Oolite Bulletins

hiran wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 9:28 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 9:22 pm

And I thought you said that you were going to sit quietly at the back munching on your crisps! What is this?!

Well, I ran out of chips.

Right. Well if you are suffering from chiplessness/crisplessness and desperately looking for something to do, please sneak a peek at this: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Trading

I wrote it with you in mind, and would appreciate some feed-back. Is it clear enough? Even if your English was less excellent that it actually is?

hiran wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 8:58 pm

ffutures wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 4:18 am

OK, since we went there with my last answer, let's have five SF works or settings in which humans have alien (or otherwise non-human but NOT robotic / android) sexual partners.

Would this one qualify?

Fred and Laliari certainly qualify from the human/alien sex point of view, and while it's never explicitly stated that they got married they do end up in a relationship on Earth long after the main events of the film are over and the other Thermians have left, so I think it's a fair assumption that they're a lot more than a one-night stand. I'll stretch a point and accept it, and amend the rules slightly to reflect this. Plus it's Galaxy Quest, which doesn't turn up here nearly often enough, by Grabthar's Hammer it must be avenged!

OK, that's two down, three to go, and I think you get a MBP for another cute couple.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 10:24 pm

Right. Well if you are suffering from chiplessness/crisplessness and desperately looking for something to do, please sneak a peek at this: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Trading

I wrote it with you in mind, and would appreciate some feed-back. Is it clear enough? Even if your English was less excellent that it actually is?

I checked that document, and hey it is good and useful read.
I only wish "TC" would be defined somewhere - it seems this is a granted for known abbreviation. I so far took it as 'tin can', some standardized container that can easily be loaded and unloaded in every ship. Interestingly then never break - even if a ship explodes they come out as a whole.
The tin can unit seems to be related to volume, as opposed to the weight unit kg. Therefore there is no formula available to calculate kg vs TC...

So far I know how to travel inside a star system. Find the station, go down onto a planet (well I crash but I get there...), go to the sun and scoop some fuel. When it comes to travel to another star I jump through witchspace/hyperspace or use another wormhole. But that pops me from one star system directly into the next star system. How do I travel interstellar space? How can I travel 3 LYrs into one direction from a given star? How do I find the direction? Would I adjust the ship to poin to the right location and then torus there? But while the star system is 3d, the charts to find the next star are 2D. How would I transform coordinates from one to the other?

Not so cute, but maybe John Cooper Clarke's poem "(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space" might count?

I fell in love with an alien being
Whose skin was jelly – whose teeth were green
She had the big bug eyes and the death-ray glare
Feet like water wings – purple hair
I was over the moon – I asked her back to my place
Then I married the monster – from outer space

Spock's parents (Sarek and Amanda Grayson) from Star Trek. Without this Vulcan/Human pairing one of the most iconic sci-fi characters of the television and movie era would not exist.

Disembodied wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 5:33 pm

Not so cute, but maybe John Cooper Clarke's poem "(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space" might count?

I fell in love with an alien being
Whose skin was jelly – whose teeth were green
She had the big bug eyes and the death-ray glare
Feet like water wings – purple hair
I was over the moon – I asked her back to my place
Then I married the monster – from outer space

Yes, I think that counts - don't think we've had a poetic answer before so have a MBP for that!

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 5:55 pm

Spock's parents (Sarek and Amanda Grayson) from Star Trek. Without this Vulcan/Human pairing one of the most iconic sci-fi characters of the television and movie era would not exist.

Yes - that and lots of other relationships in Star Trek canon; I think I'll give you an MBP for that since it's so iconic, plus she's a pretty good mum.

That makes four, just one to go!

Has this message, uhhh torus-jumped from another thread? ISTR seeing it in an OXP thread a day or so ago. Is the database (behind the phpBB) feeling a bit poorly?
Anyway ....

hiran wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 5:25 pm

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed May 05, 2021 10:24 pm

Right. Well if you are suffering from chiplessness/crisplessness and desperately looking for something to do, please sneak a peek at this: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Trading

I wrote it with you in mind, and would appreciate some feed-back. Is it clear enough? Even if your English was less excellent that it actually is?

I checked that document, and hey it is good and useful read.
I only wish "TC" would be defined somewhere - it seems this is a granted for known abbreviation. I so far took it as 'tin can', some standardized container that can easily be loaded and unloaded in every ship. Interestingly then never break - even if a ship explodes they come out as a whole.
The tin can unit seems to be related to volume, as opposed to the weight unit kg. Therefore there is no formula available to calculate kg vs TC...

So far I know how to travel inside a star system. Find the station, go down onto a planet (well I crash but I get there...), go to the sun and scoop some fuel. When it comes to travel to another star I jump through witchspace/hyperspace or use another wormhole. But that pops me from one star system directly into the next star system. How do I travel interstellar space? How can I travel 3 LYrs into one direction from a given star? How do I find the direction? Would I adjust the ship to poin to the right location and then torus there? But while the star system is 3d, the charts to find the next star are 2D. How would I transform coordinates from one to the other?

The last time I looked, a TC was a "Tonne Canister" or "Tonne Container". I've never seen it written down (or never remembered it), but it always struck me as a conscious or unconscious play to the economics of CJ Cherreh's "Chanur" and "Union" science fiction universe, where ships loaded/ unloaded standardised containers (I think she used the term "canisters", but I'd have to go back and check).
hiran's issues with the gameplay ... aren't these issues covered in the Friendly Manuals? If I had to write it, I'd analogise that we have several sectors of a galactic disc, which is considerably thicker than a stellar system, but thin enough that the "distance from disc axis" measure is negligible. I'd have to look up numbers, but the Milky Way disc has an approximately 100:1 width:thickness ratio - it's thinner than a vinyl disc, and more comparable to a CD/ DVD disc. OK, that doesn't work so well with the game's actual numbers- the disc of the Milky way is still on the order of 100 light years thick - but it's a mental model. Maybe you could explain it as "sheets" of stars (with habitable systems) separated from each other by the vasty deep, or sheets of molecular cloud ("The Coalsack" of 'Mote in God's Eye', drawn bigger). If it needed an explanation.

Isn't there an OXP that does the "you've got to align your flight path to the direction to your target" feature?

Can someone with Admin tools move this back to the appropriate thread?

Disembodied wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 5:33 pm

Not so cute, but maybe John Cooper Clarke's poem "(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space" might count?

I fell in love with an alien being
Whose skin was jelly – whose teeth were green
She had the big bug eyes and the death-ray glare
Feet like water wings – purple hair
I was over the moon – I asked her back to my place
Then I married the monster – from outer space

"Speaking as an outsider, what do you think of the human race?"
A line I've always wished someone would try on me.

Ka D'argo (luxan) and Lolaan (peacekeeper) in Farscape. Alternatively Aeryn Sun (peacekeeper) and John Crichton (human) (although there is a hint that peacekeepers were recruited some millennia back from Earth).

<scratches head> Something's gone a bit haywire with a couple of hiran's posts. I'll attempt to sort it out, but no guarantees!

Cody wrote: ↑Fri May 07, 2021 12:05 am

I'll attempt to sort it out, but no guarantees!

<groans> No luck, probably 'cos I only have Mod permissions in this section, and not the target section (don't ask).
Perhaps the Admiral will be able to sort it out in the morning. Or then again, perhaps not!

Cody wrote: ↑Fri May 07, 2021 12:05 am

<scratches head> Something's gone a bit haywire with a couple of hiran's posts. I'll attempt to sort it out, but no guarantees!

Hmmm. Maybe I have similar luck with this phpBB forum as I have with running Oolite?

Commander_X wrote: ↑Thu May 06, 2021 10:44 pm

Ka D'argo (luxan) and Lolaan (peacekeeper) in Farscape. Alternatively Aeryn Sun (peacekeeper) and John Crichton (human) (although there is a hint that peacekeepers were recruited some millennia back from Earth).

I'll go with Aeryn Sun (peacekeeper) and John Crichton (human) because I did say human as one of the partners. Even if the Peacekeepers started out as humans, millennia of divergent evolution say they aren't any more. I think they qualify as a cute couple so you get the MBP too - I think this is the first time I've given an MBP to every answer!

Over to Commander_X!

Let's have 5 examples of sci-fi "terrorist-like" attacks, regardless if they succeeded or not, i.e. defused, or abandoned.
You know the drill, one per "universe"/author, books, games, movies, series, or other media.

12 monkeys, movie...