Regarding the lack of ships in deep-space...

[Lestradae]

Does anyone know who is the author? My version has no readMe file or an version number. (creation date: 23-12-06)

The author is Sabre. The Dredger oxp is also part of the Realistic Shipyards oxp.

[pagroove]

@Eric Walch

Good work that you already look into the case. I will try it out this weekend

[Commander McLane]

@Eric: I don't know whether you are aware that apart from Dredger.oxp there was also a Dredgers.oxp, which added a whole family of deep-space-dredgers. I don't know whether it is sabre's work as well. It does look a little messy, like an abandoned WIP. Are you interested in having a look over it, too?

[Eric Walch]

@Eric: I don't know whether you are aware that apart from Dredger.oxp there was also a Dredgers.oxp, which added a whole family of deep-space-dredgers. I don't know whether it is sabre's work as well. It does look a little messy, like an abandoned WIP. Are you interested in having a look over it, too?

I got my version from the wiki link. The version you mailed me is probably a make-over with new ships drawings. The old dredger itself is missing but it has also the sabre ship in it. Also no author but from the work I can see it is from the same author. (Sabre ?). He calls his ship Super dredger. I'll look into it.

EDIT:
I looked at Sabre's status at this board. He is member for two years but he did all his posts within a months period about a year ago. There I also found him giving a link to his private site. There is the Dredgers version you gave me and you probably also got it there. There are several other oxp's but nothing changed the past year. Also this dredgers.oxp is very unfinished when I look into some of the code. His intention was to let the transports fly to and from a point in deep space. Probably a point with a station added by an other oxp of him.

[Eric Walch]

After further experimenting with the oxp I have a new test version. I made the spacelane narrower to 120 km in radius. Within this lane nothing happens but immediately outside this lane the chance of adding is now 100%. But the chance is rapidly decaying when leaving the lane further. Position checking is only executed at tickle time (every 10 sec). For adding to take place the player must fly fast. (e.g. Jumpspeed). This way he could easy pass the area with 100% adding change. But when he tries to avoid the spacelane by flying parallel to it it becomes possible that he stays long in the danger zone.

I also excluded the spacelane planet-sun from additions, instead of just the area around the sun. The system does add police at this lane (although much less than on the main route) and therefor the player should be save from extra additions.

For testing purposes all added ships have a "(ds)" suffix behind there name for easier recognition were they came from. I probably will remove that later on.

download: DeepSpacePirates v0.14

[pagroove]

Sound good. I will try it tomorrow .

Greetings,

P.A. Groove

[Dr Beeb]

After further experimenting with the oxp I have a new test version. I made the spacelane narrower to 120 km in radius. Within this lane nothing happens but immediately outside this lane the chance of adding is now 100%. But the chance is rapidly decaying when leaving the lane further. Position checking is only executed at tickle time (every 10 sec). For adding to take place the player must fly fast. (e.g. Jumpspeed). This way he could easy pass the area with 100% adding change. But when he tries to avoid the spacelane by flying parallel to it it becomes possible that he stays long in the danger zone.

I also excluded the spacelane planet-sun from additions, instead of just the area around the sun. The system does add police at this lane (although much less than on the main route) and therefor the player should be save from extra additions.

For testing purposes all added ships have a "(ds)" suffix behind there name for easier recognition were they came from. I probably will remove that later on.

download: DeepSpacePirates v0.14

This sounds wonderful and thankyou for tackling the tricky balance of player-centric like Elite vs AIs shooting each other up in the space lanes. I have had frustrations similar to those already voiced and have certainly noticed things grinding to a halt from too many ships vs the 'big-sky' problem.

Sun-skimmers was the first OXP I added to make Oolite a little more like Elite, but still not enough ships to bash for my liking if taking the time to leave the station and refuel at the sun. So I would suggest not making the sun, sun-planet lane, an exclusion zone for your OXP - it makes sense to find more ships, skin-flints, there.

Probably outside the scope of your OXP, but I would like to see the actual WP to planet space lane being slightly more useful for traders in a rush like me. For starters, reducing the number of police to space-farers. I don't know what ratio is used, but I would guess it should be at most 1:10, 1:100 or even 1:1000 ? Perhaps Corporate States retain police patrols all the way out to the WP, but the patrols are of shorter length from the station in the direction of the WP for progressively more dangerous systems - until in Anarchies the police mostly loiter around in a 'a few times the S-zone' space around the space station ? Does anyone know if the number of police in each system scale with the productivity (tax revenue) of that system, or some other metric?

[Commander McLane]

For starters, reducing the number of police to space-farers. I don't know what ratio is used, but I would guess it should be at most 1:10, 1:100 or even 1:1000 ? Perhaps Corporate States retain police patrols all the way out to the WP, but the patrols are of shorter length from the station in the direction of the WP for progressively more dangerous systems - until in Anarchies the police mostly loiter around in a 'a few times the S-zone' space around the space station ? Does anyone know if the number of police in each system scale with the productivity (tax revenue) of that system, or some other metric?

Yes, of course, as you yourself suggest, it is related to the government form. There are hardly any police ships in Anarchies, but lots of them in Corporate States.

[Eric Walch]

Yes, of course, as you yourself suggest, it is related to the government form. There are hardly any police ships in Anarchies, but lots of them in Corporate States.

I think the added police in anarchies is 0. however, instead of police the populator adds hunters there. That are a kind of free pilots that also go for offenders to collect their bounty. They even use the same AI file as police. So you don't see police there, there is still a fight against pirates going on there.

[Miangele]

My problem with the space lanes is that they're sort of slow. And I don't mean this from a "I've been a gamer for two years and I need lots of speed" perspective. The original elite was faster than this. Anyway, as far as adding too much stuff in deep space, it runs the risk of slowing the game down to a crawl. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining too much, but I really, really don't have the time to spend 20 or so minutes just flying from where I warp in at to the space station.

I think that, in regards to the jump drive, would it be possible to make it not shut off if the ships that are in range are friendly? That way, space lanes would go faster, and if you're exploring deep space and looking for pirates, you can kind of get to them... quickly.

Although, one thing I really liked from Freelancer was those weird asteroid fields that looked like forests, space wrecks, etc. I think these might be appropriate things for deep space, too.

[LittleBear]

I think in both Elite and Oolite the distance between the w/p and the planet and the speed of your ship are the same. Like for Like it would take the same time to reach the space station from the w/p in both Elite and Oolite. The difference is that there is a lot more stuff going in Oolite than Elite and so you meet ships more often and so you get mass-locked a lot more. As a result it can take ages to reach the planet in Oolite, whereas in Elite you just J jump past. Fuel Injectors though are very cheap and should perhaps be your first purchase. Not only can you then just injector past mass-locking ships in a few seconds, you can run away from fights and missiles. Without fuel injection it is very slow in the lanes.

[TGHC]

The introduction and use of fuel injectors to get through mass locks has in fact made space travel in Oolite faster than original Elite, even if there is more traffic, there's nothing worse than creeping past a ship going marginally slower than you and heading for the same destination, watching that little dot in your aft view. And of course there are the bounty hunters that sit at extreme range tailing you...........

[Dr Beeb]

The introduction and use of fuel injectors to get through mass locks has in fact made space travel in Oolite faster than original Elite, even if there is more traffic, there's nothing worse than creeping past a ship going marginally slower than you and heading for the same destination, watching that little dot in your aft view. And of course there are the bounty hunters that sit at extreme range tailing you...........

Yes I was trying to introduce an idea to make Oolite feel more like Elite. With the deep-space Pirates OXP I think deep-space will get tuned to feel like Elite, leaving the problem of the space-lanes themselves. In Elite it meant something to finally get near the space station, even if the green S had not come on yet, and feel safer. In Anarchies police would help you out of your final skirmish before arriving at the Station. I don't get that feeling in Oolite, hence my suggestion about Police convoys turning around and heading back to the Station sooner, so that for instance in Dictatorships you don't come across convoy after convoy heading for the WP while you are still less than half-way from the WP to the station.

One could pretend in (revised) GalCop regulations that the number of police per station is set by the productivity of the planet and there is no obligation to keep the whole space-lane to the witch point safe. The length of patrol is determined by the police wishing to keep themselves safe, and the planet administration's desire to attract traders arriving at the witchpoint.

With a shorter patrol length, the density of police would more or less stay constant in the vicinity of the station as one progresses to more and more lawless systems. With the total number of police going down as the lawless-ness increases, productivity dropping, this allows more spawning of pirate ships to keep total number of ships constant in the space lanes.

[GoreLeech]

After reading this rather lengthy thread, and having revisited Oolite for the umpteenth time.... I think the addition of deepspace "stuff" is perhaps the best. Having played, given up, played again, wandered several times, and come back to Oolite, my one sticking point has always been "stuff".
Not to say I come from the "OMG I NEED SPEED" gamers camp, but theres something to be said for retention of users when the game lacks interesting things. Albeit, OXP's spruce things up considerably as far as gameplay goes, but Oolite is an expansive game... and to waste all that space on nothing is not good at all. So cheers to making my spacelanes unsafe, and interesting . My only dislike to Oolite's transportation is the single witchspace beacon.
For such a flimsy device, you would think there would be more of them! All the space lanes (though not very crowded) filter into one single space. You would think after being relentlessly persued by pirates for some time in one single lane, a cry would go out for more variation to the lanes, reducing the pirates ability to camp a certain area. Perhaps thats just wishful thinking, and ruins the Oolite = Elite feeling, but it would seem somewhat like a logical path.

Cheers to the community for its advancements, Hasty patroler of the trading lane, Goreleech.

[Eric Walch]

Deep_space_pirates has now a final form. With version 0.15 I increased the likelihood just outside the spacelanes a bit and with version 0.16 the exclusion zone around the station is made smaller.

For now I leave the settings this way and version 0.16 is the final one. Can be downloaded with the link below. (It's a very short file because it has no graphics of its own).

Sun-skimmers was the first OXP I added to make Oolite a little more like Elite, but still not enough ships to bash for my liking if taking the time to leave the station and refuel at the sun. So I would suggest not making the sun, sun-planet lane, an exclusion zone for your OXP - it makes sense to find more ships, skin-flints, there.

It's a tricky balance to just add so many that space is not overcrowded. Currently there is no nice way to remove the ships again when the player has passed (Maybe "landOnPlanet" would do, but has it's own drawbacks). Best thing for the player is to shoot them up. The oxp also adds rocks, but those things use less time as they are not constantly scanning their surroundings. I deliberately didn't want to interfere with the planet - sun lane as it is populated by the system. (Just 10% of the main lane). OXP's rarely populate those. Your sunskimmers.oxp is one of the exceptions. With that one you had just bad luck that Oolite had problems with roles like trader or pirate. Under 1.65 both roles added often ships with a pirateAI and 0 bounty. Starting with 1.70 at least the traders added with your oxp have traderAI. Bountys of pirates are still zero but with JS I now give them a bounty (at least most of them).