Oolite Bulletins

Kaks wrote:

[snip]...And I'm soo not starting either 'heat shielding cost proportional to mass?' or 'escape pods proportional to sale value?', the fuel thread is already more than enough for the time being!

[snip]

The thing is, my preference is that we should have a multiplier that's affected by a specific ship factor, one that makes 'almost sense' given that Oolite has got its own not-quite-specified non-RL physics. That multiplier could be then affected to quite a large extent - but not completely disregarded - by individual ship settings.

That way we have both native & oxp ships being affected by the changes in a fairly consistent manner to begin with, even if no-one bothered to upgrade oxps with the new settings.[snip]

Okay, in an effort to get this slightly back on track so that it can be derailed again...

Kaks, I apologize right up front if this turns into the 'heat shielding cost proportional to mass?' discussion; while I'm going to go part way there, that's not the main intent.
Please be advised that I'm trying to keep the idea on a very broad scale; wherever I may happen to venture into the land of specifics, I do so only to provide an illustration of my thoughts, not to present a fully fledged proposal.

Hoping to make this clear-cut and straightforward, I'm going to break it into stages.

1. Identify which expenses (equipment, fuel, anything-that-costs-money-and-is-not-cargo) that could benefit from having a cost that varies from ship to ship.
Likely candidate for NO: Missiles
Likely candidate for YES: Heat Shielding (Sorry, Kaks!)

2. Use a formula akin to the one Lestradae used for Realistic Shipyards to derive a multiplication factor for each ship from its stats. (For those unfamiliar with RS, the short explanation is that L used a weighted formula to determine a 'fair' purchase price based on a ship's stats.)
This factor is then applied to figure out how much more (or less) you have to pay for stuff while flying anything that's not a Cobra Mark III.

While this has several obvious logical flaws (Why does my Heat Shielding (Sorry, Kaks!) cost more when I'm flying an Asp? It's not like it's bigger!) none (that I can tell) are any worse than the current system where everything is equal regardless. If so desired, it can easily be explained (or defended, if you like) using just two words: Game balance.
If you buy a better ship, you pay a higher price. Not just to buy it, but to upgrade and run it.

3. Allow for the shipdata.plist to override the multiplication factor set by the formula. Whether to allow a complete override or to put a limit on the tweaking you can do can be a separate discussion.
So when you design that tiny-tiny über-ship, you can lower the price of the Heat Shielding (Sorry, Kaks!) to something that's more sensible than what the standard formula would give you.



Right. I'm sure this can (and will!) be picked apart, turned inside out, and argued about. However, if we accept the premise that differentiated prices for (some) stuff is a Good Thing tm, then I'm fairly convinced that doing it in this (or a similar way) presents a better way to go about things than doing one component (fuel) first and then follow with others. After all, the extra work included is, as far as I can see, limited to agreeing on what should have fixed vs fluid price and finding a satisfactory formula.

CheeseRedux wrote:

Right. I'm sure this can (and will!) be picked apart, turned inside out, and argued about. However, if we accept the premise that differentiated prices for (some) stuff is a Good Thing tm, then I'm fairly convinced that doing it in this (or a similar way) presents a better way to go about things than doing one component (fuel) first and then follow with others. After all, the extra work included is, as far as I can see, limited to agreeing on what should have fixed vs fluid price and finding a satisfactory formula.

"... differentiated prices for (some) stuff is a Good Thing ..." seems like a good premise to me – because "if you buy a better ship, you pay a higher price". I also agree that it makes more sense to do this with the outfitting and running costs of ships in general, rather than just start with fuel prices (where any impact might be pretty negligible). It's a good way to add a bit more character to ship types, too. Rationalisations for why an X costs more to fit on a Y than on a Z can be invented after we're happy with the effects it has on gameplay.

If we're gonna start differentiating things by ship size, I'd rather like a 50 light year fuel tank fitting to my Python please.

Think about it, an average car has a 30-40 litre fuel tank. Which can be used up in about 6 hours of highway driving.
I used to drive a big truck, with 1,500 litre tanks, which could spend 8 hours a day on the highway for a week before needing fuel.
Ok, keep the 7 light year max single jump limit, but if we're looking at making things proportional, this needs to be considered too.

Now... where's a graphic of someone opening a can of worms when I need one....

allikat wrote:

Now... where's a graphic of someone opening a can of worms when I need one....

Like this one, you mean?

allikat wrote:

If we're gonna start differentiating things by ship size, I'd rather like a 50 light year fuel tank fitting to my Python please.

Think about it, an average car has a 30-40 litre fuel tank. Which can be used up in about 6 hours of highway driving.
I used to drive a big truck, with 1,500 litre tanks, which could spend 8 hours a day on the highway for a week before needing fuel.
Ok, keep the 7 light year max single jump limit, but if we're looking at making things proportional, this needs to be considered too.

Now... where's a graphic of someone opening a can of worms when I need one....

The aim isn't to make things proportional (or if it is, it shouldn't be!), or to add any spurious "realism". The aim is to improve gameplay. This might improve gameplay, although to be honest I doubt it: allowing some ships to make multiple jumps, without making them stop to refuel either in a station or at the sun – or to zoom around for hours on injectors – seems like too big a game-change to me.

The best thing to do is decide what we want to happen *solely because it improves the game* – i.e. because it adds more character to ship types, and provides players with extra factors to consider when choosing their ships. Then we make up whatever justifications we need afterwards. For example, we could argue that Pythons and other large ships don't carry huge, multi-jump tanks of quirium for the same reason that rockets don't carry huge extra quantities of rocket fuel. More fuel on board = more mass. More mass = more fuel required to move. This is obviously as true of a truck as it is of a rocket, but trucks aren't rockets and their engine and fuel requirements are totally different. A Python is not a truck, either, and opening a wormhole isn't the same as driving down a road.

Or – literally – whatever. If we decided that Pythons *should* have huge, multi-jump fuel tanks (because it improved the gameplay) then we make up some other justification whereby a Python is exactly like a truck. But changing something because it's "logical" or "makes sense" is the wrong approach. With make-up physics we can alter these criteria to suit. The only question should be "will it make it more fun?" That, and "can the devs implement the change without rebuilding the whole game from scratch?"

CheeseRedux: no worries! For the time being I'm just concentrating with one possible gaming tweak at a time, but I've got nothing against other people thinking about heat shields etc...

On a totally unrelated subject - and I really don't know why I've done that - I've been thinking 'hmm, Cadbury mode' on and off for the past day or so.
Apparently, it's got a very soothing effect on overworked brains...

The 7 L.y. limit should remain, as it is a core issue of this game...

I have always envisioned the limit as a limit where you can safely drop out of witchspace again, with some sort of precision, while the mis-jumps represents what can happen when you do not got that sort of precision..

Oolite simply puts you halfway between A and B, which puts you in some sort of safety margin..

So while the 7 L.Y limit may be breakable, current (oolite) technology does not allow for a precision jump beyond that range... and with Oolites time difference that makes alot of small jumps faster than 1 long jump, things could get out of hand pretty fast..

As to different usage of Fuel or ship to add charachter..

fuel injectors should use the same amount of fuel, regardless of the ship, or else we will have injector fuel fights,.., which usually ends in the the AI ramming you

In regard to jump...

OXP fuel tanks gives you 3 or 2 L.y more fuel, that you can refuel with, in mid flight... that it takes a pylon is good for gameplay IMO...

Other than that, the Fuel Collector OXP keeps you Fuel supply replenished during long sorties...

So I do not really see the point, since this is not First Encounters, where we have the larger ship, more fuel is required to jump, that in turn reduces your cargo hold size... But Oolite never used cargo for fuel.. and while it is possible to add a new commodity from an OXP, it is not possible with the current trunk to use an old save game*, after adding the OXP commodity.. (i know I tested this), and will suggest this to be fixed after the EMMNSR..

*You can load the old save game fine, but the OXP commodity will be ignored due to the savegames build in local market that acts as a sort of commodities.plist when a game is loaded..

Anyway IMO to much would have to change in order for this to work..

Cheers Frame..

Kaks wrote:

...I've been thinking 'hmm, Cadbury mode' on and off for the past day or so...

But why would you think of bad chocolate on and off?!? If you at least replaced it with Lindt & Sprüngli...

Hmm, 72% cocoa mass...

like: the ship mass multiplier

for consideration: if a big ship needs more fuel to achieve the 7LY maximum range it presumably will take longer to skim that amount of fuel from a sundive. The scoop rate ought to be adjusted too - although the maths then gets quite involved (the volume of gas scooped per second ought to be proportional to the surface area of the ship - which would be make the scoop rate multiplier proportionate to the volume of the ship divided by the surface area of the ship, or approximately equal to the sum of the dimensions of the ship divided by the sum of the dimensions of a cobby 3. I think.)

A bigger ship might have to pay more for the Shield Booster and Military Shields, as they would both have a much larger surface/volume to cover and protect. This could partly explain why Pythons and Anacondas can't have Military Shields -- too big to be cost-justified...and already deemed "tough enough", especially if they get Shield Boosters. NPC Anacondas normally don't get Shield Boosters and NPC Pythons seldom do...but I changed that in my mod to at least a low chance, since the player equivalents can have them.

aegidian wrote:

like: the ship mass multiplier

for consideration: if a big ship needs more fuel to achieve the 7LY maximum range it presumably will take longer to skim that amount of fuel from a sundive. The scoop rate ought to be adjusted too - although the maths then gets quite involved (the volume of gas scooped per second ought to be proportional to the surface area of the ship - which would be make the scoop rate multiplier proportionate to the volume of the ship divided by the surface area of the ship, or approximately equal to the sum of the dimensions of the ship divided by the sum of the dimensions of a cobby 3. I think.)

Sir! Your wish is our command, Sir!

Spookily, retroactively so: it already takes longer to scoop 1ly of fuel if you've got a ship with a bigger mass.

All that was initially implemented by D_S before 1.74.x, but left disabled for those releases. I made a few tweaks to that code & enabled it in trunk with no apparent ill effects: at startup Oolite goes through all the possible player ships, and calculates the multiplier based on the density & volume of each ship found.

One thing I forgot to do is to make the refill time at the station proportional to the ship's mass. Will sort that out when I get some Oolite quality time, hopefully this weekend...

PS: Thargoid's fuel stations are unaffected by these changes, AFAIK, so if someone's got a huge ship, in future it might be cheaper to use those rather than normal stations...

Kaks wrote:

PS: Thargoid's fuel stations are unaffected by these changes, AFAIK, so if someone's got a huge ship, in future it might be cheaper to use those rather than normal stations...

It would be partially self-limiting as larger ships (at least hugely large ones) won't physically fit.

It could be thought of two ways though:

1) As the fuel is pumped rather than skimmed, the rate would be the same as it'd just be pumped more quickly (think F1 refuelling).

2) I go with the mass-dependent version and tweak the script a little to include that.

In this case I think I'll wait and see how it pans out in trunk and then make a decision.

if a scoop scooped gas from the sun at a standard rate we could have a Big Scoop for huge ships, that would be more expensive but negate their need to spend longer at dangerous temperatures.

Killer Wolf wrote:

if a scoop scooped gas from the sun at a standard rate we could have a Big Scoop for huge ships, that would be more expensive but negate their need to spend longer at dangerous temperatures.

Yah, my complex maths assumed that scoop size would be proportionate to the surface area of the ship, but that fuel required would be proportionate to the volume.