Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:10 pm
This project sounds like a never-ending can of worms!
Indeed!
If some of the worms are stiff, and thorny, one could even say that Montana (Monty? the man with a cargo-ship design in his history?) has made a rod for his own back. Well, whatever floats his (life) boat.
montana05 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 2:18 pm
It's close to impossible to cover all aspects, and honestly I don't try to do so. I would see it as an extension trying to fix some logical problems of the core-game. While this package major purpose is still to support other OXP's (some features will only be activated with them) it also adds some modifications if installed standalone. Currently, for example, debris will show up at all ship explosions and splinter could include gold or platinum as well.
Regarding quirium crystal, there are actually some systems where you can find them in the corona of the sun, you should look out for "deadly solar", and yes, these suns are pretty rare.
I haven't had time (yet) to play that new system. But those sound like fun.
The core-game point of only having single "persons" in a lifeboat is ... definitely odd. I've spent many years working at sea, and here are a few things to consider if you're hacking lifeboats about. The design of lifecraft has a long history, and many of the lessons have been learned
post mortem ; I doubt the mariners of space would throw away these lessons.
While every vessel I worked on carried enough "individual survival devices" (a
neoprene suit designed to be able to be donned while floating in the waters of Iceberg Alley) for the entire POB (personnel on board), on each side of the vessel (because in sinking, there is likely to be a list, making one side and half the equipment useless), this has obvious limitations for use in space (
"In space, nobody can hear your tears boil, except you"). {Edit : corollary - a single ships lifeboat would be on the midline. And probably not at the "front". Launching them from the rear would obviously disable the engines..} There are cases on record of people in the water being killed by collision with a craft attempting rescue (it leads to limitations on the sea state in which helicopters can attempt routine landings). My joke about wiping people off the windscreen was not much of a joke really - minus several million points for bad piloting.
The main design criterion for these individual survival suits is to keep the user
able to help themselves (e.g. catching an holding a thrown line) for at least 6 hours, and alive and
resuscitate-able for a good number of hours longer. Do you have "line launchers" in your emergency locker, as an alternative to using the fuel scoops - so a conscious victim can attach to your ship and come in through an airlock (edit : <b>footnote</b>)? In which case ... the "emergency 'air'lock" should be able to accommodate chlorine breathers, water breathers etc - maybe an extension of the technology in a regular slave-transport pod. Which would explain why governments which would never touch the profits of the slave trade ("No sirree! No slaves here!!") still have to be able to service such technology.
I hadn't realised that part of the backstory until I just made it up.
That has implications for people painting ships - the "emergency 'air'lock" needs to be clearly marked. After all, it might be you that needs to use it. Unless you're a heartless pirate, when you might put the conventional high-contrast markings near, say, the engine vents, so the evidence will get burned off.
- <b>footnote</b> Does the ship have a line launcher - or does the space-survival-suit include a magnet & line in the same way that all survival craft include a quoit and line? So even a user of fairly high-grade idiocy can get into contact with a passing (30m-ish) vessel, if they're still conscious. Hmmm, there's a logical difficulty there - survival craft carry quoits to pull individuals towards them, not individuals carrying quoits to try to snag passing (empty, automatically ejected) survival craft. While part of our "must pass, every 2-4 years" examination includes gaining entry to an inverted survival craft in the water, and dressing it for survival. Hmmm, I have to think on that, bearing in mind my point about not forgetting lessons learned.
Individual survival suits tend to make unrealistic assumptions about the level of training of passengers - when crowded ferries sink (the Herald of Free Enterprise, for example - the news broke while I was at sea, and made many people think about the recently-opened Channel tunnel compared to shipping), many passengers fail to don even a highly "idiot-proof" floatation device.
Every damned time a passenger vessel sinks, you hear the same stories. It gets repetitive. As does the lack of attention passengers pay to safety briefings.
So you also need multi-person survival craft with idiot-proof (for even pretty high-grade idiots!) instructions, whereby one moderately trained crewman (we call this duty "
cox'n", short for "cockboat swain") can save a small hoard of bodies. Sizes range from "up to 10" (because single people may need to get away in a multi-person survival craft - I remember one of the survival craft from the Piper Alpha was observed to land nearly a kilometre from the burning rig, with one singed life jacket inside and the on-release hooks primed to release on contact with the water ; clearly the person attempting to escape had read the instructions enough to know he needed to prime the release mechanism before the explosion that launched the lifecraft into the air.
Vale.) The largest "totally enclosed motor propelled survival craft" ("
TEMPSC") I've seen catered to 80 POB - with supplies on board for 14 days without assistance. Any bigger and you're really talking about a new design of vessel anyway.
Docking to and offloading of a survival craft can be one of several ways. If there is a spare mounting of the right size, the craft can be hauled on board using the launching hooks, then everyone offloaded through the loading hatches. Otherwise, a personnel transfer device (e.g. a smaller survival craft) can shuttle POB from the main survival craft to the rescuing vessel. If the rescuing vessel can't accommodate the number of victims, they might have to take the survival craft under tow to take them to a nearby safe haven - obviously at reduced speed and greatly reduced manoeuvrability.
Does the Ooniverse have a common standard for mating 'air'locks to 'air'locks, or for rigging an enclosed, partly pressurised tube between 'air'locks? I don't recall one. Given the variety of vessels in the Ooniverse, probably rigging a tow line would be the most generally applicable solution. The analogue is already part of a cox'n's and a master's obligatory training, and I'm sure is a classroom and practical exam at Lave Academy.
Not rendering assistance in such circumstances may not result in legal punishment, but you're going to be a pariah
while people recognise you. Not
every hand will be raised against you, but damned-few hands would be raised to help you. Or, indeed, willing to sell you fuel and consumables and services. You may have to travel to less law-respecting ports, and deal with nastier people, at higher prices for worse service, becoming a pariah if not actually a fugitive. A person who didn't yield assistance might not be legally "bad", but they are likely to be considered dangerously incompetent in all ways, and a prudent vessel's master would steer well clear of them. Particularly if they were in distress themselves later.
Hmmm, thinking out loud here (while the last few files copy) - a "universal emergency 'air'lock" would be an interesting equipment item. If I were the master of an RRS station. for example, I'd consider it an essential piece of equipment in any vessel whose master was bidding for my (RRS Corp's) contracts. Possibly it could incorporate a "tow hook" attachment (there's a "tow-bar" OXP - which I haven't played with. Yet. Onto the to-do list.). As safety equipment, no respectable shipyard paint shop would paint it anything other than "yum yum yellow" or "international orange". Maybe with UV and IR contrasting stripes.
Right, other things nearly ready. This is just a brain dump of thoughts around "lifeboats", and you can see some ideas crystallising which might actually yield something from my brain too. Being thrown into the Canadian sea, then being thrown a "2-6-2" grade suit to climb into, then bobbing around for an hour before being recovered ... really does stick in the memory.