Oolite Bulletins

Smivs wrote:

I seem to have become Devil's Advocate for the Navy Oh, well.
So.
This bleak Ooniverse would benefit a Navy in many ways. As well as the relative freedom this chaotic society would give a Navy, it would also help to sustain one cheaply. Dozens of Worlds with oppressed, trapped-feeling inhabitants would be the perfect recruiting ground for the Navy. You could pay peanuts and still fit young men would come flocking to sign up. It would be (as Navies always have) a way to 'escape' all the troubles of home, and enjoy adventures and foreign travel etc.
The Ooniverse wouldn't sustain (and couldn't organise) conscription, but by paying a minimal wage plus 'room and board' it could man itself for next to nothing, leaving the main capital expense to be the hardware. Sorry second main...admin would no doubt be the most expensive aspect.

The problem would be, who would decide to set this up, how would they organise it, who would command it and why would the 2000-odd independent planets pay for it? It would be like the UN setting up a powerful military force of its very own, with its own troops, vehicles, navy, air force and command structure (to say nothing of the supporting infrastructure, stations, supply depots, etc.).

I can see that escape to the stars would have a romantic appeal, but a great many planets might not let their populations go ... if you're a serf, or a labourer in a gulag, or an indentured worker, or some other kind of slave – and slavery seems to be common – or even just poor, then your chances of making it into orbit to join the navy might be somewhat remote.

Don't get me wrong: I like the Navy OXP, and the big battles are loads of fun, which is the main thing! But it shows just how difficult it is, making a canonical universe. If you start off (like me, and DH, and Commander McLane and any other cynics and depressives ) with the idea that the Co-operative is little more than a collection of nods, winks and loopholes, then it's unlikely to ever spawn anything as complicated and powerful as a navy; if on the other hand you have more faith in your fellow sentient beings then there's no reason why the Co-op can't be seen as something at least struggling towards Star Trek's Federation.

Disembodied wrote:

The problem would be, who would decide to set this up, how would they organise it, who would command it and why would the 2000-odd independent planets pay for it? It would be like the UN setting up a powerful military force of its very own, with its own troops, vehicles, navy, air force and command structure (to say nothing of the supporting infrastructure, stations, supply depots, etc.).

I can see that escape to the stars would have a romantic appeal, but a great many planets might not let their populations go ... if you're a serf, or a labourer in a gulag, or an indentured worker, or some other kind of slave – and slavery seems to be common – or even just poor, then your chances of making it into orbit to join the navy might be somewhat remote.

Don't get me wrong: I like the Navy OXP, and the big battles are loads of fun, which is the main thing! But it shows just how difficult it is, making a canonical universe. If you start off (like me, and DH, and Commander McLane and any other cynics and depressives ) with the idea that the Co-operative is little more than a collection of nods, winks and loopholes, then it's unlikely to ever spawn anything as complicated and powerful as a navy; if on the other hand you have more faith in your fellow sentient beings then there's no reason why the Co-op can't be seen as something at least struggling towards Star Trek's Federation.

I suppose I see it perhaps more like the Imperial forces in Star Wars than a Star Trek situation, and as I speculated above (somewhere) I assume (I don't know why) that the Navy pre-dated GalCop. An old Imperial Navy now maintained and operated by the civilian authorities to combat the crime and invasion that followed the collapse of the Old Empire.

Smivs wrote:

I suppose I see it perhaps more like the Imperial forces in Star Wars than a Star Trek situation, and as I speculated above (somewhere) I assume (I don't know why) that the Navy pre-dated GalCop. An old Imperial Navy now maintained and operated by the civilian authorities to combat the crime and invasion that followed the collapse of the Old Empire.

That would work, yup ... the Co-operative as the afterglow of something greater, rather than (perhaps) the bare bones of something in its infancy.

Nice discussion!

I've got no problem with Smivs (like Matt634 before, who indeed re-wrote most of the Galactic Navy article according to the needs of his OXP) defending the possibility of the existence of a galactic navy. It's just that it doesn't exist in my personal Ooniverse, and that I don't believe it has to exist.

On the contrary, for me the entire beauty of GalCop lies in the fact that it is so low-key, and that it doesn't need a military at all. (I should add that in RealLife™ I am relatively close to what you would perhaps call a pacifist, and I generally think that the contribution of military forces towards peace and security is greatly overrated.)

It is true, Elite forced each of us to fill in the blanks of its backstory from our own imagination, and create the universe in our heads. This is precisely what made the game so special and immersive. And it gave me the freedom to create a universe without a galactic navy. At the same time it gave Smivs the freedom to create a universe which contains a strong galactic navy. I have no objections against his creation. I only object against the idea that a strong galactic navy automatically belongs into any imaginable universe. It doesn't, because at least I myself can imagine otherwise. Military forces are no natural phenomena, but entirely man-made (or Yellow Horny Bird-made, or whatever). Therefore they shouldn't be treated as a given in any situation. Only militaristic thinking dictates that military is an unavoidable force of nature.

Commander McLane wrote:

Nice discussion!

I've got no problem with Smivs (like Matt634 before, who indeed re-wrote most of the Galactic Navy article according to the needs of his OXP) defending the possibility of the existence of a galactic navy. It's just that it doesn't exist in my personal Ooniverse, and that I don't believe it has to exist.

You are right, it doesn't HAVE to exist...it didn't really in my Ooniverse until I installed it. Well it sort off did of course - the two in-built missions.

Commander McLane wrote:

On the contrary, for me the entire beauty of GalCop lies in the fact that it is so low-key, and that it doesn't need a military at all. (I should add that in RealLife™ I am relatively close to what you would perhaps call a pacifist, and I generally think that the contribution of military forces towards peace and security is greatly overrated.)

I am also in RL a 'pacifist' for want of a better term, but luckily Oolite is not RL so any violence that lurks within me has a harmless outlet. I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the benefit of the Military as peacekeepers. Just think back to some of the conflicts in Africa over recent years.

Commander McLane wrote:

It is true, Elite forced each of us to fill in the blanks of its backstory from our own imagination, and create the universe in our heads. This is precisely what made the game so special and immersive. And it gave me the freedom to create a universe without a galactic navy. At the same time it gave Smivs the freedom to create a universe which contains a strong galactic navy. I have no objections against his creation. I only object against the idea that a strong galactic navy automatically belongs into any imaginable universe. It doesn't, because at least I myself can imagine otherwise. Military forces are no natural phenomena, but entirely man-made (or Yellow Horny Bird-made, or whatever). Therefore they shouldn't be treated as a given in any situation. Only militaristic thinking dictates that military is an unavoidable force of nature.

It's Human (or Yellow Horny Bird, or whatever) nature, I'm afraid. All the time there is disagreement on the big stage, there will 'need' to be a Military. And as I see the Ooniverse as a sort of Macrocosm of my existence on Earth, it should have traders, criminals, ordinary folks, and yes, a Military dimension as well.

[immersion mode] Speaking as a hunter, contrabandista and occasional privateer, a strong navy presence in many systems would not be very good for my ‘business’. The low-key, often inneffectual efforts of GalCop are perfect. It's a jungle out here.[/immersion mode]

[Tongue in Cheek mode]
Perhaps we should be more active in settling these disputes. What we need is a COMMITTEE
The Committee for Oolite Unity, Canon and History should be set up immediately to discuss this.
Any volunteers to sit on the C.O.U.C.H ?
[/Tongue in Cheek mode]

I see the galactic navy more as a large security company founded by the need of the more richer and developed planets to secure some of their interests in their local sector. Later they found out that other sectors had similar problems so they decided to work together.

Smivs wrote:

I am also in RL a 'pacifist' for want of a better term, but luckily Oolite is not RL so any violence that lurks within me has a harmless outlet.

Same here. I happily kill pirates, thargoids, and harmless traders alike in Oolite, but I don't in real life.

Smivs wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the benefit of the Military as peacekeepers. Just think back to some of the conflicts in Africa over recent years.

You see, that's exactly what I'm doing, and it inevitably leads me to the conclusion that actual trained peaceworkers would have been much better for the job. Only that because of the prevalence of militaristic thinking in our political elites nobody trains peaceworkers, but everybody only trains soldiers (whose training is about the opposite of peacemaking). How many soldiers have been failing now for eight years in a row to bring peace in Afghanistan? Tens of thousands? And how many millions does their failure cost every day? Now imagine what an equal number of trained and skilled peaceworkers could have achieved in the same time with only a fraction of the money... Not going to happen, because militaristic thinking only can think of the military as a solution to every problem, especially every problem which obviously calls for a different solution.

Anyway, as far as Elite/Oolite is concerned, I like to indulge in my little dream of a non-militaristic, non-power-hungry, low-key, friendly organization, with all the flaws it certainly has. Sure, Carruthers and his fellow inmates are probably trying to change that dream, but who is taking them seriously, anyway?

I think that the Navy, like most things, is an option each player can decide on for themselves.

As long as the "strict" setting remains as the backbone of the game, we can't really go wrong. Elite was always a good playable game, addictive and memorable enough that almost every computer I've had over the years has had a version somewhere on it. So long as the basic backbone of Oolite stays close to that, OXPs can be written and tried with wild abandon, and it's all good.

Keep what you like, if what you want doesn't exist then decide if you want it bad enough to write it. I think that rocks.

But back to the original point of the post, I think it quite possible that generic names like G3 would most likely be used by outsiders, while the people who live there may have a particular name for the place. There's a lot of possibilities that can be explored with that for adventure OXPs where one might have to do a quick bit of research to find out which galaxy someone you met was talking about when you're off on that great quest to recover the Holy Croquet Arch of Lara'tan or whatever.

I don't think it'd be the best idea to change the existing strict core/backbone of the "strict" game to incorporate any such names, however. Leave them as an optional bit of colour for OXP development. They can be anything from a spot of colour in a mission plot to the reason some great war gets fought. But the basic game engine doesn't need them.

Ganelon wrote:

But back to the original point of the post, I think it quite possible that generic names like G3 would most likely be used by outsiders, while the people who live there may have a particular name for the place.

I think that spacers are the more likely people to use/invent galaxy names. Names are important to spacers, be it ships, planets, spacelanes, clusters… or galaxies. If I say M31, what does it conjure up… not much (unless you’re an astronomer), but if I say the Andromeda galaxy, well… but, as has been said, we all live in our own Ooniverse, and invent our own 'canon'. What a game!

Oh, and welcome Ganelon.

Commander McLane wrote:

Smivs wrote:

I am also in RL a 'pacifist' for want of a better term, but luckily Oolite is not RL so any violence that lurks within me has a harmless outlet.

Same here. I happily kill pirates, thargoids, and harmless traders alike in Oolite, but I don't in real life.

Smivs wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the benefit of the Military as peacekeepers. Just think back to some of the conflicts in Africa over recent years.

You see, that's exactly what I'm doing, and it inevitably leads me to the conclusion that actual trained peaceworkers would have been much better for the job. Only that because of the prevalence of militaristic thinking in our political elites nobody trains peaceworkers, but everybody only trains soldiers (whose training is about the opposite of peacemaking). How many soldiers have been failing now for eight years in a row to bring peace in Afghanistan? Tens of thousands? And how many millions does their failure cost every day? Now imagine what an equal number of trained and skilled peaceworkers could have achieved in the same time with only a fraction of the money... Not going to happen, because militaristic thinking only can think of the military as a solution to every problem, especially every problem which obviously calls for a different solution.

Anyway, as far as Elite/Oolite is concerned, I like to indulge in my little dream of a non-militaristic, non-power-hungry, low-key, friendly organization, with all the flaws it certainly has. Sure, Carruthers and his fellow inmates are probably trying to change that dream, but who is taking them seriously, anyway?

Peackeepers leave behind shell casings and bodies and bad memories. Just look at Afghanistan - I know the coalition is (allegedly) trying to rebuild the country, but in their fight against the Taliban the civilian bodies and ill feeling is building up and is unlikely to ever be forgotten.

(And I worked in MOD research for 13 years - fortunately in nothing that made holes in people, but in aircraft protection systems)

Thanks, El Viejo.

Indeed, spacers would have their names for things, most likely for far more items than the planetbound clodkickers might even be aware of. "Devil's Run" or "The Slot" might be names spacers have for a well known path where there is a lot of pirate activity or where alien/Navy military engagements have occurred in the past, while those names probably would make no sense to groundlings living in the system.

G2 Usceed 1c might also be called Colesque Usceed 2nd moon or Usceed Minor or The Raxxla Ritz. Others might call it something like Banderas' moon or Jarlson's Folly, Chubba's Cove, or Antoine's Last Stand. The indigenous beings of Usceed might traditionally call it P'Lnk-Sss, which in one of their old poetic languages means "Did you know that a fire-moth just drowned in your soup", and so on..

I don't think we should just throw away perfectly good names, especially not when they have some degree of canon to them from being part of a particular version of Elite. Those are the ones that would be easier to agree on, since they can be looked up. It's just too good an item for use in missions and fiction.

Ganelon wrote:

The indigenous beings of Usceed might traditionally call it P'Lnk-Sss, which in one of their old poetic languages means "Did you know that a fire-moth just drowned in your soup", and so on..

I like it... and the names are especially good for fiction. I presume you've had a look at ClymAngus' vector maps?

Ganelon wrote:

Thanks, El Viejo.

Indeed, spacers would have their names for things, most likely for far more items than the planetbound clodkickers might even be aware of. "Devil's Run" or "The Slot" might be names spacers have for a well known path where there is a lot of pirate activity or where alien/Navy military engagements have occurred in the past, while those names probably would make no sense to groundlings living in the system.

G2 Usceed 1c might also be called Colesque Usceed 2nd moon or Usceed Minor or The Raxxla Ritz. Others might call it something like Banderas' moon or Jarlson's Folly, Chubba's Cove, or Antoine's Last Stand. The indigenous beings of Usceed might traditionally call it P'Lnk-Sss, which in one of their old poetic languages means "Did you know that a fire-moth just drowned in your soup", and so on..

I don't think we should just throw away perfectly good names, especially not when they have some degree of canon to them from being part of a particular version of Elite. Those are the ones that would be easier to agree on, since they can be looked up. It's just too good an item for use in missions and fiction.

Lots of ideas for Snoopers G2 - thanks!