Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

I was referring to the fact that for all we know "Her Imperial Majesty" most probably means the leader of Lave. At least that's the only sensible explanation that I've ever come across. I don't recall at the moment whether it's on Selezen's website, in the Wiki, or buried somewhere on the boards.

I'd hardly call it canon, but I think this came out of a discussion between you, me, Selezen and others long ago ... it ended up in the entry for Lave in the Rough Guide.

Oh no, not the Empire and Federation again. Is there any mention at all of either of these entities in the Elite manual?

It is my hope that if this does come to be it will be very different from GN.
I think that an occasional navy presence would be acceptable in game, but rarely. We all know HIMSN exists...we've helped them out a couple of times, but I see it as a relatively small force, stretched to breaking point (hence them needing help from time to time). As a small force, seeing a squadron or battle group would be a very rare event. I certainly wouldn't want to find them in large numbers, or in every other system I visit.
And any missions should follow the 'core' missions in style. Again only rarely, and relatively simple tasks that a 'civilian' pilot could achieve and be trusted with. While I take your point, SandJ, it didn't take me long at all to get bored with the GN set-up. Fly to a target system, meet up with a motley crew of naval and civilian pilots then go and fight a large force of Thargoids/Pirates. Each time it was exactly the same. No variety, and once you worked out that you were actually the only ship really doing anything effective, a bit tedious as well.
So this is what I hope will come from this discussion:- an OXP that adds a few Naval ships once in a while, and offers a few, varied, missions from time to time. A nice consolidation of the core game's mentions of HIMSN which offers occasional sight of navy vessels and adds a few more missions similar to the core ones. These could be a bit more involved and require more time and thought than the two core missions though - that would be good.

Commander McLane wrote:

So we're starting with basically the same reasoning that led to GalNav.oxp in the first place. Oh well.

Hence in the end all militarists among the Oolite players will be able to install both OXPs alongside each other, and over-militarize the Ooniverse even further. That's progress!

I don't know - I think the Elite Manual implies a fairly large and powerful Galactic Navy, and I think even allowing for GalCop not generally being a military power the sheer size of the Ooniverse means that even a "small" navy is pretty large by the standards of a single planet. But large and powerful doesn't have to mean "here" or "militarised system space", which is the jarring thing about GalNavy for me.

The mission text for Thargoid Plans implies that they at least think they have a chance of winning:

Agent Blake wrote:

[...]As you know, the Navy have been keeping the Thargoids off your ass out in deep space for many years now. Well the situation has changed. Our boys are ready for a push right to the home system of those murderers. I have obtained the defence plans for their Hive Worlds. [...]

Now, Blake may be overconfident, as there's no canonical evidence that the attack actually succeeds, but that suggests that they've been on the defensive because of difficulties in gathering intelligence for a suitable counter-attack, not that they keep being forced back because the Thargoids have them totally outclassed.

All the big ships and most of the small ones can be off in intergalactic space, rather than militarising the space lanes as in the GalNavy OXP. You might see a new fleet under construction at one of the shipyard worlds, but you won't see it patrolling the spacelanes; if you're really lucky you might see a newly-commissioned ship travelling on a shakedown cruise from the shipyards to a staging area before it goes off to the front. More likely you'll see a few Naval Asps now and again on courier duty, but probably on the witchpoint-sun route than on the main spacelane.

It's only light raiders and Thargoid intelligence operatives that get through the GalNavy defensive planes, so GalNavy doesn't need to militarise galactic space - local police, system military craft, and bounty hunters can take on the raiders (especially with modern ships like the Viper Interceptor and Cobra III). Meanwhile, there's plenty of scope for secret ops, hidden R&D, and individual bravery in the fight between Naval and Thargoid intelligence agencies (much of which would be taking place in galactic space).

That the fight is going on in 3D and the Thargoids haven't just gone around the Navy implies that they have and need a fair-sized force, after all. With the Thargoids having much better witchspace technology than Galcop, they can't afford to leave holes (presumably, they also can't afford to waste time stopping the smaller raider warships getting through), so they're going to be overstretched even with what might appear by the standards of a single system to be a massive fleet.

Defending a single Oolite galaxy from all sides would require patrolling around 100,000 cubic LY of space for a 7LY coverage - and I think in practice you'd probably want to be starting a little further out than that so that you weren't relying on the first line of defense always succeeding. HIMSN can quite easily simultaneously be huge by planetary standards - hundreds of millions of personnel, millions of ships - and also be massively overstretched to the point where actions not directly related to repelling the Thargoid fleets (such as tracking down missing prototypes, or delivering crucial intelligence packages) have to be left to whatever mercenary commanders can be hired cheaply (and wow, do they hire you cheaply ).

I think we're probably looking for much the same end result for gameplay effect from a HIMSN OXP (which also seems to be the same sort of thing most of the other people posting are looking for), but we're approaching it from very different starting points in terms of narrative justifications (and perhaps different definitions of "small", too!).

cim wrote:

Defending a single Oolite galaxy from all sides would require patrolling around 100,000 cubic LY of space for a 7LY coverage - and I think in practice you'd probably want to be starting a little further out than that so that you weren't relying on the first line of defense always succeeding.

That would be assuming an analogy to defending a territory, which is not the case. GalCop doesn't have a well-defined territory, there are no "sides" of a galaxy. For all we know there may be lots of non-GalCop systems mixed with the ones visible on the charts. They simply don't appear because we're not allowed to access them.

Also, Thargoids attack primarily in interstellar space, and may even be connected to witchspace, which doesn't belong into the physical realm of the galaxies in the first place. There is no real line of defense against that. Having said that, for all practical purposes the sole points of attack are the midpoints of all witchspace routes between the systems of a galaxy. A large, but not infinite number of points in space. So there is no need to cover endless cubic LY of space.

Disembodied wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

I was referring to the fact that for all we know "Her Imperial Majesty" most probably means the leader of Lave. At least that's the only sensible explanation that I've ever come across. I don't recall at the moment whether it's on Selezen's website, in the Wiki, or buried somewhere on the boards.

I'd hardly call it canon, but I think this came out of a discussion between you, me, Selezen and others long ago ... it ended up in the entry for Lave in the Rough Guide.

Yep, that's it. I'd also hardly call it canon, but I called it "the only sensible explanation that I've ever come across", which in the absence of canon is the next best thing.

SandJ wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

In my understanding, GalCop is nothing like any current Earth country. It's more like the United Nations, only weaker by orders of magnitude. It's a (by and large) friendly

Friendly? With a life expectancy of a few hours at best? The Ooniverse is a lawless, corrupt, dangerous shambles! It's like the old frontiers of the Wild West. God helps those with the biggest laser and fastest reactions.

I am not talking about pirates coming after you, but GalCop. Indeed, the lawless state of the Ooniverse and the short life expectancy confirm and stress my point about how weak GalCop is.

SandJ wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Co-operation between planets throughout GalCop happens voluntarily and is not enforced by violent force.

The Vipers in your Ooniverse are fluffier and cuddlier than the ones in mine!

Again, I'm talking about GalCop and its relations to its member planets (and the relations among member planets). The Vipers in my Ooniverse are not fluffy or cuddly when it comes to dealing with pirates, but I've never seen even the slightest hint of the central structure (GalCop) attempting to use them against one of its members (a planetary government). Is that different in your Ooniverse?

SandJ wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Of course I can't prevent you from going ahead and script what you like. It's just going to be one more on the long list of OXPs that I don't install (and don't base my own OXPs upon).

Instead of walking away, make suggestions.

Well, here's my suggestion: leave things as they are in the core game. Don't invent a strong navy out of the blue. Adding 16 Behemoths is fine, even adding rare encounters with Leviathans is fine. But I really don't see an infrastructure with heavy military presence everywhere. In Elite clearly nothing of the sort existed.

cim wrote:

I reckon the existence of a Galactic Navy (which Thargoid Plans implies is the same as HIMSN, yes) is canon:

Elite Manual wrote:

Though most of the Thargoid Space Fleet is currently engaged by the Galactic Navy in InterGalactic Space, a few of the smaller battle ships make occasional destructor-raids into human space. These ships are extremely fast for their size and invariably have anti-missile (ECM) Systems.

Additionally, most Thargoid battle ships carry several small, remote- controlled "thargons", killer-craft each equipped with a single, but highly advanced, pulse-laser. The Galactic Navy are developing their own deep- space RemCraft, and pay a large bounty for any thargon craft that are brought to them.

The idea that the Thargoid Warship is a "small raider" equivalent to a GalCop Sidewinder (or even an Asp, if you're being generous) should be enough to scare anyone...

I disagree with your interpretation. First, nothing in the quote implies an equivalency between the Thargoid Warship and a Sidewinder, and more important, nothing implies the conclusion that "if the Thargoids have something much bigger than the Warship, the Galactic Navy must have something much bigger than their raiders".

cim wrote:

... and I think implies a fairly large standing Navy (most of which a regular pilot will never see) or the Thargoids would just walk right over them and the eight galaxies, in pretty short order.

And second, given that this is precisely what the Thargoids are doing (from the time of the beginning of Oolite (3141), the Thargoids will have completely overrun GalCop in a mere 8 years (3149), according to Selezen's timeline), I'd say that's one of the most compelling arguments against the presumption of a large standing Navy.

Commander McLane wrote:

I called it "the only sensible explanation that I've ever come across"

I believe 'Her Imperial Majesty' was one of the many titles that Queen Victoria used... maybe B&B took it from there?

El Viejo wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

I called it "the only sensible explanation that I've ever come across"

I believe 'Her Imperial Majesty' was one of the many titles that Queen Victoria used...

... and her successors until the independence of India (to which the title applied, "inherited" from the Moghul emperors, I think).

El Viejo wrote:

maybe B&B took it from there?

Absolutely possible. Or perhaps they just thought that it sounded funny (and added some depth).

It would fit with the use of names such as 'Curruthers' and 'Fortesque', in my opinion.

There is undeniably something 'British' about HIMSN.

Commander McLane wrote:

Well, here's my suggestion: leave things as they are in the core game. Don't invent a strong navy out of the blue. Adding 16 Behemoths is fine, even adding rare encounters with Leviathans is fine. But I really don't see an infrastructure with heavy military presence everywhere. In Elite clearly nothing of the sort existed.

Spot on, and the very reason this discussion about a new "Navy" oxp came up (I actually think you are to blame for that McLane). Some, like you, find that the current Galactic Navy OXP does not fit within their Ooniverse. What you describe here, is where I would want this to go. But I also think that there should be some presence and some infrastructure for those that actively seek it out. The difficult part is finding the balance. That is why I proposed to make a Scenario for Navy presence first, then build missions around that presence. I would want this to be unobtrusive, almost hidden, but hopefully interesting for those that choose to look in the right places. I'll trust you (and others) to bash us over the head at the appropriate moments, as these things tend to take on a life of their own and grow out of proportion. I'll hopefully have a draft of the way I see this going over the weekend, and hopefully others here will voice their opinion as well.

Gimi wrote:

hopefully others here will voice their opinion as well.

Certainly will... purple is the best colour!

El Viejo wrote:

Gimi wrote:

hopefully others here will voice their opinion as well.

Certainly will... purple is the best colour!

Noooo, If you remember from our last conversation regarding colours, I told you, and I think we all agree, Royal Blue is the best colour.

Commander McLane wrote:

And second, given that this is precisely what the Thargoids are doing (from the time of the beginning of Oolite (3141), the Thargoids will have completely overrun GalCop in a mere 8 years (3149), according to Selezen's timeline), I'd say that's one of the most compelling arguments against the presumption of a large standing Navy.

Heh. If Gimi can design a HIMSN that is plausible for both "Galcop is doomed, between the Thargoids, the Federation, and the Empire" and "Galcop is in a long-term stalemate with the Thargoids. What Federation and Empire?" canons, I will be extremely impressed.

cim wrote:

If Gimi can design a HIMSN that is plausible for both "Galcop is doomed, between the Thargoids, the Federation, and the Empire" and "Galcop is in a long-term stalemate with the Thargoids. What Federation and Empire?" canons, I will be extremely impressed.

So would I! Please though... can we keep anything Frontier-like out of the discussion. It has no relevance to Oolite (unless you use a crystal ball to foretell the 'future').

cim wrote:

Heh. If Gimi can design a HIMSN that is plausible for both "Galcop is doomed, between the Thargoids, the Federation, and the Empire" and "Galcop is in a long-term stalemate with the Thargoids. What Federation and Empire?" canons, I will be extremely impressed.

I have no intention of overcomplicating things. First step is to agree on level of presence and in what form. Then we can go on with missions that follow on from the native missions. In RL military forces that are outgunned and outnumbered tend to rely on information superiority. So Intelligence gathering, reconnaissance and surveillance will be my suggestion for missions.
Based on intelligence, the approach would then be hit and run missions aimed directly or indirectly at the enemy center of gravity. The Taliban has made things difficult in Afghanistan for years using this approach (Sun Tsu was a smart guy).
Anyway, I'm still thinking.