Oolite Bulletins

Ahruman wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Okti wrote:

... to use an unrealistic behaivor ...

... which is my whole point. It's unrealistic that the player would dock with an invisible station out of the blue in interstellar space.

The station is a mechanism; it’s not important. What’s needed is a good backstory/motivation.

I may say based on Thargoid technology, our Thargoid or alien Thargoids

Okti wrote:

Any way, You are free to make comments according to your understanding of oouniverse, but don't forget it is not real at all

I might remind you that the question of whether something can be real or not is entirely unrelated to that of whether or not it makes sense within the context of a fictional universe.

Indeed nothing in the game has to follow the laws of our own real physical universe, but you forget that the universe of Oolite, though fictional, has certain laws within it—laws of Narrative Causality (to borrow a term from Pratchett), not of physics—that must be followed or else things just don't make sense.

Fortunately, to create something that logically fits into a fictional universe, all one has to do is explain why it fits; much easier than doing the same in real life! The lack of such an explanation behind your OXP, however, makes it not a good addition to Oolite at the moment.

(And also: nothing is original and all that jazz, but I really feel like you've been beaten to the punch by Interstellar Help. Just saying.)

I have to agree with The Black Albatross, but not entirely. The Oolite or any game/story universe should be consistent in its own behavior.
What we THINK is possible/realistic need not apply, however for sci-fi environments it is still something to keep in mind.

Even beyond realism or consistency there is game balance. An example is the 7 LY single jump limit, barring galactic hyperdrives. This also has a limit of being the arbitrary max fuel capacity for most ships. A player-usable super-ship could carry 15 LY fuel even if it could only make 0-7 LY jumps and still have advantages over others because of it. Thargoids and Viper Interceptors already have this much fuel. So game balance is threatened even if consistency is not.

Find a (somewhat) believable story for how some NPC ship/s can find a stuck player in interstellar space in 1 hour or less. Maybe the player's exit wormhole formed...but nothing came out? This would be spotted by ships in that system or even by the witchspace beacon, so word couple be passed along to send help. Or the initial leaving wormhole from the starting system "looked wrong" because it was disrupted by the Thargoids? ...So ship/s from the starting system come looking.

Who comes looking to help the player, how they FIND the player's location in interstellar space, and how they can actually help when they too should be short on fuel? Does the NPC ships do jump-trains -- where an Anaconda and its 6 Cobra 1's only has 1 ship jump and the other 6 use that 1 wormhole? Or at least a buddy system with 2 ships doing likewise?

I'm sitting on the fence on this one because I think that both are correct.

Thanks Okti for taking the effort to make this oxp. Like you say, if people want to download it then they can.

I also agree with Commander McLane too though. Having a station just appear from nowhere is a bit strange.
It would take away some of the 'realism' of the game too and make such instances too easy to get out of.
Personally I would rather have to spend time flying around collecting fuel with the Fuel Collector, with a load of Thargoid on my tail, until I had enough fuel to escape.

Some people will want a simple way out, cheat, whatever you want to call it. Others, like me and Commander McLane, will want the trill of being cheased and trying to find other ways to escape.

Each to thier own.

lave wrote:

I'm sitting on the fence on this one because I think that both are correct.
...
Some people will want a simple way out, cheat, whatever you want to call it. Others, like me and Commander McLane, will want the trill of being cheased and trying to find other ways to escape.

Doesn't sound so much on the fence to me! You are almost explicitly saying you expect there to be a means of escape, however difficult it may be.

Without special OXPs (such as this one), there is no escape from a misjump over ~4.4 LY distance. Assuming no other systems are nearby, which makes sense or you could use them to save time and/or distance.

No, I don't expect a means of escape. In fact I have been trapped in Witch Space a few times without any means of escape. I have either restarted the game or just fought the Thargoids until I got killed.

All I am saying is that some people will want this oxp, other's won't.
Like Okti said, it is up to the player to download or not.

Personally it's not for me, but I thank Okti for making the effort.

lave wrote:

Some people will want a simple way out, cheat, whatever you want to call it.

There are several oxps that try to help the stranded player. Also ups-courier had the intention to help. Already in the legacy version of that oxp, a fuel ship was added in interstellar space when the player helped enough stranded ships in normal space.
However, I never actually tested it and when I did, I noticed the space compass does not work in interstellar space. (Probably because it can't calibrate itself against a sun and planet position.) I never fixed this because I didn't see a way. So, UPS still adds a fuel ship, when the player arrives low on fuel, but without a working compass it is not likely to be found.

If it was easy to find the Thargoids would find it.

A thought here: in the lensman series(EE 'DOC' smith) when the Boskonians created their interspatial tubes the terminus created a "curdling" of space that is detectable by the Lensmen and their compatriots.
would it not be possible to incorporate that into this situation by assuming that a 'normal' Witchspace has a symmetrical interface while a 'disrupted' witchspace (caused by the thargoids or a malfunction in the warp engines) would cause a similar effect that would be picked up by the witchspace buoys and which would then send a npc into the witchspace with the intent to create another witchspace as a means of escape for both vessels? Asthe npc would be coming out in the vicinity of the stranded vessel.. give it a 25% chance of being found. If the stranded vessel makes contact.. they make their egress from errant witchspace.. if not the npc creates it's witchspace and exits the area without the stranded vessel.

And I thought I was the only person who read EE 'Doc' Smith!

Perhaps the witchspace beacon itself is actually filled with instrumentation which detects the formation, instability and collapse of the exit point of the wormhole. Perhaps, because this is invariably of Thargoid doing, the witchspace beacon on detecting the instability transmits a tight beam message back through the tunnel before it collapses which, on reaching the event horizon of the entrance to the wormhole, is turned into a wide beam omnidirectional signal which, if the jump out occurred near the main station or start system's witchspace beacon, reaches Galcop, who can, if they have the right ships in the area, dispatch a rescue ship through the wormhole before it destabilises completely.

Hah, I've read the Lensmen series too! Borrowed them from my Dad. 'Tis always fun to read sci-fi written 50 years before you were born...

Galactic Coordinator... that's what I wanted to be, when I read the Lensman books as a kid... aah!

Since we seem to be going down memory road... I want a Hotchkiss nullifier in my kit locker along with a hot set of primaries along with Gray Roger's poly cyclic screens that only the nevians could break through.

El Viejo wrote:

Galactic Coordinator... that's what I wanted to be, when I read the Lensman books as a kid... aah!

I wanted to be Kimball Kinnison so badly I even made myself a Lens! Never did develop those ESP powers though... (I too borrowed them from my dad to start with - Galactic Patrol - then spent the rest of my teens - hunting down every copy of everything he wrote - done quite well - missing some very early rare stuff and US only stuff and some magazine stuff - but the book collection is complete I believe - including of course all the Lensman, Skylark, D'Alembert, Lord Tedric books, plus the one offs - such as Bloodhounds of IPC and the two "Subspace" books)

I'll have to agree with McLane.

There's been plenty of oxps that put strange things in the ooniverse - Santa, a TARDIS and space snakes, for examples - but they never pretended to be anything but tongue planted firmly in cheek.

But this? It's magically over the top.

If this was say, a powerful one-shot transmitter that summoned a Behemoth or a dredger to the vicinity after a few seconds of firing it, it may be believable. An instant station simply isn't.

Good idea, wrong approach. Keep trying though!