Oolite Bulletins

Initial Musings: Just thinking about Erewhon and its station.

No sun. Very dangerous environment.


Impact on prices:

Who is buying all this stuff, and how much do they really want?
To what extent are the market needs served by contracted deliveries? And if they are, presumably the same deliveries will take care of the vast majority of the mined commodities, leaving minimal amounts in the F8 markets screen. Or do the contractors avoid Erewhon due to the danger, and it is the station inhabitants themselves who fly to the local systems to trade there instead?

•Erewhon station needs: machinery, alloys, etc.
*Erewhon station small community needs: food, drink, narcotics, a few luxuries
Note: most of the station is presumably mothballed...
*Planet small expat community needs: food, drink, narcotics, a few luxuries
*Planet indigenous population (not massive in number, one presumes) needs: anything? If the station was originally abandoned, they were presumably reasonably self-sufficient before Seamus Finagle discovered it. There might be one or two New Cargoes-style oddities which they would buy, but otherwise?

F3 screen: its not part of GalCop, so the fuel especially should be much more expensive (needs to be hauled in from elsewhere). The other stuff is presumably scavenged. It might be better modeled on the availability/pricing in a Salvage Gang asteroid (Anarchies).

F8 screen: this seems to be reasonably thought through. Maybe much higher prices for machinery & alloys (needed for repairing the station and presumably not manufactured beneath)? And the high prices for slaves: why? If the indigenous population needs them for mining, they will also need to feed them.



Other effects
Many of the F4 screen interfaces should presumably be disabled (some already are!). Didn't really think about this one when I was docked there.


And what about the downworld market?


When playing the third time around I bumped into a convoy of merchanters who were making their way to the station from the witchspace entry point! Very nice, the way that the game does this for me.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 7:36 am

F3 screen: its not part of GalCop, so the fuel especially should be much more expensive (needs to be hauled in from elsewhere). The other stuff is presumably scavenged. It might be better modeled on the availability/pricing in a Salvage Gang asteroid (Anarchies).

Could also make that like Rock Hermit stations -- very low tech level and 2-10x regular cost.

Switeck wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 3:42 pm

Could also make that like Rock Hermit stations -- very low tech level and 2-10x regular cost.

I think that Rock Hermits are 3x cost (Hermitage lets you tweak this, but just for your own RH's). Bringing the fuel out to a RH in an anarchy could be quite hair-raising. But bringing out to Erewhon... goodness!

Fuel Collector OXP would get a very tenuous fuel supply to Erewhon station from interstellar space itself...so long as you don't get lost doing it.
...Or mining the planet's atmosphere, perhaps using an additional OXP.

Switeck wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 11:08 pm

Fuel Collector OXP would get a very tenuous fuel supply to Erewhon station from interstellar space itself...so long as you don't get lost doing it.
...Or mining the planet's atmosphere, perhaps using an additional OXP.

I doubt that the first would reduce the fuel price at Erewhon - dangerous and protracted. Thus, expensive.

The second would presumably also be expensive. Skimming the vanilla game sun is fast and cheap. Even in Stranger's World, you can get to the more distant suns in 20 minutes of game time. But in SW you can scoop from a greater distance due to flux, and don't need to fly for 20 mins. It will be more dangerous in anarchies, but one presumes that there would be organised convoys of skimmers with escorts. Maybe the stations themselves scoop the fuel? Maybe it is brought up from the planet (or from any moons - less of a gravity well)? Or from sunskimming convoys?

The existence of optional oxps featuring tankers do not really prove things one way or another.

Note: PlanetFall glosses over the costs of getting out of the Gravity Well. No fuel expended. No price tag for the planet putting you into orbit.

Reference: https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Quirium (see list at page bottom of tanker oxp's)

[pedant mode]I think that should be Erehwon, rather than Erewhon.[/pedant mode]

Cody wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2023 5:42 pm

[pedant mode]I think that should be Erehwon, rather than Erewhon.[/pedant mode]

[pedant mode]Depends if you are indigenous or an immigrant. Or the western side.[/pedant mode]

<cachinnates> Is there life on Erehwon? <wanders away, singing a Bowie song>