[WIP] Wormhole drones!

[aegidian]

This is a fairly neat extrapolation from the introduction of wormholes into Oolite.

While the 'drone' element doesn't seem quite right, it's a perfectly legitimate hack, and a cunning one too. I'm impressed.


Thinking in Ooniverse terms, stable, navigable wormholes introduce the concept of 'wagon-trains' of large cargo vessels. As each vessel can follow the train leader through, the effective range of a train of ships is multiplied by the number of ships in the train. This would make good economic sense to the Corporate worlds, so I'd expect to see these trains on extended milk runs.


Kudos to the first oo-fiction author who incorporates this into a story!

[Gimi]

Kudos to the first oo-fiction author who incorporates this into a story!

How about derailing a train by creating a new worm-hole exactly where they exit. Makes more sense in Frontier and FFE where there is also an exit wormhole, but a good idea for stealing a whole train.

[Cody]

Kudos to the first oo-fiction author who incorporates this into a story!

It’s not ‘wagon trains’, but the idea of ships travelling in convoy, and ‘leapfrogging’ to make multiple jumps is already in Kaxgar.

[ovvldc]

This is the first way to break the 7ly barrier that I really like. It doesn't bend the rules or really upsets any game balance, it just makes the jumps convenient.

[Mauiby de Fug]

After failing to get around to working on this for a month or so, I've finally got around to having another look at it.
Things to do:

• Add a limit to the number of jumps (I'll give it a try with 7 and see how it works)
• Change the price (probably a bit more than the cost of a Q-bomb)
• Raise tech level required to buy it.

The idea behind this being that it should not disrupt the game too much for a Jameson, but be competitive for an experienced commander who wants it to save time.

A few other thoughts/options:

• Not only limit it by tech-level, but also have a condition of availability by random chance. So that way you can have it only appear at (for example) 10% of planets with tech level <whatever> or above.
• Alternatively along similar lines, after purchase set a timer running that you cannot buy another one within x days, or x witchspace jumps.
• Have a random chance that things go wrong, for example dump you in interstellar space, dump you in a random system along your route or dump you a huge distance away from the witchpoint in a system along the route and then stop.
• Check that things are handled properly in interstellar space...

The first two can fairly easily be done by scripting and carefully set conditions within equipment.plist. The latter is also now quite possible, although I recall seeing somewhere that System.info.systemsInRange (which may screw things up a bit) was broken in 1.75, although 1.75.1 should be along quite soon to fix that.[/color]

I'd raise it to TL14, but as I posted earlier in this thread, there aren't that many on them around in some galaxies. So I'd like to have it available at TL14 worlds, and to be available at 50% of the TL13 worlds (preferably consistently, so that if it's available at world x, it'll always be available at world x). However, I can't figure out how to set conditions like this in the equipment.plist. Any help would be appreciated!

I may experiment with adding chances that things can go wrong. At the moment it adds a bunch of pirates near the witchpoint, but anyone with injectors can easily fly right past them to the wormhole without any problems. Which can make things rather dull... I'll play around in testing...

[lisbet]

If you're adding errors, I think I would vote for the mechanical 'misfire', where the drone will drop you somewhere other than your destination occasionally, over an occasional nest of pirates- mostly because there are only so many pirates at the witchpoint that I can take before I get fed-up. I uninstalled Ionics as soon as I finished it's mission because I was getting an Ionics pirate or four (and very unchallenging ones at that) every system I entered and it was becoming annoying.

I actually had an idea about the drone. The fuel thing was bugging me. Would it be possible (or reasonable) to require the player to buy the fuel for it at a premium? Perhaps with 0-? fuel tanks available on a station? Having to collect the fuel tanks might help with the game balance issue, and if the device is available only at TL 14 or 15, but the fuel tanks are available from TL 10 (or so) and up that could also address the availability concerns.

I don't know JavaScript, especially not as defined for Oolite, so I don't know if this is possible or too annoying to make. If I'm out of line entirely, I apologize.

[TGHC]

so I don't know if this is possible or too annoying to make. If I'm out of line entirely, I apologize.

Hey no need for that, all contributions are welcome, totally off the wall or blinking obvious, it doesn't matter on this forum. The more the merrier I say, the more minds at work the better Oolite will become.

[Thargoid]

Indeed, it's perfectly possible to do something like this with a little work, although the scripting could get a bit complex. But I do like the idea too, possibly including having to "in-flight refuel" the drone by approaching close to it part way through the jump sequence or something like that. It's not too difficult to do (see my fuel station OXP for example of how to do it, there specifically the fuel satellite) and could make things a bit more interesting and give some pause or other requirement to just hopping straight across a number of systems...

[Mauiby de Fug]

so I don't know if this is possible or too annoying to make. If I'm out of line entirely, I apologize.

Hey no need for that, all contributions are welcome, totally off the wall or blinking obvious, it doesn't matter on this forum. The more the merrier I say, the more minds at work the better Oolite will become.

What TGHC said! If I wasn't interested in peoples' ideas about this, I wouldn't bother asking for them.

An interesting idea... It would certainly make more sense than building a device that is used once, and then just drifts about as space junk. I'll look into it!

[chrisirhc]

Just a thought this drone is carrying enough fuel for several jumps shouldn't it end up looking something like the external fuel tank on a space shuttle... Which might have the consequence that you can't get anything else on your pylons?

[lisbet]

[quote="Mauiby de Fug"][quote="TGHC"][quote="lisbet"]so I don't know if this is possible or too annoying to make. If I'm out of line entirely, I apologize.[/quote]
Hey no need for that, [u]all[/u] contributions are welcome, totally off the wall or blinking obvious, it doesn't matter on this forum. The more the merrier I say, the more minds at work the better Oolite will become.[/quote]
What TGHC said! If I wasn't interested in peoples' ideas about this, I wouldn't bother asking for them.

An interesting idea... It would certainly make more sense than building a device that is used once, and then just drifts about as space junk. I'll look into it![/quote]


Thanks. Speaking of space junk- does this have a self destruct attached or could it be scooped and sold as alloys- or reused if refueled?

[Mauiby de Fug]

It doesn't have any sort of self destruct attached. So at the moment it just drifts in space. It isn't scoopable (yet!); you'd just end up crashing into it and killing yourself. But if I decide to make it so that you can buy fuel for it/reuse it, I would make it scoopable.

[Switeck]

While the effects are novel, game-balancing Wormhole drones seems impossible to me.

It's in effect a miniature ship which can hyperspace multiple/many times,
creates a wormhole big and long-lasting enough for even an Anaconda to use,
probably doesn't die to 1 hit (do pirates even target it?),
and it fits into a missile pylon/tube?
If it moves around much at all, it has to have sub-light engines and probably a guidance system better than a 30 credit missile for what little time it remains in-system. Smashing itself into the witchpoint buoy after a jump or 2 would be an embarrassingly expensive loss.
For multiple jumps, at least a partial equivalent of the advanced navigational array...since it can't use the player's ship's array if it's already hyperspaced ahead. If it did have to be "fed" next jump information, it would give the drone yet another reason to "wait for" the player ship to catch up...but would also make it a target for pirates to scoop up.
Whether it has shields or energy banks and regeneration, that's another concern which jacks up the cost.

I'd say if it's even possible in-universe technology-wise, its costs would vastly outweigh its abilities. The reason why many ships cannot hyperspace at all is traced to limited internal space/mass, cost, or risk...so if even many fighter ships never gained this ability, chances are a drone with it has to cost a bloody mint.

The purpose is to extend a ship's jump range before needing to refuel and to automate a series of jumps. While this method may be what we have to use, claiming it is the player ship's internal systems that are producing these effects (automated jumps) rather than an external drone seems more balanced. But even still, such improved systems have to be costly, bulky, massive, and/or all the above.

As an example -- the misjump trick to get to Oresrati, an Anaconda with 7 fuel tanks couldn't do it. It would need 5 more fuel tanks to make the 5 total ~6.8 LY jumps. Even if the Anaconda could borrow an NPC's wormhole for the first jump, it would still be 2 fuel tanks short. With Fuel Collector + fuel tanks, there will be a LONG delay between each jump and you'll also need to kill many of the Thargoid warships in your way...since an Anaconda has no hope of escaping without burning more fuel via injectors. Wormhole drones OXP wouldn't work in this case because there is no normal route to follow to get to unconnected systems -- misjumps are needed...if it's possible at all! But a simple 5-jump route with each jump being just under 7 LY would still be much faster (for our realtime clocks) with an automated jumper. In-game time not spent docking with a station to buy more fuel would help make cargo contract delivery times.

[Kaks]

Hmm, they might need another explanation if they still work for non-jump capable ships (introduced in 1.75)...

[maik]

Interesting OXP, I added it to the WIP section of the [wiki]OXP List[/wiki]