Oolite Bulletins

You're right - there are lots of systems out there not on the maps (Achenar, for instance, and countless uncharted systems), and you didn't say "Star Wars"… However, an empire with YT-1300s, TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors - bit too much of a coincidence for me! I can't remember who suggested it, but I liked the explanation someone else here offered for Star Wars ships appearing in Oolite - the Star Wars films would be part of history, and so there'd be a market for replica ships.

I suppose you could have an empire out there that modelled itself stylistically on *the* Empire - but if that's the case, I'd explain that in the description. Otherwise the implication is that Elite takes place in the Star Wars galaxy (or at least that Benulobiweed exists in a kind of parallel-universe Elite/Star Wars galaxy).

I definitely don't like "GalCop ground troops", though

(Btw, I'd never heard of Hooke's Law, but I looked it up!)

@Capt H - you replied while I was typing

Yep, the Wiki is editable, but I'm not sure that, in practice, anyone has the time or inclination to do major revisions on other people's entries. And, for example, whatever my views are on the Benulobiweed entry, I wouldn't feel justified in barging in and rewriting it.

To expand on my previous post, for me the problem kind of is that you *don't* mention Star Wars. This makes it a kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink entry - so how seriously are we meant to take it? And if GalCop are, in this particular instance, using ground troops, I think the entry should at least explain that this is an exceptional move - otherwise it does give the impression that "GalCop ground troops" are part of everyday life in the Ooniverse.

Anyway, lunchtime

Made a start. Hope people think this is suffientley Ooliteish!

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Powers ... anisations

Roberto wrote:

To expand on my previous post, for me the problem kind of is that you *don't* mention Star Wars. This makes it a kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink entry - so how seriously are we meant to take it?

Roberto wrote:

I can't remember who suggested it, but I liked the explanation someone else here offered for Star Wars ships appearing in Oolite - the Star Wars films would be part of history, and so there'd be a market for replica ships.

I get your point, and that's a perfect work-around (Besides, the scrolling text *does* say 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...)

Roberto wrote:

And if GalCop are, in this particular instance, using ground troops, I think the entry should at least explain that this is an exceptional move - otherwise it does give the impression that "GalCop ground troops" are part of everyday life in the Ooniverse.

It's quite likely that GalCop do have security troops of some description, Marines etc. for clearing out Pirate Coves, so maybe they do sometimes 'offer additional security facilities' to corporations that are contracting top-secret ships for them, but such activities are usually kept hush-hush. However, Q has been known to 'let slip' and 'leak' information that other companies might see as highly compromising, simply because the positive or negative exposure is still media attention. And media attention is still a way to sell stock, e.g. the various 'bad taste' United Colours of Benetton adverts of the 1990's (man dying of AIDS-related illness, etc.)

I had no intention of causing anyone's feathers to be ruffled, and I do encourage other OXPers to upload their own fluff. But I can certainly imaging after 8,000,000 hours of writing .plists, AIs, shiplists, building models, designing skins, etc. some writers are past the point of writing flavour text on the Wiki

P.S.

Anyway, lunchtime

I'm eating roast pork, potatoes, veg and pear sauce (wife is experimenting!). Bon apetite!

Captain Hesperus
"Eat, drink and be merry. For tomorrow we shall be sick, hung-over and grumpy, and we need to get ahead while the getting's good!"

Great idea there Capt'n. The Wiki needs updates.

If you find time to do any of my ships or other hardware or concepts, I'll be glad to see them included.

OXP Name / Entry Name(s)


Shield-tail / Teretrurus MK1


YOUR AD HERE /

• Terascreen
  Pi-42

Oo-Haul / L-Crate Hauler


Commies /

• Astromine
  Giant Ray
  Ray MK1 (People's Viper, Thought Police etc.)
  Mining Pod
  Scooper Pod
  Sturgeon (Commissar Limousine/Party Liner)
  Collective Zero-G Factory
  Solar Laboratory & Production Unit
  Worker's Commuter

Ore Processor / Ore Processor (equipment)


Missionaries /

• Church of Giles the Creator (religion)
  Witchspace Lobster Worship (religion)

Dr. Nil wrote:

Great idea there Capt'n. The Wiki needs updates.

If you find time to do any of my ships or other hardware or concepts, I'll be glad to see them included.

And the list goes on!

Captain Hesperus
"I accept payment in Credits, Gold and Platinum bars, or blackmail material. I'm not fussy."

Uh sorry. Thought you were up to it. Just leave them out then.

Dr. Nil wrote:

Uh sorry. Thought you were up to it. Just leave them out then.

Quite the opposite, I'd be glad to do your Commies et al! I was just saying that there's a real list staring up to keep me going.

Captain Hesperus
"Ooops, was that something important that just went 'BANG'? If not then it can wait for the yearly maintenance review."

@LB - Nice wiki entry as a background for Assassins - credibly "Oolitish".

I wanted to ask a question about this bit:

Colonised in 2576, Quandixe was one of the first planets to be settled following the discovery of what was thought at the time to be a wormhole leading to another Galaxy. Although later research demonstrated that the 8 Galaxies are in fact merely different sectors of the Milky Way, this did not stop adventurous types keen to start a new life on far away worlds.

Has this been established? Specifically: "the 8 Galaxies are in fact merely different sectors of the Milky Way". The reason I ask is that when I was in my teens and playing this first time round - I thought it very silly that each galaxy had only 256 systems/planets in it (even sillier that each system had only one world) as I was quite in to Astronomy at the time. What I decided was this: That Galcop was all controlling - as Earth was never mentioned it was either hidden or the 8 "galaxies" were outside the Earth "sector" - I decided based on corporate trends at the time that the eight galaxies were in fact 8 areas own by a subset of galcop which had started life as a super-corporation on Earth (Imagine if all the car companies become one supercompany (almost like that in the US - GM and Ford are the only two actual companies although yanks still buy Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Mercuries etc), then all the pharmaceutical companies, all the oil companies, all the electronics companies...)

I also decided that the Galactic Hyperdive was no such thing. It was actually a one shot overload of the normal Witchspace drive - the 5000Cr was actually the fee you paid Galcop (unknown to the user) for leaving one area of control and entering another subset of the overarching super corp. An expensive punishment if you like for no longer living under the control of the particular organisation you were born under.

I also summised that the Galactic map was more akin to the London Underground Map - the systems (like the stations) aren't really laid out like that but it's there for your simplified understanding - I also figured therefore there could be gaps in the system map that were hidden from me the common trader - after all Raxxla had to be somewhere...

Finally, I decided that the reason each system only had one planet is that it didn't! Each system only had one planet you could visit - one planet that Galcop had allowed to be visited - your nav computers and viewscreens (built by them after all (everything is somewhere connected to them)) simply blanked out and steered you around anything that was of no interest (to them - not necessarily to you!).

[Funnily enough this actual fits in with the current expansion of Oolite with new moons/planets and the like - Galcop has deemed them either no longer a risk or that they are profitable if they are visited. They're not suddenly appearing - they've always been there!]

So, it makes me smile that my suspension-of-belief-mechanism of my teenage years fits in quite nicely (potentially) with what's going on with Oolite now.

@Doc - I'd be happy to do something with the L-Crate Hauler (if that's the name/model of the ship that the Oo-Hauler and now the Tescoo Bulk Carrier is based on). Unless you had something specific in mind and/or the Cap'n doesn't want anybody stepping on his literary toes (technically fingers? unless he's even more talented than I suspected )

I've used the Timeline and Explanations written by Selezen on his website at this location:- http://hughesd.co.uk/elite/content/default.asp, where he ties Elite, Oolite and Frontier together. He's used all information from the Manuals and fiction, but filled in some of the gaps.

Fun nerdy reading![/url]

@DaddyHoggy - I've heard a couple of differing opinions re: Earth. I'll relate them in no particular order:
1) Earth (Sol) is the seat of the (FFE/FE2) Federation. As such, GalCop would have 'blanked' it from the GalCp-controlled Witchspace Beacon network. If there isn't a beacon, there isn't anything for your navigation computer to 'lock-on' to, as happened with Achenar (seat of the Duvalian Empire) and it's aligned systems.
2) Earth is subject to a 'preservation order', since it was being trampled so badly by extraterrestrial tourists wanting to see the 'Birthplace of Humanity' that some part of GalCop shut down the Beacon and declared Earth off-limits to non-official business.
3) Earth is a dead world. After effectively wiping each other out in an almighty 'War to End All, Well, Everything' there wasn't anything left. No cities, no forests, no oceans, no life. Since there was nothing of economic value, it was left and the Witchspace Beacon was removed and a footnote left in the annals of history, 'this is what happens when people stop talking to one another."*
4)The Vogons demolished it to make way for the new Trans-Galactic Highway

Captain Hesperus
*adaptation of quote from Steven Hawking regarding war.

Captain Hesperus wrote:

Quite the opposite, I'd be glad to do your Commies et al!

Sounds good.

I look forward to reading it when you get to them.

Ot: Thanks for a good job done on your most recent expeditions tracking bots for our tireless admins to kill. Php ought to include a first person shooter admin interface to allow them the joy of taking out bots with a flamer (perhaps also an idea for anti-virus software, firewalls etc.).

I still hope that the 8 'galaxies' will turn out to be 8 small sectors arranged as a cube of 2x2x2 sectors in a much larger Frontier style galaxy at some future point of development in the history of Oolite.

I choose to believe that much of the information in Dark Wheel and the Elite Pilot's Manual only reflects what Cal-Cop Psy-Ops want pilots and everybody else to think. I make this choice because that view can allow enhancements to be made in areas where the original story in reality was dictated by limitations in hardware.

@Dr - spot on, that's exactly how I view it.