL hyperspace skills give my Oolite combat skills a good run for the money!

You on keyboard only or joystick, Cholly?

Mostly keyboard. Joystick is definitely more fun, but more hassle setting it up. Anyway, I spend more time kicking the stuffing out of the wiki and trampling it into oblivion than getting the stuffing knocked out of me by (or, to be more realistic, legging it away from) the pirates).

[cim]

Admittedly I never managed to play for too long before being turned inside-out when my witchspace journeys reached an excruciating finale...

The idea was you'd need to refit a bit - carry more energy cells and fuel for mapping some hyperspace routes, then switch to scanners to survey the systems.

[Cholmondely]

Admittedly I never managed to play for too long before being turned inside-out when my witchspace journeys reached an excruciating finale...

The idea was you'd need to refit a bit - carry more energy cells and fuel for mapping some hyperspace routes, then switch to scanners to survey the systems.

That I understood (I printed out the wiki pages and read them several times)! I just never survived long enough to manage any of it!

[Cholmondely]

Just had a look at Cim's Alternative Map - and almost gave myself a heart attack!

A Third Game!!!

A HUD showing a looong ES bar, a DES bar, a GEN indicator, S & CC settings for the witchdrive, etc etc.
Light & Heavy Pulse Lasers! Thrusters, engines, capacitors, generators etc.
And starting off with over 80,000₢ and no ideas as to what to spend it on (or where to spend it!).
40-odd commodities from scrap metals to mixed foods to luxury foods to artistic ceramics to industrial ceramics ...
Presumably it is to help buy a better ship - or to be lost in taxes to all the socialist goverments out there!

Does anyone have any idea as to what on earth this one is about?

There seems to be nothing on the wiki or the BB thread, and all that the Manifest.plist says is:
This is an experiment in alternative map generation for Oolite. A few other experimental features are included.

The setting is similar in some ways to the original Oolite setting, but provides more detail in the politics, economy and history of the region, and is of a set of charts which have been inhabited for less time - many systems are still unsettled or only lightly populated.

Also experimented with are NPC torus drives and ship-to-ship docking.

Does anybody have any idea about the indicators on the HUD?

[Cody]

<chortles> Cool, ain't it!

[Cholmondely]

Actually, unless it goes against Cim's design concept, what the Altmap scenario really needs is some version of Spara's Market Observer built in (as one can't add other oxp's). Then one has a chance to keep tabs on 40 different commodities - and one can see if one is selling at a profit or a loss. There is no record of what you bought anything at - and keeping tabs on 40 different commodities across 256 systems - hahaha!

It does come with ASC and also some sort of target handling pre-loaded (you get a targeting box and a ship name around your target - and it remembers old targets: ie some version of Scanner Targeting Enhancement & Integrated Targeting System).

[Cholmondely]

Actually, unless it goes against Cim's design concept, what the Altmap scenario really needs is some version of Spara's Market Observer built in (as one can't add other oxp's). Then one has a chance to keep tabs on 40 different commodities - and one can see if one is selling at a profit or a loss. There is no record of what you bought anything at - and keeping tabs on 40 different commodities across 256 systems - hahaha!

Actually, is there some way of tweaking Cim's work to allow other OXPs to be included in the mix?

He already has 3 OXPs: starting with his "loader" which one presumes excludes all other OXPs apart from "Exploration" & "AltMap".

[Cholmondely]

Ha, I planned way more than that I just never got round to it.

• The longer-term idea was that your home base would only have a limited amount of hyperspace fuel - large, but not infinite.
• You'd then need to locate and mine particular materials from asteroids which could be synthesised into fuel back at the home base.
• While doing that you'd also be picking up other raw materials, which would let your home build additional equipment
• First basic one would be a mining drone which attached to an asteroid and started doing (slow!) automated mining of it. Build a few of those and you can start to get minerals in a bit faster. You'd have to give up a lot of your storage space to drag it out there in the first place, of course.
• That would unlock additional deployable modules - a basic fuel storage depot, which would let you move fuel out from the base ship, and then run bigger expeditions from there - and then later a portable fuel refinery which would mean you didn't have to transport mined materials all the way back to base to get more fuel
• Probably then another sort of drone at some point which would pick up gas/liquid elements from planets for you, which would then extend the range of things your base could construct ... as well as resupply oxygen on the base ship, and other large-but-not-infinite consumables
• As well as modules for you, also goals to supply materials to repairs on the base ship
• Eventually, then a long-term goal to repair the base ship entirely (including its hyperdrive), and gradually move it across the chart to one of the habitable planets you found while exploring for the rest of this. (And then you've "won" but obviously you can keep exploring the rest of the map, with the benefit that you no longer need to keep dragging oxygen and water and minerals to your base)

No objection in principle to what there is being put in the manager, maybe someone else will finish it off / take it in another direction someday.

But ... one reason I didn't put it in the manager is that Exploration depends on Loader, so if you install Exploration, you get the Loader OXP too. Loader can't depend on Exploration, because if it did, Exploration won't load in the core scenario, and then Loader won't load because Exploration isn't there, and then you can't actually start the scenario game. But that means when you're installing from the manager, if you install Loader it can't then auto-install Exploration ... and then if you try to run Loader it'll probably go wrong with an entirely unhelpful error message

The manager ideally needs a new relationship type adding to handle that sort of "install-time but not run-time" dependency, but I never got round to that either.

You might be able to make this clear enough with descriptions.

Thank you for this!

Moving on to AltMap,

1) If one wanted to include some other OXPs - such as XenonUI & Market Observer, how could one tweak Loader/AltMap?
2) Is there any way of getting the "background knowledge" that someone growing up in the world would have before setting off in their new Kodiak? History of the politics? Where to expect pirates? Significance of economy types? Was everything civilised and then it all went to pot? What are these various species? Etc.
If you have anything on any of this, I'm happy to massage it into shape and bung it on the wiki.

And ... why so much jolly dosh at the outset? And ... what would my sainted great-uncle recommend regarding fitting out my Kodiak? And ... would my older brother have any suggestions as to what I should buy and where I should sell it? ... Are any of these system alliances/empires at war? ... Do any of these species loathe another?

Would it be better to natter over the phone/zoom rather than type it all up?