Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

Could debris around a Torus station also be caused by NPCs trying to fly through the wheel and failing (because they're too slow for the turning wheel and are cut in half or something)?

I don't know about anyone else, but I've never seen a NPC try to fly through the spokes. Might be a hoot to add in, though. Something to provide variety from the occasional NPC who just flies straight out the dock and smashes into the beacon.

fronclynne wrote:

Something to provide variety from the occasional NPC who just flies straight out the dock and smashes into the beacon.

This should be a thing of the past. It's been ages since I've seen this old chestnut of a bug in my game.

And I don't think that NPC's actually would try to fly through the spokes. I tend to think that the AI treats a Torus station as a solid object, and therefore would not attempt to fly through it. But I'm not sure, hence my question.

I've sat and watched many Torus stations, and I've yet to see an NPC ship attempt the fly-through.

El Viejo wrote:

I've sat and watched many Torus stations, and I've yet to see an NPC ship attempt the fly-through.

fronclynne states there are double ring Torus stations and that blew me away. Have not see one.

CaptSolo wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

I've sat and watched many Torus stations, and I've yet to see an NPC ship attempt the fly-through.

fronclynne states there are double ring Torus stations and that blew me away. Have not see one.

Yes, there are. If memory serves me well, there are three or four different type of toruses, an at least one is double ringed.

Generally Torus stations are found in the highest tech systems only. Therefore it's even less likely to see a specific variant.

Commander McLane wrote:

CaptSolo wrote:

fronclynne states there are double ring Torus stations and that blew me away. Have not see one.

Yes, there are. If memory serves me well, there are three or four different type of toruses, an at least one is double ringed.

Generally Torus stations are found in the highest tech systems only. Therefore it's even less likely to see a specific variant.

Probably the closest one to Lave, at Onrira:

Good fun, is that! As is injectoring through the spokes on docking approach.
I've replaced all the native Ico stations with extra Torus stations... I like them!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Since the concrete blocks are stationary in both cases the KE of the impact is all from the car, so it should be capped out at the speed which the car hits the block(s) - could this be translated into Oolite code somehow?

Note that “x is stationary” doesn’t have any magical meaning, it just states a preferred frame of reference, and it isn’t really a very useful one in a 3D simulation of free-floating objects. For normal ship-to-ship collisions – as Eric said, collisions with the inside of the docking bay are different – Oolite works in terms of relative velocity between the two colliding entities and calculates a fully elastic collision (with damage to each party being linearly proportional to the imparted impulse).

A fully elastic collision implies that the ships are completely rigid, which is pretty ridiculous in the case of a giant space station, but there’s no chance of a detailed damage model and quick fixes are a bad idea by their very nature. (For instance, a damage cap might mean that you could get away with being thwacked by the outer end of a torus spoke, which I think should insta-kill any vaguely reasonable player ship regardless of how much it ought to deform the station in the process.)

The damage model for inside the docking bay should probably be revised to work more like the general collision model, with a fixed inertia for the station/docking bay and taking closing velocity into account. Currently it’s (5 * flight speed) damage points per second while touching the edge, regardless of the direction of flight.

Ahruman wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Since the concrete blocks are stationary in both cases the KE of the impact is all from the car, so it should be capped out at the speed which the car hits the block(s) - could this be translated into Oolite code somehow?

Note that “x is stationary” doesn’t have any magical meaning, it just states a preferred frame of reference, and it isn’t really a very useful one in a 3D simulation of free-floating objects. For normal ship-to-ship collisions – as Eric said, collisions with the inside of the docking bay are different – Oolite works in terms of relative velocity between the two colliding entities and calculates a fully elastic collision (with damage to each party being linearly proportional to the imparted impulse).

A fully elastic collision implies that the ships are completely rigid, which is pretty ridiculous in the case of a giant space station, but there’s no chance of a detailed damage model and quick fixes are a bad idea by their very nature. (For instance, a damage cap might mean that you could get away with being thwacked by the outer end of a torus spoke, which I think should insta-kill any vaguely reasonable player ship regardless of how much it ought to deform the station in the process.)

The damage model for inside the docking bay should probably be revised to work more like the general collision model, with a fixed inertia for the station/docking bay and taking closing velocity into account. Currently it’s (5 * flight speed) damage points per second while touching the edge, regardless of the direction of flight.

True. I was thinking (badly) that at slow speeds, close to the centre of rotation, if the objects were truly floating, then a ship clipping the inside of the station wall is more likely to be driven down/around by the impact (ignoring deformation of ship/station wall) rather than being insta-death - but if the collision damage model wasn't designed that way... then pilots need to learn to not crash!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

... then pilots need to learn to not crash!

The Daddy has spoken

I don't think I have witnessed any NPC crashes at Torus stations at all, then again it is not so often that I meet them Torus stations.

El Viejo wrote:

[double torus] Good fun, is that! As is injectoring through the spokes on docking approach.
I've replaced all the native Ico stations with extra Torus stations... I like them!

My main concern with these is that I can fly right through the spikes and/or rings (the parts that look like they are solid) of this one without any "press space" or such.
Don't know for other Torus models, only noticed it on the double ones.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

True. I was thinking (badly) that at slow speeds, close to the centre of rotation, if the objects were truly floating, then a ship clipping the inside of the station wall is more likely to be driven down/around by the impact (ignoring deformation of ship/station wall) rather than being insta-death - but if the collision damage model wasn't designed that way... then pilots need to learn to not crash!

Ships are actually pushed away from the inside walls of the dock on touching. But the code is very primitive and only repositions a ship to the centre of the dock on colliding with it. The further the ship is in the dock, the stronger is this effect if I read the code right. Probably to give a real feeling of colliding with something. Better would be when the ship also would get a new velocity direction, away from the wall like really bouncing back But maybe that would make docking to easy.

snork wrote:

My main concern with these is that I can fly right through the spikes and/or rings (the parts that look like they are solid) of this one without any "press space" or such.

That shouldn't happen. If I hit a spoke, I'm dead... pdq!

snork wrote:

I don't think I have witnessed any NPC crashes at Torus stations at all, then again it is not so often that I meet them Torus stations.

I have. Also, by the time I have flown from the witchpoint to the Torus, there are usually some cargo canisters floating around it. Last night I spent ages visiting all the dockables in a system with a double (it looked like a triple - do they exist?) Torus and when I finally got round to visiting the Torus space station there was a cloud of cargo pods and metal plates floating around it.

I put on my docking computer and felt I had to switch it off and stop suddenly when I was within a quarter of my Python's length away from the edge of the Torus. I reckon the top of my Python was going to catch the edge of the ring. With hindsight (one day I'll order some in advance) I should have taken screendumps.

Having spent ages visiting all the dockables I was not inclined to risk being destroyed just to see what would happen next if I let the docking computer keep going.

SandJ wrote:

Having spent ages visiting all the dockables I was not inclined to risk being destroyed just to see what would happen next if I let the docking computer keep going.

Welcome to the life as a test pilot It's not Uber lasers and injectors all the time, just most of it