Lestradae wrote:By the way, perhaps this might be of interest you: From the next version(s) (1.08+) on, there will be a "strict" and an expanded version of the Realistic Shipyards.
The expanded version will go on adding all sorts of stuff one might want or not want to have / fit into one`s game, the other will ONLY change prices and tech level spans for ships appearing without putting anything else in.
Now, that's finally a
really good idea!
As you certainly have figured out yourself
, I have strong objections against the idea of making every ship buyable for the player. In my opinion there are a lot of ships that are simply
not meant to be available on the open market, and so they should
under no circumstances become available. (So even not with a super-high price-tag or a certain kill-requirement, or both.)
A very broad definition of those ships which are not meant to be available for the player would include all ships whose original authors haven't made them available. Just because I believe those authors had a good reason for not doing so.
Now that would be a really broad definition. Because you or I could as well have a good reason to differ from the original author.
So I have another, narrower definition for "ships which are not meant to be available". This includes all ships for which -- in a game-perspective! -- it simply makes no sense to have them available on the open market.
In my opinion, for instance all military and police ships fall under this category. Never ever would a player be able to buy one. Because I think it makes sense to assume that even 1000 years from now police vessels are exclusively for the police, and military vessels are exclusively for the military. And the player simply is neither police nor military. You could argue that all space pilots by definition belong to the reserve military, which is true. But even in the real world no reserve-navy-captain is allowed to purchase his own, private cruiser, destroyer, dreadnaught or carrier. And Maegil, whom we know to be on a boat, for sure was never offered to buy a military ship. It makes no sense, and it makes no sense in Oolite's world either. Therefore, to be frank, I think it's a big
cheat to make military ships available.
In my opinion, also the Dredger falls under this category. After all, this ship is just a myth.
Thanks to a friendly scripter we are able to encounter this old Elite myth for real in Oolite, but I think this is enough of an encounter. It shouldn't be possible to purchase one.
And there are for sure a couple of other ships, which, for simple reasons of in-game-logic, never should be available for the player.
So for me it is no good news that you made them available in your OXP. You won't be surprised to know that I wouldn't even consider to download realistic shipyards, let alone install it, as it is now in 1.07.
Actually this last weekend I had the idea that I could produce a stripped-off variant of it and upload it under a name like "realistic shipyards without cheating". It would contain only those ships which IMO make sense to have in a shipyard (oh, and before I forget: I would also delete the cloaking device from the available equipment; it is not meant to be buyable, you have to earn it; or else a certain mission in Galaxy 5 would stop making sense; and it's cheating as well).
So I am pleased to hear that you came up with essentially the same idea.
I
would consider installing an OXP which
only brings a formula to the pricing of the
existing ships.
Anything else would kill too much of the intrinsic logic, and therefore the fun of the game. Just my humble opinion.
, I will stick to "The Graceful Sofia" (my pcc [named after my little sister]) for now. I rob Deep Space Dredger's all the time, so the cat is in for it 
