Oolite Bulletins

In my run yesterday a Kiota BiosSpehere created in the Main Planet - Sun lane at 75% distance in Maesin (G1) survived fine for the whole game session.

I visited it and there was already a bit of ambient glare cruising outside the station, even facing away from the sun, so I think that would be near the limit for Habitat stations.

I will try it in Vetitice (G1) ( where I remember getting some really strong flares) during the weekend.

I added some information about heat_insulation to the wiki.

Hello,

I had to fetch again this OXP because it is not on my disk anymore (or somewhere non obvious). I only rarely play Oolite these days, and last time I was hacking it, I removed Kyota stations in favor of the rock hermits the system populator may spawn near the sun if you ask it (more-or-less) politely. Rock hermits are the shady places native to the game, where you can find "opportunities", so it makes sense to move them far from the eye of the Galcops and have players to go out of their way to make some profits on the side.

At first I was favorable for Dybal to take over the maintenance of this OXP - because obviously I am not a good maintainer anymore if I ever was, but it seems to me that the new orbits for the Kyotas, that can be much farther from the sun, change significantly this OXP. This could be a problem for its users, who probably have built some expectations on the current placement.

So, I suggest to create a separate OXP instead, perhaps with additional modifications that some users would like to see. On my side, I'll try to fix the placement and the docking clearance (the intention is indeed to require it for all Kyota stations). Those are probably not very difficult to do, but I have to find the motivation to install the OXPs again and test the fixes, so no ETA. Of course, if someone reliable has already done and tested those fixes, I can update the OXP in a few days - I am not opposed to a takeover either.

As for the market changes suggested by Milo: messing with the in-game economy is a delicate topic, because it is a major component of the Credit/Hour ratio that dictates the pace and progression of the game, just like the XP/Hour ratio does in MMORPG games. Depending on how much time is available for them to play, some players prefer a fast pace and progression, while others don't mind a more calm and contemplative game.

So I suggest that additional market features should be in another OXP (which would probably also work with the original Wildships OXP and maybe Dybal's variant if he chooses to make one). Oolite has a nice download manager with dependency and conflict management, so let's use it.

Glad to hear from you, Astrobe.

I think I persuaded Dybal to keep the stations on the planet-sun route and as close to the sun as is practical (he wanted to make sure they are not so close that they overheat, which makes some sense...). I think he has scaled back the extent of positioning changes in his latest test version. If you are willing, I think letting Dybal maintain this OXP would be better than creating a separate but very similar OXP. If some player really dislikes whatever placement tweaks Dybal decides he wants to make, he can consider the feedback and make changes or introduce configuration in the OXP itself to cater to different preferences.

As for the docking clearance, thanks for clarifying your intention. The revised overrides plist file that I pasted in the thread above will take care of enabling the requirement for all of the stations. So you (or Dybal, if you give him permission) can include that in the next release.

As for market changes, I agree it does not belong in this OXP, which is why I proposed to stranger that his in-system parcel missions OXP could be expanded to include Kiota stations as a destination. I think that would be a nice complement to this OXP for those who want it.

As for rock hermits, those are built in asteroids, so they would be found in asteroid fields, or at least in places where asteroid fields were in the past (assuming the rock hermit is now all that remains after mining removed the rest). I think Kiota stations near the sun is a good tweak for incorporating WildShips OXP without replacing main stations, and I suggest to keep that instead of replacing them with rock hermits. Rock hermits are re-positioned by other OXPs already (Spicy Hermits OXP, for example), so I suggest looking at complementing/tweaking what those OXPs do if you have further ideas about what to do with them (of course you could declare a conflict, but you may find a way to adapt your concepts to coexist with them).

Glad to hear from you, Astrobe!

I want to apologise for the proposed mods, since they go against the core of what you had wanted the OXP to do... I didn't realize you intended for _all_ kinds of Kyota stations to be placed very near the sun.

They can be all placed at 90% distance, which in my OXP set means around 900km from the Sun by ASC (I don't know if that's from the centre or the surface), in a region with time limits even for heat insulated ships, but they would all need high heat_insulation in their shipdata defs.

That would solve the main problem, the non-Solar stations disintegrating after a while, without messing up anybody's expectations about station placement.

I would suggest also modifying the OXP description in the manifest to make it clearer that all Kyota stations will be near the sun, and why that's desirable, so newbies to the game (like me) would know what to expect.

Just minimal mods (forget the mods I posted above)...