Oolite Bulletins

Disembodied wrote:

Smivs wrote:

You will all be aware by now that I am collaborating with McLane and others to produce a Capital player ship, and it is this which prompted my train of thought that lead to this thread. This ship will be a trader - I personally see no point in producing a Battleship/carrier/whatever - and I have two considerations with respect to this and similar subsequent vessels.
1) It should sit comfortably in the Ooniverse of the core game. It is obviously outside any previous experience in the game but if well thought-through, sensibly spec'd and priced and designed as an 'Oolite' ship this should be acheivable.
2) It should (has to, by its nature) offer the player a whole new experience.

Particularly with regard to point 2), possibly the best way to do this (and indeed to bring about some balance) is to remove, almost completely, any chance of the player dogfighting in this beast. You could perhaps launch the shuttle, and defend the mothership that way; or you could give the hauler passive defences only, e.g. turrets, and have a small squadron of escorts which you can issue commands to as per Ramirez's [wiki]Resistance Commander[/wiki].

The other option is to shift things away from the usual commodities, especially the commodities normally carried by players - i.e. computers, furs, liquor and wines, machinery - and move towards truly bulk hauling: e.g. minerals, alloys, radioactives, and indeed specialised versions of these not available at main stations. These could be sourced in large quantities from asteroid (or moon-based) mining stations, and the player wouldn't be buying and selling these so much as being paid to transport them (which would make things easier when it comes to balancing out the profitability of such a ship). There could be specific issues with loading these bulk cargoes, with getting permissions, with sourcing intelligence on the latest movements of pirate fleets and so on. All this would help shift things away from the core game, and make the experience genuinely different from being the pilot of a more-or-less nimble lone-wolf trader.

One thing that has always bothered me about Oolite/Elite is actually the concept of TCs and the cannisters themselves. While I can accept the idea of food, furs, L&W, minerals, computers, etc... being divided up so that they fit inside this specialist style cannister... BUT... How do you move a Combine Harvester from an Industrial planet that built it to an agricultural planet that wants it, or a huge turbine for a low tech planet that's building a Hydro-Electric power plant? It makes absolutely no sense to break these delicate items down into lego style blocks and slide them into these little cannisters.

So, bulk carriers (this may possibly include the Anaconda (in its current state)) have a certain capacity *THE EQUIVALENT OF* X TCs - so they can take these very large items intact.

Modern cars have boot (trunk for US members) sizes given in litres even though this shape may be terribly laid out. (For example my car has an alleged capacity of 320 litres, but I couldn't get a small fridge into it that had an internal capacity of 160 litres (and measuring up an external capacity of about 210 litres))

So how about this - bulk carriers (possibly including the Anaconda) can take a certain number of physical TC cannisters BUT can take very large, bulky items, intact. So, you could limit the Anaconda to, for example, 250TCs for actual trading in TC cannisters - but its equivalent ACTUAL capacity is 750TCs, so contracts could also include genuinely bulky items that only Anacondas (core ship) and Bulk haulers (OXP ships) can carry. This way BULK Hauler would mean something. You would buy an Anaconda (core game) because you wanted to haul actual large items - with the ability to carry large but not silly amounts of TC cannisters for normal trading when no bulk items are available.

Let's not smash up the mythos of the original Elite, because "we" have decided that we want to expand the game and have decided the original core game is broken. Let's work with it instead, lets give Annie pilots a reason to exist, a genuine, alternative, career path, through the contracts system to haul bulk items.

<steps down from soap box>

"'Cos I've got a brand-new combine harvester, and you've got an old Annie..."


What DH says makes much sense.

Diziet Sma wrote:

"'Cos I've got a brand-new combine harvester, and you've got an old Annie..."


What DH says makes much sense.

Thanks Diziet Sma - it does happen very occasionally. I'm happy that my musings have struck a chord with at least one other forum member.

I must admit I also think the idea of using 'bulk haulers' to transport larger items of cargo that normal ships can't carry is a great idea.

This would open up a whole new set of possibilities with regard to new cargo contracts and maybe even missions.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Let's not smash up the mythos of the original Elite, because "we" have decided that we want to expand the game and have decided the original core game is broken. Let's work with it instead, lets give Annie pilots a reason to exist, a genuine, alternative, career path, through the contracts system to haul bulk items.

This, expanded to player Cobra mk 3 speed back to original 0.30 LM & Energy Bomb damage down to 500 (from 1000) get my votes.

Zieman wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Let's not smash up the mythos of the original Elite, because "we" have decided that we want to expand the game and have decided the original core game is broken. Let's work with it instead, lets give Annie pilots a reason to exist, a genuine, alternative, career path, through the contracts system to haul bulk items.

This, expanded to player Cobra mk 3 speed back to original 0.30 LM & Energy Bomb damage down to 500 (from 1000) get my votes.

Hi Zieman - I'd like to see these discussed too BUT - How about we "fix" the Anaconda, in the "fix the Anaconda" thread and then we can also debate the other Elite/Oolite oddities in greater detail without muddying the waters, in threads of their own?

I'm trying to imagine gutting an Anaconda, then scooping a combine harvester!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Hi Zieman - I'd like to see these discussed too BUT - How about we "fix" the Anaconda, in the "fix the Anaconda" thread and then we can also debate the other Elite/Oolite oddities in greater detail without muddying the waters, in threads of their own?

Now that these other "oddities" are also in the radar, sure.
I'm eager to see how this Anaconda-thingy will be resolved, and after that I do hope that the other issue(s) will get the creator's, developers' & active foruminites' attention too.

El Viejo wrote:

I'm trying to imagine gutting an Anaconda, then scooping a combine harvester!

Think how brilliant that would be though - there would be a risk when gutting an Annie that you got something you couldn't scoop - rather than a decent chance of a pinata effect.

Think of the OXPs it could spawn and the 3D models that might drop out of an cracked open Annie (or other OXP Bulk Haulers) [I want a Griff-ified Combine Harvester!]

Would make a cargo analyser worthwhile - why crack open an Annie with an unscoopable cargo...

The possibilities are endless...

(and we get to keep a 750TC Anaconda but with a twist...)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I want a Griff-ified Combine Harvester!

<howls> Summon Griff!

El Viejo wrote:

I'm trying to imagine gutting an Anaconda, then scooping a combine harvester!

Hah hah! Somebody has got to make that OXP, right?

Well, we can't just have Annie's moving thousands of Combine Harvesters all over the Ooniverse, so we'll need some other Big Machines as well. So I'd like to propose the following massive machines for Griff-ication and adding to Oolite.

The Bucyrus RH400 Hydraulic Shovel:


The Krupp Bagger 288:


The Herrenknecht Double Shield Tunnel Boring Machine:



Can anyone think of any other suitable loads for a hollowed-out Annie?

Described as a "snow eating serpent"



http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... es/4299670

Also, how about Engine spares, or even whole other ships (a couple of shiny new adders being delivered to a showroom somewhere?), Communication satellites...

I'm sure I have a Wings 3D model somewhere of a satellite.

See how this is gathering momentum now... soon this idea will be unstoppable...