Oolite Bulletins

Oolite is 'inspired' by Elite - not a carbon-copy. For example, Oolite is not player-centric.

bobalicious wrote:

I have just played from a starting position: Lave to Zaonce to Isinor. The whole journey took just short of 30 minutes, doing what I could to avoid the space lanes.

Your ability will be better soon. I tested now: to arrive into the masslock of main station in Zaonce need 2 minutes including 2 masslocks from ships (I leaved these in a few seconds with instant turnback), a proper docking (next to buoy before turn back so no shortcut) was 1.5 minutes. Then after refuel I go to Isinor in about the same time, so it is possible to arrive within 7 minutes (so you will be 4 times faster than now after some practice). I spent a few seconds only for leaving the main lane (more is much better but I wanted to get some masslocks in this test), then aimed the non-moving pixel of the station and not the center of the planet. Then at the masslock of the station I aimed the buoy, stop very near (almost hit the buoy), turn to the dock and roll in the last seconds.

The early travels can be faster with new extensions also, I posted my suggestions here.

Lastly you will forgot the whole problem soon after you bought your  Injectors for 600 credits and got 7x speed when you hold down the "i" key.

bobalicious wrote:

1) There is more traffic and therefore flying directly to the planet / station results in more mass locks.

And, specifically, there are far more traders, hunters and police ships compared with pirates. In Elite almost every ship you met was a pirate, and the mass locking was more than just inconvenient.

bobalicious wrote:

2) If you fly directly towards the planet then fly to the station, the time taken from mass lock to docking is significantly higher than it was in the original.

Comparing the Oolite scale and the Elite scale is tricky here, but one thing that really makes a difference in Elite is that the planets have multiple stations, so you're very likely to come out of your final in-system jump fairly near to one of them. For technical reasons this isn't yet possible in Oolite.

Cody wrote:

For example, Oolite is not player-centric.

Another big difference is that Oolite has to look good at resolutions higher than 320x256. This means that certain decisions and numbers which worked very well in Elite would have very strange consequences now.

One of the consequences is that mass-lock range is quite a bit wider than in the original compared with the speed of your ship, so breaking a mass-lock takes much longer. Merely narrowing the range without changing other numbers will have other weird consequences - being able to torus drive away when you're still in laser range, for example.

While I think these issues - in-system travel, masslocking, combat ranges, etc. - are something I think could in theory be improved on, it's not a simple matter of just plugging in the equivalent numbers from Elite to replace the ones currently in use. You're absolutely right that the dynamics are different to Elite's, and the weaknesses you've identified in them are ones I would like to address somehow. It's just that the issues involved are really complicated and built into the Oolite gameplay and game balance at a pretty fundamental level (and even bits of the game engine, though those are being adjusted gradually) and there aren't easy answers.

cim wrote:

One of the consequences is that mass-lock range is quite a bit wider than in the original compared with the speed of your ship, so breaking a mass-lock takes much longer.

This might be totally unworkable or even of no benefit, but...

Could trader AI be set for traders to head a little off centre when the player shows up?

Current game:
You get mass-locked by a trader.
You slowly crawl past trader (assuming you stay on lane) as trader heads straight to planet/station (12 o'clock heading).

Imagined game:
You get mass-locked by a trader.
Trader recognises your presence and veers to left or right (10 o'clock or 2 o'clock heading) until out of your scanner range. If the player does nothing then mass-lock will be slightly shorter; if the player does similar (but to the opposite side of course ) then mass-lock should be significantly shorter and the player is less likely to have left the lane in order to do so.

Whilst there might not be a strict left or right in space, I don't think that's essential for this idea to work... if indeed it could

Of course, there might be more than one trader present but it still might reduce mass-locking in general.
There might need to be an override should they be very close to their destination however.

I like that AI idea.

Redspear wrote:

Could trader AI be set for traders to head a little off centre when the player shows up?

This is already in 1.81 (in certain situations) - traders spotting a ship of potentially hostile configuration, which includes the "player-unknown" role, will try to avoid it. Unless the player is coming up right behind them, they'll naturally get out of the way (and if the player is already past them, they'll hang back until they've gone).

They don't do this for other traders, however.

It sounds like this has been thought about to a pretty good degree already, that's most certainly welcome and great to see aired out in this thread a bit more. Thanks for the responses.

I like the AI idea - essentially if you as a player would perform particular actions then maybe the AI should try to replicate that behaviour.

If I would normally fly out of the space lane to get to the station more quickly, why wouldn't every other trader out there?

If I would normally fly directly away from another trader to get out of mass lock range, why wouldn't every other trader I meet do that too?

Of course, the effect of spreading out the other ships over a larger area of space, and of changing their behaviours, is to reduce the number of ships you're likely to meet in space and they effect they have on you - that in turn has an effect on the overall game dynamics and feeling of the game, not just the amount of time it takes to get you to dock.

Why does Oolite have a higher traders to pirate ration than the original game? Presumably to give you a more holistic feeling of a universe of people that you exist within (the non-player centric view). I guess you want to avoid breaking that feeling.

In terms of the laser range - presumably your laser range is near infinite? Meaning that is really just a point about screen resolution. You can fire at a pixel if you can target it accurately enough. I could shoot at a planet from 10 light years away couldn't I (mind you I could jump to the planet and get hit by my own laser), hang on, dropped out of game mechanics in into horrible real / not real thought experiment!

Before I discovered Oolite, my favorite game of this genre was the X series of games (X: Beyond the Frontier, X2, X3). In the later games especially they had a great sense of "life" by having ships trading between all the stations and the economy really being organic - supply and demand played a real part of how things evolved. It not only make the trading element more interesting, but make the world more alive.

While I doubt we could really recreate the back-and-forth trading affecting prices in the same way, we probably could at the very least have distinct lines of trade going between all stations, regardless of location, which would end up widening the spaceways and increasing encounters without them simply spawning.

bobalicious wrote:

In terms of the laser range - presumably your laser range is near infinite? Meaning that is really just a point about screen resolution. You can fire at a pixel if you can target it accurately enough. I could shoot at a planet from 10 light years away couldn't I (mind you I could jump to the planet and get hit by my own laser), hang on, dropped out of game mechanics in into horrible real / not real thought experiment!

I've at least once destroyed a target just after it went out of range - if you're still on target the lasers still seem to work, it's just VERY difficult to do. Oddly, it doesn't work if you can see something big ahead - such as an asteroid - get it in the centre of the sights, and open fire before it's in range for the targeting system. That might be something to consider, except of course it does mean that it would be possible to shoot at a station from a LONG distance.

bobalicious wrote:

If I would normally fly out of the space lane to get to the station more quickly, why wouldn't every other trader out there?

If I would normally fly directly away from another trader to get out of mass lock range, why wouldn't every other trader I meet do that too?

Essentially because NPCs don't have the torus drive, so they get to the station more quickly by going in a straight line, and the presence of other traders is advantageous to them (it's someone the pirates might go for instead).

bobalicious wrote:

Why does Oolite have a higher traders to pirate ration than the original game? Presumably to give you a more holistic feeling of a universe of people that you exist within (the non-player centric view). I guess you want to avoid breaking that feeling.

That's about it. Also, to give player pirates something to shoot at.

bobalicious wrote:

In terms of the laser range - presumably your laser range is near infinite?

No, not at all. About 15km for most lasers, and 30km for the military laser. You do sometimes need sub-pixel accuracy of aim to hit things with the military laser at far range, but it's possible with practice.

mossfoot wrote:

While I doubt we could really recreate the back-and-forth trading affecting prices in the same way, we probably could at the very least have distinct lines of trade going between all stations, regardless of location, which would end up widening the spaceways and increasing encounters without them simply spawning.

This would require there to be quite a bit more (core game but also OXP) diversity in where the stations are. Pretty much every station is on or very close to a spacelane (or deliberately elsewhere to avoid visitors), so the secondary lanes would be very lightly populated as it currently is.

(If you wait long enough in one system, the existing shuttle AI will eventually populate some of those secondary lanes for you, but it'll take a while)

bobalicious wrote:

In terms of the laser range - presumably your laser range is near infinite? Meaning that is really just a point about screen resolution. You can fire at a pixel if you can target it accurately enough. I could shoot at a planet from 10 light years away couldn't I (mind you I could jump to the planet and get hit by my own laser), hang on, dropped out of game mechanics in into horrible real / not real thought experiment!

This  wiki page might help you here.

Norby wrote:

I tested now: to arrive into the masslock of main station in Zaonce need 2 minutes including 2 masslocks from ships (I leaved these in a few seconds with instant turnback), a proper docking (next to buoy before turn back so no shortcut) was 1.5 minutes. Then after refuel I go to Isinor in about the same time, so it is possible to arrive within 7 minutes (so you will be 4 times faster than now after some practice).

I was inspired to check against something close to the original, Elite-B, with vids posted here
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=227926#p227926
and also got 7 minutes, although if I had encountered/engaged pirates it would have taken longer.

The game play is quite different, the classic generates ships only near the player. In Elite-B some of the freighters hyp away to remove themselves (or more precisely you) from mass-locking. And staring out the rear or left windows speeds up the graphics ...

Dr Beeb wrote:

And staring out the rear or left windows speeds up the graphics ...

Now that brings back memories.

Is there an OXP for version 1.8 that has variable mass-locks based on object masses?

Before commencing... I never said nothing......

Probably Taboo ....Oh and it just might destroy any sense of achievement.. but If you really need a fillip at the open of business.
In the Expansion Manager select Oocheat....Award yourself extra credits (according to your requirements and Lave's low tech equipment availability) and Bob . should ideally be your uncle .

If anyone asks... I ain't said nothing.. And I was never here