Oolite Bulletins

spara wrote:

Chance, techlevel and condition_script.

That's cool, I didn't realize you could control shipyard appearance with a conditions_script.

spara wrote:

It also affects the pre-installed extra equipment.

That what I thought it mainly was for but wondered about it affecting a ships appearance.

spara wrote:

Fritz wrote:

it also has a standard size shipyard, which sort of breaks the illusion. Especially, if there are many pages of ships for sale. They must have some hyper cargo storage or something.

It is odd that the ships for sale aren't stacked up in space outside the station. Doors locked, distributor arms in the office, take a taxi out to the yard.
It's also surprising that there's no posted time for transferring your stuff to a new ship.

It is odd that the ships for sale aren't stacked up in space outside the station. Doors locked, distributor arms in the office, take a taxi out to the yard.

What a great idea, arriving at a station and seeing some/all/most or a diverse collection of the ships for sale outside ( non docking side ) of a station.
Maybe semi connected to some kind of spaceparking structure

cbr wrote:

What a great idea...

What a great target!

What a great target!

What a bad thought! The station police should take care of that...

What a great target!

I was waiting for this comment!

But apart from this, outside in the vacuum of space seems like a bad place for displaying ships for sale, especially because there isn't something like beaming in Oolite. So how do you get there? The main stations are big enough anyhow: Calculating from the maximum queue positions I had, there must be room for at least 60 or 70 ships. If ship buying had a more important role for gameplay, I would suggest separate "ship shop stations".

I would think it also a cost effective method to store vehicle designed for outer space in outer space.

No beaming no but there is a spacesuit ! ( and i believe a remote control perhaps an auto-ILS would do the trick )

I think it would certainly add to the experience, the long range trader finally seeing the ship he longed for, for sale arriving on a distant station in G5.


question :
If one added another station to the system will it have ( can it ) the exact same ship shop.

separate ship shop with chip shop coming up!

cbr wrote:

question :
If one added another station to the system will it have ( can it ) the exact same ship shop.

Shipyards are unique to the station. If there are five stations with shipyards in system, there are five different selections of ships.

Fritz wrote:

What a great target!

especially because there isn't something like beaming in Oolite. So how do you get there?

Like I said : take a taxi out to the shipyard from the offices on the space station.
There's no "beaming".
That's no problem.
Do you seriously think that the hanger decks are going to be tight to vacuum, behind doors big enough to admit an Anaconda? Have you ever tried to seal anything that wasn't circular against pressure or vacuum. No? I didn't think so.
Even if there are multiple layers of doors, there's still going to be the possibility of leaks to kill your expensivly pampered passengers as they board. Or even worse, your own laser-scarred hide. Even if there were another system for sealing the doors, there would be some sort of pressurised access tube for life forms, if not for cargo containers. And once you look at that, you're looking at a restricted number of standardised sizes, in the same way that you get 97 Octane Unleaded Qurium in one pipe fitting, and QuriumGas (from the fields of Qurait?) through a different size of pipe.
So, any ship for carrying people will have at least a 1-human pressure tube (2.5m diameter ; semi-automated locks and latches ; contains communications links in the locking mechanisms. Larger ships may have wider or more crew tubes. Taxis will need them too, precisely to enable personnel transfer to ships that don't want to pay the station's docking fee just to drop off a passenger.
Hmmm, GalCop would probably frown on links that you could establish between two ships in free space to allow the ready transfer of goods, without passing the eyes of the Tax Department.
That would imply a number of items of equipment, and a whole sub-economy.

On a different note - I detect a lot of CJ Cherryh's "Union" etc interstellar economy in the Ooniverse. I don't recall seeing that discussed in any of the history of the game development, but does anyone else see that?

RockDoctor wrote:

On a different note - I detect a lot of CJ Cherryh's "Union" etc interstellar economy in the Ooniverse. I don't recall seeing that discussed in any of the history of the game development, but does anyone else see that?

Never read them, personally, but the dates given on wikipedia make it possible that Bell and/or Braben had read the first two books. Generally though it's usually the Traveller rpg universe that is suggested as the main influence on the original game. Of course, there's also the need to have a series of planets of different types, where prices of a short range of goods can fluctuate but still allow a dependable profit, and to fit all this, plus graphics and gameplay, into 32K ...