[WIP] Life in the Frontier OXP

[Redspear]

Government Types - brainstorming

I think it's easy to consider multi-govs as something different to what we have on earth but then maybe we shouldn't. It's the one planetary governmental system we have a 'working' example of.

Likewise, I think it's easy to confuse democracies with corporate states.

1) Corporate States
Inspiration from Imprint
•Lots of advertising everywhere (take company names from wiki & YAH ads). Probably lots of repeat blanket ads from the biggest corporations to stop the others grabbing any of the spaces!
•Lots of sponsorships. "Free trips" downplanet to visit the factory and salesroom of a corporate business located in the middle of nowhere with a tied-in hotel and beach...
•Trade names dominate such things as lists of bar drinks.
•No (or hardly any) independent businesses
•Lots of busy corporate executives buzzing around the orbital

The one thing I'd take from there as distinctly corporate is this:

•No (or hardly any) independent businesses

So I'd be imagining corporate states as giant monopolies: 'safe' but not necessarily fun/fair/desirable.
Perhaps advertising is much more likely to be promoting the system itself rather than the products within. Why advertise ten brands of toothpaste when you sell all of them?
Which further begs the question how corporates might be different from dictatorships?

Perhaps it's that the former are consumer driven and the latter worker driven. It's a fine line but then they're all systems of governance.

Communist states more about the workers? Perhaps a veneer of the government acting 'for them' rather than their acting for the government. People or State? Rhetoric can be otherwise similar: "Ask not what your planet can do for you..."

So much of governance is superficialy similar, "Trust us, we know what's best for you", that there are many parallels to be drawn between all government types.

Who has the power?

• individual/group/collective

How did they gain it?

• meritocracy/monarchy/campaigning

How is power kept?

• might/diplomacy/finances

Who must be appeased to keep it?

• consumers/barons/workers

etc. etc.

Governance may not be all about power but who has governance does rather tend to be I think.

[cbr]

Isn't that Perry Rhodant?

[phkb]

It's possible to integrate with existing mission screens, at least from the point of view of understanding when a particular mission screen has ended, using a couple of techniques. Note, this will only work with mission screens that define the "screenID" property.

First, you need to know when a particular missions screen has been opened. You do that with the worldscript event "guiScreenChanged".

Code: Select all

this.guiScreenChanged = function (to, from) {
	// is this a mission screen?
	if (to == "GUI_SCREEN_MISSION") {
		// reset the variable we'll use to track the current screen.
		this._currentMissionScreen = "";
		// make a note of the screenID (if defined)
		if (mission.screenID && mission.screenID != "") this._currentMissionScreen = mission.screenID;
	}
}

With that done, we can now monitor for when a mission screen ends with the worldscript event "missionScreenEnded"

Code: Select all

this.missionScreenEnded = function () {
	if (this._currentMissionScreen && this._currentMissionScreen != "") {
		switch (this._currentMissionScreen) {
			case "oolite-sdc-main-map": // screen ID for the main Station Dock Control mission screen
				{
					// do something here, like jumping into a LitF mission screen
					// ...
				}
				break;
		}
		this._currentMissionScreen = "";
	}
}

Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if you hit any snags.

[Cholmondely]

ML: I just stumbled across this:

Something I was going to mention re. the version 1.2 was that the fire, the begging commander, and the thief seemed to come up much too often. I have not noticed them in version 1.3 so far, so thanks for fixing that.

That is a pure game of chance. Increasing the number of events, the repeating factor will be diminished. Now we are at about 20 events, but my real goal is reaching a hundred - that should be enough to guarantee a decent level variety.

How many "events" are we now up to?

And presuming that BB's list of 100 is based on his knowledge of game programming, do you reckon adding in another 20 for each of the 8 government types is sufficient?

[Massively Locked]

How many "events" are we now up to?

And presuming that BB's list of 100 is based on his knowledge of game programming, do you reckon adding in another 20 for each of the 8 government types is sufficient?

31 assuming that I'm counting right. Aiming for 50 would be good. 100 would be even better.

[Cholmondely]

ML - how would we add in the purchase of Ebortsa's lucky charm as an encounter? On the F3 screen it does not appear once one already owns it, but of course a huckster will try and sell you one whether you already own one or not... and there will be other variants (Raepsder's rightful periapt which protects against being

pulled in

by the Thargoids while witchjumping. You buy it, attach it to your left earlobe, mutter the mystic metaphysical mantra of the Church of the holy witchspace guard (the one that their Kingsnake pilots intone before entering battle with the Thargoids) while facing the Straits Seminary on Qutiri (your local Witchspace beacon is a poorer, secondary option). And you have to be ritually purified for it to work...)

More along such lines:
•St Giles's Glorious Gloucester (CGC) a piece of blessed cheese which summons rodentine help when in extremis. One must intone the Oration of the Octad from the Treatise on Theological Arithmetics by St. Phibo Nacci. Sold on rodentine anarchic, feudal, multi-gov, confederate & democratic stations. Overuse is dangerous. One can be engulfed by the Dark Side, subsisting on a diet of half-baked cookies while disdaining piloting for a life of endless tweaking with one's Telescope in Station Options.oxp.
•the Juju of the Holy Jens (CGC) which increases one's abilities to escape inclement encounters through judicious use of the yaw movement.
•the Orrery of Ojeiv Le (Witchspace Lobsters) which allows one to plot a misjump which prove to be Thargoid-free (needs a true blessing from a Witchspace Lobster Archimandrite to function at its best). Sold on lobstoid stations (add in option to seek blessing in the local WL church!).

How many "events" are we now up to?

And presuming that BB's list of 100 is based on his knowledge of game programming, do you reckon adding in another 20 for each of the 8 government types is sufficient?

31 assuming that I'm counting right. Aiming for 50 would be good. 100 would be even better.

It is a balance, no? The larger the proportion of specifically "feudal encounters", the more feudal the station will feel. So ideally 100 vanilla, 100 feudal, 100 democratic etc. This seems unlikely unless our entire community chips in.

But if we have 40 vanilla, 30 political, 20 species-based and say 10 economy-based (agri/ind - if possible) that would give us our hundred, no? We could also include repeats ("Nothing particularly interesting is happening at the moment" (with minor variations in wording) - and repeat this say 4 times for Corporates but just the once for anarchies; or more encounters with beggars in both anarchies and economically poor systems).


<dons thinking hat>

[Cholmondely]

Government Types - brainstorming

I think it's easy to consider multi-govs as something different to what we have on earth but then maybe we shouldn't. It's the one planetary governmental system we have a 'working' example of.

Likewise, I think it's easy to confuse democracies with corporate states.

1) Corporate States
Inspiration from Imprint
•Lots of advertising everywhere (take company names from wiki & YAH ads). Probably lots of repeat blanket ads from the biggest corporations to stop the others grabbing any of the spaces!
•Lots of sponsorships. "Free trips" downplanet to visit the factory and salesroom of a corporate business located in the middle of nowhere with a tied-in hotel and beach...
•Trade names dominate such things as lists of bar drinks.
•No (or hardly any) independent businesses
•Lots of busy corporate executives buzzing around the orbital

The one thing I'd take from there as distinctly corporate is this:

•No (or hardly any) independent businesses

So I'd be imagining corporate states as giant monopolies: 'safe' but not necessarily fun/fair/desirable.
Perhaps advertising is much more likely to be promoting the system itself rather than the products within. Why advertise ten brands of toothpaste when you sell all of them?
Which further begs the question how corporates might be different from dictatorships?

Perhaps it's that the former are consumer driven and the latter worker driven. It's a fine line but then they're all systems of governance.

Communist states more about the workers? Perhaps a veneer of the government acting 'for them' rather than their acting for the government. People or State? Rhetoric can be otherwise similar: "Ask not what your planet can do for you..."

So much of governance is superficialy similar, "Trust us, we know what's best for you", that there are many parallels to be drawn between all government types.

Who has the power?

• individual/group/collective

How did they gain it?

• meritocracy/monarchy/campaigning

How is power kept?

• might/diplomacy/finances

Who must be appeased to keep it?

• consumers/barons/workers

etc. etc.

Governance may not be all about power but who has governance does rather tend to be I think.

Cim wrote this in his Ship's Manual:

Corporate States

The official description of a Corporate State is “a system where the majority of work is carried out through corporate rather than governmental entities”

Bisoge in Chart 5 is a clear example of this. A largely industrial world, it produces high-tech manufacturing technology for the neighbouring systems, with the majority of economic power concentrated in the four major corporations involved in this production. The civil planetary government has the major role of arbitrating disputes between the four corporations, and occasionally representing them in inter-system diplomacy. The corporations provide accommodation, education and healthcare to their workers, and manage internal law and order. Living standards are moderately high for corporation employees, especially senior ones, and very low for others, whose welfare is taken care of by the underresourced planetary government, and are usually forced to live in the system's undeveloped forested areas, constantly threatened by the local wildlife.

Raenonce in Chart 2 is similar, though focusing on mining and extraction of rare elements. The entire planet is owned by the Raenonce Corporation, which originally paid for much of the settling and terraforming of the system, and slowly bought up the remaining rights as the original settlers died or retired. There is no distinction between the Corporation and the government in this case. Living standards are low, outside of the managerial class, who live in luxury off the system's trading profits.

Reatte in Chart 7 at first glance seems to be similar to Raenonce, with the entire planet's government controlled by a single corporation – Raette Liquors Inc. Corporate decisions are taken by the shareholders, but share holding is extremely regulated: off-worlders may not own shares, no individual may hold more than five shares, and all individuals are given one share at birth. The corporation and its officers therefore act more like a democracy than the more dictatorial states above, in their provision of governmental services. In this case, the corporation handles inter-system trade and production of the planet's famous brandy, using the revenue from this to fund education, defence and healthcare. Most of the inhabitants however work for independent companies, charities, or small businesses unrelated to the RLI's work.

I think, Redspear, that I'll go with your model for now. It is clearly different from a democracy and should be easier to provide a "feel" for. Thank you. In cim's models only the first has more than the one corporation, and it would make sense that even there only one of them would control the orbital station. The handful of putative exceptions can be easily ignored for LitF v.1.0.

Any recommendations on what I might read to give me more of a feel for the flavour?

[Redspear]

•St Giles's Glorious Gloucester (CGC) a piece of blessed cheese which summons rodentine help when in extremis.

I rather like that

Any recommendations on what I might read to give me more of a feel for the flavour?

Sorry but not really. As usual, it's just the stuff floating around in my head.
If something comes to mind then I'll let you know.

[Redspear]

If something comes to mind then I'll let you know.

Ah yes, The East India Company.

[Cholmondely]

Lave (0:7)

I just added your random text snippets.

Initial musings - to be added to!

Who is in the orbital station?
*Old classmate from Lave Academy now in the ship's chandlery who can give a 5% discount! Proper ships chandlery to come in LitF v.2.0
*Occasional members of the felinoid species from the 4th continent beneath
*GalCop hoity-toity types (galactic offices as a GalCop "capital"), foreign system diplomats, corporate big-wheels, GalCop police commissoners
*Lots of people being run into the hospital after landing at the hangers (due to piracy)
*Sightings of infamous pirates wandering the corridors!
*With Lave Academy installed - Lots of Lave Academy students (on exeat from the Academy station). Living it up! Occasional teachers.
*With GalNavyOXP or HIMSN - high-up officers visiting (placating?) the Empress, making their way out-system/downplanet/over to the moon (Basta)

Other stuff
*Warnings in the bars about the piracy - don't come back here!
*Announcements of arriving escape pods

Statues: In specific large hallways or the central points where they meet
•The current Empress of Lave, Queen Isabell
•The current Tyrant
•Previous examples of either (Prince Eduard Campbell; Harvic Mellir & Nameen Orkand)

Church - there are three.
1) Church of St Giles
2) Church of the Cosmic Wanderer
3) Randomius Factoria

Other places of interest
1) Offices of the Secret Society of Ishnaan - containing a collection of their silver samovars and a publicity office.
2) Offices of Littlebear's Legal Services
3) Cowell & MgRath Shipyards salesroom (near the Hangers) and separately, offices.
4) Lave Fried Trumble takeaways (many of them)
5) Lavian Lottery kiosks (several of them)


Viceregal Palace (Govt offices - in Lave this is on the top floor besides the GalCop precinct)

<Walk towards the Viceroy's Palace>
As you approach you see several uniformed curaissers in Lavean green and silver standing guard outside the doorway.
<Leave>
<Walk to the door>
The curaissers ignore you as you walk by them. The doorway is emblazoned with the Imperial Coat of Arms.
<Leave>
<Walk through the doorway>
You enter a hallway, lit by crystal chandeliers. There is a large door to your left with "museum" written above it. The door to the right is marked with "bureau". The staircase in front has curaissers blocking the entry.
<Leave>
<Enter the museum>
In front is a long line of Emperors and Empresses of Lave, stretching from left to right. In the middle is the current Empress: Queen Isabell. Behind is a holostim of the current Tyrant.

To the left is a large interactive map of Lave with images of the important places on each of the four continents (such as the Cowell & MgRath Shipyards).

To the right is a table with an attendant. The table is full of samples of food and drink. The attendant tells you that these are examples of traditional Laveian cuisine (Fried Trumbles, Tree Grubs, etc.). On the walls are holostims advertising various Lavian curiosities - the Cirque du Soleesti (mighty Lavian Lobsters), the Secret Society of Ishnaan, Littlebear's Legal Services, the Lave Roover (for jungle trekking), the Lavian Lottery etc.

<Try some of the food>
various responses from disgust to razzle-dazzlement


Lore

Lave features reasonably prominently in Imprint, the novel which came with some of the later versions of Classic Elite. Set circa 20 years before Oolite.

As the indicator in the Translocator settled on the requested level and the slight pressure of deceleration set itself against his body, Hood stood up from the smooth grey seat and felt a three joint click. Aware of his body again he caught the tension gripping his back, the taut curve from his neck to his shoulders. A conscious effort to relax left a ghastly ache in his muscles, now malleable in a lingering mould of stiffness that had set as he had made his way towards GalCop licensing.

The complex was in the anterior of Station 3 orbiting Lave. Each Lavean Station had a perpetual stream of would-be pilots and, currently, a waiting-list for appointments. He was renting a small resunit and, apart from a brief visit to Ashoria, Lave's primary colonial city, on the shuttle, he had been on the Station for two weeks; ten whole days, passing the time. The wait had been made all the worse by the knowledge that he had a Mark III Cobra berthed in the Station, waiting for him whilst he awaited his licence.
The doors opened and he gazed out across jade floor tiles to the cleon foyer doors. Aligned vertically at their centre, and spreading up and across the access in a sweep of majesty, was the Golden GalCop symbol; RA the Robotic Avian, fixing him with a benign and impregnable stare from holocast eyes. Above its feathered helm, across the lintel, was the complex title; 'GalCop Space Licensing Authority'.
Hood stepped out, amongst the green pools under soft pillars of light falling from the ceiling, light- headed from the adrenaline coursing in response to the furious pounding of his heart. He could feel this moment, a turning point in his life as sure as the Station pivoted in geostationary above the green world below. Today was the culmination of his life thus far, the effort he had put in at an Anlama ground Station, 15 light years and a life-style away.
In the foyer beyond he could see numbers of people; their only common bond the Space and Interstellar Pilot Exam, waiting for the doors to the Issuing Hall to open for Licence Registration. As Hood approached, the foyer doors responded in silence. RA parted, a shimmering shedding of skin, for the image was replicated, emblazoned behind the reception desk, just beyond. There was no accounting for the ingenuity of the GalCop Design Section when it came down to their perceived integrity of the GalCop mantle, corporate wholeness unblemished.
"Card"; demanded the figure behind the desk. Paying more attention to his surroundings than the officer, Hood held out his GCID card and waited whilst his appointment was confirmed. "Wait in the foyer until you are called please". It seemed something of a understatement, but whilst Rif Hood felt a pang of annoyance that his moment of achievement was a passing occupational chore to the figure before him, who was already turning back to a comm screen, it could not deflate his anticipation.
"Thanks", he retorted as he began to head in the direction of the foyer...
Some attempt had been made to arrange the seating into small, sociable, areas. Soft uplighters glowed from behind lush Lavean planting, with Station comma-units to hand. No connection made, the screen that Hood sat next to operated a free-space run of adverts between general Station announcements. 'Celebrate as a licensee at the Balcony Complex' was followed by 'The Lave Orbit Space Authority: Trading Profile Seminar. Call on C43-97T28 for your competitive advantage'. Hood watched for a while, unwilling to make eye contact and possibly have to engage in conversation with the eight people in his seating enclave. (Chapter 2)

The Station docks ran in levels behind the free-space at station-core. Beyond and below the Station egress gaped planetwards, powerful shields operating a safety vortex both for, and against, traffic in the tubes. In a honeycomb of wedges behind the dockside were the cargo warehouses where a specialised transport network supported the auto-trading system. Autoscam modules plied their intermediary trade along these routes. The life-cycle of the Station was a peculiar one. The docks never grew still and the Station authorities were active even when sections of the Station with something approaching a diurnal routine fell quiet as they moved darkside...

There were a number of available security checks which the pilot could use in the activation process. Hood had a basic palm scan and code-entry at present, which quickly brought the array of instrumentation alive. He brought up the Orbital Space Authority Data Link on the Comms Console and left the latest flight and docking information running on the local view screen. A matrix showed Hood's Cobra in perspective of the docked complement at Dock 4 where standard information would show berthed time, whether loading or unloading, ship to ship contact data and various local statistics. Watching the data flow, Hood felt insecurity gnawing at his thoughts again, fear of trying and finding mediocrity, the burden of insignificance, he looked at the small code for his berth, tangled in the midst of 400 berths on Dock 4 (Chapter 3).

Lave's rich and fertile plains were a renowned source of protein extract (Chapter 4).
... they had met up in another bar of the Sans Serif complex next to a pool, separated by a screen of cleon that curved up and partly over the seating area so that a variety of Lavean fish swam in front of, and above them... They had laughed, drank and watched some of Lave's more peculiar forms of aquatic life scuttle around the tank. (Chapter 9).
The Navy wanted to make the registration as Elite into a special presentation. As one of the Arazaen Senators, OSA, GalCop and Naval authorities gathered for the presentation, ... away from the purple uniforms to a corner near the RA symbol in the main Naval Briefing room... "I've still got to go to Lave if I want to register officially. Can you believe it?'... (Chapter 13).

How many orbital stations at Lave?
Selezen suggested 6, which strikes me as a reasonable number, unless it would look bad in-game. Say 3 Corioli, the Academy, a Cowell Mgrath shipyard of some sort (SIRF?) and say an Octahedron or a Tetrahedron?

The other systems would have fewer. So why so many? The status of Lave as a GalCop capital of some sort? Lots of embassies & corporate offices (also duplicated downworld). But then what about the higher incidence of piracy? With all this diplomatic types, one would expect that the area would be kept safe from them. But then, when I visited Addis Ababa some years back (one of the 3 international capitals in Africa and with an impressive selection of international restaurants), the crime-rate was high and there had been a recent civil war! So who knows?


Mr Gimlet, Dockmaster, Lave Coriolis 1

[Redspear]

How many orbital stations at Lave?
Selezen suggested 6, which strikes me as a reasonable number, unless it would look bad in-game.

I suspect it might. A solitary station looks huge but at least one can perhaps imagine some trick of perspective/range in some instances. Having another on scanner might spoil that.

I'm aware of the casinos and the like but that's with the idea of a station hub around which they congregate, the idea of their being significantly seperate however likely won't work well in the default game (at least to some eyes). The rescaling experiment should/could cope however.

[Cholmondely]

Incipient Problem (Flying Dutchman OXP):

I've just been watching Arquebus's new Oolite video. Flying Dutchman OXP (which is truly lethal) relies on a pop-up mission screen to give an essential warning on docking (at 12:47 in his video). This prematurely takes you straight to the bar (before you disembark in LitF) and you overhear bar conversation there.

I wonder if
1) we should relocate the bar conversation to the first bar visited inside LitF, blocking off the OXP's enforced "bar visit"
2) we ensure that the local "newsflash" happens first for those who don't disembark or check GNN (Arquebus tends not to). And follow it up with a second newsflash some time later which combines with the bar conversation, coming shortly after.

The oxp's missiontext.plist:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>flying_dutchman_encounter</key>
	<string>You are headed for the bar when you hear wild noises. The whole bar is in turmoil. Everybody is cluttered around a table in the middle. It takes a while until you are able to make out what is going on.\n\nTwo people are sitting at the table, an old looking Humanoid and what must have been a Horned Blue Bird, but its feathers are all snow-white. Even the Humanoid is not as old as you first thought, but his hair is of an unnatural white colour. Then you hear what they are saying, repeating it over and over again, in a kind of trance.\n\n  - "It appeared out of nowhere, and then it was there, but it was not there. Only a\nhollow frame."\n  - "I saw the ghost of Peter Jameson."\n  - "No, the lost souls of those trapped in the trackless depths of interstellar space..."\n  - "Death and pestilence follow in its wake!"\n  - "Away!, away!, flee from the wraths to come!"\n\nYou leave the place and the spooky couple, but you can't help the ominous presage shadowing your mind.</string>
	<key>flying_dutchman_encountertitle</key>
	<string>In the station's bar</string>
	<key>flying_dutchman_newsflash</key>
	<string>---iNews Flash!!!\n\nGHOST SHIP SIGHTED!!! TRAGEDY IN THE WAKE OF THE SIGHTING!\n\nTwo freighter-captains have been rescued from their escape pods in a yet undisclosed system of this galaxy, uttering incoherent babble and their hair having turned snow-white. The last detail is even weirder, as one of them appears to be a Horned Blue Bird.\n\nFrom what little sense they made, they claim to have sighted a 'Ghost Ship', a spooky Cobra III, which crossed their way on the witchpoint route, apparently fooling their scanners, and not reacting to any kind of communication. It seemed to be headed to the sun. Shortly afterwards all kinds of menacing, ghostly and horrifying things started to happen, resulting in the destruction of the freighters involved and the complete loss of their escorts. The captains appear to be the sole survivors of the mysterious events.\n\n---Full story on iNews at 10!!!</string>
	<key>flying_dutchman_newstitle</key>
	<string>iNews</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Now. I wonder if we can override the OXP from inside LitF?
1) Introduce the changes above (if they make sense)

2) is it possible to replace the "iNews" with the station's own news channel (including the station name or the system name: "Local Isinorean News")? And change the "yet undisclosed system of this galaxy" to this current system (possibly not yet an option when McLane wrote the oxp in 2011).


There will inevitably be other OXP's that this will also be true for.

Again, this might well wait for LitF v.2.0

[Cholmondely]

Isn't that Perry Rhodant?

cbr, sorry to be a nag.

I'm just wondering: with the potential for increasing LitF to include more and more stations (eg Tionisla Chronicle Array, the TOGY dodo, Riredi station, etc., would there be any chance of your designing a LitF logo like those for GNN, BGS & Library, so that we can mark compliant stations accordingly?





ML has already included floor plans for Rock Hermits, Dodos & Icos in addition to the original Coriolis - and I have been scheming away with TCA & TOGY in mind!

[cbr]

I'm just wondering: with the potential for increasing LitF to include more and more stations (eg Tionisla Chronicle Array, the TOGY dodo, Riredi station, etc., would there be any chance of your designing a LitF logo like those for GNN, BGS & Library, so that we can mark compliant stations accordingly?

[Cholmondely]

Great! Thank you!