Planetfall OXP

[Thargoid]

Gleetings!
Part of the reason of my suggestion is that I don't really like the idea of out of scale models on the actual planet surface (even if they could be faded in), it just seems it's going to end up a bit wonky no matter what, not saying that you clever chaps won't find a way round it though, I just can't see it myself.

Here we're in agreement I think Hence my stated reluctance, and my going the route I currently have.

Maybe then it could be that each planet only has one civillian space port and the whole surface remains the entry point to that?

That was essentially what v1.0 was (although that had planet surface rather than spaceport). The current one expands it a little to give some variety of where you land (randomly), but the essence is the same.

My only problem conceptually with the planets having spaceports at all is that it rather makes the orbitting station redundant. If there was enough traffic to warrant a spaceport then there wouldn't be enough to need a station, and if the station is dealing with the traffic then there wouldn't be a spaceport (as in the trunk game concept). Hence why I've not used them as locations.

Is it possible to jump to another location by other kinds of trigger, such as the altitude from the planet surface (as opposed to altitude above the sun?).

Yes, perfectly possible. That's how the existing OXP works (although that uses one or two of the built-in trigger events, but using a timer to monitor the altitude is also simple, and it spawns a station in-situ rather than moving the player at that point, although it does that too on launch). And it already distinguishes between the four existing planetary body types (main planet, additional planet, moon and sun) so you can't land on the sun, and you get different responses and locations on the other three.

Instead of being shot down then perhaps a bad landing could be ejected and fined?

In which case you may as well land them and be done with it. It's one of those scenarios where there are a number of different routes that can be taken.

I think at the moment I'm going to leave this OXP with the random locations, and perhaps come back to it later on once I've finished off the other ongoing OXPs I've been tinkering with the for the last few months (and perhaps even finally get around to finishing and issuing the very first one I started!).

[ZygoUgo]

Probably for the best, it's a bit of a can of worms.
May I suggest a couple of points for your digestion in the meantime though..
I have wondered about this making the main stations redundant and although its great to have that extra bit of dimension to the game the novelty will wear off, therefore I'm suggesting that for gameplay sakes entry to the planetary docks be restricted somehow..? Something to aim for.
There's the aforementioned landing gear, but I think this would be better off as a predetermined characteristic of a vessel, not all vessels (IE no uber or especially large traders) have the ability for planet fall. This creates a descision to be made by the player between which advantages he/she/it wants from their vessel. Also it restricts access until the player can afford a new ship, and therefore all the juicy missions therein.
Another way would be via a difficult set of missions, as in the landing ports are under the jurisdiction of a monopoly, this would restrict you till your are experienced enough to be able to fully equip your ship or instead a certain rating level.
Personally I think it would be truer to Elite to maintain that only certain lighter or more airworthy vessels are capable.
Maybe it's to do with some level of quarantine so your access to socialising with the public has to be worked at planet by planet, or certain planets of other species require you to be cleansed by being injected with some very expensive nanobots.
Maybe it's not a game play issue at all?

[Thargoid]

I don't like the monopoly idea, but the ship size one is perhaps possible (via the mass property). That one certainly will bear some investigation I think.

Will of course depend on what kind of masses different ships have to find a suitable yes/no decision point, but that would be about the only way to do this I think. Not sure how this would affect OXP ships in terms of exclusion though, but it's worth looking into.

There's no other measure of "uberness" that I can think of that would be suitably measurable, and I'm not sure anything other than size would make sense anyway.

There is the argument of course that larger ships (which couldn't dock at the station) are precisely the ones who should be catered for with PF. And also there could be specific reasons to go to the planet rather than the station, for example for mission offering/accomplishment or availability of cheap/expensive goods or equipment.

Other thoughts anyone? (to save this becoming a duologue).

[Lestradae]

Well, I for one think that planetary landing should not be restricted according to the ship a player is flying. It should be decided by the players if they want the planetary landing feature in their game or not.

If Uberness was a criterium, some people would no longer be able to land on planets as they would have advanced too far in their game?!

If "too big ships" couldn't land, again, same thing. The players shouldn't be effectively punished for what ship they have by being locked out of an optional part of the game.

Anyone should be able to land if they choose so, and I find especially the idea of planetary black monks, hoopy casinos, seedy bars and navy stations fascinating.

But, an idea I think interesting and perhaps a reasonable and immersive restriction would be that planetary landing has to be earned somehow and needs, for example, a landing gear and additional atmospheric shielding (which could, I guess, easily be scripted as equipment items).

No idea how that could be earned, perhaps a certain rank is nescessary? A series of missions? A special permit?

Those are my thoughts on the topic, making this at least a trialogue.

Good n8

L

[Thargoid]

Using the mass factor would be workable for trunk ships, but it's completely blown for OXP ships mainly. Some have extremely low values, and some absurdly huge ones. So that way doesn't make sense after all.

It's perfectly possible to have a requirement for equipment for planet landing. I was just resisting it so as not to introduce yet more kit to the game.

The "earning" of the right to land doesn't seem very realistic or immersive to me though. My feeling I think is to leave it as-is, just to have the requirement to await landing clearance to make things not totally simple. Unless anyone else has a good idea though.

[DaddyHoggy]

I've joined this debate rather late but here it goes:

Some ships (from my C64 days of reading the flight manual and the novella) were specifically designed to enter the atmosphere and be able to land, some were clearly not.

I think planetfall is an excellent idea so how about, without complicating things too much further that for ships which weren't designed to perform planetfall specifically could be modified to accommodate such a capability, thus requiring perhaps additional piece(s) such as:

atmospheric stabilisation system (an upgrade to the standard docking computer?)
Launch boosters (modification/upgrade of the WF Injector system)
Atmospheric shielding (upgrade for heat shielding)
Landing gear upgrade

This way the equipment list would remain much as it is now (with possible exception of landing gear upgrade).

The equipment could simply cost money and/or cost money and eat into cargo space and/or be a permanent upgrade or be a one-shot use (Landing gear upgrade or shielding good for only one landing/take-off?)

As ever just my 0.02Cr worth

[Commander McLane]

It is my understanding of the game mechanism that only a couple of ships can land in the first place. That's the shuttle-class of ships: Worm, Orbital Shuttle, Transporter, and Adder. It is suggested that the Moray may have landing capacities as well, although it is more like a watering capability.

Some OXP-ships could be capable of atmospheric flight as well. Especially I am thinking of the Executive Spaceways ships with their aerodynamic design and fins.

As far as the stations are concerned, it is quite clearly stated that they are needed as trading place, because under GalCop laws outworlders are prohibited from landing on the planet itself altogether. If you want to travel down, you have to park your ship at the station and book a seat on a shuttle, see 'Justice for Mrs Combs'. The novel tells us as well, though, that there may be semi-legal landing spots on a planet, where a spaceship might go down undetected, at least for a while.

@ L: As to the point of 'punishing' a player for owning a certain ship: I don't see your point here. Each ship comes (and has always come!) with its specific upsides and downsides. One ship has only a small cargo bay, the next ship is very slow, another has a terrible turn rate, yet another cannot fit shield enhancers, there are even ships that cannot have fuel scoops, etc., etc. I don't see any of those as a 'punishment' for the player. It's just how these ships are built, and the player decides what ship he buys, depending on its abilities. So why shouldn't can-touchdown-on-a-planet be just another of a ship's specifications? After all, what's the point in having different player ships to choose from, if in the end they all have the same specifications? In that case we could as well return to the original Elite-style: Everybody gets a Cobbie III, period.

[Killer Wolf]

i agree that a choice of ship *should* affect if you can land planetside or not - like Commander McLane says, it's all part of the decision about which ship to invest in.
what could be done, to expand this, is to add in a shuttle system. People in non-lanadable ships eg could dock at the Coriolis, and pay for a shuttle to take them (and cargo if needed) planetside to sell and bring them (and bought cargo) back. if you pay to go down then find the prices on the planet are worse than the station, well that's just part of the trading lark isn't it?

[Thargoid]

What I think I'll do is add in "Planetary Landing Capability" as a new bit of kit that's required for landing (to include conceptually most of the kit that DH lists above). This will be usable for any number of launches, but on launch it will have a chance of breaking and requiring repair before the next landing can be achieved.

That way the player has to purchase it to have the landing enabled, and periodically it will need to be repaired as a kind of maintenance overhaul.

And if players want to keep things strict and only have shuttles etc land, then skip the OXP The "shuttle down to the planet" idea is do-able, but would more easily be a separate OXP I think.

[Lestradae]

I think some sort of landing gear/atmospheric shielding is in order, then?

I can see the point of Cmdr McLane, too. Perhaps a new entry into the shipdata.plist that sets "planetarylanding" to true or false?

Concerning too many restrictions, my point is that as always, this oxp can be installed or not. There is also the difference to ship's choices which are better or worse at certain things.

A player might want to have planets that can be landed on, it's an oxp choice. A player who wants only a ship that can do everything and the NPCs can't, it's a choice to cheat.

As usual, that's just my take on things, and anyone is entitled to differ in opinion

Cheers

L

[Eric Walch]

Well, I for one think that planetary landing should not be restricted according to the ship a player is flying. It should be decided by the players if they want the planetary landing feature in their game or not.

Currently Thargoid is landing at 500m height (that is the moment the handler triggers). I wrote a small example were the player has to fly below 200 meter height to be able to dock. That way big ships will always crash before reaching this height.

And have you ever seen a starship land? Really big ships will never be able to land. It would look weird to see a Behemoth land.

But the main reason is practical: Big ships don't fit in a docking slid. Currently Oolite crashes with me when I try it, but when oolite wouldn't crash it would most likely let the player crash with energy damage.

[Thargoid]

This is partly why I kept it at 500m (the event trigger level as you say) and also didn't move the player before docking. If I moved the player and then tried to dock them, if they're in too large a ship you at worst get the whole game crash as you say, or more often the ship and the station intersect and the collision/docking detection doesn't happen, and you end up with the station behind you (or around you) but you're not docked. If you re-orient yourself then you either fly out into free space or crash into the station wall and die. You've then got a rogue station around spoiling things (at least until you leave the surface trigger, when a clean-up routine kicks in and removes any that may be around).

By keeping things at 500m and not moving, there is enough space to spawn the station without it interfering with the planet, and if something does go wrong you're low down and you go splat into the planet anyway, thus "simulating" a death by failure of the heat shielding and burning up or something similar. I was trying to avoid the failed docking and suddenly the player is 4km up in orbit and not sure how they got there scenario.

Essentially large ships (ones that cannot dock) already cannot land, they will not interact correctly with the temporary station and so will hit the planet and die (if the station spawning doesn't completely crash things).

[Eric Walch]

or more often the ship and the station intersect and the collision/docking detection doesn't happen, and you end up with the station behind you (or around you) but you're not docked. If you re-orient yourself then you either fly out into free space or crash into the station wall and die.

All those things mainly happen because you don't rotate your docking station in a way the bay is oriented towards the player.

Look at my second example with the landing strip I already send you by PM. (Based on one of your early versions) Landing strip
The flashers of the strip are placed only meters above the surface. You only dock when height is below 200 meter. (probably you can lower this value even a bit). Big ships will automatically touch surface before reaching that height as the height is calculated from the ships centre.

[Thargoid]

For the latest beta version (the one you have, not the one on general release) I've changed the station. Given Frame uses a similar methodology in Save Anywhere with his intermission station, I thought I'd look and see how he did it, and it's a much better way and completely does away with the issue.

So as it's such a clever way I duly nicked it and used it too There's no need to re-orient the docking bay as the temporary station now doesn't have one. You now squeeze yourself into a cargo pod instead

[pagroove]

Hi thargoid,

Nice to see that a 'simple' OXP grows on you
I like the way the OXP is as in the latest version. I do however fully agree with Daddyhoggy. A planetfall kit is a modification which costs some cargo space. The engineers have to make some room for the gears which is the reason it costs (2tc for small ships to 8 tc for large ships) room? As a balancing factor some very lucrative benefits or trading deals can be found at the surface.