Oolite Bulletins

2 things I like to see

Recon missions.: Assume (for example) that the Targoids established a base in a sector (in a rock hermit) You then have to fly within a certain distance and take a picture.

Supply missions:

Fly supplies to the front

Attack a really big ship:

Thargoid supercruiser. This ship a danger for each system ( inspired on a Cylon Base Star or the Deadstar in Starwars)

Disembodied wrote:

How about a mission or missions into some of the "islands", now that they're accessible? Subduing secessionist movements, rooting out Thargoid nests, and planting Sector Command Stations in these Disconnects? For the Greater Good, naturally...

Or even... maybe one of the Disconnects already has a SecCom in there, that's been cut off. Perhaps a little bit of civil war might be fun? Red-hot Navy-on-Navy action!

Edit: of course, this isn't randomisable or repeatable... still might be fun, though. Give us a minute and I'll try to come up with something else.

I'd thought about something like this, it would be a perfect idea for a series of missions. You could do it as an Expansion Pack, or something similar, to the Galactic Navy.OXP perhaps. But a civil war would be interesting in Oolite and bring a much more intense combat situation.

I've messed about a bit and scripted Navy Frigates to attack one another with fleets of Vipers and other support craft on either side... Looks amazing from a distance, sort of like something you'd see in a film, and if you try and help one of the sides...well, you have to just stay out of the firgates way pretty much, lol!

A long flight into a weird system (full of strange things) to dock with a renegade station - interesting things could happen inside too - interesting trade prices, equiupment, dialogue... even one of those "hunt the wumpus" style in-station adventures that I'm looking forward to in Assassins(?)

Ok I'm being a bit simplistic here, but the missions of all the OXP's so far basically break down into two types:

Seek and destroy, or a courier run. The end result is normally either a cash reward or a special piece of equipment.

The main one to stand out as being different is the Nova mission, although that is also a courier job in the end, so I'd like to see something a bit more creative, like tracking down Raaxla.

I still hanker for a mission to go to Oresrati in Galaxy 8 and survive to tell the tale. This should be possible using another_commander's galactic hyperspace options.

matt634 wrote:

The Thargoid hive world is intriguing. I've thought about it before but always been tripped up about where and how to locate one. Not sure the interstellar space idea would work, interstellar space being so "busy" with constant warfare and all.

There are workarounds for that. E.g. you can start with a sendAllShipsAway, and then populate the space anew. Although this leaves a lot of wormholes, for which there would have to be an explanation.

Personally I'd rather prefer a new method removeAllEntities, which would simply remove all existing entities without replacing them, and without having them hyperspace out and leaving wormholes (okay, will post that to the sripting requests). This would give you a real tabula rasa, which you can then populate according to your wishes.

A problem more difficult to overcome for a hive world (or any uncharted system, for that matter) between the systems on the map is that Oolite treats interstellar space differently from stellar space. For instance there is this freaky greenish background light in interstellar space. You can't get rid of that via a script. And you cannot add a sun, just planets and moons. So it will never resemble an ordinary system.

Of course, in the case of a Thargoid hive world, you could explain that somehow in the mission. Somehow in the line of: Being creatures with an affirmity to interplanetary space, Thargoids are actually hiving in large asteroids (or brown dwarfs, or whatever) far from any sun.

But I would suggest that we are talking about additional hiving places across the galaxies, because on the other hand we know that there is a Thargoid Homeworld, only it hasn't yet been discovered and reached by the time of Oolite. In a later stage it will be, defeating the Thargoids by Biological (or Chemical? what was it?) Warfare.

Although this would bring the small challenge to explain how INRA could eradicate the Thargoid Thread by bombing their homeworld, if they have hiving grounds all across the galaxy.

So perhaps it would be better not to involve a hive world as such, but something like interstellar Thargoid command facilities and grouping points.

Although this would bring the small challenge to explain how INRA could eradicate the Thargoid Thread by bombing their homeworld, if they have hiving grounds all across the galaxy.

If you refer to the events of FFE, actually they didn`t (bomb any homeworlds) - they couldn`t even reach it distancewise!

The background story revolved as such: After an intact Thargoid Warship was recovered by the Galactic Navy it was found out that the thargoids have biological hyperdrives. So INRA concocted a virus for that with a latency period. Thargoid ship drives would infect each other. When it all came out, it was too late (for them).

But INRA and before it the Galactic Navy never reached deep into their territory. The infection spread beyond the horizon of human knowledge in the galaxy (1?).

I played that story. One of the thargoid (ex-) hive worlds that INRA had managed to conquer and occupy from them was about 90 light years far out into no-mans-land. The place was already as good as unreachable by normal ships. The nearest real homeworld of them was about 1300 light years away, and travelling there was the endgame mission of FFE.

So, the humans never won - they just grounded their entire fleet, and they disappeared, never to be seen again until FFE finale.

Needless to say, the general populace knew nothing of this.

History hour over

L

Thanks for the lesson!

As I never have played anything from the Frontier series, my entire knowledge is derived from the wiki. So it is sure incomplete or perhaps sometimes inaccurate.

Anyway, my point is: For the sake of those of us who think the Elite and Frontier are related (and I know this does not cover all of us), and really just for their sake, I would prefer not to invent something that openly contradicts the later plot. That's all.

And I think it's fair enough, and still leaves us a lot of room for invention.

Commander McLane wrote:

A problem more difficult to overcome for a hive world (or any uncharted system, for that matter) between the systems on the map is that Oolite treats interstellar space differently from stellar space. For instance there is this freaky greenish background light in interstellar space. You can't get rid of that via a script.

But you can get rid of it (for all interstellar space, or the misjump space between any pair of systems) using planetinfo.plist. For the former case, use the key "interstellar space" (starting at 1.70 or so).

For the latter, use "interstellar: 1 2 3" where 1 is the galaxy number, 2 is a system ID and 3 is another, higher system ID (the system IDs are sorted so that you get the same key regardless of which way the player is going). This is supported at least as far back as 1.65.

No, the point was not how to access interstellar space. I have done that in an (unfinished) OXP, although I wasn't yet aware of the general interstellar space-key .

The point is how to change the dim greenish background light. So what key and value would you have to put inside the interstellar space-key, in order to make the background light bright white? I know of no planetinfo-key that could do that.

*cat wrote:

A long flight into a weird system (full of strange things) to dock with a renegade station - interesting things could happen inside too - interesting trade prices, equiupment, dialogue... even one of those "hunt the wumpus" style in-station adventures that I'm looking forward to in Assassins(?)

Ohhh, there has to be a place for a wumpus-hunt-style scenario... maybe even a randomisable one! How about the occasional disabled/destroyed Thargoid carrier, floating about on the fringes of a system? The player has to locate the ship, deal with any attendant bugs or scavengers, dock with the ship and "retrieve the data core" -- which is nothing short of the head of a class of Bug which is wired into the ship's bridge. A brief text-adventure style mini-game could let the player explore the weirdly-lit, strangely-proportioned interior of a Bug mothership.

Sometimes the "core" is destroyed; bad luck, no bonus. Sometimes it's there for the taking and the player gets a nice cash reward if they return it to a SecCom. And sometimes it's there, and still very much alive, and a full wumpus-hunt can ensue!

Retrieving the "core" could of course set off a countdown to self-destruct...

Hmmm. Maybe I have an idea where to employ a wumpus hunt...

By the way, that's really a looooooong way back. I played Hunt-the-Wumpus on a TI-99/4A

Commander McLane wrote:

No, the point was not how to access interstellar space. I have done that in an (unfinished) OXP, although I wasn't yet aware of the general interstellar space-key :) .

The point is how to change the dim greenish background light. So what key and value would you have to put inside the interstellar space-key, in order to make the background light bright white? I know of no planetinfo-key that could do that.

Bah, you’re right. I thought it used the star colours like normal systems, and that this could be overridden. Turns out I’m wrong on both counts. File a bug. :-)

JavaScript Converter Error Crusader Bot says: You can have ten cruisers. You can have one cruiser. But you can’t have both at once.

Thanks, bug squashed for the often promised but yet unrealized Galactic Navy update