Oolite Bulletins

While adding a ship to the wiki and expanding some ships stubs, I had a look at the ship-infobox. I felt there is some information missing, which a would-be owner probably would like to see there, before he goes shopping for a new vessel. I immediately came up with "missile slots" and "base price", and added those to the template. (And, as an example, to the Cobra III page as well.) I also sorted them differently, e.g. the shield booster before the naval shield booster and all weapons after speed, manoeuverability and energy.

Now, before I go and edit all the existing ship pages to add the new informations (which I intend to do), I thought I'd better ask here whether there is something else that you would like to see summarized in the infobox. So I don't have to edit all the pages twice.

One long weekend later:

Nobody reacted to the previous post, so I think it's safe to assume there are no other wishes. I've come up with one myself: There should be two entries for cargo capacity, one without and one with the Large Cargo Bay, if it can be fitted, which is another valuable piece of information.

Thanks to Winston (or whoever?) the wiki is up and running again, so I can (slowly) start to edit all the ship-pages. While I'm doing this, I'm going to incorporate the Infobox on all the stub-pages which haven't yet got it. Nevertheless I'd like to call upon the authors of ship OXPs (in case they are still around) to provide some babble for the general content of their ships' pages, apart from the box. It would be nice to stick to the headline "Overview" for the first paragraph, and possibly "Notable Features" for the second one, after which (or instead of which) all additional information you like could follow.

Another thing I am wondering about: The original ships all have a sub-page, listing the available extra equipment (Cobbie III-example). Should I create sub-pages like this for the OXP-ships as well? Or should that be just another headline on the ship-page itself (I don't know why these are all extra pages)?

McLain wrote:

Nobody reacted to the previous post, so I think it's safe to assume there are no other wishes. I've come up with one myself: There should be two entries for cargo capacity, one without and one with the Large Cargo Bay, if it can be fitted, which is another valuable piece of information.

I think the reason nobody reacted was that from the active users of this board nobody looks at these pages as we all know this info by heart. But yes, thinking back when I started all this info would have been valuable for me at that time.

Giles made the extra cargo bay customizable in size starting with version 1.62. Default is 15 ton but when an "extra_cargobay" entry exists in shipdata, the bay of a playership will be extended by this value. A nice feature, but I could find only one ship that made use of this feature. The Terrapin.oxp. Has an extension of only 10 ton. (Wrongful he also gave the non-player ships this extension) But there could be more, so be warned to also look at this value.

Commander McLane wrote:

Another thing I am wondering about: The original ships all have a sub-page, listing the available extra equipment (Cobbie III-example). Should I create sub-pages like this for the OXP-ships as well? Or should that be just another headline on the ship-page itself (I don't know why these are all extra pages)?

I would say yes, because it's not duplicating at all, it's providing more useful information.

I did struggle to find the link to the ship page at first, it's not very obvious, but then again it's probably the alzheimers......I think

Very good housekeeping work BTW.

Sorry Commander Mac, I'd overlooked this thread!
I think it's a great idea that you've added the extra values to the InfoBox template, and I agree that there should be a 'standard template' for the ship entries. I had ideas along that line when I originally started hammering at the Wiki, but I got lazy.

Captain Hesperus

Captain Hesperus wrote:

but I got lazy.

Captain Hesperus

I wouldn't exactly call this lazy.

I mean, you're doing that thing 24/7, man!

Eric Walch wrote:

Giles made the extra cargo bay customizable in size starting with version 1.62. Default is 15 ton but when an "extra_cargobay" entry exists in shipdata, the bay of a playership will be extended by this value.

Yes, I know that. Therefore this entry will be a numerical value (mostly "15 TC") or "N/A", when no large cargo bay can be fitted.

And BTW: I know of two other ships with extra_cargo (should be this, not extra_cargobay, shouldn't it?): The Excalibur and the Paladin (from PTI.oxp). The Excalibur is especially interesting, as it as a max_cargo of 0. So only with a large cargo bay it will be able to take cargo at all.

You brought me in doubt, so I double checked with the code. It is really just extra_cargo. I noticed that the key extra_cargo is also read in for NPC ships, but the code does nothing with the result.

I came up with an other missing item: energy recharge rate. This is how fast the energybanks are filled again and is just as important as the size of the banks itself.

As an example of the value:
Adder 2.0
Annaconda 3.0
Asp 4.0
Boa-mk2 3.2
Cobra 4.0
Ferdelance 4.5
Imperial Courier 4.5

This value is increased with 50% by a extra energy unit and by 100% with a naval energy unit.

So you can get a maximum of 9.0 what is still lower as the energy consumption of a cloaking device : 12.8

I also think the energy recharge rate is a useful information and had already put it into the template, when I got some doubts, and made it hidden for the moment.

My question is: In which way shall it be put on the wiki? The max energy is not given in a numerical value, but in number of energybanks. So if a certain ship has let's say 2 energybanks, what would the noob wiki-user (and all these information is made for people who are not yet expert Ooliteers, but are perhaps looking for their first ship to buy) make with an energy recharge rate of let's say "2.5"? Because this is not related to the number of energybanks, but (roughly) to energybanks * 64.

So I would rather like to either find a way of giving the needed information without using the numbers (like "low", "medium", "high") or to come up with some sort of techno-babble measurement unit that could be put behind the number (like "2.5 foos per second").

Any ideas on this?

How about 2.5 Durabs


(Duracell Rabbits)


IIRC There's a mention in the original user manual about a piece of equipment with a copper cloured top.

My question is: In which way shall it be put on the wiki? The max energy is not given in a numerical value, but in number of energybanks. So if a certain ship has let's say 2 energybanks, what would the noob wiki-user (and all these information is made for people who are not yet expert Ooliteers, but are perhaps looking for their first ship to buy) make with an energy recharge rate of let's say "2.5"? Because this is not related to the number of energybanks, but (roughly) to energybanks * 64.

There is a very good correlation between energy and energy_recharge_rate. Energy is every second increased by energy_recharge_rate.

The only problem is that a energy bank has no fixed value. It has a minimum value of 64, but could be a little more.

Number_of_banks is defined as : integer(energy/64) with a minimum of 1, so:

a ship with 0 till 63 energy has one bank.
a ship with 64 till 127 has also one bank.
a ship with 128 till 191 has two banks.
a ship with 192 till 255 has three banks.
a ship with 256 till 319 has four banks and so on...

Energy itself is a more precise value than bank numbers, but for newbies it is easier for a rough comparison.

But when energy bank only gives a rough estimation of energy, the energy_recharge_rate also needs to be roughly. Just calculate with an energy bank of 64. Than a recharge rate of
2 gives 64/2 = 32 seconds per bank
3 gives 64/3 = 21 seconds per bank
4 gives 64/4 = 16 seconds per bank

That just leaves one problem, the seconds oolite uses in his calculations are not real seconds. When I use a pause command in a script I always have the feeling that oolite time is twice as fast as real time.

This all makes things complicated. Just dividing things in low/med/high/superb will be more readable and enough for a starting player.: low 0-2.4, med 2.5-3.2, high 3.3-4.1, superb 4.2-up (or any other division in categories.)

I'd have thought that just giving the numbers would be more useful (and take up less space in the table). By the time anyone gets around to buying a new ship they're going to have played long enough to want to know the details.

Eric Walch wrote:

That just leaves one problem, the seconds oolite uses in his calculations are not real seconds. When I use a pause command in a script I always have the feeling that oolite time is twice as fast as real time.

If you follow the ship's clock for a while it seems that there are real seconds passing by. At least it's far from a factor of two.

BTW: Have you noticed that, whenever you load a save-game, the days, hours and minutes are set to the time from the save-game, but not the seconds? They are set to exactly the actual second of your system clock. And keep pretty much in line with that. At least that's the behaviour of my 1.69.1.1-mac.

So when I start a save-game, quit it and restart it, the seconds have moved on (or returned, when the system clock passed 0 in-between).

MaLaine wrote:

So when I start a save-game, quit it and restart it, the seconds have moved on (or returned, when the system clock passed 0 in-between).

No I have never noticed it. But a nice guesture to synchronise the Oolite clock with the system clock.

I also just wrote a small script with a 30 second pause and timed it. It is realy 30 seconds. (or 30.125 according to the code) My feeling of time was probably bad when I thought time was ticking faster. When you are bussy time just flies by.

Eric Walch wrote:

When you are busy time just flies by.

There was someone here on the board with a nice signature mentioning this. Did a quick search in older posts, but haven't found it.

*****

On the subject of energy banks and recharge rate again: I have thought it over and perhaps come up with a way how to put it on the wiki: I think it is in the technical line of the game to say that an energy bank is made of 64 enery cells, and there could be a short technical explanation of this somewhere on the wiki. So what is recharged are the cells, and then we could use the accurate figure from shipdata of e.g. "2.4 cells/second", which seems less odd do me than "26.67 seconds/bank"

Commander McLane wrote:

I think it is in the technical line of the game to say that an energy bank is made of 64 enery cells, and there could be a short technical explanation of this somewhere on the wiki. So what is recharged are the cells, and then we could use the accurate figure from shipdata of e.g. "2.4 cells/second", which seems less odd do me than "26.67 seconds/bank"

Personally, I have no use for the per cell information and more for the per bank or (preferably) per ship. The question is then whether you want the Wiki to be an in-game technical reference or an aid to players.

Best wishes,
Oscar