Oolite Bulletins

Disembodied wrote:

... maybe systems which are "plagued by unpredictable solar activity" could have tricky jump conditions?

This... the game's been needing to use those 'conditions' in some way!

Cody wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

... maybe systems which are "plagued by unpredictable solar activity" could have tricky jump conditions?

This... the game's been needing to use those 'conditions' in some way!

What would be really good would be if there was some sort of visual clue in the appearance of the star during a solar storm - a pulsing corona or somesuch.

<nods>

Disembodied wrote:

I like your earlier ideas about jump duration (it might take longer than normal, by some factor, to enter, or leave, a system with "solar activity"), and fuel use (maybe there's a strong chance of a fuel leak, as solar radiation denatures your quirium fuel).

The fuel leak idea might be tricky in that if your target system is 6.8LY away then a fuel leak is either inconsequential or potentially crippling. If sticking with the solar activity connection then how about half jump range/double fuel cost + double duration during said activity? Too draconian?

Disembodied wrote:

Alternatively, it might just be impossible to leave a system during a solar storm: if the "weather" is bad, the player would just have to wait it out. Any effects would have to be flagged up to the player, though: for solar "weather", there would need to be a forecast, and alerts on launching (perhaps pre-launching, with an option to wait - perhaps for days - for the all-clear?).

I like that idea better if connected to "occasional civil war" - GalCop could attempt to restrict traffic in one or more directions by <handwaving>limiting the signals broadcast by the witchpoint beacons</handwaving>. Clues might be greater/lesser Viper presence or even system wide announcements giving you X amount of time to vacate the system.

Redspear wrote:

The fuel leak idea might be tricky in that if your target system is 6.8LY away then a fuel leak is either inconsequential or potentially crippling. If sticking with the solar activity connection then how about half jump range/double fuel cost + double duration during said activity? Too draconian?

It's worth experimenting with, and seeing what works best. I think if there's going to be an effect, though, it needs to be reasonably severe: if it's just a minor inconvenience then there's not much point. To maintain a link with "weather" then there's always the possibility of being "blown off-course" by a storm, too. And just to push the "weather" analogy further, would it be possible to limit (say, by 50%) the scanner range during a solar storm? There could be advantages to this, as well as disadvantages: hostile ships might struggle to locate you.

Redspear wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

Alternatively, it might just be impossible to leave a system during a solar storm: if the "weather" is bad, the player would just have to wait it out. Any effects would have to be flagged up to the player, though: for solar "weather", there would need to be a forecast, and alerts on launching (perhaps pre-launching, with an option to wait - perhaps for days - for the all-clear?).

I like that idea better if connected to "occasional civil war" - GalCop could attempt to restrict traffic in one or more directions by <handwaving>limiting the signals broadcast by the witchpoint beacons</handwaving>. Clues might be greater/lesser Viper presence or even system wide announcements giving you X amount of time to vacate the system.

I think that any sort of physical prevention - anything that made jumps actually impossible - would work better as an act of nature, rather than as an act of politics. Being able to push a button and stop ships jumping into or out of a system seems to me to give too much power to the Co-operative. For a political situation like a civil war they might, however, opt for a legal solution, making it illegal to jump into a system under interdict, perhaps by monitoring the wormholes of ships within jump range of the interdicted planet (so if you want to go there undetected, you have to sneak in - e.g. by forcing a misjump nearby, and then jumping in to the forbidden system from interstellar space). This could be coupled by making the WP and station aegis - everywhere, basically - potentially very dangerous places during a civil war, where you might be attacked by just about anybody, including Vipers: this is, after all, a war zone! And who knows what might happen if you dock with a station? Is it in rebel hands? Will they try to impound your ship? Sunskimming could be risky, too - with so much disruption, there will be lots of people trying to get fuel, from all sides, and lots of people trying to prevent them, too.

Disembodied wrote:

Redspear wrote:

The fuel leak idea might be tricky in that if your target system is 6.8LY away then a fuel leak is either inconsequential or potentially crippling. If sticking with the solar activity connection then how about half jump range/double fuel cost + double duration during said activity? Too draconian?

It's worth experimenting with, and seeing what works best. I think if there's going to be an effect, though, it needs to be reasonably severe: if it's just a minor inconvenience then there's not much point.

What's the current core situation for being marooned in witchspace with no fuel? Assuming you survive the attention of any assailants, can escape be achieved?

Disembodied wrote:

...would it be possible to limit (say, by 50%) the scanner range during a solar storm?

Presumably but I'm not sure how at present. I think I might prefer a different scanner 'defect' rather than a reduction in range - imagine if everything showed up with the 'scan class' of 'asteroid', or if 'scan class' were allocated randomly? (I think I might prefer the former of those two*...)

Disembodied wrote:

Redspear wrote:

I like that idea better if connected to "occasional civil war" - GalCop could attempt to restrict traffic in one or more directions by <handwaving>limiting the signals broadcast by the witchpoint beacons</handwaving>. Clues might be greater/lesser Viper presence or even system wide announcements giving you X amount of time to vacate the system.

I think that any sort of physical prevention - anything that made jumps actually impossible - would work better as an act of nature, rather than as an act of politics. Being able to push a button and stop ships jumping into or out of a system seems to me to give too much power to the Co-operative.

Well, I think that rather depends on one's definition of 'nature', and also how successful any 'attempt' might be. Scrambling a signal, for example, suggests that there would be a way to unscamble it. 'Shutting down' an official beacon might present opportunities for unlicenced beacons to pop up, probably in different locations.

Disembodied wrote:

For a political situation like a civil war they might, however, opt for a legal solution, making it illegal to jump into a system under interdict, perhaps by monitoring the wormholes of ships within jump range of the interdicted planet (so if you want to go there undetected, you have to sneak in - e.g. by forcing a misjump nearby, and then jumping in to the forbidden system from interstellar space). This could be coupled by making the WP and station aegis - everywhere, basically - potentially very dangerous places during a civil war, where you might be attacked by just about anybody, including Vipers: this is, after all, a war zone! And who knows what might happen if you dock with a station? Is it in rebel hands? Will they try to impound your ship? Sunskimming could be risky, too - with so much disruption, there will be lots of people trying to get fuel, from all sides, and lots of people trying to prevent them, too.

Some good ideas there. As long as you're not talking of the infamous Spectrum ending where if you didn't save often enough you got the message upon docking, "You're ship has been boarded by pirates.They show no mercy." (or similar)


Edit:
*There should probably be something to initiate mass-locks however.

Redspear wrote:

What's the current core situation for being marooned in witchspace with no fuel? Assuming you survive the attention of any assailants, can escape be achieved?

Short answer: yes - but it can be tough!

Redspear wrote:

I think I might prefer a different scanner 'defect' rather than a reduction in range - imagine if everything showed up with the 'scan class' of 'asteroid', or if 'scan class' were allocated randomly? (I think I might prefer the former of those two*...)

Yes, great idea! Everything reduced to white dots ... probably much simpler to do, too. Mass-locking should still happen as normal, though, definitely.

Redspear wrote:

Scrambling a signal, for example, suggests that there would be a way to unscamble it. 'Shutting down' an official beacon might present opportunities for unlicenced beacons to pop up, probably in different locations.

That's a possibility ... if the "signal is scrambled", then maybe on entering the system you can pop out anywhere (like, dangerously close to the sun, for example).

Redspear wrote:

Some good ideas there. As long as you're not talking of the infamous Spectrum ending where if you didn't save often enough you got the message upon docking, "You're ship has been boarded by pirates.They show no mercy." (or similar)

No, nothing like that! Probably the best bet would be for the station to be in lockdown, with the docking bay firmly closed.

There's only one other item in the F7 planet descriptions that I can think of which could have an effect on the player: disease. An outbreak might result in a station lockdown, or at least in significant delays due to quarantine procedures.

If there were to be random events like civil wars, solar activity and disease outbreaks, there would need to be a news network which would announce these events and ideally allow them to be represented, for as long as they lasted, on the long- and short-range maps. As long as they weren't too frequent, they could have the potential to make the galaxy seem much more dynamic (especially if, now and then, a civil war could change the political status of a planet ...). Coping with these events might make long-range package, passenger and cargo contracts a bit more interesting, too.

Disembodied wrote:

There's only one other item in the F7 planet descriptions that I can think of which could have an effect on the player: disease. An outbreak might result in a station lockdown, or at least in significant delays due to quarantine procedures.

If there were to be random events like civil wars, solar activity and disease outbreaks, there would need to be a news network which would announce these events and ideally allow them to be represented, for as long as they lasted, on the long- and short-range maps. As long as they weren't too frequent, they could have the potential to make the galaxy seem much more dynamic (especially if, now and then, a civil war could change the political status of a planet ...). Coping with these events might make long-range package, passenger and cargo contracts a bit more interesting, too.

Agreed. locking down the stations (including those around extra planets, but maybe not rock hermits) opens the possibility for OXPs to populate those systems with mobile dockable ships that would sell fuel at an indecent price (bonus points if it can depend on to how many systems this system is connected to). Without OXPs, the player still has the option to go sun-skimming (currently I don't have any reason to do it, the fuel prices are too low to justify the cost of the thermal plating).

I think it would be good that lock downs are more likely to happen at certain places (some stars more prone to massive solar eruptions, multigov systems more prone to civil wars, etc.) so that those events are not just a "bad luck" but has some predictability. Systems lock down could also be influenced by the lock down of a nearby system as well.

However, I think one should balance these potential troubles with something positive. For instance:

• If a lock down can be decided when players dock, they could benefit from the local market crash (but the fuel costs would sky-rocket as well). Perhaps having something-something on board could trigger more easily a quarantine for pest infestation. For systems where the star is acting, maybe one could consider playing with the gamma value and/or the sun glare?
  The possibility of a jump back in time as suggested below
  The possibility of selling fuel (profitable at locked down systems)
  Some NPC ships able to perform jumps in linear-time (buy a wormhole scanner!)
  Or mobile dockables with the same feature that would jump based on a schedule (like ferries)

There was some talks about misjumps, so here are some ideas on how to disturb a peaceful journey:

• - when jumping to a close system (less than 3LY), it is possible to "overshoot" it and land in another system instead (including returning to the original system). Could be implemented as a "forced double jump".
  - Very rare possibility to perform a galactic jump instead (for the lulz)
  - jumping to the right place, but back in time. This is to balance the "bad luck" factor of the extra difficulties.

I also wonder if it would be possible to have all ships to hyperspace only near the Witchpoint. Rationale:

• - it would indirectly affect jump ranges because the player may have to use injectors en route to the Witchpoint
  - it would concentrate the wormholes at the witchpoint, which would make the wormhole scanner a bit more interesting to have - assuming the arriving ships generate usable wormholes to their systems of origin.
  - it would make sense because everyone can only arrive there
  - More traffic in both directions on the lane, which makes for a more lively system, and an other reason to use injectors (to escape masslocks), which in turn makes some additional equipments more interesting (fuel collector, extra fuel tanks, military injectors, Q-charger, ...)

Re Disease systems and locking down the stations
(This seems to have moved quite some distance away from jump ranges, but anyway...)

Would locking the station down be a case of limiting the players view of docked systems (eg, hiding the F3 and F8 screens), or turning off docking request acknowledgements, or by actually blocking up the docking port?

I admit to a certain amount of interest in this, as I'm working on a mission pack that implements disease outbreak events. The missions I have so far would require the player to dock at a station (delivering hitech antibiotics, picking up critically ill patients), so I'm wondering how to implement some of this discussion in my development and still allow players to dock.

One of the things I'm trying to implement is the idea that a disease outbreak could move off-world, infecting nearby systems. If the player was able to buy certain cargo items from a system with a disease outbreak (food, textiles, liquor maybe) and then took those items to another world, there would be a chance the disease could be transferred. There could then be repercussions to the player - legal/money penalties are easy, but maybe a harsher restriction would be to prevent the player from buying/selling cargo at GalCop stations for a certain number of days/weeks/months.

phkb wrote:

Re Disease systems and locking down the stations
(This seems to have moved quite some distance away from jump ranges, but anyway...)

Would locking the station down be a case of limiting the players view of docked systems (eg, hiding the F3 and F8 screens), or turning off docking request acknowledgements, or by actually blocking up the docking port?

I think it would involve actually sealing off the docking port. It might be possible for a player to acquire some sort of pass which would allow them to dock (getting more complicated, this might involve an animation with huge doors sliding open ... more simply, a sealed station just has red flashers in its docking tunnel and flying into the tunnel doesn't activate docking: this would have to be combined with a constant broadcast stating that the station was in lockdown and no ships could dock). So if the player has the vital vials of medicine, they can beam the code signal and presto, green light, docking and a hero's welcome.

This has indeed moved away from jump ranges ... to bring it back (a bit), if there was a dynamic universe where these kinds of navigational hazard events took place, and were represented on the long- and short-range charts, it might be good if these were updated as news spread - which would depend on jump ranges (see what I did there? ). On the assumption that it would take time for news to percolate through the galaxy, travelling at the speed of a ship, the player would only really be confident about local events. I don't know how best to model this: it might be good if it was possible to take into account the traffic density, too, so that getting news in a heavily interconnected hub system was much quicker and easier than getting news in a backwater system at the end of a route.

Cody wrote:

Short answer: yes - but it can be tough!

Disembodied wrote:

Redspear wrote:

I think I might prefer a different scanner 'defect' rather than a reduction in range - imagine if everything showed up with the 'scan class' of 'asteroid', or if 'scan class' were allocated randomly? (I think I might prefer the former of those two*...)

Yes, great idea!

Thanks chaps.

Disembodied wrote:

Redspear wrote:

Some good ideas there. As long as you're not talking of the infamous Spectrum ending where if you didn't save often enough you got the message upon docking, "You're ship has been boarded by pirates.They show no mercy." (or similar)

No, nothing like that! Probably the best bet would be for the station to be in lockdown, with the docking bay firmly closed.

Phew...

phkb wrote:

Re Disease systems and locking down the stations
(This seems to have moved quite some distance away from jump ranges, but anyway...)

I used to have medical ships showing up in those systems (simple oxp tweak which I should have lying around somewhere...) with the intention of having then show up both in the aegis and also along the space-lane (at least Anacondas aren't the hardest ships to overtake).
(No worries re 'derailment', as I see things it's all relevant in terms of navigational choices.)

Disembodied wrote:

...if there was a dynamic universe where these kinds of navigational hazard events took place, and were represented on the long- and short-range charts...

That's very relevant to me, moreso the latter part than the dynamism. Dynamism is good of course but when the system conditions are unusual enough, it's nice if there's a good chance that something will be happening when the player is around, so if that is achieved dynamically then that is just a bonus to me. It's easy enough to rewrite the planet description showing up on the f7 screen and I think some oxps have marked events on the f6 page before???

Redspear wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

...if there was a dynamic universe where these kinds of navigational hazard events took place, and were represented on the long- and short-range charts...

That's very relevant to me, moreso the latter part than the dynamism. Dynamism is good of course but when the system conditions are unusual enough, it's nice if there's a good chance that something will be happening when the player is around, so if that is achieved dynamically then that is just a bonus to me. It's easy enough to rewrite the planet description showing up on the f7 screen and I think some oxps have marked events on the f6 page before???

PhantorGorth put species icons on the short-range chart (see thread here). Being able to label systems currently experiencing solar activity, disease or civil war on at least the short-range map (with, say, a yellow sun, a blue skull, or a red pair of crossed swords) would be very handy ... if a yellow, blue or red circle could be placed around the system, too, that would make the warning stand out more clearly (and if they pulsed, it would make them much more noticeable ... don't know if that's possible, though). These navigational alerts would show up without the "i" key being pressed, of course.

Another idea for an external event which could give players navigational problems: a large-scale Thargoid raid (marked with a green-and-purple octagon on the map, maybe?). This could definitely cause serious problems with jumping in and out, and of course there would be the small matter of having numerous bug ships cruising up and down the lanes ...