Oolite Bulletins

Ebi wrote:

The civilization is on main planet, IMO this planet should have the "correct" distance to support life. Of course, "correct" means actually nothing if there are no physic laws defined:) However, how's about giving the Oolite sun the apparent size of our solar system sun, viewed from the main planet. Standing on Earth the sun has a diameter of only 0.5 degree. I've used this code recently:

Code: Select all

   s.setPosition(p.position.add(
	s.position.subtract(p.position).direction().multiply(
	    s.radius / Math.tan(0.25 * Math.PI / 180))));
// s == sun
// p == main planet

Hi Ebi,

not that Oolite has to worry about realism .. but your comment sent my mind racing on RL planetary theory. (Nearly) all stars will have a habitable zone around them. Depending on the temperature, size, of star that zone will be closer or further away. For red dwarfs the distance is so close to the star that the planet would probably get tidally locked and (most of it) would fry, so that sets a lower limit. As for upper limit, blue supergiant produces too much UV for a planet's atmosphere to retain water vapour undisassociated.

Within the range of allowed stars for populated worlds (Pop >= 0.8 Billion), for a limited range the radius of star would scale with habitable distance (leaving the subtended angle constant as your code above suggests) but most cases are strongly affected by the temperature (colour) of the star. And maybe planets around red supergiants would still be habitable - for a while. I think Oolite uses a range of pre-determined random numbers for most of these properties (star radius, colour, distance) and probably quite difficult to do better.

Hi Frame. I assume it's easy for you to make a Hyperjumpgate? That's a jumpgate which triggers a Witchspace jump. Why?

As you may know I'm working on a Famous Planets spaceway-L1 Add on. In that route the planet Aronar is a very dangerous feudal world (for regular traders). What if a trader can choose to take a jumpgate (for a price) from Zaonce to Aesbion (2 Corporate states). Then it would be like a little toll tunnel. It's not an interplanetary gat but still a nice chance to test if a gate works. Sorry to be a bit off-topic

See the illustration for the sort of thing I would like to see:

@pagroove - might make for a good mission OXP too - pirates from the feudal system jumping in to destroy the jumpgate to force traders to return to their dangerous trade routes... the player could be hired to help defend the gate (or by the pirates to help destroy it!)

Yes but that sort of ideas are possible then. But beyond the scope of my oxp. However would be nice to see if a jumpgate is possible.

Tee hee.
The only problem with creating this interstellar bypass is a small, blue-green Harmless planet is smack-bang in the way.

Dispatching Vogon Constructor Fleet......

Captain Hesperus

use the vacuum cleaner to suck the planet up

pagroove wrote:

Hi Frame. I assume it's easy for you to make a Hyperjumpgate? That's a jumpgate which triggers a Witchspace jump. Why?

As you may know I'm working on a Famous Planets spaceway-L1 Add on. In that route the planet Aronar is a very dangerous feudal world (for regular traders). What if a trader can choose to take a jumpgate (for a price) from Zaonce to Aesbion (2 Corporate states). Then it would be like a little toll tunnel. It's not an interplanetary gat but still a nice chance to test if a gate works. Sorry to be a bit off-topic

See the illustration for the sort of thing I would like to see:

I'm, sorry that i didn't see this before now...but i'm afraid that is impossible,

The jumpgate propels you interplanetary, not interstallar/y... atm there is no way for a scripter to trigger a hyperspace jump, or control it, or move the player between systems.. so far we can only move the player around inside a system...

Even if it is possible to create custom systems... to create a half way short cut,, this short cut would remain constant... since we cannot dynamicly move systems around in the galactic coordinate system.

And even then ships would be arriving at the witchspace point, which ofcourse could be solved by moving the player far away, when entering the system.

Planet and sun would also need to be moved far away, and the only thing the player would see is the jumpgate...

Beacons however would still be seen..

Even trying something with a failed withcspace jump wouldn't work as you would need to target Aesbion... in order to get halfway there... which the hyperspace drives ofcourse prevents you from doing... since it is outside the 7 L.Y range...

I think however something is coming up in 1.72, then we can take a second look at it...

Cheers Frame...

<rant>

Personally I would be strongly opposed against anything that circumvents the 7LY-rule. You can't jump further than 7 LY. Period. IMO breaking that rule would be a real game-breaker, making passenger- and cargo-hauls, and a lot of missions just ridiculously easy.

Please image just for a second what kind of mission the Long Way Around would be, if you had some kind of device that would allow you to travel from Soladies to Qubeen in one jump.

No. No. No. Simply no.

</rant>

Well the idea is that players will have to pay for it big time like a toll tunnel but that some companies (liners etc) have free access to it,.

So if you have to pay it does not have to be a game breaker. You can balance that.
But I drop the idea. It wasn't meant to be in the OXP anyway but I was just curious if such a construction is possible. The jump gate would be like in Freelancer. BTW the OXP -expansion is ready (texture wise).

It was, of course, my personal rant only. I don't want to discourage you from experimenting. It's just that I feel here is something very fundamental for Elite at stake.

Therefore I don't even think you could balance such a fundamental change to the whole game mechanics with just money. It would have to be really, really prohibitive, like hundreds of thousands of credits per jump, in order to make it acceptable for me. (For an instant jump from one end of the galaxy to the other it should be even more.) And that wouldn't make sense in-game, because even the largest haulers couldn't possibly make a profit with costs like that, so they wouldn't use the technology.

Commander McLane wrote:

It was, of course, my personal rant only. I don't want to discourage you from experimenting. It's just that I feel here is something very fundamental for Elite at stake.

Therefore I don't even think you could balance such a fundamental change to the whole game mechanics with just money. It would have to be really, really prohibitive, like hundreds of thousands of credits per jump, in order to make it acceptable for me. (For an instant jump from one end of the galaxy to the other it should be even more.) And that wouldn't make sense in-game, because even the largest haulers couldn't possibly make a profit with costs like that, so they wouldn't use the technology.

My speculation of this, if jump by script was possible.. Was that you still could not break the 7 ly barrier,

However it if where possible to make a player make a stop in any galactic coordinate by script, you could make a midway stop, in interstellar space... from where the player can activate a normal hyperspace jump, or the scripter could remove the players fuel, forcing him to enter some sort of jump-gate in witch-space...

There should by additional flags though, like not wanting the thargoids to show up, and other OXP ships to show up...

But I'm not planning to do this at all for the moment, and it all looks terrible complicated (not that, that usually stops me).. but to complicated weighed against the benefits...

I´m well into designing the solar systems OXP and expanding on my Oolite Model Viewers Abilities, like implementing shaders

Frame wrote:

However it if where possible to make a player make a stop in any galactic coordinate by script, you could make a midway stop, in interstellar space...

Ah. Yes, the possibility of a forced-by-script misjump has been on my wishlist for quite a while.

what might be a nice twist for the jumpgates : in order to jump to further/different systems, you'd need to access witchspace...so you *can* do it, but you have to force a misjump and run a potential Thargoid gauntlet on your way to the gate.

Killer Wolf wrote:

what might be a nice twist for the jumpgates : in order to jump to further/different systems, you'd need to access witchspace...so you *can* do it, but you have to force a misjump and run a potential Thargoid gauntlet on your way to the gate.

I would think, that will overcomplicate the usage of jumpgates, and add fuel usage to them aswell...

to much hazzle.. IMO

Frame wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

It was, of course, my personal rant only. I don't want to discourage you from experimenting. It's just that I feel here is something very fundamental for Elite at stake.

Therefore I don't even think you could balance such a fundamental change to the whole game mechanics with just money. It would have to be really, really prohibitive, like hundreds of thousands of credits per jump, in order to make it acceptable for me. (For an instant jump from one end of the galaxy to the other it should be even more.) And that wouldn't make sense in-game, because even the largest haulers couldn't possibly make a profit with costs like that, so they wouldn't use the technology.

My speculation of this, if jump by script was possible.. Was that you still could not break the 7 ly barrier,

However it if where possible to make a player make a stop in any galactic coordinate by script, you could make a midway stop, in interstellar space... from where the player can activate a normal hyperspace jump, or the scripter could remove the players fuel, forcing him to enter some sort of jump-gate in witch-space...

There should by additional flags though, like not wanting the thargoids to show up, and other OXP ships to show up...

But I'm not planning to do this at all for the moment, and it all looks terrible complicated (not that, that usually stops me).. but to complicated weighed against the benefits...

I´m well into designing the solar systems OXP and expanding on my Oolite Model Viewers Abilities, like implementing shaders

I can think of a much cheaper way of doing it though....

Just have some kind of beacon in interstellar space at <7 light year intervals, with refueling stations nearby. Sort of an Elite equivalent of motorway service stations...

No new tech would be needed, you'd just witchspace to the beacon, refuel and witchspace onwards (via multiple beacons if necessary). No need for fancy jumpgates and wormholes.

Of course, I don't know if this is possible in game, but it would be hard to avoid somebody doing it in 'real' life. Especially in areas like the those that provided the situation for the 'long way round' mission. It wouldn't cost 'very' much in Elite economic terms to set up a series of beacons and refueling points. It would be easier enough to refuel them with tankers.

Just like on our motorways, the price of fuel would be a bit higher here, than planetside (analogous to your local tesco).

Cheers,

Drew.