Regarding the lack of ships in deep-space...

[Commander McLane]

IIRC, Rafe's Anaconda was situated in interstellar space, one tenth the distance to the next system. And it's the last part we can't do in Oolite, because a misjump will place you at half the distance to the next system.

*****

On a general note: If we populate deep-space with aliens, I wouldn't go for Thargoids again. But: Wouldn't the Orb be wonderfully fitting for that purpose? They are completely alien and incomprehensible. So I would suggest the occasional Orb encounter out of the spacelines.

[Gareth3377]

Yes, you're right about Rafe and interstellar space. It's the concept I was thinking - that there are things outside of the space lanes. Ooo, and as an aside (I don't think I'm opening a can of worms). The interstellar space that Rafe's Anaconda was in isn't Witchspace is it? That's got to be different, right?

About the aliens. Totally agree. The Orb was a fantastic OXP that had the unfortunate effect of crashing my PC so, sadly, I had to take it out. If it could be stabalised then that would be ace.

[Commander McLane]

The interstellar space that Rafe's Anaconda was in isn't Witchspace is it? That's got to be different, right?

That depends on how precise you are in your definition of witchspace.

Actually witchspace is only the connection between two points of normal space, in other words, only the tunnel-effect is actually witchspace. As soon as you leave the tunnel, you are back in normal space.

That normal space may be close to a planet, that's what we call planetary or system space. Or it can be a point far away from any planet and sun, and that's what we call interstellar space. And this is where Rafe's Anaconda was.

But many people are a little sloppy in their wording. Therefore they would call the entire interstellar space witchspace, not only the tunnel itself.

If you belong to that category, then the answer is Yes, the interstellar space is witchspace.

[Scoopy]

On a general note: If we populate deep-space with aliens, I wouldn't go for Thargoids again. But: Wouldn't the Orb be wonderfully fitting for that purpose? They are completely alien and incomprehensible. So I would suggest the occasional Orb encounter out of the spacelines.

This sounds good. Something rarely encountered but extremely likely to kill you if you do.

However, I don't think we are talking about deep space here as such. As far as I can tell, you can be extremely close to a planet and/or station and not be in the space lane and thus completely safe.

[Commander McLane]

Indeed. In the context of this discussion "deep space" is used with the meaning of "anything outside the space-lanes".

[Amen Brick]

Maybe not aliens at all, but X-filesy in the sense of governmental secrecy, genetic tampering, black craft, etc. You can get away with a lot if no one flies near.

[Eric Walch]

I just looked at my quick code and added two more conditions to make things more practical:

1) No adding of ships within a 250 000 meter range of any deep-space station.

2) Made chance of encounters speed dependent. Now you only get encounters every few minutes when at jumpspeed. At normal maximum speed it takes much longer and no ships at all when standing still.

3) Adds also an occasional asteroid.

Download: DeepSpacePirates v0.12

[Scoopy]

I just looked at my quick code and added two more conditions to make things more practical:

1) No adding of ships within a 250 000 meter range of any deep-space station.

2) Made chance of encounters speed dependent. Now you only get encounters every few minutes when at jumpspeed. At normal maximum speed it takes much longer and no ships at all when standing still.

Download: DeepSpacePirates v0.11

I like this

[Gareth3377]

@McLane

Got you. Your thoughts on Witchspace confirm what I thought I thought (if you see what I mean).

Ta muchly

[Cmdr. Maegil]

the lane is notoriously slow, so some faster or better armed ship pilots might decide to take their chances on a route parallel to the lane (but not too far out), as the trading players often do.

Faster ships equipped with fuel injectors and beam or military lasers could be given an extra AI with a chance of flying perpendicular to the lane for a short time before reverting to the normal go to station AI - that'd somewhat populate at least the lane edges without adding any extra ships.

Something similar could be done to the pirates, only some of the best armed should venture on the police-patrolled lanes (possibly in groups), and unescorted weaker ships ought to remain on the fringes.

(sorry if this is in, I haven't tried your OXP yet )

[Frame]

the lane is notoriously slow, so some faster or better armed ship pilots might decide to take their chances on a route parallel to the lane (but not too far out), as the trading players often do.

Add on to that idea... When i flew an Anaconda, i used deep space as a way to get to the stations without encountering pirates. So large ships with or without escorts should exist further out.

Large ships doing this should also reflect the experience level of the pilot and therefore indicate that his has been in business for a long time, and therefore only be armed with Hard-Heads.. i have lately seen many ships fire these off, only to have them explode a moment later.. but that seems to be a 1.7.1.2 bug...

however, they seem to fire off 3-4 missiles at a time... imagine you facing 4 hardheads at once... "DIVE DIVE DIVE HIT YOUR BURNERS COMMANDER".... ... <--- wonder if another_commander can remember this...

ahh nostalagi trip there... but anyway, if someone is going to add special ships to new space lanes so to speak... we might as well toughen up these ships. Deep Space "explorers" should only be the most dangerous foes/freinds...

[Scoopy]

Large ships doing this should also reflect the experience level of the pilot and therefore indicate that his has been in business for a long time, and therefore only be armed with Hard-Heads.. i have lately seen many ships fire these off, only to have them explode a moment later.. but that seems to be a 1.7.1.2 bug...

however, they seem to fire off 3-4 missiles at a time... imagine you facing 4 hardheads at once... "DIVE DIVE DIVE HIT YOUR BURNERS COMMANDER".... ... <--- wonder if another_commander can remember this...

ahh nostalagi trip there... but anyway, if someone is going to add special ships to new space lanes so to speak... we might as well toughen up these ships. Deep Space "explorers" should only be the most dangerous foes/freinds...

For me, the point is that currently deep space is the place for novice pilots not tough ones. Pilots that don´t want to get killed travel out of the space lanes. That´s why I think, from a realism point of view, someone or something needs to exist to provide a reason why pilots "run the gauntlet" of the space lanes.

Personally I use the space lanes because if I don´t, nothing happens and the game becomes a simple trading game.

[LittleBear]

Well it could make sense to encounter pirates outside the space lanes. Even pirates need to sleep / rest / make repaires etc. As they're offenders or fugitives, it make sense for them to park up outside the space lanes once they've filled their holds. The Captain of a pirate Python may perhaps have a fixed 'meeting point' way outside the space lanes. He may meet up with felow criminals who have Clean records. The booty is transfered and the 'fence' takes it to the station in return for a cut of the profits. Natrually you don't want to do this sort of thing in the Space Lanes were a passing Cop might notice and give the 'fence' an offender tag (ruining his usefulness). A pirate might also have to shut down his main reacter to fix battle damage. It would be suicide to do that the space lanes where any passing Cop or Hunter might blast your helpless craft apart. I'd vote for quite a few pirates outside the space lanes. This explains why traders tend to stick to the space lanes. At least they are patroled by Cops. Even in an Anarchy there at least a chance that a bounty hunter might help you out or a fellow trader hear your distress call and come to your hail. But outside the space lanes, if you do run into a band of ruffians , there's nobody about to hear your screams...

[Eric Walch]

Faster ships equipped with fuel injectors and beam or military lasers could be given an extra AI with a chance of flying perpendicular to the lane for a short time before reverting to the normal go to station AI - that'd somewhat populate at least the lane edges without adding any extra ships.

From a normal trader point of view that would be the most logical action. But from the programmer point of view you want only a certain amount of ships in the system. The more you add, the slower the game becomes. When you spread the ships to widely it is likely the player won't see much of it. I think the spread is now well optimised.

On the point of parallel routes: Somehow it already happens that way. Most ships don't go to the station but call a system function to go to the planet. That function does not return the position of the planet centre but a position in its area. When the ship is far away it even get destination coordinates back that are a bit outside the planet. This to prevent that not all ships head for the same point but travel in a wide lane in direction of the planet. (That is also the reason that falling shuttles go down in a zigzag way. Every time it asks for the "planet" coordinates it gets back slightly different values.)

What I did in the few lines of code is drawing a cylinder around the spacelane with a diameter of 250 000 meters. Within this cylinder I add nothing. When the player does not fly to far parallel to the spacelane nothing happens. He has to go really in deep space.
Some oxp's add stations in deep space. To not interfere with these I also add an exclusion sphere around those stations and the sun with a diameter of 250 000 meters were nothing is added.

The whole code is just an example were new ideas and ships can be added to. One must just watch out that deep space not looks too crowded and encounters stay rare. Probably I must make additions also more rare the further away from the planet. (decrease the encounter chance logarithmic with the distance).

EDIT: added the logaritmic chance.
Download: DeepSpacePirates v0.13.
This fits Little Bears suggestion: more encounters closer to the spacelanes and less further away.

[Eric Walch]

.... Would make more sense to find deep space dredgers here too.

Makes a lot of sense. I looked at the code of the dredger and added a script that only adds the ships when in deep space. Just out of visible range of the player (=300 000 meters ahead for such a large ship).
I made sure is is only added once every few systems.
I removed some obvious bugs like defense-ships with an escortAI and station scanclass for a ship removed the trader role.

Does anyone know who is the author? My version has no readMe file or an version number. (creation date: 23-12-06)

EDIT:
I updated the code a bit and reuploaded the dredger with version number 1.1: Deep Space Dredger 1.1
You will mainly see it in deep space. Not in all the systems, but with Oolite 1.71 it will be in the one after a startup or reload when one heads long enough for deep space at jumpspeed.
Besides this it will also be occasionally near the spacelanes with all Oolite versions.