Oolite Bulletins

Darkbee wrote:

Second, that is very interesting indeed as it seems completely contra to my casual observations. I don't recall running into any ships when trying to, for example, lower my legal status by system-hopping via the witchspace-sun route. However, I am almost certain that I've encountered ships when going from planet to sun (or vice versa).

I do quite a bit of Sunskimming, so often find other ships doing this. They nearly always seem to be quite near the sun already. It might be (due to the geography of the System) that as you travel from the station to the Sun you are meeting others who have come from the Witchpoint and you're all converging on the same point.
They all also seem to be heading towards the Sun, never away, so I guess they re-fuel and jump out which is why you don't see them heading towards the planet.

Smivs wrote:

Darkbee wrote:

Second, that is very interesting indeed as it seems completely contra to my casual observations. I don't recall running into any ships when trying to, for example, lower my legal status by system-hopping via the witchspace-sun route. However, I am almost certain that I've encountered ships when going from planet to sun (or vice versa).

I do quite a bit of Sunskimming, so often find other ships doing this. They nearly always seem to be quite near the sun already. It might be (due to the geography of the System) that as you travel from the station to the Sun you are meeting others who have come from the Witchpoint and you're all converging on the same point.
They all also seem to be heading towards the Sun, never away, so I guess they re-fuel and jump out which is why you don't see them heading towards the planet.

You probably don't see any flying away because until Eric's recent fix - sunskimming NPCs lacked sufficient shielding to prevent them blowing up while skimming - some have reported that sunskimmers can still go "phut" - so perhaps they don't all jump out...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

You probably don't see any flying away because until Eric's recent fix - sunskimming NPCs lacked sufficient shielding to prevent them blowing up while skimming - some have reported that sunskimmers can still go "phut" - so perhaps they don't all jump out...

Ah yes, I remember reading that now.
I've just had a quick look at the sunskim AI. It seems they should sunskim and then hyperspace out, but if wichspace is unavailable (?) they switch to the trader AI which I believe sets them on course for the planet.

I don't think I've ever seen a Hyperspace cloud near the sun... (anybody else?)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I don't think I've ever seen a Hyperspace cloud near the sun... (anybody else?)

What about this one:



I must say that I added a beacon to the ship so I could find it sooner. I also set up an inspector to follow the ship (This is a mac-debug only feature).

Than I waited at a safe distance until the inspector told me the ship had jumped out. Than I rushed in at injectors to get a glimpse of the wormhole cloud.

For a normal player probably difficult to fly in at the right time, but they do jump correct since Oolite 1.74 (Before they just burned)

Cool - and I've only just upgrade to 1.74 and hardly had anytime to play, which may explain why I've never seen any before...

There's plenty times i've been Torusing down the lanes and found outbound ships - where they heading? a vast majority are cops, are the others ones that have a Route1Patrol AI or something?

Killer Wolf wrote:

There's plenty times i've been Torusing down the lanes and found outbound ships - where they heading? a vast majority are cops, are the others ones that have a Route1Patrol AI or something?

Yes, they're hunters. As a general rule, every NPC travelling from planet to witchpoint is either police or hunter (there may exist OXPs that create exceptions from that rule, but those will be very rare) and runs on route1patrolAI, which is the only generic AI to make ships fly both ways between witchpoint and planet. Not all of those ships need to have been created as hunters, though. Usually you may encounter some ex-escorts who didn't find a new mother when their original mother had an "accident", and thus switched to route1patrolAI, thereby effectively becoming hunters.

ah cool, thanks for that. Maybe we should have and OXp that adds something liek a Nuit around the WS beacon area that would justify a lot more traffic : maybe it'd be slightly less reputable establishments like casinos or such like that planets/stations wouldn't want in their vicinity. Or maybe flight schools, where trainees are kept well away from normal traffic.

Killer Wolf wrote:

Maybe we should have and OXp that adds something liek a Nuit around the WS beacon area that would justify a lot more traffic : maybe it'd be slightly less reputable establishments like casinos or such like that planets/stations wouldn't want in their vicinity. Or maybe flight schools, where trainees are kept well away from normal traffic.

Uhm, I thought we already had constores right next to the witchpoint?

Commander McLane wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

Maybe we should have and OXp that adds something liek a Nuit around the WS beacon area that would justify a lot more traffic : maybe it'd be slightly less reputable establishments like casinos or such like that planets/stations wouldn't want in their vicinity. Or maybe flight schools, where trainees are kept well away from normal traffic.

Uhm, I thought we already had constores right next to the witchpoint?

We do have constores if we choose to install them. Why not have other options.

maik wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

Maybe we should have and OXp that adds something liek a Nuit around the WS beacon area that would justify a lot more traffic : maybe it'd be slightly less reputable establishments like casinos or such like that planets/stations wouldn't want in their vicinity. Or maybe flight schools, where trainees are kept well away from normal traffic.

Uhm, I thought we already had constores right next to the witchpoint?

We do have constores if we choose to install them. Why not have other options.

Like Seedy Space Bars?

Or "Free Trade Zones" quite a ways past the witchpoint away from the planet. It's about as "seedy" as you can get, complete with a 5 point bounty penalty on your record just for visiting it.

Although my computer would totally choke on this, It would be great to see a collection of dockable objects in the 'outer suburbs' all lined up like the Vegas casino strip...casino, con-store, Monks, science station (allows you to buy high tech objects at low tech systems...i don't know, I just made that one up)

Although what would a science station be doing in the middle of nowhere...more likely they'd be around the sun...