Increasing fuel limit and jump range

[idkman]

How do I modify those values with plist or scripts? In Elite Dangerous big ships like Anaconda have big jump range but in this game it seems like every ship has the same 7 ly range.

[Redspear]

Hi idkman.

The 7LY limit is 'hard-coded', so to solve the problem with the plists you'd need to edit the source code.

One thing to consider however is that the galaxy maps are both quite small and (generally) quite cramped, to the extent that granting larger jump ranges tends to make them feel even smaller.

My personal oxp 'solution' to this was to keep the 7LY max but reduce the max for some ships  Hyperdrives

[idkman]

Oh that's a shame
Maybe I'll take a look at the code and OXPs.

[Cholmondely]

You might care to cast your eye over this (Cim was the 3rd Lead Developer of Oolite):

Also would people want more galaxies, or are the majority of players content with the current 8 galaxies?

Takes off dev hat, puts on player/OXP writer hat
Well, with 2048 systems in the original 8, it's not as if the average player - or even a committed member of the Explorer's Club - is going to visit them all in a hurry. So an extra 2048 which are more of the same (but with fewer content or mission OXPs available) doesn't immediately sound appealing. What they need is interesting stories that couldn't be told in the original 8.

There really isn't a lot of difference in direct gameplay terms between Ensoreus (Gal 1, Rich Ind Corporate, TL 12) and Edxebere (Gal 5, Rich Ind Corporate, TL 12). But while Ensoreus is the technological and industrial anchor of a small cluster of mostly-agricultural stars, Edxebere is a gateway system - along with its sister world of Gediesqu - between the dense mostly-stable cluster of Galcentre G5, and the dangerous and bottleneck-filled trail that leads from the Siege Worlds down to the trader's graveyard of Bizaar.

Ensoreus is a local trading hub of some importance, well positioned to fend off competition from Zaonce and Tionisla on the edges of its cluster - and it exploits this to keep the nearby Agricultural worlds mostly pretty poor and dependent on it.

Edxebere - with Inbior, Bisoaton, and a range of other high tech worlds just two jumps to its north - is mainly a place people go through on their way to somewhere more interesting, or for emergency repairs after a nasty experience in Anisat when traversing the trail eastward.

The stories that get told about each place are very different, despite their apparent similarity. There are three types of stories to tell ... not without overlap, of course:
1) The unfolding personal narrative as you play the game
2) Stories told through the medium of fiction
3) Stories told through a mission OXP.

There are entire regions of the Eight - in some cases getting on for entire galaxies - which don't yet have their stories told to a wide audience (indeed, once you get out of Chart 1, the stories get much sparser). If you start with the topology, and work out of the story, there are hundreds of interesting OXPs and/or novellas yet to be written, just from the existing eight charts.

Of course, sometimes you want to start with the story, and then find a place in the charts to set it. The charts are very diverse already, so there's usually space for it. So - a 9th chart is only useful in my opinion if it lets a story be told that someone wants to tell but can't in the original 8 because there's nowhere it makes sense to set it. Find that story - and a chart that allows it - and there's your justification.

Incidentally, this is why the 7LY jump limit is for me the key thing that makes Oolite what it is. With the jump limit increased by a mere 0.2LY, for instance, a jump from Bexe to Zaenza becomes possible, and the Steel Halo in Gal 5 goes from being an extremely interesting branch with one story already set there - and at least one other very obvious story no-one's yet published - to being a relatively dull cluster of industrial and semi-industrial worlds.

See the version here (comes with maps)

[Switeck]

I'd rather increase the fuel limit than jump range.
Just use multiple jumps up to 7 L.Y. each.

A 8 L.Y. jump (were it possible) using existing time models in-game would take 64 hours (8x8).
Two 4 L.Y. jumps would take 32 hours.

Also helpful to have a little fuel left over for injectors/hyperspace escape route.

[szaumix]

There's actually really good video game science theory reason for jump limits: the fact that time in the wormhole increases exponentially with every otherwise constant pip of distance and fuel expended is the big clue.

Just for fun,
What I've figured is that wormholes (IIRC, the actual theoretical physics term is "closed time-like curves") are of improbably dubious stability beyond the 7LY limit -- rather like the old math question of "how many times would you have to double distance starting from 1cm to span the galaxy?" -- the answer is disarmingly small and the final leap in the exponent is the greatest. The opening/casting of the wormhole may or may not be done with witchdrive fuel itself, it may be via some other fitted hyperdrive mechanism. The actual travel itself (once in the wormhole) is theoretically most likely to expend fuel. In terms of astrophysics a ship is less likely to actually fly down the wormhole than to "instantly" teleport through folded space. This is consistent with theoretical astrophysics, just as the distance is skipped so is the time: time is actually not something the pilot or ship would likely experience. Not sure if that's canon though.

[idkman]

Oh so there's a lot of science and lore reasons behind this. No 7A FSDs then

[Switeck]

I (ab)use wormhole misjump tricks to travel to quite a few hard-to-reach places in the 8 Galactic Charts.

The 7 L.Y. limit to me is at times only a strongly worded suggestion...but it is that limit that makes my accomplishments all the greater.

[Redspear]

Oh so there's a lot of science and lore reasons behind this. No 7A FSDs then

Can't claim to know a great deal about wormholes but here's a few things to consider...

1. They're (I believe) theoretical.
2. David Braben was all for realism and yet exceeded the 7LY limit in Elite Dangerous, Frontier and even Elite (in that the mk III was a specifically a medium range ship).
3. The time multiplication idea is a function within oolite to encourage shorter jumps and therefore balance risk with speed for contracts (more jumps = less time but more encounters).
4. Elite Dangerous and Frontier both have full size galaxies to tackle, oolite clearly doesn't.

What I've always figured is that wormholes (IIRC, the actual theoretical physics term is "closed time-like curves") are of improbably dubious stability beyond the 7LY limit

So this is a fair handwave reason why there would be a limit but not why it need be 7LY in particular (beyond the fact that oolite currently sets it there, right?)

[szaumix]

1. They're (I believe) theoretical.

They are. I used to read math and physics papers and books for fun. I'm such a party animal.

What I've always figured is that wormholes (IIRC, the actual theoretical physics term is "closed time-like curves") are of improbably dubious stability beyond the 7LY limit

So this is a fair handwave reason why there would be a limit but not why it need be 7LY in particular (beyond the fact that oolite currently sets it there, right?)

Like I said, as with the question of "how many times would you have to double your distance starting from 1cm to fill the galaxy", since jump distance is exponential it makes sense if 7LY is the max distance before the next factorization of the exponent makes the jump impossible or unstable. Or maybe it could CAUSE A CHAIN REACTION THAT WOULD UNRAVEL THE VERY FABRIC OF THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM AND DESTROY THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE! (Granted that is a worst case scenario and the destruction might in fact be very localised, to merely our own galaxy ). Also the logical assumption then becomes: mass plays no part in hyperdrive efficiency.

[tsoj]

I'd rather increase the fuel limit than jump range.
Just use multiple jumps up to 7 L.Y. each.

The Black Monk Monastery OXP sells "Holy Fuel" at the monasteries, which effectively increases the fuel limit. So I think it could be possible to write an OXP that does this also for when buying normal fuel. However, this would change the gameplay balance of the game, as you basically can use the fuel injector much longer than usually.

[idkman]

Oh and one last quick question that might be unrelated to the subject.
How do I change the pylon icon for a custom missile?

edit: nevermind I figured it out.

[Cholmondely]

Oh and one last quick question that might be unrelated to the subject.
How do I change the pylon icon for a custom missile?

Here is a list of current icons

And there is some discussion here (2011)

[idkman]

thanks but i already found out about it
It's strange that the devs decide to put those into description.plist instead of hud or crosshair files

[Switeck]

Just for fun, going back to highschool and college physics:
What I've always figured is that wormholes (IIRC, the actual theoretical physics term is "closed time-like curves") are of improbably dubious stability beyond the 7LY limit -- rather like the old math question of "how many times would you have to double distance starting from 1cm to span the galaxy?" -- the answer is disarmingly small and the final leap in the exponent is the greatest.

This sounds like a variation of The Rice And Chessboard Story .

The actual travel itself (once in the wormhole) is theoretically most likely to expend fuel.

And that reminds me a little of playing Badminton...that bloody shuttlecock!
"A shuttlecock (also called a birdie or shuttle) is a high-drag projectile used in the sport of badminton."

The drag on the shuttlecock is exponential with speed. You can hit it much harder+faster, but it will only fly a little further than a 'normal' hit.
In the case of the shuttlecock, the drag is with the air.

But with a ship traveling through a wormhole, the drag is the wormhole tunnel itself -- the ship's shields have to be used to hold it open or it could pinch together just like the singularity at the center of most black holes. (Most, because one could be spinning at-or-near the speed-of-light and possibly have different internal properties...or multiple black holes in orbit of each other can create temporary weird properties between them.)

The external view of a wormhole is a sphere, but inside it's likely a truncated cone...and you can only go so far down it before the walls close in on you or you hit the energy wall where no level of energy expenditure would push the tunnel any further forwards. Short jumps push that energy wall only a couple light-years...and even my Variable Jump Drive equipment (used along with my Misjump Inducer equipment) doesn't let me exceed that limit.

A misjump has the drag of the wormhole tunnel exceed acceptable limits and the ship is dragged back into regular space. Lore vaguely mentioned in Elite/Oolite is you need ship servicing much sooner after doing misjumps than regular jumps...possibly because the front and rear of the ship are bent due to not perfectly smooth space-time when reemerging from a jump.

Earth's ancient steel ships (read: from current days back to before WW1) would often snap in 2 because of flooding in 1 end or water pressure in the depths of Earth's oceans...so if that even happens to a WW2 battleship, think how tough Elite/Oolite ships have to be to survive space itself bending them!
This can only be possible due to force fields rather than structural materials...since crew and cargo would not have a nice time of it without renormalizing forces.