Oolite Bulletins

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Scatter these warp gates around the eight charts - ignored and unloved, decayed and decaying.

Then have them burst into life and an ancient alien race explodes into the Ooniverse - mean and nasty and intent on setting up more gates or fully reactivating the most decayed gates which don't yet work. Perhaps an ancient foe of the Thargoids, long thought vanquished (by the Thargoids) who had a superior ship carried Wormhole Generating Trans-Dimensional Engine.

For those who are bored of just fighting the Thargoids...

...an uneasy alliance between Thargoids and the Navy where the new arrivals have spawned?

[Think of it as an amalgamation of the final series of Star Gate, Star Trek Voyager (Borg/Species 8???) and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica]

But which role would the warp gates actually play in this scenario? What would be done with them which can't be done just as well without them?

(I am not trying to shoot ideas down or something like that, so please bear with me. It's just that at this point there is only a model which could possibly be used for something like a warp gate. This model needs both a use (like a ship model needs a role) and a back story. And I currently feel that both are lacking somehow.

Personally I find it easier to begin with an idea for some kind of game enhancement or modification and get into the technical details later. Here we're going the other way round: starting with a technical detail (a specific model) and only then trying to find a way to insert it into ... something. And this something isn't even determined yet. It's just contrary to my usual OXPing.)

Gimi wrote:

How about this being ultra expensive technology allowing jumps straight from within the main station aegis to, within the main station aegis in another system. A way for really rich system to protect their trade from pirates and it's like. Now, in "RL" terms that makes sense. In gaming terms, that beats the purpose of the game. The warp gates would have to be rare and reserved to places where rich systems are within jumping distance.

That's an interesting idea, and it has a certain appeal. I immediately notice that the gates in this scenario would not lead along the main trade routes, because those don't connect rich systems to each other.

I am not immediately sure about the jump-straight-into-the-aegis idea. One the one hand I see why scientists and engineers in the Ooniverse would strive for that. On the other hand in my own head "You Always Enter At The Witchpoint" is quite a dogma. I am not sure whether I'd want this rule removed from game play.

The Warp ring is not an object, it is a ship that was developed secretly by the navy to fly long distances very quickly to prevent the usual happening when the navy go to fight a war but it has finished by the time that they get there.

Commander McLane wrote:

I am not immediately sure about the jump-straight-into-the-aegis idea. One the one hand I see why scientists and engineers in the Ooniverse would strive for that. On the other hand in my own head "You Always Enter At The Witchpoint" is quite a dogma. I am not sure whether I'd want this rule removed from game play.

My sentiment also. Hence my suggestion that this would have to be something rear and perhaps very expensive to use. Rich high tech systems are fairly safe anyway, so it wouldn't alter game play that much. But I do agree, I'm also ambivalent towards the whole concept. Now, if you have an unpopulated mining system where you just want to bring a huge amount of minerals using stupid tugs to populated space, this would be a great addition to the Oonivers, but as of today, we don't have those.

Commander McLane wrote:

I am not immediately sure about the jump-straight-into-the-aegis idea. One the one hand I see why scientists and engineers in the Ooniverse would strive for that. On the other hand in my own head "You Always Enter At The Witchpoint" is quite a dogma. I am not sure whether I'd want this rule removed from game play.

i agree and add my own thought : danger. would Galcop allow a ship to suddenly appear in aegis? what happens if pirates gained control of the gate? And more to the point, what if Thargoids did?

Killer Wolf wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

I am not immediately sure about the jump-straight-into-the-aegis idea. One the one hand I see why scientists and engineers in the Ooniverse would strive for that. On the other hand in my own head "You Always Enter At The Witchpoint" is quite a dogma. I am not sure whether I'd want this rule removed from game play.

i agree and add my own thought : danger. would Galcop allow a ship to suddenly appear in aegis? what happens if pirates gained control of the gate? And more to the point, what if Thargoids did?

That's a very good reason for outlawing this technology! Not only GalCop, but also the planetary government would not want mortal enemies to pop up right above the atmosphere without any previous warning.

Commander McLane wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Scatter these warp gates around the eight charts - ignored and unloved, decayed and decaying.

Then have them burst into life and an ancient alien race explodes into the Ooniverse - mean and nasty and intent on setting up more gates or fully reactivating the most decayed gates which don't yet work. Perhaps an ancient foe of the Thargoids, long thought vanquished (by the Thargoids) who had a superior ship carried Wormhole Generating Trans-Dimensional Engine.

But which role would the warp gates actually play in this scenario? What would be done with them which can't be done just as well without them?

(I am not trying to shoot ideas down or something like that, so please bear with me. It's just that at this point there is only a model which could possibly be used for something like a warp gate. This model needs both a use (like a ship model needs a role) and a back story. And I currently feel that both are lacking somehow.

A point in favor of the warp gates is they act as a single point of strength/weakness of whoever/whatever is using them, acting as a nexus of their activity and concentrating their firepower to/from a system. Because the gates are not mobile...capturing/disabling/destroying it could represent a "serious setback for"...whatever faction has them. In a large universe with few boundaries and almost no "Keep Out!" signs, they represent doors. Even if these doors can't really go anywhere you can't already get other ways OR do anything that hasn't already been done...they are still different and special as a concept.

The closest equivalent to doors that strong would be destroying whole systems via novas to cut off other systems from the rest of the region. But I am very much opposed to the moral implications of an OXP that used that "tactic" especially against a minor faction. Even the Thargoids don't really merit such a response -- even destroying their homeworld would hardly matter now because of how spread out they are. Inducing stars to go nova seems very steep tech-wise...so novas should not be treated lightly if done at all.

For warp gates, it is up to us to create what lies beyond those doors. Or what tangled webs connect these doors. And whether we find out these doors should never have been (re)opened.

These warp gates could use misjump tricks to reach distant systems. They could even stay in a system but go far away from the system's sun and place items there. A mini-system hidden in interstellar space could easily be added...which only appears if you go through one of these "doors". Or they could be just meant as 2-way routes between known systems...but something went wrong...and then it got worse. Strange ships could start pouring through a warp gate. No response to hailing them. What started out as an opening ceremony (or sometime after regular use of these gates) could end up a funeral pyre. Were there even any survivors to report what really happened? These aren't new ideas to me, it's partly the reason why I didn't want Thargoids in interstellar space after multiple intentional misjumps.

I've been trying to make working warp gates since before I even found a way to do misjumps to reach Oresrati a few months ago. It seems that Thargoid was as well, but had to settle on making Gates OXP only "gates" that moved ships around in 1 system because of game limitations that prevented doing a lot more with them. Some of those limitations have been removed by Oolite v1.75.2. 1-way use of a warp gate to send ships to another system can already be done. I accomplished that much with my Null Gates OXP even if it only worked for the player's ship and was totally random which system it took you to. Far more can be done now. A combination of ideas from Gates OXP and OneWayTicket2Oresrati OXP would solve much of the problems. Instead of the gate hyperspacing itself, a ship "entering" it would use the Gates OXP trick of moving that ship to a distant part of the system (and unobserved due to distance) and from there a fake NPC ship is created directly in front of that ship which then hyperspaces out...forcing that ship through the resulting wormhole. The short-lived wormhole would disappear, leaving nothing behind at that distant part of the system even if you knew exactly where it was at. At the other end of the jump, the "transport" NPC ship is then removed from the game, as its only purpose was to create the wormhole. Going the other way, on arriving at whatever the destination system is...the traveling ship could be moved from the witchpoint beacon after it arrives to just "exiting" the warp gate in the destination system, thus creating the illusion of 2-way warp gates. Or ships could be made to launch from the warp gate "station" as though they came from some distant system without the mess of moving them from near the witchspace beacon. "has_npc_traffic = yes;" would even save you some of the trouble of having to script all of it! And defensive ships "max_defense_ships = 9;" plus "defense_ship_role" = "whatever"; together could even create whatever evil things you want to pop out of the warp gate. Even "max_scavengers = 3;" could have a use, though I don't believe they can be assigned a specific type.

A local system's inhabitants might seek to preserve their space efforts, and a warp gate would be very high on their list of "culturally significant locations". I wouldn't expect these to be very near the planet/main station. If anything, I'd expect them closer to the sun than the planet...possibly in a random position around it relative the planet and witchspace beacon due to its orbit.

Switeck wrote:

A point in favor of the warp gates is they act as a single point of strength/weakness of whoever/whatever is using them, acting as a nexus of their activity and concentrating their firepower to/from a system. Because the gates are not mobile...capturing/disabling/destroying it could represent a "serious setback for"...whatever faction has them.

I don't get that. As far as jumping between systems is concerned, warp gates add nothing at all. You can get to (or from) any system within 7 LY with them, just like (and to be precise: just because) you can do that without them. So I don't get why their loss would be a setback for anyone.

Switeck wrote:

In a large universe with few boundaries and almost no "Keep Out!" signs, they represent doors. Even if these doors can't really go anywhere you can't already get other ways OR do anything that hasn't already been done...they are still different and special as a concept.

I don't get that, too. Who cares about the 'special concept', if there is no scriptable reality whatsoever behind that concept? As a matter of fact, warp gates can neither add nor take away boundaries, so how are they like doors? Factually they aren't.

The only way I can imagine them representing doors is as pure models, mysterious objects in a system, without any functionality at all. Perhaps with a backstory like "this warp gate once enabled us to travel back to the previous chart, but it doesn't work anymore". Then they would become like the Dredgers and Generation Ships of original Oolite: rumours of old times, adding some mystery to the back story, but completely without any actual gameplay behind it. As soon as you want to attach some actual functionality to them, and want this functionality have something to do with jumping to another system, the whole illusion comes crashing down. The warp gate doesn't do anything which selecting a neighbouring system and hitting 'H' doesn't do as well.

Switeck wrote:

The closest equivalent to doors that strong would be destroying whole systems via novas to cut off other systems from the rest of the region. But I am very much opposed to the moral implications of an OXP that used that "tactic" especially against a minor faction.

That's not an equivalent, because warp gates only represent fake doors, and have no actual power to 'close off' or 'open' any jump route at all.

Switeck wrote:

For warp gates, it is up to us to create what lies beyond those doors. Or what tangled webs connect these doors. And whether we find out these doors should never have been (re)opened.

As I said, that works only as long as nothing actually lies beyond. And we don't need to discuss aspects of scripting, because nothing whatsoever gets scripted.

Switeck wrote:

These warp gates could use misjump tricks to reach distant systems.

For which already an OXP exists.

Switeck wrote:

They could even stay in a system but go far away from the system's sun and place items there.

That OXP also already exists. And the possibilities to place things very far away from the sun are limited due to the issue of precision of floating points.

Switeck wrote:

A mini-system hidden in interstellar space could easily be added...which only appears if you go through one of these "doors".

That's the first idea which I actually understand, and feel it makes sense. (However, I'm not overly excited about additional systems in interstellar space. They'll never look like a proper system.)

Switeck wrote:

Or they could be just meant as 2-way routes between known systems

Again, adding nothing over "hit 'H', count down from 15". That also works 2-way.

Switeck wrote:

Or ships could be made to launch from the warp gate "station" as though they came from some distant system without the mess of moving them from near the witchspace beacon. "has_npc_traffic = yes;" would even save you some of the trouble of having to script all of it!

I don't think that would work. As soon as the player decides to jump through the gate, he would in fact watch the docking rings animation, and then find himself on a station named "Warp Gate" with a market and equipment store. At that point his willing suspension of disbelief would be out of the window. An immersion breaker, if there ever was one.

I'm sorry, but within Oolite's game engine I find that warp gates make very little sense, and are of very limited use.

In the Assassins oxp, at least once the player is hit with something which removes their fuel, in such a way that it cannot be replenished until the mission is complete. Now assume that this is used against the player by some enemy. Let us also assume that the player is vastly outnumbered, such that they have no chance of possibly surviving a battle. Now let us also assume that there exists a warp gate in that system. Said warp gate provides the only means of escape/survival for the player. It also prevents the player from jumping out of that system. So if the system that the player is in happens to be an isthmus, by which we mean that removing said system would partition the graph of all connected systems, then you have managed to prevent the player from travelling to certain worlds. This technique could quite easily be utilised in a mission oxp.
(Of course, one has to conjure up a reason for such overwhelming odds and why systems have been effectively quarantined in the first place... But that is not the point I'm making, nor do I have any reasonable answer for it!)

One could also use the gates as a primitive way of marking a trail. You have to get from system x to system y, but you don't know where system y is. The only way is to take the path through the warp gates, which would be in each system between x and y. Think of it as a sort of treasure hunt.

These are just two ways in which I can see warp gates being used. Albeit, they are part of mission oxps and have specific reasons for existing, rather than being part of an ambience oxp. But they have their uses, and it is not right to completely devalue their potential. (The reasons such an oxp may give for them, however, is a different story, and the explanation may not fit into peoples' own Ooniverses...)

I hope that makes some sort of sense! I'm somewhat inebriated at the moment, and therefore might not be as coherent as I otherwise could be...

Warps gates could have tactical advantages. They could be useful in that they don't have to use witchspace technology same way ships do. They could work instantaneously like gal drive jump and not use any of the ships fuel. I agree that they probably have the most use in mission oxps.

As for systems in interstellar space, who says they have to be solar systems. What if the gate led to the remains of an old battlefield or a military fortress station, such things could be considered artificial "systems".

Commander Wilmot wrote:

Warps gates could have tactical advantages. They could be useful in that they don't have to use witchspace technology same way ships do. They could work instantaneously like gal drive jump and not use any of the ships fuel. I agree that they probably have the most use in mission oxps.

As for systems in interstellar space, who says they have to be solar systems. What if the gate led to the remains of an old battlefield or a military fortress station, such things could be considered artificial "systems".

Funny, I just read about planets that do not orbit a star: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 10092.html

maik wrote:

Funny, I just read about planets that do not orbit a star: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 10092.html

I was reading that earlier on another site... they would appear to be very numerous, if those scientists are correct.

Commander Wilmot wrote:

Warps gates could have tactical advantages. They could be useful in that they don't have to use witchspace technology same way ships do. They could work instantaneously like gal drive jump and not use any of the ships fuel.

There is no other witchspace technology in Oolite than the one you have been using with your ship all along. A warp gate would just be a neat disguise for an ordinary witch jump, nothing more. Technically it would be the exact same thing, with the exact same properties as a witch jump. Therefore, by definition the proposed warp gates use witchspace technology just the same way ships do. They are nothing but a piece of eye candy that induces an ordinary witch jump for the player ship by script. That means among other things that they cannot work instantaneously.

There is one possible use for a jump gate/warp gate whereby its' existence fulfills a need rather than finding a need to justify its' existence and cannot be done normally with Hyperspace jumping and fits into good gameplay where new places to go open up not bypassing the whole witchpoint to station travel part of the game which is core fundamental oolite.

That is providing a "highway" of sorts for travel to distant planets of the system you are already in.

Almost every system could have one or more "highways" with jump/warp gates inside station aegis for protection with a link to a distant planet/outpost/asteroid field, etc. Ships wouldn't exit from a gate at their destination as it would use a kind of space bending/folding technology, perhaps related to the torus drive, to in this case instantly transport a ship to another location, like the gates.oxp does.

Untold opportunities for increasing the core gameplay would result. All that is really needed is to have a system generator that automatically generates these destinations based upon each systems unique statistics.

A planet would have a generated station, an asteroid field would have hermits or mining/refining stations/vessels etc. Every generated area will have a population script for it. One might also find a more logical place to find pirate bases than within earshot of GalCop and the main spacelane.

It would probably be best to make this part of a system generating/enhancing oxp. as part of setting up the system changes.
Other oxps could also get in on the action using these places as destinations for missions automatically selecting from those places.
This would literally allow the generation of the backwaters of the ooniverse and draw the player into it.

Two thumbs up for this idea and if done correctly would be THE must have oxp for enhancing CORE gameplay. More playgrounds to play in within systems would enhance the game considerably.