Oolite Bulletins

cim wrote:

2) The trade goods are pretty boring and don't take system danger into account, and there's really only two economy types and one plausible trade good each way

As I've said somewhere before, I think the main problem is the static map. Once you've found that one safe opposite eco planet pair, it's just zipping between those two. In every game. And that's boring.

Here's on possible solution to the zipping problem. Make the markets more persistent. Why should the market reset every time you switch system? You could be away in game time for a couple of hours and there's a new market waiting for you. I can understand the decision for this in the original Elite when memory was scarce and it's been carried over to Oolite, but maybe something should be done about it.

For this I have created a small experimental OXP that saves the market data when exiting system. The memory gradually fades after a few jumps to give the player a fresh market again. So zipping between two systems just trading furs and computers won't work because when you buy a system empty, it replenishes itself slowly.

If anyone is interested in testing this kind of solution, here's the oxp: https://app.box.com/s/2zf3gfmvu5ji5k0vmzb7nu2yye9z7usf. To test the effect, just buy one system empty of one commodity, jump to an adjacent system and come right back. The quantity of that commodity should be quite low. Do it again and take a short round of a few systems and then come back. Now it should give you a fresh market again.

spara wrote:

Redspear wrote:

Mass-lock worked in elite because (amongst other things) most of the traffic was headed in the opposite direction to you.
That didn't appear to make a lot of sense but it did work in a gameplay sense.

It makes perfect sense, if you assume that
a) everyone is using a torus drive
b) torus-speed is the same for everyone

Sorry, I don't understand - how does that explain why they were headed away from the station?

spara wrote:

The torus problem and mass locks discussed here can easily be remedied by skipping the lane. It's so natural that it's against all logic that the NPCs don't do it. Yes, they don't have torus drives, but that's wrong too. The relative safety of the lane is insignificant compared to skipping the lane. I can't seriously see any activity so luring that I would not skip the lane.

For the rescaling experiment I tried a wider lane - so all inbound traffic spreads out a little more to result in less contact with each other. I loved it but it also reduces pirate encounters so it was something that has remained in my version but not the downloadable patches.

spara wrote:

In the original Elite you could imagine others having it too. In Oolite that's pretty darn hard.

I agree. In elite it even helped explain how when 'target lost' occurred, they really were lost to you.

spara wrote:

Here's on possible solution to the zipping problem. Make the markets more persistent. Why should the market reset every time you switch system? You could be away in game time for a couple of hours and there's a new market waiting for you. I can understand the decision for this in the original Elite when memory was scarce and it's been carried over to Oolite, but maybe something should be done about it.

It may be slightly less to your taste but did you catch the similar suggestion here, under the 'Variety' section of the post?

Norby wrote:

A "Supercruise" OXP is possible based on the ideas above.

From your suggestions Norby, IMHO manually disabling weapons would be preferable and the 'injectors without fuel usage' idea would be the smoothest transition with what we have at present (enabling the j key rather than holding down i). You also make a good point about maintaining yellow alert.

I don't have much in the way of time to offer as a 'test pilot' but I'd be very interested to try this were it to be made... Perhaps I could even try out spara's oxp at the same time?

As another thought, did anyone ever play Archimides Elite?

I never did but didn't it have a less player-centric model than the BBC (et.al.) elite?
Did it also have similar issues around mass-locking?
If not, what did it do differently?

Redspear wrote:

Big question: How fast is cruising speed?

IIRC, injector speed = x7, base torus speed = x32 (max torus being factorially higher)

If this is to result in equal or shorter journey times then you would need a multiplier of, I would suspect, at the very least x16 (i.e. approx double injector speed)
That would take some hitting from a x1 speed ship (the attacker couldn't be in cruise, right?) and indeed some catching if being used to escape!

The aim is not specifically to achieve shorter total journey times: the aim is to reduce the feeling of crawling through traffic. I think it could be tested at around 8x the Cobra III's base speed, so 2.8lm. This would not mean that it would take four times as long to reach the station, when you consider that meeting and passing one inward-bound ship can currently take longer than the rest of the WP-aegis journey.

I'll drop the name "cruising speed" and just call it the torus-2 drive: everyone's got it, and it's the same speed for everyone.

Important features of the torus-2

• Speed: 2.8lm, for all ships (subject to testing, of course)
• 10-second spool-up time required to activate: ship must fly straight and level (perhaps below redline speeds? Or even remain stationary?)
• No manoeuvring is possible, as per Wildeblood's Bullet Drive
• Shields and weapons are automatically disabled
• Encountering another ship results in temporary "masslock" for both ships - both are forced to use manoeuvre drives only (including injectors, if they have them). Shields and weapons come back online automatically. Ships masslocked by other ships can choose to reactivate their torus-2 drives if they want to (subject to dropping shields, deactivating weapons, and flying straight/sitting still for 10 seconds: so not advisable if hostile ships are present)
• Masslocking by planet/star is the same as at present: ships cannot use the torus-2 within range of a planetary or stellar gravity well

With everyone equipped with a torus-2, there would be fewer encounters with inward-bound traffic: they're all moving at the same speed as the player, after all. Encounters would mainly be with A) outbound traffic (and maybe there could be a bit more of this, as per your suggestions); B) ships coming in at a tangent to the main WP-planet lane (from other stations, of which there could be a few more, in richer/higher tech systems at least: rock hermits, asteroid and artificial habitats); C) pirates.

Redspear wrote:

Bizarre as it might sound, coming from me, I don't like the thought of just 'skipping' encounters. I'm not sure there's currently enough outbound traffic for my ides in that link and I'm not sure that speeds are right for yours.

Encounters wouldn't be "skipped". Meeting and passing non-hostile outbound ships would probably take just slightly less time that it does at present (masslock; quick scan to make sure they're not hostile; reset ship on bearing; spool up torus-2; head off again). If you meet a ship on the way in, then it's either going to be interesting (hostile, or you encounter other ships in combat), or it's going to be because you're both heading towards the same destination - in which case, both ships can scan each other, reset their headings, spool up their torus-2 drives and head off together. You've not skipped anything. With the new mobile external view camera, you can even sightsee as you go.

Traversing an empty system with a torus-2 would take longer than traversing an empty system with the current setup. But there would be significantly less grinding slowly past NPCs that you don't care about.

spara wrote:

The torus problem and mass locks discussed here can easily be remedied by skipping the lane. It's so natural that it's against all logic that the NPCs don't do it. Yes, they don't have torus drives, but that's wrong too. The relative safety of the lane is insignificant compared to skipping the lane. I can't seriously see any activity so luring that I would not skip the lane.

Placing a few more minor stations, from rock hermits to artificial habitats, around the main lane, and creating some cross-traffic between them, from the WP to them, and between them and the main station, would help widen the lanes. And - in more dangerous systems, certainly - adding in some occasional player-centric offlane pirates (or worse, offlane Thargoids) would be worth considering, I think.

Persistent and reacting markets looks interesting,
but after how many tons should a market be empty or saturated?

but for the beginning player having a safe traderoute is highly encouraging,
they will be exploring after while.

widening or using no spacelanes et all should not be a problem if the game reacts on your
status/cargo/passengers, moving gold? your bound to have pirates on your @ss.

just a thought about speeding up.
what if the overall gamespeed could be increased.
(some rts games have this feature )
everything speeds up, when attacked it is then usually better to slow down to encounter your enemies,
or you should have very quick reflexes

Disembodied wrote:

Redspear wrote:

Bizarre as it might sound, coming from me, I don't like the thought of just 'skipping' encounters. I'm not sure there's currently enough outbound traffic for my ides in that link and I'm not sure that speeds are right for yours.

Encounters wouldn't be "skipped". Meeting and passing non-hostile outbound ships would probably take just slightly less time that it does at present (masslock; quick scan to make sure they're not hostile; reset ship on bearing; spool up torus-2; head off again). If you meet a ship on the way in, then it's either going to be interesting (hostile, or you encounter other ships in combat), or it's going to be because you're both heading towards the same destination - in which case, both ships can scan each other, reset their headings, spool up their torus-2 drives and head off together. You've not skipped anything. With the new mobile external view camera, you can even sightsee as you go.

Re 'skipping', I was speaking more generally. Although your 'variant' included an initial mass-lock, your original suggestion did not, right?

Disembodied wrote:

Traversing an empty system with a torus-2 would take longer than traversing an empty system with the current setup. But there would be significantly less grinding slowly past NPCs that you don't care about.

With no torus a accelearation it might take a bit longer than you think but I agree that it's a reasonable trade-off.

Disembodied wrote:

adding in some occasional player-centric offlane pirates (or worse, offlane Thargoids) would be worth considering, I think.

Yeah, that's an easy fix to the wider lane problem but you lose a little of the non-player interaction though. Again, it's still a fair trade-off IMO.

cbr wrote:

widening or using no spacelanes et all should not be a problem if the game reacts on your
status/cargo/passengers, moving gold? your bound to have pirates on your @ss.

True!

Redspear wrote:

Re 'skipping', I was speaking more generally. Although your 'variant' included an initial mass-lock, your original suggestion did not, right?

No, it didn't - but from reading various ideas on the thread I now think an automatic masslock would be necessary. Any ship encounter would mean some action being required by the player: at the very least, just restarting their torus-2 (if they're foolish/desperate), and more probably scanning the other ship and deciding if they're hostile or not before either engaging/running away from the enemy or getting back on course and restarting the torus-2.

There could even be sneaky pirate types who might drift innocently inwards, and wait for the player to restart the torus-2 (drop shields, deactivate weapons, fly slow and straight/sit motionless) before diving in to attack …

A visual effect for the torus-2 spooling up would be useful - something like a growing purple glow from the engines?

Redspear wrote:

spara wrote:

Redspear wrote:

Mass-lock worked in elite because (amongst other things) most of the traffic was headed in the opposite direction to you.
That didn't appear to make a lot of sense but it did work in a gameplay sense.

It makes perfect sense, if you assume that
a) everyone is using a torus drive
b) torus-speed is the same for everyone

Sorry, I don't understand - how does that explain why they were headed away from the station?

It explains why you see more ship coming against you than ships going in your direction. Overall the only ships heading out should be police, hunters, pirates, assassins and scavengers. Traders overall should not be traveling outwards.

Redspear wrote:

spara wrote:

The torus problem and mass locks discussed here can easily be remedied by skipping the lane. It's so natural that it's against all logic that the NPCs don't do it. Yes, they don't have torus drives, but that's wrong too. The relative safety of the lane is insignificant compared to skipping the lane. I can't seriously see any activity so luring that I would not skip the lane.

For the rescaling experiment I tried a wider lane - so all inbound traffic spreads out a little more to result in less contact with each other. I loved it but it also reduces pirate encounters so it was something that has remained in my version but not the downloadable patches.

Yes, that's definitely what happens since the playground is bigger. With pirates/hunters torusing, that might still work.

Redspear wrote:

spara wrote:

Here's on possible solution to the zipping problem. Make the markets more persistent. Why should the market reset every time you switch system? You could be away in game time for a couple of hours and there's a new market waiting for you. I can understand the decision for this in the original Elite when memory was scarce and it's been carried over to Oolite, but maybe something should be done about it.

It may be slightly less to your taste but did you catch the similar suggestion here, under the 'Variety' section of the post?

Great minds think alike or something. Consider it as a lite version that was simple enough to OXP for testing the idea out.

cbr wrote:

Persistent and reacting markets looks interesting,
but after how many tons should a market be empty or saturated?

but for the beginning player having a safe traderoute is highly encouraging,
they will be exploring after while.

Test drive the oxp I upped earlier: https://app.box.com/s/2zf3gfmvu5ji5k0vmzb7nu2yye9z7usf. The idea is not to kill those trade routes, but to add a sort of cool down time to them. Find a nice 3-5 system ring instead of a profitable twin system. Should be more interesting and rewarding.

spara wrote:

It explains why you see more ship coming against you than ships going in your direction. Overall the only ships heading out should be police, hunters, pirates, assassins and scavengers. Traders overall should not be traveling outwards.

So you mean that traders are hard to catch up with because they also have torus drives and so are speeding ahead of you?
That would require traffic to be suffiently thin, I think, never to bump into someone else's mass-lock or to have them bump into yours. Still, I'm nit-picking

spara wrote:

Great minds think alike or something. Consider it as a lite version that was simple enough to OXP for testing the idea out.

Good way for me to look at it

Redspear wrote:

spara wrote:

It explains why you see more ship coming against you than ships going in your direction. Overall the only ships heading out should be police, hunters, pirates, assassins and scavengers. Traders overall should not be traveling outwards.

So you mean that traders are hard to catch up with because they also have torus drives and so are speeding ahead of you?
That would require traffic to be suffiently thin, I think, never to bump into someone else's mass-lock or to have them bump into yours. Still, I'm nit-picking

To be honest, in action it would cause a massive traffic jam. Assume that all ships are on a same line, evenly distributed and torusing to the same direction. Then the first one hits encounters a mass lock. It won't take long before the others coming behind the first one have caught the same mass lock.

spara wrote:

To be honest, in action it would cause a massive traffic jam. Assume that all ships are on a same line, evenly distributed and torusing to the same direction. Then the first one hits encounters a mass lock. It won't take long before the others coming behind the first one have caught the same mass lock.

That's what I was thinking... But with traffic generated in a player-centric 'on the fly' fashion as it was as in elite, it worked just fine, as many of us experienced.

spara wrote:

To be honest, in action it would cause a massive traffic jam. Assume that all ships are on a same line, evenly distributed and torusing to the same direction. Then the first one hits encounters a mass lock. It won't take long before the others coming behind the first one have caught the same mass lock.

I think, though, that this could be avoided if A) the torus speed is lower, and B) it's possible to reactive the torus drive (with all the attendant caveats of lowering shields, pausing, and generally exposing yourself to attack) while other ships are on the scanner. If being held in masslock is changed from a physical law to a tactical decision, it should allow ships to move past masslocking craft that aren't attacking them and prevent tailbacks building up.

One issue that occurs, though, would be regarding ships moving in convoy: what happens if one escort ship gets masslocked, but not the mothership? For game purposes it might be better, in that circumstance, to treat mothership-and-escort(s) as one unit for masslocking.

cbr wrote:

just a thought about speeding up.
what if the overall gamespeed could be increased.
(some rts games have this feature )
everything speeds up, when attacked it is then usually better to slow down to encounter your enemies,
or you should have very quick reflexes

That would be _the solution_. No torus, just fast forward time. This has been suggested/discussed numerous times before and with the current game there seems to be major issues in handling all the activity in-system with an accelerated game. It would probably require designing the whole game from scratch or something.

You NPC-justice warriors made me really mad.

Here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7mL1 ... HEzaXJVOGM

Apparently some lunatic leaving on some distant rock thought it was good idea to reroute all the energy a ship can produce to the engine in order to go faster. And there's people dumb enough to buy it.

Sure, they go faster, but is it really a good idea when you can't see where you go and have no shields?

So when you switch off your weapons and engage injectors, you get a X4 base speed bonus (a bit more than half injector speed) but you don't burn any fuel. The drawback is that your shields go down and your instruments (i.e., your HUD) go down as well.

The idea is to let you overtake the masslockers without burning fuel, but it's a quite dangerous thing to do. That's why NPCs won't use it. Especially not in combat.

I made it by hacking my previous OXP, "Shaky drives", which was itself based on "Bullet Drive". So don't worry if you see those names here and there.

There's a bug that cause the feature not to work after launch for some time. There might be over bugs since I tested it very quickly.

If you want it to use it to test other ideas, of course feel free.