OXPs - Strategic thinking!

[Switeck]

the joys of discovery/exploration in Oolite?
...
What wrecks it for you?

My feelings on Commies, Dictatorships, Feudal, etc. getting their own flavor ships is...you don't see those same ships outside their respective systems. And that doesn't make sense. They're like an aquarium of fish seen nowhere in the wild...very artificial feeling.

While there's not a huge number of original game ships, when I first started playing Oolite they were very limited in what roles they appeared in...so getting them further displaced by 3rd party ships made the original ships even rarer.
Sure there were always a lot of Pythons, Boa 1s, and Anacondas arriving at the witchpoint and heading to the main station...but not so much Boa 2s or Cobra 3s acting as freighters as well. And in the Cobra 3's case...always lacking escorts.

More activities (rescuing astro-gulag prisoners? Or docking with an Astrofactory to allow a refugee to clamber on board and try and escape.

More activities...are good, but those have to be either open-ended or with a clear reason for a conclusion.

Asteroid mining for instance -- you won't bother doing it (for long anyway) if all you can get from asteroids is...minerals every time.
Yet I've pointed out that having a mineral refinery on board (Ore Processor OXP) seems far-fetched -- so that means it has to be on a station with appropriate delays with the refining process.

Recovering derelict ships is its own mini-game, and there's a few OXPs dedicated to that task. None seems to have found a good balance.

Having multiple player ships is another thing -- and that will require "parking" the ship or ships you're not using. Makes sense this would go with something like a player's Home System as a parking location. Maybe even later have a 2nd-in-command to use your spare ship/s in a nominal level that's relatively safe...or even become an escort of your "main" ship!

I agree with your point about the contrived discovery of the Hacker's dens.

So much potential wasted with the Hacker Station -- it could be used by a faction listening in to another faction from within that faction's system...but pretty far from the planet.

A proper system for navigation would make all the difference, as one could then be given rough directions. And then go and "explore".

Nothing in the game is more frustrating than looking for something in the big void of space with no references to its direction from known locations -- just "find McGuffin in system so-and-so!"
The Constrictor at least attacks you when you finally reach the last system, so you don't have to spend hours more looking for it.

Lastly, are my PMs reaching you Cholmondely?

[Cholmondely]

the joys of discovery/exploration in Oolite?
...
What wrecks it for you?

My feelings on Commies, Dictatorships, Feudal, etc. getting their own flavor ships is...you don't see those same ships outside their respective systems. And that doesn't make sense. They're like an aquarium of fish seen nowhere in the wild...very artificial feeling.

Surely this needs little other than a minor tweak of the code for populating a system? But then there should be a purpose to a political ship being there (is this to do with "Ship roles"?). Whether a diplomatic call from a Commie Commissar and his goons or the transportation of goods by a Dictatorship Freighter. Am I correct in presuming that the current coding would ensure this? (And have you seen Stranger's Feudal Raiders?)

While there's not a huge number of original game ships, when I first started playing Oolite they were very limited in what roles they appeared in...so getting them further displaced by 3rd party ships made the original ships even rarer.
Sure there were always a lot of Pythons, Boa 1s, and Anacondas arriving at the witchpoint and heading to the main station...but not so much Boa 2s or Cobra 3s acting as freighters as well. And in the Cobra 3's case...always lacking escorts.

I don't really notice any of this. I have cim's and Norby's convoy pattern OXPs installed, and thus notice large dens of Morays, Anacondas, Boas and Pythons (with suitable waits for docking at the main orbital). I do believe that I've seen at least one quiver of cobras over the past year of play. But I've failed to distinguish between the various varieties of Boa out there.

But would not the Cobra be a bit different anyway? It can do a rather better job of defending itself and of scramming than the lumbering anacondas/pythons/boas, no? Unlike those, it will not be transporting massive quantities of goods (less likely to be fulfilling contracts) and as such less likely to be seen in a trading role, no? The haulage firms won't use them (too little cargo, so uneconomic in terms of purchase and use). The smaller traders would presumably be more used for making smaller/local deliveries - as with the mix of juggernauts and vans we see in the English streets/motorways.

Which raises a subsidiary point about crew sizes.
If a Cobra Mk.3 can manage perfectly well with a single crewman/pilot, why on earth do the freighters need so many? What the dickens are they all doing? Are pilots who can both steer and fire a laser so horrendously expensive to employ?

The bevy of butlers/cluster of chambermaids on cousin Digby's Fer-de-Lance makes perfectly good sense. He is a Duke, for heaven's sake! He needs his dozen-or-so footmen to make the appropriate impression when visiting the GalCop types at Lave and Zadies.

But 20-30 in a Python with a measly 100+15TC of cargo? What is there for them to do? And if they are really doing it, then the ship should never need servicing and equipment damage should be fixed almost immediately! Or are they all "manning the oars": cycling furiously on exercise bikes to generate energy so that the ship can manage its witchspace jumps using as little fuel as my Cobra Mk.3 does?

And all this makes the use of the Moray StarBoat in the OXP trading convoys quite ridiculous. A crew of 6 for 7+0 TC of cargo! Obviously 5 crystal vase polishers (hard at work) and the one pilot.

I think I can see why the crew sizes were left out from the Oolite ship pages.

Reference: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix ... tive_nouns

More activities (rescuing astro-gulag prisoners? Or docking with an Astrofactory to allow a refugee to clamber on board and try and escape.

More activities...are good, but those have to be either open-ended or with a clear reason for a conclusion.

Asteroid mining for instance -- you won't bother doing it (for long anyway) if all you can get from asteroids is...minerals every time.
Yet I've pointed out that having a mineral refinery on board (Ore Processor OXP) seems far-fetched -- so that means it has to be on a station with appropriate delays with the refining process.

Recovering derelict ships is its own mini-game, and there's a few OXPs dedicated to that task. None seems to have found a good balance.

Having multiple player ships is another thing -- and that will require "parking" the ship or ships you're not using. Makes sense this would go with something like a player's Home System as a parking location. Maybe even later have a 2nd-in-command to use your spare ship/s in a nominal level that's relatively safe...or even become an escort of your "main" ship!

Ummm... I'm not sure I understand how the examples illustrate the point of needing to be open-ended or with clear reason for a conclusion. Are you adding in other things here? And asteroid mining/derelict ship recovery are open-ended, yes?

I agree with your point about the contrived discovery of the Hacker's dens.

So much potential wasted with the Hacker Station -- it could be used by a faction listening in to another faction from within that faction's system...but pretty far from the planet.

A proper system for navigation would make all the difference, as one could then be given rough directions. And then go and "explore".

Nothing in the game is more frustrating than looking for something in the big void of space with no references to its direction from known locations -- just "find McGuffin in system so-and-so!"
The Constrictor at least attacks you when you finally reach the last system, so you don't have to spend hours more looking for it.

Lastly, are my PMs reaching you Cholmondely?

No, not at the moment. Don't know why they usually do, and all of a sudden, failure!

BUT! I'm still desperate for an answer to this:

How do you understand the joys of discovery/exploration in Oolite?
What are you hoping to do? What sort of experiences would you value? What wrecks it for you?

[Switeck]

While there's not a huge number of original game ships, when I first started playing Oolite they were very limited in what roles they appeared in...so getting them further displaced by 3rd party ships made the original ships even rarer.
Sure there were always a lot of Pythons, Boa 1s, and Anacondas arriving at the witchpoint and heading to the main station...but not so much Boa 2s or Cobra 3s acting as freighters as well. And in the Cobra 3's case...always lacking escorts.

I don't really notice any of this. I have cim's and Norby's convoy pattern OXPs installed, and thus notice large dens of Morays, Anacondas, Boas and Pythons (with suitable waits for docking at the main orbital). I do believe that I've seen at least one quiver of cobras over the past year of play. But I've failed to distinguish between the various varieties of Boa out there.

And this is because I started playing back around Oolite v1.73 before any of that happened.
Early impressions matter, although they often get clouded over by nostalgia.
As OXP add-ons started to proliferate (esp. in the 2009-2012 period when I was playing heavy), the original game ships were being more-and-more displaced into obscurity.
Switeck's Shipping OXP was in large part my attempt to reverse that trend...by making more core game ships appear in more roles/conditions.

My feelings on Commies, Dictatorships, Feudal, etc. getting their own flavor ships is...you don't see those same ships outside their respective systems. And that doesn't make sense. They're like an aquarium of fish seen nowhere in the wild...very artificial feeling.

Surely this needs little other than a minor tweak of the code for populating a system?

HA!
I feel Szaumix would make fun of you for even suggesting that. I know I want to!
You probably don't know how hard it is to game-balance feelings and hunches, stuff that doesn't quantify very well.

I keep reiterating that I don't want to rework Switeck's Shipping OXP to make it compatible with Oolite v1.90 and later, because that's really hard for me!
But that's mostly just tweaking the populating of a system with ships.
I spent years working on it and core game changes broke it in at least 3 distinct ways.

But then there should be a purpose to a political ship being there (is this to do with "Ship roles"?). Whether a diplomatic call from a Commie Commissar and his goons or the transportation of goods by a Dictatorship Freighter. Am I correct in presuming that the current coding would ensure this? (And have you seen Stranger's Feudal Raiders?)

Oh wait, you're serious... I want to make fun of you again over that...

Yes, no, and no.
That's a much bigger job than it sounds, and opens up cans of worms you won't even see until you start adding other OXPs/OXZs to the mix which mess everything up.

But would not the Cobra be a bit different anyway? It can do a rather better job of defending itself and of scramming than the lumbering anacondas/pythons/boas, no? Unlike those, it will not be transporting massive quantities of goods (less likely to be fulfilling contracts) and as such less likely to be seen in a trading role, no? The haulage firms won't use them (too little cargo, so uneconomic in terms of purchase and use). The smaller traders would presumably be more used for making smaller/local deliveries - as with the mix of juggernauts and vans we see in the English streets/motorways.

“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Ship production limitations versus demand for more ships dictate that a lot of ships get used in roles they don't fit well in.

WARNING: EXTREME RANTING AHEAD!!!

If the only way to increase deliveries of cargo to a system is by using a swarm of smaller ships (because the others are all 'booked' doing long-hauls?), then that's what you bloody well do!
So even Adders show up trying to deliver a tiny cargo, hopefully as free traders instead of tied to a big shipping company that charges them somehow for the 'privilege'.

as with the mix of juggernauts and vans we see in the English streets/motorways.

Consider the truckers stuck sitting in Dover port for over a week on end waiting for their paperwork to clear and everyone else in line to move ahead, almost entirely because of politics rather than logistics/physics.

That also ties up mad quantities of trucks and drivers which cannot be used elsewhere.

Build more trucks?
Nah, we'd rather shut the vehicle factories down because they're not (as) profitable now!

Hire more drivers?
Sure, we'll just recruit from the medical care profession...especially ambulance drivers since the delays at hospitals are now so long as to make them almost useless there.

Hopefully rant over now...

So imagine a long peninsulas of systems in Oolite where somewhere along the chain a (dictatorship?) system decided out of "nationalism" to kick out GalCop and that the Galactic Navy is no longer allowed to pass through its system.

(...a few days later...)
Pirate hijinks ensues...

Trade grinds to a near-halt, with the only ships daring to make the trip do so in huge convoys, forcing them to wait in ever-increasing numbers before beginning their trip.

(I'm getting Suez Canal / Red Sea / Gulf of Aden vibes from this idea...even though it's nowhere near an exact match.)

Which raises a subsidiary point about crew sizes.
If a Cobra Mk.3 can manage perfectly well with a single crewman/pilot, why on earth do the freighters need so many? What the dickens are they all doing? Are pilots who can both steer and fire a laser so horrendously expensive to employ?

Round-the-clock crews.
Pilot/gunner, navigator (route-planner), engineer/loadmaster...probably has some of the crew members double-up on tasks, however to have the ship continuously crewed by fully awake members requires redundancy.
So a ship that needs 2 active crew members at all times needs probably 4-8 to cover each 24-hour period.
This gets even weirder if we assume each hyperspace jump is relatively quick from the crew's point-of-view but takes hours from the rest of the universe's point-of-view, especially for crews of long-endurance freighters doing lots of 6-6.8 LY jumps.
Main stations turn into massive hotels for spare ship crews resting while their ships make additional runs.

Ummm... I'm not sure I understand how the examples illustrate the point of needing to be open-ended or with clear reason for a conclusion. Are you adding in other things here? And asteroid mining/derelict ship recovery are open-ended, yes?

Asteroid mining and derelict ship recovery tend to be activities players will only do for a short while.

How do you understand the joys of discovery/exploration in Oolite?

I don't want to deep dive into that...I haven't done much "for serious" playing of Oolite in ages. And most of what I do now (finding misjump routes) easily qualifies as cheating.

What are you hoping to do? What sort of experiences would you value?

Haven't I been answering this question well enough over the last few years, especially in recent PMs to you?

[montana05]

Goodness me! Hero! That sounds absolutely super!! Well done!

I'd love to see it! Will you be calling it "Montana's Monumentally Murderous Modifications"?

Here we go:
https://app.box.com/s/35s7upenqndlm53kfoy2kqp9crqay8z8

Please remember it is a WIP so a bit chaotic and not cleaned up and therefore not useful to publish in the current state. BTW the name is simple Lambda Series

Happy New Year!

Any progress on this one?

A late Happy New Year to everybody as well. I didn't touch any Oolite code anymore since Revals outbursts on wiki to his crappy code. If this moron doesn't show up anymore, I might return and continue my WIP's.

[Cholmondely]

... I might return and continue my WIP's.

I'd not realised that you were working on a "Star Wars remake" oxp.

You might wish to look at Phkb's recent work on External Docking and just check how the Imperial Star Destroyer oxp works with it, to try and allow a variant docking procedure without using the shuttle.

YouTube: Oolite 1.91 - demo - external docking at Nuit (I did it just fine with Oolite 1.90)

...here's a preliminary set of OXP's to play with.

FIrst: ExternalDockingSystem.oxz

That OXP won't do anything on it's own. A station needs to make use of it. And so...

Second: Nuit_Station_2.0.oxz

This updated Nuit Station will set up each of the external ports as valid docking locations. Additionally, there could also be docked ships at some of the ports, so those won't be available. If you have the Liners OXP installed, the docked ships will be liners. If you don't, I've currently only coded an Anaconda and a Boa Class Cruiser as possible docked ships - I may add to that in future. The station should tell you which ports are available as you approach, and the ports now have visible numbers to match.

I'm not guaranteeing anything with these OXP's. I haven't tested for all the possible interactions with other OXP's, so expect things to go "bang". But let me know if you encounter anything unexpected. I also haven't completely nailed down the interface spec for EDS, so don't go nuts with that yet. Once I'm more comfortable with the state of the code, I'll create a separate thread for it.

[montana05]

... I might return and continue my WIP's.

I'd not realised that you were working on a "Star Wars remake" oxp.

I never touched the Star Destroyer from Norby except as a non-player version addition to Galactic Navy new. However, I did retexture some other ships and even found better models to replace the existing simple ones.