Oolite Bulletins

ioannis wrote:

Tricky wrote:

You can not own a station (or planet) like in other games. YET!!!

Ah, that explains things, thank you. Station ownership is indeed something many players look forward to, methinks.

In Oolite 1.76.1 you can't*, but in trunk you can**. I doubt it's a very good idea, though: what would you actually do with a station once you'd bought it?

* Well, you can from the equipment purchase screen, not from the shipyard screen.
** From the shipyard, I mean.

Wildeblood wrote:

ioannis wrote:

Tricky wrote:

You can not own a station (or planet) like in other games. YET!!!

Ah, that explains things, thank you. Station ownership is indeed something many players look forward to, methinks.

In Oolite 1.76.1 you can't*, but in trunk you can**. I doubt it's a very good idea, though: what would you actually do with a station once you'd bought it?

* Well, you can from the equipment purchase screen, not from the shipyard screen.
** From the shipyard, I mean.

I think it would open up a whole new set of possibilities and oxp-ers would quickly get to work.
For example, you could start setting purchase and sale prices for various items. You could purchase defense equipment to protect your station from attacks, start a whole set of missions in relation to the planets (eg in multigovernment worlds you could support one or another faction, perhaps even changing the government of that world from multigovernment to something different, because a station would be a highly influential presence in the area).

ioannis wrote:

I think it would open up a whole new set of possibilities and oxp-ers would quickly get to work.

And yet they haven't. Well, there have been a few attempts. Look at the old mining OXP, for example: buy your own rock hermit, stock it with slaves, bring them food so they don't starve, take the minerals they mine away to sell... Profit! Except you can dock at any rock hermit, buy cheap minerals and take them away to sell for profit. So why have the hassle of feeding and defending your own? People think, "Ooh, own your station!" But once they start work on the idea they realize it just doesn't fit into the E/Oolite game-verse.

ioannis wrote:

For example, you could start setting purchase and sale prices for various items. You could purchase defense equipment to protect your station from attacks, start a whole set of missions in relation to the planets (eg in multigovernment worlds you could support one or another faction, perhaps even changing the government of that world from multigovernment to something different, because a station would be a highly influential presence in the area).

Now that last idea I like. But that's more about whether we can create ground-attack missions in Oolite, than it is about whether we can own stations.

Am I missing something here? This is a space trading and combat game where you jump in your ship and get out there and do stuff.
I honestly can't see any appeal in owning a station, and being stuck in an Admin Office all day, and the career path looks a bit dull too.

Admin tasks completed/Rating
0 Tea boy
8 Typing Pool
16 Senior Typist
32 Typing Pool Supervisor
64 Secretary
128 Salesman
512 Sales Manager
2560 General Manager
6400 Managing Director

ioannis wrote:

Station ownership is indeed something many players look forward to, methinks.

…

I think it would open up a whole new set of possibilities and oxp-ers would quickly get to work.

I don't actually think so. Excitable players with god-complexes perhaps, yes.

It's one of those ideas that seem brilliant and are exciting for a moment. But as soon as you start to think about how it would work in the game, it stops making sense, because there are far more questions than answers:

• Surely a station would cost way more to purchase than even the most expensive ship. Where do you get all that money in the first place?
• How far do you want to micromanage it? If it's just a plot device for a daily message à la "your station cost X cr to maintain yesterday, and brought Y cr of income", it would seem like a lot of effort for a very small result, gameplay-wise.
• Most of the time you're not where your station is; you're most likely to be in another galaxy, totally cut-off from any reasonable connection to it. So what's the point anyway?

Bottom line: in a big Ooniverse where you spend your time mostly traveling, the concept of an immobile station as a main focus of your game is somewhat alien. It just doesn't fit.

Commander McLane wrote:

ioannis wrote:

Station ownership is indeed something many players look forward to, methinks.

…

I think it would open up a whole new set of possibilities and oxp-ers would quickly get to work.

I don't actually think so. Excitable players with god-complexes perhaps, yes.

It's one of those ideas that seem brilliant and are exciting for a moment. But as soon as you start to think about how it would work in the game, it stops making sense, because there are far more questions than answers:

• Surely a station would cost way more to purchase than even the most expensive ship. Where do you get all that money in the first place?
• How far do you want to micromanage it? If it's just a plot device for a daily message à la "your station cost X cr to maintain yesterday, and brought Y cr of income", it would seem like a lot of effort for a very small result, gameplay-wise.
• Most of the time you're not where your station is; you're most likely to be in another galaxy, totally cut-off from any reasonable connection to it. So what's the point anyway?

Bottom line: in a big Ooniverse where you spend your time mostly traveling, the concept of an immobile station as a main focus of your game is somewhat alien. It just doesn't fit.

• Surely a station would cost way more to purchase than even the most expensive ship. Where do you get all that money in the first place?

Surely a station would cost way more to purchase than even the most expensive ship.

It would. That would have the player set a new goal in the game, ie, make enough money to own a station. In fact, making more money in order to own a better ship and explore its potential, or buy new equipment keeps or renews the interest of many players. Ownership of a station would be another (admitteldy a very high one) goal for players.

Where do you get all that money in the first place?

Make some of it, then attempt to get a loan or multiple loans, perhaps. Of course, station ownership and the profit it would make, would help repay the loans.

[*]How far do you want to micromanage it? If it's just a plot device for a daily message à la "your station cost X cr to maintain yesterday, and brought Y cr of income", it would seem like a lot of effort for a very small result, gameplay-wise.

Good question. That's where the oxps would come in, i think. There could be a "basic" setup, and after that point there could be oxps that allow more micromanagement, or more details, just like the specialized cargoes oxp, which allows more detail for the already known commodities.

[*]Most of the time you're not where your station is; you're most likely to be in another galaxy, totally cut-off from any reasonable connection to it. So what's the point anyway?

Bottom line: in a big Ooniverse where you spend your time mostly traveling, the concept of an immobile station as a main focus of your game is somewhat alien. It just doesn't fit.

There are different professions in the game. In each profession, there is a certain amount of travelling involved. If you are a trader, you were "encouraged" to keep to one specific profitable journey, ie take x cargo from this planet, sell it to y planet, take y cargo from y planet and sell it to x planet, perhaps make some journeys to nearby systems, etc, at least until you can get a better ship to go to another, more dangerous destination, etc. That sort of player genarally kept to a specific place.
If you are a miner, you mine the asteroids you can find in one place, then move on to another place. A person who seeks feudal systems with the ability to fight in duels, would generally try to stay around these systems, etc.
Admittedly, some players like to travel around more than others do, and therefore choose professions that allow them to do so. However, there are also players who like to stay in specific locations (a bit longer).

ioannis wrote:

Surely a station would cost way more to purchase than even the most expensive ship.

It would. That would have the player set a new goal in the game, ie, make enough money to own a station. In fact, making more money in order to own a better ship and explore its potential, or buy new equipment keeps or renews the interest of many players. Ownership of a station would be another (admitteldy a very high one) goal for players.

I'd say it depends on which numbers we're talking about here. The most expensive ships in the game are in the seven figures (perhaps even higher). For the sake of keeping it simple, let's say that a million will buy you a really good, but not huge ship. It will be able to dock with a Coriolis. Now, how much would the Coriolis cost, then? 100 times the cost of a ship? 500 times? 1000 times? To me a proportion of 200-500 times would feel about right. Which would put the purchasing (or building) cost anywhere between 200 and 500 million.

Well, personally I have played Oolite for six years now (although admittedly over long periods not actually played it), and my main commander owns about 14 million in cash, which is pretty good. But it's a looooong shot from being able to own a station. Even if I could have made 30 million credits in the last six years, I would have to spend another 34 years(!) playing Oolite before reaching even the entry level for Coriolis ownership. That would stretch even the definition for "extraordinarily super high end goal" quite a bit.

Adding a high end goal that couldn't realistically be achieved by anyone but perhaps two or three completely mad 24/7 Oolite players doesn't strike me as a priority for game development.

ioannis wrote:

How far do you want to micromanage it? If it's just a plot device for a daily message à la "your station cost X cr to maintain yesterday, and brought Y cr of income", it would seem like a lot of effort for a very small result, gameplay-wise.

Good question. That's where the oxps would come in, i think. There could be a "basic" setup, and after that point there could be oxps that allow more micromanagement, or more details, just like the specialized cargoes oxp, which allows more detail for the already known commodities.

Well, no. Any functionality that OXPs may use has to be implemented in the code base first.

If nothing needs to be implemented in the code, then nothing prevents you to own and manage a station right now. In fact, it's a piece of cake to put a station of your liking somewhere in the system of your choice, call it "The home of ioannis", and send you a console message every three minutes either saying "You had to pay wages for your station personnel: -580 cr", "Station hull maintenance: -14500 cr", "You got sued for <insert mildly humourous reason here>: -500 cr for legal fees and -200 to bribe the judge", "The Zero-G bar had a revenue of 2834 cr last week" or "An Anaconda docked and paid 4.5 cr docking fee", and of course "A Thargoid force has attacked and destroyed your station. Sorry, commander". As long as you don't visit the system, you don't even need a physical model of the station. The main question is: how much would that add to game-play?

ioannis wrote:

Most of the time you're not where your station is; you're most likely to be in another galaxy, totally cut-off from any reasonable connection to it. So what's the point anyway?

Bottom line: in a big Ooniverse where you spend your time mostly traveling, the concept of an immobile station as a main focus of your game is somewhat alien. It just doesn't fit.

There are different professions in the game. In each profession, there is a certain amount of travelling involved. If you are a trader, you were "encouraged" to keep to one specific profitable journey, ie take x cargo from this planet, sell it to y planet, take y cargo from y planet and sell it to x planet, perhaps make some journeys to nearby systems, etc, at least until you can get a better ship to go to another, more dangerous destination, etc. That sort of player genarally kept to a specific place.
If you are a miner, you mine the asteroids you can find in one place, then move on to another place. A person who seeks feudal systems with the ability to fight in duels, would generally try to stay around these systems, etc.
Admittedly, some players like to travel around more than others do, and therefore choose professions that allow them to do so. However, there are also players who like to stay in specific locations (a bit longer).

Sure, there are different styles of play. And I have also done my share of milk runs between two fixed systems. However, at least to me that always gets boring after a while, and I move on, perhaps finding another nice trading pair at the other end of the galaxy, or in the next galaxy. After all, Oolite hasn't got eight galaxies, so that the player only ever flies between the same three systems. That's what I meant: immobility doesn't really fit well into the whole spirit of Oolite (although it's of course completely possible).

You seem to be making some good points there, particularly regarding the difficulty of ever obtaining the cash needed to buy a station. I would argue, of course that the black monks or some other similar establishment could lend some money, provided the player had, say a part of the money (for example 20 million if the total cost would be 200 million) as "insurance". from that point onward, the station would have to be a money making machine in order to pay the monks, or their gunships would maike scrapmetal out of the station (I would like to see a group of Black monk gunships vs a station).

If nothing needs to be implemented in the code, then nothing prevents you to own and manage a station right now. In fact, it's a piece of cake to put a station of your liking somewhere in the system of your choice, call it "The home of ioannis", and send you a console message every three minutes either saying "You had to pay wages for your station personnel: -580 cr", "Station hull maintenance: -14500 cr", "You got sued for <insert mildly humourous reason here>: -500 cr for legal fees and -200 to bribe the judge", "The Zero-G bar had a revenue of 2834 cr last week" or "An Anaconda docked and paid 4.5 cr docking fee", and of course "A Thargoid force has attacked and destroyed your station. Sorry, commander". As long as you don't visit the system, you don't even need a physical model of the station. The main question is: how much would that add to game-play?

Hm, i guess not really much, since there wouldn't actually be a station, so there would be nothing "tangible" (so to speak, I am aware that it's just a game. ). There could be an addition of businesses on a planet, though, which would work in that way. For example some Feudal lord might give the player acres for good services, and perhaps upon docking with the relevant station, the player could receive some TCs of food or similar agricultural goods) that would be produced on these acres.

Sure, there are different styles of play. And I have also done my share of milk runs between two fixed systems. However, at least to me that always gets boring after a while, and I move on, perhaps finding another nice trading pair at the other end of the galaxy, or in the next galaxy. After all, Oolite hasn't got eight galaxies, so that the player only ever flies between the same three systems. That's what I meant: immobility doesn't really fit well into the whole spirit of Oolite (although it's of course completely possible).

Same here, I made some cash from some routes, then, when I got the upgrade I had set my eyes on, moved on, etc. And it's true that such a large universe was built for exploring. The station would just keep the player in one place for a bit longer.

Anyway, we are taking the thread to the "suggestions" part, and I am not sure if mandoman will like this.