Oolite Bulletins

Strangely 'blocky' background - which nebulae are you using?

Cody wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 1:41 pm

Strangely 'blocky' background - which nebulae are you using?

The background is a nebula from a public internet page, so not included in Oolite. I just copied & paste the station there.

montana05 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 1:11 pm

Included in the next release of Nuit Space Station, docked liners and bulk haulers. I still need to run some tests to see if I missed anything.

Great! Thanks for this!

Now we just need somebody with the programming skills who could actually create a genuine docking/undocking process for these massive ships and any players who want to fly one!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 2:16 pm

Great! Thanks for this!

Now we just need somebody with the programming skills who could actually create a genuine docking/undocking process for these massive ships and any players who want to fly one!

For a little more work...perhaps make using one of those special docking ports have a docking fee, like 10-100 credits -- just enough to be annoying.

This could make Nuit and Superhub stations the only ones I know of that can accommodate BIG ships.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 4:41 pm

Which brings up the matter of how on earth do the stations end up where they are. Yes, we know that Superhubs come with engines attached... But are the stations built locally? Are they built at Vetitice and brought through witch tunnels to their present locations? And what about the increasing prevalence of pirates/Thargoids... how does this affect things?

Most stations are built in relatively small pieces that fit inside the biggest freighters (Anacondas typically) or shuttles from planet surfaces, even fluffed as such for a couple OXP stations (Sothis and Globe if I recall...)

montana05 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 11:32 am

Switeck wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 8:25 am

Combine these stations with other station OXPs/OXZs, and a tech level 13-15 system will seem "busy" with all the stations there.
There are no station exclusion rules to limit the number of stations in 1 system.
Hathor, Nuit, and Nephthys stations can all be in a single system.
...Biosphere, Sothis, Superhub, Transhab, and Tori stations might be present as well!

The techlevel is there for a reason, maintenance should last longer and 20 % up plus a minimum of 20K credits on your account before you even could enter the station should prevent a run for it. Some OXP's actually use 16 or even 17, but I do agree that it's not really relevant.

You are correct that a lot of stations could show up in some systems, but on the other hand, rich systems with only a GalCop station seems kind of unrealistic too, even for Oolite.

It might be possible to code a special mini-mission that offers only a maintenance overhaul, but probably more trouble than it's worth to do to avoid offering a lot of other equipment for sale.

Oolite had a ~2k objects limit and I'm not sure station subentities count against that limit. But even if not, the needed traffic to "justify" the presence of lots of stations in 1 system might be quite high. "Realism" or not, lots of stations can be a game balance issue if they're near each other and have significant price differences and commodities for sale.

Simply installing fewer stations removes some of the quirks of different systems, so I am trying to consolidate spawning scripts for stations into 1 so it's easier to prevent conflicts. Obviously, that's somewhat unworkable to make available as an OXZ or OXP...because only named scripts can be deleted by other scripts while running as far as I know. Superhub for instance has a script.js in its config folder for its spawning in a system as an example of this.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 2:16 pm

Great! Thanks for this!
Now we just need somebody with the programming skills who could actually create a genuine docking/undocking process for these massive ships and any players who want to fly one!

Switeck wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 12:07 am

For a little more work...perhaps make using one of those special docking ports have a docking fee, like 10-100 credits -- just enough to be annoying.

This could make Nuit and Superhub stations the only ones I know of that can accommodate BIG ships

I will happy step back and let somebody better than me do this job. I have a pretty vague idea how I can let big NPC's dock and launch there, but, from my experience, a lot features I have in mind will not work as intended.

Would be anybody interested to improve the Hathor ? Otherwise, it will be the next in my queue.

My ideas for now would be a free port, available in agricultural systems, excluding rich ones. Location between planet and sun.

montana05 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 18, 2022 1:24 am

Would be anybody interested to improve the Hathor ? Otherwise, it will be the next in my queue.

My ideas for now would be a free port, available in agricultural systems, excluding rich ones. Location between planet and sun.

I'd love to be able to do this. Alas, not yet!

1) As adumbrated above, my thinking was that they would be more likely found in the rich systems than the poor - their higher cost of food means more profit margin to play with.

One presumes that the real cost of food is added to by GalCop taxes & fees in the GalCop stations. This pays for the station, the police and GalCop and the transport costs.

Hathor does not pay GalCop. It's own police (if they exist) are presumably cheaper (Hence, I would not expect to find Hathors in pirate-infested systems either). It needs to pay for itself. The higher prices in the rich agriculturals would seem to make this more feasible.

But it would be good if one or two others had a look at my logic and see if I've missed anything.

2) Is there any chance of making it also appear towards the sun in Stranger's World? (distances are massive, so having them near the sun means a long journey) He's presumably out for the count - getting through to the rest of us from "Mother Russia" cannot be too easy at the moment. If you (or someone else) can come up with the code then I can tweak my own SLAPU's/CZGF's etc. to try to get them to behave. In his own coding he has managed to get his own KOS-M stations closer to the sun, but still much more distant than SLAPU's would be (which makes me wonder if it is even possible!).

Hathor for AppleMac

The script.js in the config folder is illegible for an AppleMac

The Hathor is quite beautiful, Killer Wolf has done us a major favour by publishing this. And not only is the station elegant - just try the docking experience!

Try this instead:
Reference: Hathor Trade Station

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 11:08 pm

Hathor for AppleMac

The script.js in the config folder is illegible for an AppleMac

The Hathor is quite beautiful, Killer Wolf has done us a major favour by publishing this. And not only is the station elegant - just try the docking experience!

Try this instead:

Code: Select all

this.name           = "Hathor-Nephthys-populator.js"; 
this.author         = "Thargoid"; 
this.copyright      = "For Killer Wolf to use as he pleases."; 
this.version        = "1.0"; 
this.description    = "Script to add Hathor and Nephthys stations to systems." 

this.scrambledPseudoRandom = function(salt) // Ahruman's random number generator.
	{
    // Convert from float in [0..1) with 24 bits of precision to integer.
    var n = Math.floor(system.pseudoRandomNumber * 16777216.0);
   
    // Add salt to enable generation of different sequences.
    n += salt;
   
    // Scramble with basic LCG psuedo-random number generator.
    n = (214013 * n + 2531011) & 0xFFFFFFFF;
    n = (214013 * n + 2531011) & 0xFFFFFFFF;
    n = (214013 * n + 2531011) & 0xFFFFFFFF;
   
    // Convert from (effectively) 32-bit signed integer to float in [0..1).
    return n / 4294967296.0 + 0.5;
	};

this.shipWillLaunchFromStation = function()
	{ // to make sure stations are present on the first launch after save-game load.
	this.shipWillExitWitchspace();
	delete this.shipWillLaunchFromStation;
	}

this.shipWillExitWitchspace = function() 
	{ 
	if(system.isInterstellarSpace || system.sun.isGoingNova || system.sun.hasGoneNova)
		{ return; } // block them from appearing in interstellar space or nova systems.
		
	if (this.scrambledPseudoRandom(14) < 0.5 && system.countShipsWithRole("KW_nephthys") === 0 && system.techLevel > 5 && system.government > 1 && system.mainStation && system.mainPlanet)
		{ 
		this.nephthysOffset = system.mainPlanet.position.subtract(system.mainStation.position);
		this.nephthysPosition = system.mainStation.position.add(this.nephthysOffset.multiply(2)); // put the Nephthys directly on the other side of the planet from the main station.
		this.nephthys = system.addShips("KW_nephthys", 1, this.nephthysPosition); // this.nephthys is an array of added ships - in this case a single cell array
		this.turnStation(this.nephthys[0], system.mainPlanet);
		log(this.name, "Nephthys added.");
		}
    

	if (this.scrambledPseudoRandom(18) < 0.5 && system.countShipsWithRole("KW_hathor") === 0 && system.techLevel > 7 && system.government > 2)
		{ 
		this.hathor = system.addShipsToRoute("KW_hathor", 1, 0.7, "ws"); // this.hathor is an array of added ships - in this case a single cell array
		this.turnStation(this.hathor[0], system.sun);
		log(this.name, "Hathor added.");
		}

	} 

this.turnStation = function(stationEntity, targetEntity)
	{
	if(!stationEntity.isValid || !targetEntity.isValid) { return; } 
	let stationVector = stationEntity.position.subtract(targetEntity.position).direction(); // unit vector pointing away from the sun
	let angle = stationEntity.heading.angleTo(stationVector); // angle between current heading and target heading
	let cross = stationEntity.heading.cross(stationVector).direction(); // set the plane where we should rotate in
	stationEntity.orientation = stationEntity.orientation.rotate(cross, -angle); // re-orient the station away from the sun
	}	

Reference: Hathor Trade Station

I didn't touch or even have a deeper look at Hathor yet. Current status for the stations:

Nuit:
adding escape crafts and some effects

Nephthys:
docking fee and, inspired by your Taranis Corporation HQ questions, individual shipyard for luxurious ships

Sothis:
started an overhaul of the OXP

An individual market is kind of simple if you just hard code everything but requires some test-routines when it should be more generic and flexible.

montana05 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 11:54 pm

I didn't touch or even have a deeper look at Hathor yet. Current status for the stations:

Nuit:
adding escape crafts and some effects

Nephthys:
docking fee and, inspired by your Taranis Corporation HQ questions, individual shipyard for luxurious ships

Sothis:
started an overhaul of the OXP

An individual market is kind of simple if you just hard code everything but requires some test-routines when it should be more generic and flexible.

Here is Spara's SothisTC tweaked so it also works on the AppleMac: SothisTC OXZ. As said before, it overrides Sothis.oxp. Sothis is now only found in Corporates, has a slightly different market, is dockable at, is on the far side of the planet, and has goodies for NewCargoes users (NC clashes with Smugglers due to use of import licenses and banned trade goods).



Having been mucking about with Sothis, the one thing which I feel that it really needs is an enhanced BGS docking (just as Nuit, Nephtys & Hathor have). Despite your helpful suggestions, I doubt that I will do anything with it before you do - I prefer to use Spara's SothisTC override. When you do publish your version, do feel free to override my own when you upload to the wiki, unless you feel there is some reason for preserving it.

These stations look superb. I merely wish that they were more different internally too (like Galactic Navy stations are). I do feel that properly achieving this would be a major work. But your shipyard should help!

I find tweaking can be a nightmare. My tweaked version from Spara's Masterclass last year stopped working shortly afterwards. I've only just found out why, and fixed it. This happens to me far too frequently. It's always warnings like "Unexpected character { at line 1" which seems like gobbledegook to me! This one I fixed, though (Apple's text editor was sticking in invisible gibberish, just as the windows equivalent does).

For me, the Sothis station represents the low-end tech level station, with its simple flat panels and slightly smaller size than the other "big" stations.
It appears in TL roughly about 6-10, not in Rich Industrial or Poor Agricultural systems, and requires "safer" governments (Confed., Democracy, or Corp. State).
This gives Sothis a place where it's less likely to be "contending" with other stations.

I put it in this role because early on, I had few other stations besides Superhub which was the high-end place for giant ships to dock.

montana05 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 1:11 pm

Included in the next release of Nuit Space Station, docked liners and bulk haulers. I still need to run some tests to see if I missed anything.

:-O
that looks fricking amazing, just like how i imagined it.

Killer Wolf wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 8:27 am

that looks fricking amazing, just like how i imagined it.

So is the docking experience. I don't know whether the BGS docking tunnel is yours or Montana's, but it is superb!

Edited to add: not only would it be super to be able to allow these big ships to dock and launch from Nuit and equivalents, ...but it would also be fun to be able to tour the liners while they are docked (or while in flight too!). If one could superimpose a cocktail bar on (say) a right-view from inside the liner, we could sit nibbling our crisps dipped in Weeviloid relish and watch the Ooniverse go past! And would it possible to do something similar for the counter-rotating rings on Nuit or the horticultural domes?

superimpose mock up



Yeah that would be nice

Very nice! Could you create an alternative splashscreen for me? That bar scene with this screenshot as the backdrop?