SOTL Exploration v0.4 [WIP, 1.83 required]

[cim]

Altmap was highly experimental - in part, a testbed for when I was developing the scenario code at all, in part a place to test wacky ideas like NPC torus or a new equipment model - and crucially, not remotely finished. So the answer to "why does it do that" is probably "I don't know, it's probably at best a placeholder". If it's playable at all it's only by coincidence...


So far as including other OXPs in it goes, the current loader OXP has

Code: Select all

<key>scenario_restriction</key>
    <string>id:oolite.oxp.cim.sotl.altmap;exc:trade-goods.plist;exc:world-scripts.plist;exc:equipment.plist;exc:shipdata.plist;exc:shipyard.plist;exc:planetinfo.plist</string>

You'll notice that unlike SOTL, I never bothered putting a tag in it. (Here's SOTL's)

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    <key>scenario_restriction</key>
    <string>id:oolite.oxp.cim.sotl.exploration;exc:world-scripts.plist;exc:crosshairs.plist;exc:equipment.plist;exc:shipdata.plist;exc:shipyard.plist;exc:trade-goods.plist;tag:sotl-exploration-extension</string>

So you can mark an OXP as SOTL-compatible (not that many will be) by adding "sotl-exploration-extension" to the tag list in its manifest. You can't do that for Altmap.

What you can do is just add extra manifest IDs to the scenario restriction, so changing the "Scenarios/sotl-normal.oolite-save" to have

Code: Select all

<key>scenario_restriction</key>
    <string>id:oolite.oxp.cim.sotl.altmap;exc:trade-goods.plist;exc:world-scripts.plist;exc:equipment.plist;exc:shipdata.plist;exc:shipyard.plist;exc:planetinfo.plist;id:oolite.oxp.cim.ships-library</string>

would allow the Ship's Library OXP to be included, and then just keep doing that by ID for any other OXP you want including. Then start a new game (or do the same manual edit to an existing savegame, if you like) and that OXP will also be loaded if present (but ignored if not)

Basically the higher-level idea here is that compatibility can be declared both ways
- the scenario OXP author can explicitly mark by id other OXPs as compatible.
- the scenario OXP author can (and for anything more released than Altmap probably should unless they're wishing to retain complete control) provide a tag so that future OXP authors can mark their OXPs as compatible with the scenario.

-=-=-=-=-

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.

As far as "intended" setting, something like the "not in the manual" history I wrote for Oolite, but set a few centuries later than Oolite is probably about right... the map generator goes as follows, which is probably as good a recap as you'll get...:
- define systems, determine habitability for various species (which the planet colours should hint at)
- reverse-engineer home systems based on top habitability in the chart, except for humans who got in early
- add some early colonies for each species in two waves
- invent the galactic hyperdrive, start people meeting up and agreeing united species treaties, overall capital system in chart 3 (no homeworlds), embassy system in other charts (picked based on "least unfavourable")
- lots of cross-chart colonies taking systems suitable for their species that the native species didn't want
- a few passes of cooperative colonisation and some terraforming
- a bit more consolidation
- "not Thargoid" invasion wave from "outside", lots of destruction, increased militarisation, refugee colonies, etc. partial breakdown of central order
- that finalises the populations of the systems, and then it sets the economies based on habitability, resources, and history
- give each system influence points based on its population, and some historic bonuses, use those to spread out the various alliances from natural hubs until they meet at borders or run out of influence. Expanding influence past bottlenecks is extremely difficult.
- apply governments to regionalised systems based on history, some vague cultural preferences from the species, and influences from their regional leader. Certain systems end up at earlier stages being marked as "outsiders" and those tend to get the weirder government types.
- then go back and define the regions retrospectively based on their political coherence - is it plausible that the "lead" system is enforcing its will on the rest, or are the politics more split suggesting that this is an area bound together by economic or cultural/historic interests.
- fill in the governments for the non-regional systems
- certain systems near political alliances can end up in "Civil War" as pro- and anti- joining forces fight.
- other systems between alliances, especially in bottlenecks, can end up as "independent hubs"
- do a little bit of cleanup to make sure economic/political mismatches are sorted
- set up trade routes based on the imports and exports of the various economies, which the NPC freighters follow
- set up stability levels (influenced by population, economy, government, region type, history, etc.) which would, if there were any, determine piracy levels.
- fill in system names mostly based on the first species to inhabit (you'll see some partial constellations showing up in sectors around homeworlds)
- give the species names (they are, underneath, the Oolite species) and name the regions
- based on all of the above history, write the system descriptions
- finish off some other planetinfo.plist properties (which would at some point have included more main station types, reflecting the size and history of the system)

Some of the alliances probably are at war or at least cold war, I don't think I'd got as far as defining that much.

I can stick the map builder code up somewhere if people are interested.

Starting cash: for easy debugging.
Recommended loadout: no idea, I didn't get that far. You can probably get by without a weapon unless you're planning to *be* the pirate, though.

[Cholmondely]

Apologies, I'm a dumb pilot, not a theoretical physicist! And the only space game I've played is Oolite, so I've never seen Gravity Scanners anywhere else.

How does one use the Gravity Scanner to find other planets in the solar system?

I can cheat and use Telescope.oxp, but that's hardly the idea!

The instructions seem too short. They tell you how to turn it on and off, but give no idea as to how to interpret the readouts! What are x,y,z? Where are they measured from? Why are they only positive? And what is the significance of all those "G" 's? What would one expect?



The instructions say only this:

The gravity scanner allows the mass of nearby stars and planets to be estimated. If multiple are fitted, they are used in parallel to provide more accurate readings. You must be at a complete stop to use it. You may turn with it in use, but this will interfere with the readings.

Use the mode key ('b') to cycle between the four modes of operation, and press 'n' to activate the current mode:

power on/off: initial mode, you must switch it off to re-engage drives
scan on/off: while scanning, it will collect gravitational data, giving you the intensity and direction of the net gravitation force (in the screenshot, below and slightly ahead of the ship). The longer the scan runs for, the more precise a reading you'll get. You can turn the ship while the scan is running, but this will affect the data quality and you'll then need to wait a little bit for it to settle. Once you're happy with the data collected, press 'n' to stop the scan
assign scan: assigns the scan data to the selected compass target (you need to pick for yourself what object you believe to be the gravitationally dominant one). The system will filter out components of the gravitational force not parallel to the direction of the target, and then use that to calculate surface gravity
filter scan: if you already know the approximate mass of an object from a previous scan, you can filter it out of the scan by selecting it with the compass and pressing 'n' in this mode. This lets you get more accurate readings for unmeasured objects, and with sufficient practice and luck can also help you find undiscovered planets.

Reference: SOTL Exploration

[cim]

What are x,y,z? Where are they measured from?

Relative to your ship and its current axis set.

Why are they only positive?

There's an implicit zero-mark about half-way up the scale.

So if you turn your ship so that the X and Y are about half-way up, and the Z is all the way up, then the gravitational source should be in front of you.
(On arrival in a new system, the dominant gravitational force will be the star, so this should be easy to verify!)

And what is the significance of all those "G" 's? What would one expect?

That's the gravitational field strength at the current location - minus any gravitational fields from previously-identified bodies.

So, to find planets:
- get reasonably close to the star, turn to face it, verify that the grav sensor has the half-half-full XYZ readings mentioned above
- set the star on the compass, assign the scan
- now filter the scan to exclude the star
- the high-unit (Gs, milli-Gs) of the grav scan should drop out
- and you should have a new direction for the next most dominant gravitational source
- turn to face that using the XYZ scans
- then set off in that direction
- hopefully after a while you'll come across a planet

Now you can repeat the process - do another G-scan, and you should get a pretty high milli-G reading when near the planet. Assign the scan, filter out that planet, and then see what's left to find a second planet. Eventually you'll have filtered out all the major gravitational sources, and your gravity scan will just be returning noise in the pico-G region. At that point you've probably found all the planets.

[Cholmondely]

...
So, to find planets:
- get reasonably close to the star, turn to face it, verify that the grav sensor has the half-half-full XYZ readings mentioned above
- set the star on the compass, assign the scan
- now filter the scan to exclude the star
- the high-unit (Gs, milli-Gs) of the grav scan should drop out
- and you should have a new direction for the next most dominant gravitational source
- turn to face that using the XYZ scans
- then set off in that direction
- hopefully after a while you'll come across a planet
...

Great! Thanks for this. Looking forwards to giving it another whirl.

[CalebOfIronAssMiner]

... I've been thinking about how it might be possible to add extra galaxies to Oolite pretty much since I joined the dev team, since it's been a long-standing request. While it's easy enough to add support for extra galaxies to the core, giving OXP's access to that is trickier - if two OXPs both add an extra galaxy, which one is ID 8 and which one is ID 9 will depend on load order (and there'll also be incompatibilities with OXPs expecting the Galdrive to take you from ID 7 straight to ID 0). I've never been able to figure out a sensible way around that which didn't end up creating massive incompatibilities with existing OXPs.

Maybe messing around with the octagon isn't the best idea.

A more sound idea would be some sort of newly developed and maybe experimental "configurable galactic drive" which branches you through a different stable wormhole to a completely unexplored galaxy. Or it could be partially explored as these new stable wormholes are relatively new discovery leading to vast swathes of these charts to be still unexplored. I suggest these charts to be organized in rings that eventually lead back to one of the octagon charts.

The motivation for the development of these new galactic hyperdrives would be that the original ones are single use only and search for a reusable version proved futile. The wormholes these new hyperdrives use are easier to access, meaning these hyperdrives can be used repeatedly but the disadvantage is that the wormholes go through a lot more space and most of it is still unexplored.

That would also explain the wide availability of the "exploratory equipment". There would be NPCs interested in exploration of these new frontiers. And if you are inclined in exploration, you could join their ranks too.

Just my two cents.

[Cholmondely]

... I've been thinking about how it might be possible to add extra galaxies to Oolite pretty much since I joined the dev team, since it's been a long-standing request. While it's easy enough to add support for extra galaxies to the core, giving OXP's access to that is trickier - if two OXPs both add an extra galaxy, which one is ID 8 and which one is ID 9 will depend on load order (and there'll also be incompatibilities with OXPs expecting the Galdrive to take you from ID 7 straight to ID 0). I've never been able to figure out a sensible way around that which didn't end up creating massive incompatibilities with existing OXPs.

Maybe messing around with the octagon isn't the best idea.

A more sound idea would be some sort of newly developed and maybe experimental "configurable galactic drive" which branches you through a different stable wormhole to a completely unexplored galaxy. Or it could be partially explored as these new stable wormholes are relatively new discovery leading to vast swathes of these charts to be still unexplored. I suggest these charts to be organized in rings that eventually lead back to one of the octagon charts.

The motivation for the development of these new galactic hyperdrives would be that the original ones are single use only and search for a reusable version proved futile. The wormholes these new hyperdrives use are easier to access, meaning these hyperdrives can be used repeatedly but the disadvantage is that the wormholes go through a lot more space and most of it is still unexplored.

That would also explain the wide availability of the "exploratory equipment". There would be NPCs interested in exploration of these new frontiers. And if you are inclined in exploration, you could join their ranks too.

Just my two cents.

Hey! Welcome back! How are things over there in Slovakia? Did you and yours manage to get through Covid without too much agony? Are you coping with the current fuel crisis? (as a miner, you should have an advantage over the rest of us...)

[CalebOfIronAssMiner]

Hey! Welcome back! How are things over there in Slovakia? Did you and yours manage to get through Covid without too much agony? Are you coping with the current fuel crisis? (as a miner, you should have an advantage over the rest of us...)

Hello! In Slovakia it is pretty bad, the economy is badly damaged and still spiraling down. But in my case I can use Slovakia only for work (the work offers housing and staple foods are still relatively cheap) and then hyperspace into Colombia to have some normal life. Today I even experienced a misjump! The wormhole I was using partially collapsed and I ended up stranded in Bogota. I had to use some extra quirium to finish my journey.

But back to the topic I started (I was at Vienna at that time). It was about how to merge this exploratory game we are talking about here with the "normal" oolite gameplay.

My idea is that the market could offer a specialized galactic drive that branches you off using a different loop of "stable wormholes" rather than the octagon. The background could be something like this:

The octagon systems are now pretty crowded and overpopulation problems crop up in much more systems than GalCop considers comfortable. And being boxed in by the dreaded 7ly limit with pretty much nonexistent space for expansion there is only inevitable outcome and that is the overpopulation problem getting out of control and destroy everything through interstellar wars between the crowded planets.

And to add insult to the injury, the octagon started to show signs of deterioration due to the sheer volume of traffic these wormholes experience. If these wormholes collapse, GalCop is pretty likely to not survive.

So when the other stable wormhole loops were discovered, GalCop jumped onto the opportunity like a hungry tiger on a goat. Well, calling these structures "stable wormholes" is kind of a stretch. These are more like some sort of stable currents that can bring spaceships predictably to different completely unexplored regions of the space. Also didn't matter that the new hyperdrive designs were less than polished.

So in the shadow of a looming global interstellar war GalCop comissioned expedited development of portable and ship-mountable hyperdrives based on these new designs along with a range of tools useful for adventurers venturing into these uncharted realms to discover resources quickly. And, fortunately for GalCop, enough individuals in the Octagon Worlds found the exploring adventurer in them to prevent

And this would explain why the shipyard shelves are full of items one would like to have on the StartShip Enterprise venturing into "hic sunt leones" lands but would make little sense in a place that everyone knows like his hand for nobody remembers since when.

Moreover no messing with The Octagon is necessary and thus no need to worry about "who gets galaxy=8 number" and "my oxp expects to land in galaxy 0 when leaving galaxy 7" problems. And players can ignore the new functionality if they want to do something else.

The hyperdrives would work like the SOTL hyperdrives. You would have to manually pilot the hyperjump (you are not in a wormhole but flowing around a current). If your energy goes too low, you would not get destroyed but drop somewhere else than the next universe in the loop.

The charts would be organized in loops that start and end in the octagon. Some would have only a handful of charts in them while others could have several dozen. Thus the decision to embark onto this exploratory adventure should not be made lightly. Because once you leave, you have to follow the links until you find your way back into the Octagon.

Now when I think about it, you could have the "target marks" you are aligning with to "split up" occasionally, giving you branching witchspace streams. That would open more opportunities for discovery of charts. And more opportunities to get lost.

Once you land in a chart, you would arrive at a system with a station in it. This is because these systems get colonized pretty fast. A handful of systems in close proximity would be colonized too but the rest would pretty much be uncharted empty territory.

Also, not all systems in all charts would be visible. There could be charts where only the landing system and the colonized ones are visible. You would have to discover the rest first. For example build an observatory somewhere and let it crunch numbers for a while or install and activate some special equipment and then jump "like a goat on a cemetery" around the frontier until it collects enough data to pinpoint a new system. But the best way would be some sort of "exploratory hyperdrive" which would be manually controlled and which would allow you to zip around the witchspace until you detect and then land in a new system. There would be a network of "branching witchspace currents" connecting all the systems in a chart and if you fail to maintain your energy reserves, you would end up somewhere in the interstellar space.

Once inside a system you would use the kit from the SOTL to figure out where the planets are and what stuff they are made of.

You could also limit the adventure to a set of specialized explorer ships rather than allowing players to bring their stock Cobra MKIII along with them.

[Cholmondely]

Hey! Welcome back! How are things over there in Slovakia? Did you and yours manage to get through Covid without too much agony? Are you coping with the current fuel crisis? (as a miner, you should have an advantage over the rest of us...)

Hello! In Slovakia it is pretty bad, the economy is badly damaged and still spiraling down. But in my case I can use Slovakia only for work (the work offers housing and staple foods are still relatively cheap) and then hyperspace into Colombia to have some normal life. Today I even experienced a misjump! The wormhole I was using partially collapsed and I ended up stranded in Bogota. I had to use some extra quirium to finish my journey.

But back to the topic I started (I was at Vienna at that time). It was about how to merge this exploratory game we are talking about here with the "normal" oolite gameplay.

My idea is that the market could offer a specialized galactic drive that branches you off using a different loop of "stable wormholes" rather than the octagon. The background could be something like this:

The octagon systems are now pretty crowded and overpopulation problems crop up in much more systems than GalCop considers comfortable. And being boxed in by the dreaded 7ly limit with pretty much nonexistent space for expansion there is only inevitable outcome and that is the overpopulation problem getting out of control and destroy everything through interstellar wars between the crowded planets.

And to add insult to the injury, the octagon started to show signs of deterioration due to the sheer volume of traffic these wormholes experience. If these wormholes collapse, GalCop is pretty likely to not survive.

So when the other stable wormhole loops were discovered, GalCop jumped onto the opportunity like a hungry tiger on a goat. Well, calling these structures "stable wormholes" is kind of a stretch. These are more like some sort of stable currents that can bring spaceships predictably to different completely unexplored regions of the space. Also didn't matter that the new hyperdrive designs were less than polished.

So in the shadow of a looming global interstellar war GalCop comissioned expedited development of portable and ship-mountable hyperdrives based on these new designs along with a range of tools useful for adventurers venturing into these uncharted realms to discover resources quickly. And, fortunately for GalCop, enough individuals in the Octagon Worlds found the exploring adventurer in them to prevent

And this would explain why the shipyard shelves are full of items one would like to have on the StartShip Enterprise venturing into "hic sunt leones" lands but would make little sense in a place that everyone knows like his hand for nobody remembers since when.

Moreover no messing with The Octagon is necessary and thus no need to worry about "who gets galaxy=8 number" and "my oxp expects to land in galaxy 0 when leaving galaxy 7" problems. And players can ignore the new functionality if they want to do something else.

The hyperdrives would work like the SOTL hyperdrives. You would have to manually pilot the hyperjump (you are not in a wormhole but flowing around a current). If your energy goes too low, you would not get destroyed but drop somewhere else than the next universe in the loop.

The charts would be organized in loops that start and end in the octagon. Some would have only a handful of charts in them while others could have several dozen. Thus the decision to embark onto this exploratory adventure should not be made lightly. Because once you leave, you have to follow the links until you find your way back into the Octagon.

Now when I think about it, you could have the "target marks" you are aligning with to "split up" occasionally, giving you branching witchspace streams. That would open more opportunities for discovery of charts. And more opportunities to get lost.

Once you land in a chart, you would arrive at a system with a station in it. This is because these systems get colonized pretty fast. A handful of systems in close proximity would be colonized too but the rest would pretty much be uncharted empty territory.

Also, not all systems in all charts would be visible. There could be charts where only the landing system and the colonized ones are visible. You would have to discover the rest first. For example build an observatory somewhere and let it crunch numbers for a while or install and activate some special equipment and then jump "like a goat on a cemetery" around the frontier until it collects enough data to pinpoint a new system. But the best way would be some sort of "exploratory hyperdrive" which would be manually controlled and which would allow you to zip around the witchspace until you detect and then land in a new system. There would be a network of "branching witchspace currents" connecting all the systems in a chart and if you fail to maintain your energy reserves, you would end up somewhere in the interstellar space.

Once inside a system you would use the kit from the SOTL to figure out where the planets are and what stuff they are made of.

You could also limit the adventure to a set of specialized explorer ships rather than allowing players to bring their stock Cobra MKIII along with them.

You lucky chap - Vienna! I still remember the luscious architecture and the wonderful food. I hope you enjoyed it! Let's hope that things start looking up soon back in Slovakia.

But! Are you interested in developing this further? Your ideas for weaving it into regular Oolite are interesting - but also seem to involve a lot of work (But we've already got a number of oxp's which could be combined with it). Cim implied that there is a fair amount of work still needing to be done on SOTL Exploration. So might it make more sense to start developing this scenario game independently of the Oolite Octagon - so there is no need to work out how to make them both cohere! Then one could work on your combination of the two later.

Cim's comments on this
Implemented so far:

Basic multi-planet system maps (much more to do here)
Hyperspace is its own thing rather than a cut-scene tunnel
More realistic (though still somewhat adjusted) system scale
Basic planetary detection and parallax searches
Gravitational sensors to measure planetary mass, and detect planets beyond visual range

Cim's original plans for the future development of this OXP (or, what's missing!)

A nicer cockpit/HUD.

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 then 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

Goals: 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)

I have no objection in principle to what there is being put in the Expansions 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 (Song_of_the_Labyrinth_Startup). 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.

I've tried SOTL-Ex several times now. I've totally failed to find anything, but had fun trying out the scanners! Maybe better instructions (with some sort of example) are needed?

Locating reachable solar systems:
Your observatory idea appeals to me. Maybe an observatory module on the Exploration ship?

I don't know how the "markers" in Cheyd's Deep Horizon Advanced Navigation Computer have been placed - if they really are aligned with the systems in some way or if they just are placed at random. But it might be possible to cobble together something using his code to simulate the "as yet" undiscovered distant systems. I've nosed around using Okti's Long Range Scanner. Telescope might also help - but only picks up the nearest and largest 200 objects.

Other stuff
And as you probably realise, we have a plethora of other oxp's which can be made relevant (see Exploration .

Also, Griff has useful bots in his Busy Ports OXP for the drones.

How to explore?
My only real experience of the space game genre is Oolite. Cody once told me that when E:D first came out it had an amazing exploration sequence worked out which was dumbed down for the later versions, maybe after a year or so. And I'm sure that there are other games out there with ideas we could nab!



My programming skills are feeble beyond belief, but I'm willing to help as I can if you wish to take this on...

Oh! ... I seem to remember Hic sunt dracones rather than leones ...

[CalebOfIronAssMiner]

But! Are you interested in developing this further? Your ideas for weaving it into regular Oolite are interesting - but also seem to involve a lot of work (But we've already got a number of oxp's which could be combined with it).

Theoretically yes but my actual code awareness of oolite is very, very close to nonexistent. And yes, I was aware that it is a lot of work. Plus the inability to debug the code (the javascript) means I am pretty much screwed out of anything more complicated than simple "hello world". And the fact that I frequently get lost in hyperspace isn't helping this matter.

If I tried to implement this, it would take me forever to get anywhere close to something plausibly playable. In fact, it could take a better part of a decade to even figure out how to affect certain things (e.g. tinkering with the planet placement). The main problem here is to not break any OXPs that exist nor let them break the new stuff.

On the positive note, maybe I posted these ideas here so the community could give their input. I think it would be wise to let the community develop the idea first. And as I said in the paragraph above, maybe someone more involved in the code is going to like this and implement it.

Cody once told me that when E:D first came out it had an amazing exploration sequence worked out which was dumbed down for the later versions, maybe after a year or so. And I'm sure that there are other games out there with ideas we could nab!

Maybe he could elaborate about that so we know what ideas from the story to nab.

(if he already did, link please ...)

My programming skills are feeble beyond belief, but I'm willing to help as I can if you wish to take this on...

On this regards we are pretty much at the same level. While my programming skills are pretty sharp, I have no experience with Objective C and not much with Javascript.

Oh! ... I seem to remember Hic sunt dracones rather than leones ...

I think actually both phrases were used. Depending on what level of danger was assumed ("dracones" > "leones")

[Cholmondely]

Cody once told me that when E:D first came out it had an amazing exploration sequence worked out which was dumbed down for the later versions, maybe after a year or so. And I'm sure that there are other games out there with ideas we could nab!

Maybe he could elaborate about that so we know what ideas from the story to nab.

The explorer ideas are interesting...

Will players risk scanning for hyperspace routes or just buy data?

If/when I get as far as doing any exploration, I'd take the risk of scanning for routes.

I found this: Elite Dangerous: Episode 1 - Exploring HIP 91906 - Part 1 (Oct 2014?)

Obsidian Ant starts talking about the difficulties of exploration at 4 mins 20 seconds, for another 4 minutes; the actual discovery is at 16 mins 20 seconds. He recaps his method just after 17 minutes.

[Cody]

I remember Obsidian Ant - not much I can add. That would've been about the time I parked my Cobra at Teveri, and gave up in disgust!

Alas, no orrery view - though they once led us to believe that there would be!

<grumbles> Back to the Beta, when exploration was often tricky, but always fun!

[CalebOfIronAssMiner]

I found this: Elite Dangerous: Episode 1 - Exploring HIP 91906 - Part 1 (Oct 2014?)

Obsidian Ant starts talking about the difficulties of exploration at 4 mins 20 seconds, for another 4 minutes; the actual discovery is at 16 mins 20 seconds. He recaps his method just after 17 minutes.

Thanks for the link. I just finished looking at the video. Here are my observations:

1. This is about discovering planets inside a system. In a vanilla oolite we only have 1 star and 1 planet in a system so no much use. But there are OXPs that add more planets. Also I think this "total conversion" adds more planets.
2. However the way he did the exploration is way labor intensive. Circling around the star in the orbit plane until he managed to get the undiscovered planets in scanner range while hitting a "scan" button. I like the gravity scanner a lot better, the scanner leads you directly to an undiscovered object.

While watching a video I got an idea how the discovery of new systems could work.

1. Hyperspace (using the standard "tunnel" mode) into a known system and take a shot of the sky. You may want to move a little bit and take multiple shots to allow a telescope to filter out the in-system moving objects.
2. Hyperspace into another known system close by and take another shot (or set of shots).
3. The exploration software suite then gives you [x,y,z] coordinates of any undiscovered stars nearby.
4. Now the problem is that the hyperdrive needs a [x,y] coordinate of the system for the 2D witchspace chart instead of [x,y,z] coordinates for a realspace. To find these you need to first select one of the discovered but unexplored coordinates, enter the hyperspace in the "exploration" mode and follow the markers indicated to chart a path between your current system and the one in question. If you are successful, you will be thrown out at a random point inside the system. If you fail, you exit somewhere in interstellar space or some different system nearby.

The exploration mode hyperspace would work differently from what you have in that OXP. The markers you need to line up with would be pointing you towards the target. The hyperdrive sensors would continuously check where in the 3D space you are, how it relates to the 2D hyperspace you are passing through and update the markers accordingly.

You are not using energy to "keep timespace aligned/coherent/whatever". The challenge here is to not miss the unknown system. Instead the hyperdrive is feeding fuel continuously as you pass through the hyperspace. If you keep yourself aligned, you will travel through more or less straight hyperspace line between the origin and the target system. If you get misaligned a little, you will waste fuel until you get there. However if you keep yourself misaligned too much, you will end up running around in circles or missing the target all the time until you hit that dreaded 7 LY limit and get thrown out of hyperspace at a random place.

Now there could be other things to do once you get there:

1. You should be able to buy a deployable hyperspace beacon. Once inside the system, find a nice spot and jetisson one of these. It will deploy itself some 5 km from the point you jetissoned it. This allows you to return to the system later using the tunnel mode. The beacons would cost CrCrCr to buy but when you deploy one successfully, you can get another one for free or have its cost refunded. Plus some extra for the new system on the map.
2. Explore the system using your gravity scanner and possibly other instruments. This could give you more data for selling. Not just starts and the planet(s) but also any significant asteroid fields.
3. You could also deploy the beacon in a "personal" mode. This means it transmits a scrambled signal that only you can decipher. As a result only you can find the location. Obviously you can't get your CrCrCr for the beacon back nor any bonus when doing this. But you can always switch the beacon to public and finish the job to get the CrCrCr.
4. The beacons could be used to mark any non-empty interstellar region for "tunnel mode travel". Non-empty means there must be at least an asteroid field.

Other random ideas:

You could be able to select different hyperspace speeds. Progressing through hyperspace slower not only allows you to keep yourself aligned more precisely (the markers don't jink around that fast) but also conserve fuel. The standard tunnel mode speed is 3.5 light years per second and consumes the fuel at 1:1 ratio. A typical "fast travel" speed could be 0.35 LY per second, letting you pass through 7 LY in 20 seconds but I would also like modes like 0.02 LY per second giving you 20 seconds per LY or even slower.

The downside is you may not want to spend extended periods of time in hyperspace without taking precautions first. One problem could be the dreaded "witchspace sickness". Explorers should either buy some pills to allow themselves to extend their hyperspace stay (low CrCrCr but each pill is a single use) (could also be shots that are administered automatically when your ship's health monitor detects the onset of the hyperspace sickness; could work in hyperspace too) (or both, with pills costing next to nothing but need to be taken manually and while out of hyperspace, the shots more expensive but completely automatic), buy special medbay for their ship (lots of CrCrCr upfront, unlimited uses but you have to be in normal space to do that) or have to abort the trip and return to a main station (free but risky if you are already sick).

[CalebOfIronAssMiner]

To finish the point about "fuel conservation": A 1:1 speed would have 1x fuel consumption. If you choose 1:2 speed (half), the savings would be roughly 10% but at that speed you could have a problem aligning yourself and would likely overshoot. At a 1:7 speed (1 ly per second) you would save like 20% fuel. At a 1:70 speed 10 ly per second), you the savings would go to 50%. At the crawling speed of 1:700 (almost 2 minutes per ly) you could save as much as 80% but you run significant risk of getting sick if you do more than about 1.5 ly at this slow speed.

The "pills" could be eaten before the trip and they could accumulate in the body, meaning that eating 1 pill gives extra 2.5 minutes in hyperspace, two pills give 5 minutes and so on. However after some 5 pills there would be diminishing results
and gobbling up 10 or more at a go would cause some of them to just get wasted.

The injections don't suffer from these problems as they are administered automatically but they are more expensive.

Your body could also be able to learn to use the material in the pills more efficiently. Like after you spend some time exploring, a pill would give you 3 minutes instead of just 2.5. Your body could also allow more pills to be "stored" before wastage occurs.

[cim]

The original ED exploration idea drafts - never implemented - had exploration require finding the destination stars first, and then quite a bit of logistics needed to avoid your ship falling apart on the way.

The actual implementation had all star positions be public knowledge, and wear-and-tear during exploration be minimal and generally not dangerous (though you can still lose a lot of progress if you're careless or repeatedly make smaller mistakes). There was also a fair bit of criticism of the initial implementation that all you did was jump into a system and press a button to scan it, then point your ship at the various objects to scan them further. They've improved on that since a bit both in terms of making the system discovery process more interactive and adding a wider range of things to discover; the improvements were of course themselves unpopular with people who liked finding everything in a system with a single button-press...

Anyway, SOTL was in part an experiment in "what would happen if exploration was made more involved and had higher logistics considerations" - would it actually work as a game.

(My conclusion: yes, but probably not in the context of an ED-style multiplayer game where the scale required for long-term exploration is very different)

[Cholmondely]

The original ED exploration idea drafts - never implemented - had exploration require finding the destination stars first, and then quite a bit of logistics needed to avoid your ship falling apart on the way.

The actual implementation had all star positions be public knowledge, and wear-and-tear during exploration be minimal and generally not dangerous (though you can still lose a lot of progress if you're careless or repeatedly make smaller mistakes). There was also a fair bit of criticism of the initial implementation that all you did was jump into a system and press a button to scan it, then point your ship at the various objects to scan them further. They've improved on that since a bit both in terms of making the system discovery process more interactive and adding a wider range of things to discover; the improvements were of course themselves unpopular with people who liked finding everything in a system with a single button-press...

Anyway, SOTL was in part an experiment in "what would happen if exploration was made more involved and had higher logistics considerations" - would it actually work as a game.

(My conclusion: yes, but probably not in the context of an ED-style multiplayer game where the scale required for long-term exploration is very different)

What a crying shame you stepped down from developing Oolite! Having now spent some time playing v.1.77.1, I find that your changes to it massively improve the game for me. And that is despite being a "combat no-hoper" who runs at every opportunity! (I also find 1.77.1 a massive improvement on Classic Elite).

Having read through your consultations on the BB, I find them fascinating. And your various .oxp's really add, too. I just wish you had managed to do more with the SOTL scenarios.


1) Would it have been difficult to rejig the vanilla game code to allow .oxp galaxies containing stars without planets? One might then create a more involved exploration scenario involving trying to find some stars too!

2) Looking back at Communications Pack A - is there anything you might have expected to be included in a Pack B (perhaps Phkb's Death Comms)?

3)

I can stick the map builder code up somewhere if people are interested.

Would there be any chance of your uploading your galaxy generator programme to the wiki? (it is supposed to take .zip's) I can happily work in the various links to the relevant wiki pages...