Oolite Bulletins

spara wrote:

One more idea. Real taxis have comms so that they can be notified of customers when they are driving. Taxi Station could offer a buyable equipment that would alert player when there is a customer waiting. These contracts could be randomly generated in-system transports from one station to another or maybe to the planet or moon surface depending on the oxps installed. When flying in a system you might get a comms message saying something like "Customer waiting for a transport from Coriolis Station to RSS Station, do you accept?" If you want the job, you would have to accept it in 1 min. Accepting could be done with primable equipment and the payment could be fixed to something like 100 cr.

Like the idea!

Thargoid wrote:

Long ago I wrote the Planetfall Taxi add-on OXP which does most of that already (between station and planets/moons). It's somewhat in need of update and overhaul, but if people want to use it (subject to its license) as a basis of such an expansion to one or more of these taxi OXPs then feel free to.

I had forgotten the was such a plugin for planetfall. I'll check it out and use it as a starting point. Thanks.

Switeck wrote:

It would be hard to allow buying but not selling. Cargo amounts could be checked and re-added then credits edited as well, but it would likely be a "jarring" manner that's messy and not totally obvious to the player.

Better to just block commodities if you don't really want it.
There is a way to block out the commodities market. Save Anywhere OXP uses such a method to prevent buying and selling at the main station when you're temporarily placed there to save your game.

Unless I set my ship up to act as a Taxi, what reason would I ever have to visit a Taxi station?
I suggested small quantities of commodities (gold/plat/gems) or at least a place to sell some commodities (food, liquors/wines) only as a means of giving me something to do there.

Are there or might there be missions associated with Taxi Galactica?

Agreed I didn't ever want commodities to be bought/sold there, as I dislike there being places in the same system where you could trade back and forth and make 'easy money'. It discourages players, especially 'Jamesons', from going out and exploring the ooniverse. There is only one 'special mission' available in the OXP after completing so many (think its 5 but I'm at work and cannot check) contracts. but I have always planned to add more. Rather than devoting time to tweaking the commodities market I think I'll continue implementing more missions with more variety than just ferrying people around.

Smivs wrote:

Just a mention that my (surprisingly popular) YellOo Cabs make excellent Taxis, and you are welcome to incorporate them into Taxi Galactica if they would be of use.

If you wouldn't mind? Would help to create a variety of Taxis, rather than just the Taxi Adder. I have been using dertian's Taxi Adder (which is a modified Griff Adder) as it fits in with my 'Griff-ed' ooniverse, but as I have noticed from my Flyable Thargoid Warship OXP, where I've offered two editions of one standard and one 'Griff-ed', the standard OXP has only been downloaded a few more times than the Griff version, so perhaps I could offer Taxi Galactica on two different editions and bring back the old models in a Standard Edition and use the dertian retextures in the Griff Edition, as I know dertian did a retexture for the YellOo Cab as well.

spara wrote:

One more idea. Real taxis have comms so that they can be notified of customers when they are driving. Taxi Station could offer a buyable equipment that would alert player when there is a customer waiting. These contracts could be randomly generated in-system transports from one station to another or maybe to the planet or moon surface depending on the oxps installed. When flying in a system you might get a comms message saying something like "Customer waiting for a transport from Coriolis Station to RSS Station, do you accept?" If you want the job, you would have to accept it in 1 min. Accepting could be done with primable equipment and the payment could be fixed to something like 100 cr.

Thargoid wrote:

Long ago I wrote the Planetfall Taxi add-on OXP which does most of that already (between station and planets/moons). It's somewhat in need of update and overhaul, but if people want to use it (subject to its license) as a basis of such an expansion to one or more of these taxi OXPs then feel free to.

I was going to say to spara that I'm not sure how to go about having passenger contracts to go to somewhere in the same system, but I too had forgotten about the Planetfall Taxi missions. I'm not sure how you did this Thargoid, as Taxi Galactica uses the same method of passenger contracts as the standard passenger contracts (using the player.ship.addPassenger() function). I will have to take a look at how it was done in Thargoid's OXP and see if this is incorparable into Taxi Galactica.

Pleb wrote:

Smivs wrote:

Just a mention that my (surprisingly popular) YellOo Cabs make excellent Taxis, and you are welcome to incorporate them into Taxi Galactica if they would be of use.

If you wouldn't mind? Would help to create a variety of Taxis, rather than just the Taxi Adder.

I am in the process of updating many of my OXPs (for 1.77 compatibility and to improve some of the textures as my skills develop) and the YellOo Cabs are going to be done in the next day or so - mostly a graphic update to add normal and specular maps for improvements for those users with Simple or Full shaders available. Watch the Expansion Pack thread for the Update Release. If you need any help incorpaorating these into your OXP, give me a shout

Pleb wrote:

Agreed I didn't ever want commodities to be bought/sold there, as I dislike there being places in the same system where you could trade back and forth and make 'easy money'. It discourages players, especially 'Jamesons', from going out and exploring the ooniverse. There is only one 'special mission' available in the OXP after completing so many (think its 5 but I'm at work and cannot check) contracts. but I have always planned to add more. Rather than devoting time to tweaking the commodities market I think I'll continue implementing more missions with more variety than just ferrying people around.

This is why if commodities are allowed they must be very close to the same price as the main station. Quantities should almost always be tiny unless it's a dedicated mining facility. Your Ad Here OXP is not a regular part of my game because they have silly prices.

More missions is good -- it gives your station a greater purpose in the Oolite universe. It could be as simple as special passenger contracts to/from in-system stations to returning someone's lost luggage to a distant system.

Switeck wrote:

This is why if commodities are allowed they must be very close to the same price as the main station. Quantities should almost always be tiny unless it's a dedicated mining facility. Your Ad Here OXP is not a regular part of my game because they have silly prices.

Agreed, I like the billboards and I like the Constores so I've modified the markets on them to be the same as the main station. I like them for eye-candy purposes more than anything (and its handy having them for refuelling purposes!).

Switeck wrote:

More missions is good -- it gives your station a greater purpose in the Oolite universe. It could be as simple as special passenger contracts to/from in-system stations to returning someone's lost luggage to a distant system.

I like the idea of returning luggage! I do also like the idea of having to take passengers from one station to another, but after looking through the Planetfall Taxi OXP I noticed that the passengers are more like 'magic passengers' (to steal a phrase from Wildeblood!), in that they don't take up any room. Getting the passengers to take up room like normal passengers and require to be taken to specific stations may not be possible...

Pleb wrote:

Getting the passengers to take up room like normal passengers and require to be taken to specific stations may not be possible...

Let's not give up just yet. I'm fairly positive about the idea I'm having. If it works, it will do exactly what is wanted. I'll report back when I have done some more testing. If my idea works, I'll create a Local Taxi oxp, that gives you random in system passenger contracts. Boy this is addicting, if only I would not need to sleep and work .

spara wrote:

Let's not give up just yet. I'm fairly positive about the idea I'm having. If it works, it will do exactly what is wanted. I'll report back when I have done some more testing. If my idea works, I'll create a Local Taxi oxp, that gives you random in system passenger contracts. Boy this is addicting, if only I would not need to sleep and work .

It is very addictive...until the wife starts complaining you spend more time on the computer than looking after your newborn child!

Pleb wrote:

...until the wife starts complaining you spend more time on the computer than looking after your newborn child!

Don't worry...they grow up just fine

So Smivs has created a brilliant retexture for his Contractor ship for use in the Taxi Galactica OXP, which will be part of the Standard Edition (based on stock-game models) in the next release:



Also I'm (attempting) to create a 'Griff-ed' version to go into the Griff Edition (based on Griff models) in the next release. So far it's pretty basic:



I may also try to retexture dertian's retexture of the Griff Moray:

Pleb wrote:

So Smivs has created a brilliant retexture for his Contractor ship for use in the Taxi Galactica OXP, which will be part of the Standard Edition (based on stock-game models) in the next release:



Also I'm (attempting) to create a 'Griff-ed' version to go into the Griff Edition (based on Griff models) in the next release. So far it's pretty basic:



I may also try to retexture dertian's retexture of the Griff Moray:

These look fantastic!!!

The Griff Moray makes more sense as a Taxi, given that the Constrictor derivative may have only appeared recently.

As for magic passengers not taking up a passenger berth "space", that sounds like a bug in Oolite itself that needs to be hammered out.

Spara has sent me a prototype of his in-system taxi missions that use the passenger space - but sadly I have yet to have a chance to test it! I will hopefully get some time to do that this evening and then we shall hopefully have a method of delivering passengers to stations (and eventually other planets) in system.

Pleb wrote:

Spara has sent me a prototype of his in-system taxi missions that use the passenger space - but sadly I have yet to have a chance to test it! I will hopefully get some time to do that this evening and then we shall hopefully have a method of delivering passengers to stations (and eventually other planets) in system.

That prototype is evolving quite nicely...

Last evening I was cruising in a corporate system waiting for my In-System Taxi Comms to notify me of passengers needing a fast delivery from one station to another. After a while I get a call notifying of a passenger wanting to get from RSS station to Kiota Research station in 23 minutes. Fee would be 26 credits. I accept the job with my taxi comms equipment and fly to RSS station. Passenger boards and off we g. o. Deadline just came 10 mins closer as launcing takes time. Torusdriving and injecting my way to the Research station and I reach it in time. Passenger says thank you and pays the ride. Next I switch to the interfaces screen to see if there is someone needing to be in another station and yes, there is a passenger wanting to be in Icosahedron station in 21 minutes. Accept the contract and realize I need to fuel. After fueling, I realize that I can't deliver in time. Fueling took too much time. I deliver the passenger anyway. He ain't too happy about missing the deadline. No payment. At least I have an empty berth again.

I'll be releasing a public test version of Taxi Galactica's In-System Taxi Services soon.