A question of lore

[Cody]

Yes, there's a reason why I said "Ignoring any previous timelines (and our shipclocks)".

[Cholmondely]

Yes, there's a reason why I said "Ignoring any previous timelines (and our shipclocks)".

Not too sure what you are looking for.

*Aegidian's answer ignores all lore, relying purely on the game code/ship clock, but without Cim's deeper analysis.
*Selezen's answer accepts all the lore - & FE2/FFE - and decides that the "Ships in Service guide 5th Edition pub. 3205"'s "3205" cannot be a date.
*Cim's answer ignores FE2/FFE and tries to come up with a rationale for what is found in the game code (patterns of settlement of the 8 etc).

We seem to have 4 sources of information.
1) Ship clock - which may not refer to the 2021 dating system, being dated from a different year 0
2) Material in the Manual, where again the dates may be dated from a different year 0, and one or two might not be dates at all
3) FE2/FFE material which does not work well with Oolite unless you want to add lots of OXPs incorporating elements of FE2/FFE (and even then ...)
4) The Ooniverse with every single system systems settled by the 9 species and no Planet Earth/Sol etc. Only Cim & Selezen have seriously tried to make sense of it from what I've so far seen.

Otherwise, if you want to accept 3205 as a valid date, then you either
1) go down the Aegidian/Selezen route, but ignoring the FE2/FFE lore and ignoring the ship clock. So we are some time after 3205 (if that really is a valid BCE/CE date), close-ish to it (for a Classic Elite Manual to be relevant), but a little later to take account of the later developments in Oolite (eg: new ship technology: the ASC, ANA, STE, MTS, TSME, Wormhole Scanner etc).
2) go down the Cim route and focus on the ship's clock but add thousands of years before the 3205 date to account for patterns of colonization in The 8.

I wonder if the morass of contradictions in all this was part of the reason that Cim started developing his SOTL AltMap, which seems to have a much more coherent history?

I'm sure that one could come up with yet another approach. But the amount of effort that both Selezen and Cim put into theirs makes it a tad unlikely that anyone would. Unless you are hoping to... !

[Cody]

Not too sure what you are looking for.

Opinions! Call it a folly, brought on by lockdowns and shielding, but I wish to determine the age of a certain ship!
Of course, I could simply pull a number out of the air, but hey... where's the fun in that.

[Cody]

As a slight deviation - has anyone flown a Llama? And who is/was Flying Circus?
The curious thing is it's downloadable from the Wiki as a .zip - strange.

[Cholmondely]

As a slight deviation - has anyone flown a Llama? And who is/was Flying Circus?
The curious thing is it's downloadable from the Wiki as a .zip - strange.

manufactured by Klimov Corporation, of New St Petersburg, Luna (in the Luna/Earth bi-planetary system, of Old Sol).

And written in 2006.

And Flying Circus was with us from 2004-7

It has to be FE/FFE based, doesn't it?

[Cody]

... manufactured by Klimov Corporation, of New St Petersburg, Luna (in the Luna/Earth bi-planetary system, of Old Sol)
And Flying Circus was with us from 2004-7. It has to be FE/FFE based, doesn't it?

You'd think so, yes! Was Monty Python the author, perhaps?

[cbr]

The readme state it was a port from the game vegastrike...

[Cody]

Vega Strike passed me by, probably 'cos I wasn't into video gaming when it was released.

[Cholmondely]

Vega Strike passed me by, probably 'cos I wasn't into video gaming when it was released.

I've just been sneaking a peek at their site. Very sad. They did come out with a new Linux version last month, but the Windows and Mac versions date back years (2012 & 2008), as does all the other material background from what I can make out - and a lot of that seems to be unlinkable now.

[Cody]

I could simply pull a number out of the air...

3323 - that feels like a good number!

[hiran]

I could simply pull a number out of the air...

3323 - that feels like a good number!

Do not disclose my secret PIN!

[Cholmondely]

I could simply pull a number out of the air...

3323 - that feels like a good number!

That's later than any of the "year" dates so far given. But maybe it is the planet date rather than the galactic date. Or the Witchspace Lobster cult date...

Is this ship supposedly a recent one?

[Cody]

If I stick with that date, the keel of the ship in question would be well over 300 years old. A vintage model, one might say.
What's the lifespan of a ship which has been refurbished a couple of times, and kept in storage for a century or more?

[Cholmondely]

3323

If I stick with that date, the keel of the ship in question would be well over 300 years old.

According to whom? Aegidian has our starting game year as 3015, Selezen as 3142, Cim as 5709 (5709 years after the Birds & Frogs of Galaxy 6 first communicated with each other!).

I've yet to come across another dating theory.

If you had tried this a decade ago the mere mention of such a late date would probably have had a whole bunch of people jumping up and down. I'm not so sure anybody cares anymore, I'm afraid.

A vintage model, one might say.
What's the lifespan of a ship which has been refurbished a couple of times, and kept in storage for a century or more?

If the technology/materials are still available to repair/upgrade it?

Put it this way - if a Generation Ship turned up at the system orbital, one presumes that it would be repairable unless it arrived at a TL1 system. And even then...

[Cody]

Oh, I'm well aware that nobody cares anymore, and I care not for who said what.
My only datum is 3205, as per the Elite manual's Ships in Service guide.