Oolite Bulletins

another_commander wrote:

Rather than trying to explain it away in various fictional ways, why don't we just call it a bug and fix it?

Fixing it, has some 'interesting' complications. Currently a Jameson can start buying a passenger cabin when he earned a bit. From that point on he can accept a long distant passenger contract. The advance fee is much higher than the cost of the passenger cabin. So, he could just take the passenger without intention to deliver him. However, in the current setup there is no benefit from it, because the reduced cargo space costs him more than the earnings of the advance passenger fee.

When ejecting would cancel the contract, it might become profitable to accept a long distant passenger, buy an escape capsule, launch, eject and earn on this cycle when the advance fee is higher than the costs of an escape capsule.

I understand it may not be a very simple fix and we may have to think carefully how to handle the case, but it just feels so wrong having the passengers you just abandoned waiting for you at the system station. I think this is a subject very worthy of discussion. How about setting the player's passenger reputation to the absolute minimum in case of an eject when a passenger contract is running? Or even, have a special reputation class whereby players finding themselves in simply stop getting passenger offers for a period of time, until their reputation increases to the minimum level again?

Yes, some of this may be entering new features territory. It's OK to leave the implementation for 1.78, but I think it's important that the subject gets eventually addressed.

Alternatively, (just to play devil's advocate) perhaps each passenger cabin also contains a small escape pod?

Taking the idea further, there could be a dice-roll to decide if each passenger survives, or not.

After some quick tests, I think the problem is less than I thought. An escape pod costs ₢ 1000 and a long distant passenger contract gives an advance fee of ₢ 900 - 1000. Maybe a little above the 1000 on rare occasions, but probably no chance for a serious exploit. With a good reputation the advance will probably be higher, but with reputation dropping on ejection, this only can be misused once or twice.
It only will become an exploit if OXP's start adding contracts with a higher advance fee. But, that is a matter of documenting on the wiki that an advance fee never should exceed the costs of an escape pod.

I agree that passengers should be gone after ejection. Cargo is already gone after ejection, so cargo contracts can stay active. What remains are the new parcel contracts. Does the captain store his parcels in the hold, of in the safe with the gold etc. In other words: should parcel contracts stay active? I see no problem with leaving them active. The time penalty makes success already near to impossible.

That leaves only the passenger contracts that seems wrong now and need fixing.

another_commander wrote:

I understand it may not be a very simple fix and we may have to think carefully how to handle the case, but it just feels so wrong having the passengers you just abandoned waiting for you at the system station. I think this is a subject very worthy of discussion. How about setting the player's passenger reputation to the absolute minimum in case of an eject when a passenger contract is running? Or even, have a special reputation class whereby players finding themselves in simply stop getting passenger offers for a period of time, until their reputation increases to the minimum level again?

Having a strongly negative reputation at the moment slightly decreases the number of available contracts, but not by much. Perhaps the advance should be halved for each point of negative reputation? That would make it difficult to find passengers with a sufficiently large advance to exploit the system.

Parcels and sub-TC cargo are also protected when ejecting, at the moment. Those should probably be removed as well, though there probably doesn't need to be anything more than the generic contract failure happen for parcels.

"Lose all cargo, except for the bits which have a substantial cash value" seems a slightly odd penalty for the escape capsule.

Eric Walch wrote:

should parcel contracts stay active? I see no problem with leaving them active. The time penalty makes success already near to impossible. .

I agree. Parcels can be considered as being carried in the part of the ship that forms the escape pod itself, therefore I see no problem with them remaining active.

@cim: Eric's last comment indicates that there does not seem to be real need to take any action regarding passenger contract advance payments, so we should be fine. As for the lose all cargo bit, I believe that small items (like parcels, metals and gems) can be considered salvalgable due to their size. It just happens that some of these items are most valuable.

cim wrote:

Parcels and sub-TC cargo are also protected when ejecting, at the moment. Those should probably be removed as well, though there probably doesn't need to be anything more than the generic contract failure happen for parcels.

I thought that when an escape capsule was fitted, the ship's safe was mounted inside it?

<note to self: keep gemstones in pockets>

Some concepts of the escape pod has some/most/all the crew compartment ejecting from the ship, because there's not time to make it into a separate escape pod when seconds count...

Switeck wrote:

Some concepts of the escape pod has some/most/all the crew compartment ejecting from the ship...

That's how I see it when immersed - the cockpit becomes the escape pod.

The Elite Manual wrote:

An escape capsule can be fitted in place of your cabin at any world of Tech level 6 or higher.

El Viejo wrote:

Switeck wrote:

Some concepts of the escape pod has some/most/all the crew compartment ejecting from the ship...

That's how I see it when immersed - the cockpit becomes the escape pod.

The Elite Manual wrote:

An escape capsule can be fitted in place of your cabin at any world of Tech level 6 or higher.

For me the same was always true for the passenger cabin. After all, it's the equivalent of 5TC, and we all know that an escape capsule is only 1TC. Also the text "Provides life support, entertainment and comfort for a single passenger." can easily be understood to indicate that a passenger berth is practically equivalent to an escape capsule. At least it indicates that life support independent from your ship is provided, which is obviously what is required of an escape capsule as well. So then it's only missing the propulsion, and that can easily be part of the additional 4TC.

So for me it's at least safe to say that when you eject, your passengers (can) get ejected as well. We may even assume an auto-ejection when destruction of the vessel is imminent. Thus, you may find your passenger at the closest station after ejecting. That's not to say that you'll always must find him there, though. His berth/escape pod could have been scooped or destroyed on the way, after all (just like yours, which luckily never happens in Oolite).

Commander McLane wrote:

So for me it's at least safe to say that when you eject, your passengers (can) get ejected as well. We may even assume an auto-ejection when destruction of the vessel is imminent.

This has some logic in it, but there is a small flaw: How come we never, ever, see other ships ejecting more than one escape pod (not talking about liner-style OXP ships here, just core ones)? It can't be just the player ship utilizing passenger cabins, right? This to me implies that the passenger cabin is not an auto-eject thing, therefore you should not normally see your passengers waiting for you at the station following a ship abandonment, except maybe in one in a thousand chance or something.

No reason we can't fix the flaw.. why not re-code the game so that a capsule is ejected for each passenger cabin fitted as well? For players and NPCs?

Diziet Sma wrote:

No reason we can't fix the flaw.. why not re-code the game so that a capsule is ejected for each passenger cabin fitted as well? For players and NPCs?

We apparently have different points of view about what the flaw is. For me, it is a flaw that the passengers are waiting at the station and this is what I would like to see fixed, not the number of pods ejecting from ships.

For me as a paying passenger in a place as dangerous as the Ooniverse, I'd darn well expect my cabin to double as an escape pod.. if it didn't, now that would be a flaw, and a serious one at that, IMO.