Oolite Bulletins

DH, that piece of equipment does ring a bell!
You wouldn't be talking about the Greewald-Osbourne-Birkenoff Short Hyperspace Telemetry Enhancement by any chance? I've had some experience with that one!

Kaks wrote:

DH, that piece of equipment does ring a bell!
You wouldn't be talking about the Greewald-Osbourne-Birkenoff Short Hyperspace Telemetry Enhancement by any chance? I've had some experience with that one!

That's the one!

byronarn wrote:

Anyone have alternate keyboard bindings that gives an advantage in combat?

Oh, hi!

But no, none I can think of. Of course, if you're already used to a specific layout, you can always use that one instead of the one provided.

It does take some time to get used to new ways of doing things, so if you avoid the new ways altogether, you should have some advantage already!

byronarn wrote:

Anyone have alternate keyboard bindings that gives an advantage in combat?

Well, if anyone did, you wouldn't expect them to mention it now, would you?

Another perspective would be to view the map as not a representation of any sort of physical arrangement of the systems, but strictly a chart of witchspace bearings and fuel needs. Since it's not possible within the game to fly from one system to another without witchspace, no matter how long you fly, why would they bother with a shipboard chart showing an actual physical layout of the stars?

A hyperspace navigation chart might not reflect physical distances and directions at all.

So it might not be inconceivable that there are some rare locations where fuel costs are inconsequential. If that actually needs to be "corrected", then maybe correct those systems where one has to make an impossible jump of more than 7 units of fuel to get there or even just follow a long route around when the map looks like one "should" be able to just hop there, if it weren't for the pesky 7 units of fuel rule. I mean, why stop with just one arbitrary alteration of accepted game map mathematics?

First, the in-game answer:

Another perspective? Are you suggesting you thought the ooniverse was really 2 dimensional?

Those overlapping systems are not actually overlapping, but the rounding algorithm used to position them on screen (& to calculate the fuel consumption) rounds the distance down to zero.

Entering witchspace means creating an artificial wormhole. (You know those sparkly blue things left behind when a ship disappear?) The energy used to create that wormhole is the same no matter whether the ship reaches its destination or not. Given that the real distance is non-zero, the energy used to create the wormhole should be non-zero too.


Now the me answer:

I arbitrarily decided to fix all the various bugs that made it impossible to fly between 2 overlapping systems before 1.74. As far as I'm concerned using 0.1ly to jump in between the two is actually fixing a bug I overlooked at the time. There were quite a number of bugs in there, you know?


There actually are a few systems out there that are a bit over the 7 ly limit, but were reachable in Elite - yep, due to rounding errors - we kept those systems connected, to leave the ooniverse the same shape as it was. Changing the way systems are connected - which is what your 'change the 7ly limit' suggestion actually means, is something we're simply not going to do in Oolite.

Ganelon, you're of course more than welcome to create your own version of Oolite with different galaxies, the witchspace limit you feel you're entitled to, etc... that way you'll have just the arbitrary rules you feel confortable with!
If you don't feel going down that path on your own, you could have a closer look at OE: amongst other things, they were thinking of adding many more galaxies to the 8 that you have in Oolite, thus changing the known universe already. The idea of altering the maximum reachable distance might work really well in the OE universe...

Kaks wrote:

Those overlapping systems are not actually overlapping, but the rounding algorithm used to position them on screen (& to calculate the fuel consumption) rounds the distance down to zero.

Is that the same ‘rounding algorithm’ that robs me of a tenth of a light's worth of quirium fuel when I make a jump?

No, the creating the blue sparkly bit would rob you of the tenth of a ly...

The rounding algorithm would rob you of the distance between systems to - 0.1ly worth of fuel, in .4 ly increments...

According to the game engine, all the overlapping systems are a few light days apart - anything between 2 and 16 light days - should be rounded down to 0.

I personally consider 10 light hours ( a distance it would take a cobra 3 more than 20 hours to cover at full pelt ) a pretty huge distance already, but that's probably just me......

My brain hurts… I don’t mean zero-distance jumps. If I have a full tank, and make a jump of 0.8 lights, I’m left with 6.1 light’s worth of fuel. If I then make a jump of 5.6 lights, I’m left with 0.4 light’s worth. I’m down 0.2 light’s worth of fuel in two jumps.

My apologies, I should know better than to post when in a sarky mood.

No serious criticism was meant, nor was it a serious suggestion to change the 7ly limit. What I was trying to express (albeit poorly) was confusion over why some things are changed quickly (like this, or going to a "double click" of the esc key to trigger the escape pod), while other things are considered sacrosanct. Obviously there is a logic to it, as you explained, but it can seem confusing from a player POV (or perhaps I'm just easily confused. ) I don't believe I played Oolite before 1.74, so I was unaware the map had ever changed. I only started playing Oolite around 6 months ago.

I did look into Oolite Extended a while back, at least so far as reading the 60-some page thread in the expansion pack forum. It is often suggested whenever concepts are mentioned that are on the "ain't gonna happen" list. The "all of it" approach to OXPs doesn't actually sound as good to me as the level of customisation offered by Oolite with the OXPs one chooses to add.

In any case, my apologies. No offence was intended.

EV:

Aaah!
Then the answer is - looks that way. Evil rounding!

G:
No worries!
The map didn't actually change.
In 1.73 (& all the way to 1.65 and before) you could see the overlapping systems, but no matter where you tried to go, you'd always end up in just one of the two systems - kind of: the actual sun type would change, but the system name & marketplace would stay the same.

Whenever we make changes we do try to think things through, but sometimes we don't spot all potential issues: the more eyes looking at the thing, the better!

Kaks wrote:

EV:
Aaah!
Then the answer is - looks that way. Evil rounding!

Yes, ‘evil rounding’… I can think of several ‘handwavium’ reasons for it. I have to take it into account when doing a tour of three or four systems on one tank, as a contrabandista often has to do to find the ‘right’ market.

EV: We should play the quote game more often!

Ganelon wrote:

What I was trying to express (albeit poorly) was confusion over why some things are changed quickly (like this, or going to a "double click" of the esc key to trigger the escape pod), while other things are considered sacrosanct.

Just wanted to note that normally the things we proceed with changing are not just decisions of the moment. They are proposed and discussed in our internal mailing list before any final action is taken, unless they are completely inconsequential with regards to gameplay. In the case of the double click on the escape pod, it was already agreed that we'd go this way before the change was made. It doesn't affect gameplay (and if anyone thinks it does, I urge them to try it) and it has been agreed that it's best like this rather than allowing accidental triggering.

The point I'm trying to make is that most of the things that we know we're not going to change have been already agreed to be "not changeable", while others are discussed and agreed to proceed with having them changed. There is activity in the background that normal users don't need to be bothered with but suffice to say that we don't normally take gameplay decisions lightly.

Kaks wrote:

EV: We should play the quote game more often!

Yeah… I just about kept up with that.

Using 0.1 light’s worth of fuel for a zero-distance jump is a good idea, btw.

I have figured out a good way to get my kill count up. I will do an intentional misjump, kill as many thargoids as I can before I feel that I am being swarmed by them and have no chance of survival (for my n00b skills, that is usally after only 2 kills), then I release an energy bomb. I get 5 to 10 kills that way.

Only problem is, its expensive. An E-bomb costs 900 cr, and you only usualy get 100 cr. of bounty for each one. Each trip I usually lose 200-500 cr in the deal.

In spite of this, I think it may be worth it. I went from harmless to mostly harmless to poor to average in just a day!