Witchspace Question for Story and OXP

Website · Post by **Cody** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 9:52 pm

#228. Rear (59,146), {27,96,99,164,226} within 7.0 LY. Radius 2875 km.

Feudal, Poor Ind. Pop. 4.0 B, Prod. 12800 MCr. HC: 5, TL: 10, Large Red Bug-Eyed Frogs.
The planet Rear is scourged by a evil disease.

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:04 pm

Damn, what do you say if you stem from there? "I'm from the Rear end of the Ooniverse ..."

Evil disease indeed

Post by **Eric Walch** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:05 pm

aegidian wrote:
Last time I looked at the code (way way back,) I was toying with the idea of systems existing halfway along witchsppace routes. I'm not sure how much of this I ever implemented or whether it remained on the back of an envelope somewhere.

I don't think this has been developed any further. In 1.71 you could not add planets, only ships. With 1.72 this was corrected and I wrote the anachar.oxp as mentioned before. It adds a planet, a station and a station buoy in witchspace.

Space compass does not work but on sight you can find the planet and its station easy. But on launching from that station you ended in one of the surrounding systems. I just tested it again with both 1.73 and trunk: On pressing 1 (or F1) my position on the galactic chart suddenly jumps to an other nearby system (not my start or ending system) and than nothing happens. I can't launch anymore. (Testing with a behemoth in witchspace showed I can launch from that one)

treczoks · Post by **treczoks** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:55 am

Eric Walch wrote:
There is just one problem. When launching from such a station you end up in normal space. A bit stupid for a story. With a carrier you can still imagine the carrier jumped while docked, but not with a station.

Mhh, bad. That black system i imagined was supposed to consist of an enourmous planetary body that failed to be a sun (a bit like jupiter, but bigger, and too much iron to star the fusion process), and a special GalCop station. As one cannot scoop fuel in this system, one is either bound to dock and refuel, or hike somebody elses witch space trail.

And of course, when leaving the station, one should end up in the black system again. But I'm just working on the very beginnings of the story, so when i start to build an OXP this will propably be solved, anyway.

The location of this black system would be in Galaxy Sector 3, between Inlain (184) and Ditere (133). A look on the map will shw the obvious reason for this location.

Right on, Trumbles!

Christian Treczoks

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:36 am

treczoks wrote:
The location of this black system would be in Galaxy Sector 3, between Inlain (184) and Ditere (133). A look on the map will shw the obvious reason for this location.

Hmmm. The look on the map rather shows the obvious reason why your black system should not be located there. The place is not reachable, under no circumstances can the player get there.

In order to make a misjump, first the correct destination for a jump as to be chosen. Valid destinations are all systems within the 7LY range. Neither from Inlain nor from Ditere can the other system be chosen as a destination in the first place. So no jump can be initiated. Ergo no misjump can happen.

The off-reach systems are what it says on the tin: off-reach. You can't get to them from the same galaxy. There is no workaround for that, and there won't be any in Oolite.

Sorry, you'll have to go and choose another location.

treczoks · Post by **treczoks** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 12:53 pm

Commander McLane wrote:
treczoks wrote:
The location of this black system would be in Galaxy Sector 3, between Inlain (184) and Ditere (133). A look on the map will shw the obvious reason for this location.
Hmmm. The look on the map rather shows the obvious reason why your black system should not be located there. The place is not reachable, under no circumstances can the player get there.

There IS a way to Ditere - and due to the fact that Ditere has a TL of 10 - a way out, too. I wanted to keep this as a backdoor for the experienced spacer (and somehow get them extra points for being smart, too), but I would need to verify this backdoor path in the Oolite engine (I gained this knowledge from the TXTELITE sources). The same path would open a path to the Lost Worlds in Galaxy Sector 6 (but, sadly, not out of the Beanxeat/Quitius pair*). I wanted to give you a hint here, but it looks (judging from later in your text) that you are aware of this kind of backdoor.

Commander McLane wrote:
In order to make a misjump, first the correct destination for a jump as to be chosen. Valid destinations are all systems within the 7LY range. Neither from Inlain nor from Ditere can the other system be chosen as a destination in the first place. So no jump can be initiated. Ergo no misjump can happen.

OK, I thought more along the lines of a piece of equipment enabling you to take something that looks like a standard witchspace jump in either Inlain or Detere, but ends in this black system. There is a certain purpose to it that it can't be reached via a forced misjump.

Commander McLane wrote:
The off-reach systems are what it says on the tin: off-reach. You can't get to them from the same galaxy. There is no workaround for that, and there won't be any in Oolite.

Somehow this paragraph is challenging me to take a serious look under the hood of the Oolite engine. Maybe this is a way to learn YACD (Yet Another C Dialect).

Commander McLane wrote:
Sorry, you'll have to go and choose another location.

Well, lets say I'm not totally convinced yet. And even if this does not work out the way I initially thought, I can always use the original back door as the front door.

Yours, Christian

*Maybe another interesting story starting point: Meet the stranded spacers in the quite crowded Beanxeat station and ask them how much they are willing to pay for a certain piece of equipment...

Post by **Disembodied** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 1:19 pm

I don't know if anything like this actually appears anywhere on any map, but presumably it's possible for the midpoint of a valid jump – i.e. where you end up with a witchspace malfunction – to be within 7LY of an otherwise isolated sector, e.g.

*A
.
x . . . .*C (isolated)
.
*B

From *A to *B it's 6.8LY. From *A or *B to *C it's 7.6LY. But from the midpoint x to *C, it's only 6.8LY. If you can misjump to x, and refuel, you can then jump from x to *C.

Hey! I just used Pythagorus for the first time in more than 20 years! So might have got it wrong ...

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 1:22 pm

treczoks wrote:
Commander McLane wrote:
treczoks wrote:
The location of this black system would be in Galaxy Sector 3, between Inlain (184) and Ditere (133). A look on the map will shw the obvious reason for this location.
Hmmm. The look on the map rather shows the obvious reason why your black system should not be located there. The place is not reachable, under no circumstances can the player get there.
There IS a way to Ditere - and due to the fact that Ditere has a TL of 10 - a way out, too. I wanted to keep this as a backdoor for the experienced spacer (and somehow get them extra points for being smart, too), but I would need to verify this backdoor path in the Oolite engine (I gained this knowledge from the TXTELITE sources). The same path would open a path to the Lost Worlds in Galaxy Sector 6 (but, sadly, not out of the Beanxeat/Quitius pair*). I wanted to give you a hint here, but it looks (judging from later in your text) that you are aware of this kind of backdoor.

See Cataclysm and a certain pair of systems in Galaxy 6.

treczoks wrote:
Commander McLane wrote:
In order to make a misjump, first the correct destination for a jump as to be chosen. Valid destinations are all systems within the 7LY range. Neither from Inlain nor from Ditere can the other system be chosen as a destination in the first place. So no jump can be initiated. Ergo no misjump can happen.
OK, I thought more along the lines of a piece of equipment enabling you to take something that looks like a standard witchspace jump in either Inlain or Detere, but ends in this black system. There is a certain purpose to it that it can't be reached via a forced misjump.

For the game engine there is no difference between an accidental and a forced misjump. In both cases you end up exactly halfway between your source system and your target system. Which excludes your preferred location. Hey, I happen to be the guy who has requested the full scriptability of misjumps, including the setting of any point along the way as exit point. But this isn't implemented yet. And still, it would be along the way between source and destination. I also could imagine the possibility of giving the scripter total freedom as to where in the current galaxy the exit point should be. But this is even less implemented yet, and I seriously doubt that it ever will be.

treczoks wrote:
Commander McLane wrote:
The off-reach systems are what it says on the tin: off-reach. You can't get to them from the same galaxy. There is no workaround for that, and there won't be any in Oolite.
Somehow this paragraph is challenging me to take a serious look under the hood of the Oolite engine. Maybe this is a way to learn YACD (Yet Another C Dialect).

Of course, feel free to learn the code. But be aware that you won't get support among the developers for anything that would break the 7LY barrier. It is one of the features which make Oolite into being Oolite (= a re-invention of Elite, not Frontier). And as our Grand Admiral likes to put it: For games different from Oolite, see: games that are not Oolite.

treczoks wrote:
Commander McLane wrote:
Sorry, you'll have to go and choose another location.
Well, lets say I'm not totally convinced yet. And even if this does not work out the way I initially thought, I can always use the original back door as the front door.

There are no galactic mis-jumps. Not supported by the code. A galactic hyperjump always ends in a system. Even the Thargoids can't ambush you during one (there are several theories around why that is so: maybe it has something to do with the increased energy output of the galactic hyperdrive; or the eight wormholes are inherently stable and cannot be interrupted; maybe the eventual breakdown of the wormhole network will be caused by an attempt of the Thargoids to interrupt intergalactic travel?; truth is: we don't know

).

Post by **Eric Walch** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 2:55 pm

treczoks wrote:
Commander McLane wrote:
treczoks wrote:
The location of this black system would be in Galaxy Sector 3, between Inlain (184) and Ditere (133). A look on the map will shw the obvious reason for this location.
Hmmm. The look on the map rather shows the obvious reason why your black system should not be located there. The place is not reachable, under no circumstances can the player get there.
There IS a way to Ditere - and due to the fact that Ditere has a TL of 10 - a way out, too.

No way you can get there in between. To make a misjump you must first start a normal jump and that can only started for a destination within 7 LY.

When you look for a special location, you can go to galaxy 7. That contains a whole group of 28 isolated stars. That group IS reachable from a position halfway system 89 and 194. I have done it in the past. But there is no way back.

treczoks · Post by **treczoks** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:30 pm

Disembodied wrote:
If you can misjump to x, and refuel, you can then jump from x to *C.

Ok, now just tell me how one is going to refuel out there. Unless the thargs left a usable fuel station out there, and without a sun to play "catch a corona" with, getting some Quirium might be a teensy bit of a problem. Looks like you're either walking to the next station with a fuel canister or using the escape pod...

Yours, Christian

Website · Post by **DaddyHoggy** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:49 pm

treczoks wrote:
Disembodied wrote:
If you can misjump to x, and refuel, you can then jump from x to *C.
Ok, now just tell me how one is going to refuel out there. Unless the thargs left a usable fuel station out there, and without a sun to play "catch a corona" with, getting some Quirium might be a teensy bit of a problem. Looks like you're either walking to the next station with a fuel canister or using the escape pod...

Yours, Christian

I thought the Fuel Collector worked even in the rarefied vapour streams of deepspace - it just worked really really slowly...

Screet · Post by **Screet** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:53 pm

DaddyHoggy wrote:
I thought the Fuel Collector worked even in the rarefied vapour streams of deepspace - it just worked really really slowly...

...and then there are external fueltanks to speed things up

Screet

Post by **Disembodied** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:05 pm

treczoks wrote:
Ok, now just tell me how one is going to refuel out there. Unless the thargs left a usable fuel station out there, and without a sun to play "catch a corona" with, getting some Quirium might be a teensy bit of a problem. Looks like you're either walking to the next station with a fuel canister or using the escape pod...

... or you could dock with a Behemoth ... or someone else could script in some other clever thing. If you're adding a planet to witchspace then presumably you're going to add something else around it, no?

LittleBear · Post by **LittleBear** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:44 pm

If you're going on a Black Op for GalCop, it would make sense in terms of story that you are just given co-ordinates by your shady contact to jump to. You know its off the map and you are making a leap (or jump) of faith. (Starbuck in the last episode of BSG if you like!) Your heart skips a beat as you realise you have emerged from witchspace with insufficent fuel to escape a slow lingering death as your systems run down in the depths of space. You are shaking with relief as a hail comes in from a Navy Tanker decloaking to your port...

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:26 pm

Disembodied wrote:
treczoks wrote:
Ok, now just tell me how one is going to refuel out there. Unless the thargs left a usable fuel station out there, and without a sun to play "catch a corona" with, getting some Quirium might be a teensy bit of a problem. Looks like you're either walking to the next station with a fuel canister or using the escape pod...
... or you could dock with a Behemoth ...

No, you can't. Because if you launch again, the Behemoth has already jumped into one of the adjacent systems. Probably in one you didn't want to go to.