Oolite Bulletins

must admit i can't understand how "handwavium" Torus power is not acceptable but some kinda hypnotic trance is. would Galcop really allow huge ships to be powered by people in a trance? if it's like other equipment, what if we have a breakage factor and you end up not being able to turn it off?

Because space is absolutely enormous? Because if this was real (rather than just a game (phew!)) then the chances of encountering another ship other than Witchpoint and station aegis (where TAF cuts out anyway due to presence of other ships) would be staggeringly tiny, whereas pointing a spaceship at a planet and then accelerating up to 32x the normal speed of your already sub-luminal ship and hoping/expecting it cuts out before you make a very large crater on the surface of said planet strikes me as a little odd.

In the game - we're talking about a choice between mechanisms that cut out the "dull" bits between Witchpoint and Station Aegis.

So:

Torus drive: player only, accelerates ship to utterly ridiculous speeds, costs no fuel, can be used to get away from NPCs that should be able to catch you and for you to catch ships that should be able to get away. Proposed solution, give NPCs a "Spaceballs"-like "Ludicrous Speed" engine too to "balance it out". Issues: Then have to fiddle with all the mass locking code because NPCs will now be able to mass lock each other with their Torus drives too - so will also need to fiddle with all the AI codes too to cope with this new issue (for it to work well/properly). Escorts will still need lots of handwavium to explain how they can Torus with you and not mass lock, lest you completely negate the point of having escorts as you must plod along without using the Torus drive...

TAF: The game runs faster for everybody and everything. No Torus drive mass locking issues because there is no Torus drive. Issues: Immersion breaker (for some) - feels like a fast forward on a video playback etc... (but a player only super-fast drive is ok...): Suggestion - make it reflect <shudders> Frontier canon - StarDreamer mode - trancelike state - linked to alert status. Potential Issue: Unknown effect on gameplay - slower player ships are caught by faster NPCs may become "annoying" (too much realism for some?). However, this will also be true for the solution for where NPCs are given Torus drives too - since its a 32x factor increase on native max speed of ship then fast NPCs on Torus drive will catch slow Player ships on Torus drive... (although it will have a smaller opportunity to do so given how little time it takes to reach Station Aegis - compared to the TAF solution)

Obviously I am anti-Torus because I don't like player only kit - I supported the E-bomb ban. I'm pro-Yaw not because it gives the player and advantage but because I like the concept that in space there isn't any difference between pitch and yaw - I think if they could be programmed NPCs should have yaw too (and side mounted lasers).

TAF is a mechanism that cuts out the dull bits the same as the Torus drive but isn't player centric - at the moment - the advice to any noob who complains about masslocking is to get out of the space lane and Torus to the station - now that's dull... You could TAF inside the spacelane - it would cut out when it encountered a ship, but if there was no alert you could immediately initiate it again - having it cut out when finally something targeted/attacked you. You could live in the spacelane - you could live inside the thing the game created for you to enrich the Ooniverse, but every player avoids so they can use the Torus drive to miss out the "dull bits" - with TAF you live in the corridor betwixt witchpoint and planet like every other trader, like you're nothing special, like you don't have a magic go-faster drive that you can only use if you're outside the spacelane, needing to avoid all that life Giles went to the effort of creating in the first place...

I loved Elite, but Oolite != Elite, it has an opportunity to finally break some of the old 8-bit player-centric hang-ups.

Killer Wolf wrote:

must admit i can't understand how "handwavium" Torus power is not acceptable but some kinda hypnotic trance is. would Galcop really allow huge ships to be powered by people in a trance? if it's like other equipment, what if we have a breakage factor and you end up not being able to turn it off?

The problem is that giving every ship a torus drive like the player currently has would pretty much break the game, I think. There would be huge big masslock jams all over the place. Time acceleration allows all ships to move within a normal range of speeds, without boring the player to death. We can have escorts, and escort missions, without getting masslocked all the time, because "masslocking" won't exist.

As long as players can turn the TAF on and off whenever they want to, I think it sounds like a great idea. No more sitting waiting to overhaul some slowcoach, so you can get out of masslock and hit "j" again! If he's harmless, just push the TAF back up and slide on by (or let him slide on by if he's faster than you). As long as the NPCs are capable of killing you reliably if you're daft enough to try to fight them using time acceleration, it sounds great.

My objection is only to the flavour of the handwavium. The Stardreamer trance seems like a sort of zombie switch. I'd prefer, in my own imagination, to believe instead that time was running at a slower speed inside my ship (as opposed to it running at normal speed, with only my perception of it being altered).

Edit: pretty much what DH said, there ... just quickly point out that being caught by faster NPCs would only be annoying if – like the current masslock system – you couldn't use the TAF while there were other ships on the scanner. If you can (having checked first, if you're sensible, to make sure the faster ship isn't hostile), then no problem.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Escorts will still need lots of handwavium to explain how they can Torus with you and not mass lock, lest you completely negate the point of having escorts as you must plod along without using the Torus drive...

Handwavium already provided in Replay ol' boy...

'Sync your...' he paused again, the familiar word not immediately being recalled, 'Torus drive with me. Let's get station-side.'

<handwavium>I envisaged a way of ships syncing or aligning their gravitic hyperspeed field inducers to allow them to combine their drives and coast together. Each linked series of ships would need to sync to each other and stay in close proximity for it to work...</handwavium>

Cheers,

Drew.

As long as players can turn the TAF on and off whenever they want to, I think it sounds like a great idea. No more sitting waiting to overhaul some slowcoach, so you can get out of masslock and hit "j" again! If he's harmless, just push the TAF back up and slide on by (or let him slide on by if he's faster than you). As long as the NPCs are capable of killing you reliably if you're daft enough to try to fight them using time acceleration, it sounds great.

I agree with you!

Disembodied wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

must admit i can't understand how "handwavium" Torus power is not acceptable but some kinda hypnotic trance is. would Galcop really allow huge ships to be powered by people in a trance? if it's like other equipment, what if we have a breakage factor and you end up not being able to turn it off?

The problem is that giving every ship a torus drive like the player currently has would pretty much break the game, I think. There would be huge big masslock jams all over the place. Time acceleration allows all ships to move within a normal range of speeds, without boring the player to death. We can have escorts, and escort missions, without getting masslocked all the time, because "masslocking" won't exist.

As long as players can turn the TAF on and off whenever they want to, I think it sounds like a great idea. No more sitting waiting to overhaul some slowcoach, so you can get out of masslock and hit "j" again! If he's harmless, just push the TAF back up and slide on by (or let him slide on by if he's faster than you). As long as the NPCs are capable of killing you reliably if you're daft enough to try to fight them using time acceleration, it sounds great.

My objection is only to the flavour of the handwavium. The Stardreamer trance seems like a sort of zombie switch. I'd prefer, in my own imagination, to believe instead that time was running at a slower speed inside my ship (as opposed to it running at normal speed, with only my perception of it being altered).

Edit: pretty much what DH said, there ... just quickly point out that being caught by faster NPCs would only be annoying if – like the current masslock system – you couldn't use the TAF while there were other ships on the scanner. If you can (having checked first, if you're sensible, to make sure the faster ship isn't hostile), then no problem.

As per you edit - which is what I think Ahruman proposed (complete with reduced movement sensitivity!) - which is why I said: "You could TAF inside the spacelane - it would cut out when it encountered a ship, but if there was no alert you could immediately initiate it again - having it cut out when finally something targeted/attacked you. You could live in the spacelane - you could live inside the thing the game created for you to enrich the Ooniverse,"

So I think we agree! Hooray!

Edit: I also wanted to say - I'm happy with no handwavium stardreamer explanation - I don't need one - but for potential future fiction and for those who might want/need one - I thought I'd offer that which already existed in Frontier.

I'll miss the ol' Torus drive, but I think the TAF is a more elegant solution. Using the Torus drive to avoid the space lane is all very well, but you're effectively 'going around' the game.

Cheers,

Drew.

I'm quite ambivalent towards removing the Torus drive. It was put into Elite for a reason, and replacing it may cause unpredictable results with game play. Anyway, I think I'm in favour of replacing it in the core game with something better different that is available to both player and NPC, but, since there seems to be some disagreement here, would it be possible to convert it to an OXP, making everyone happy. Those who want and those who don't can then choose.

Gimi wrote:

I'm quite ambivalent towards removing the Torus drive. It was put into Elite for a reason, and replacing it may cause unpredictable results with game play. Anyway, I think I'm in favour of replacing it in the core game with something better different that is available to both player and NPC, but, since there seems to be some disagreement here, would it be possible to convert it to an OXP, making everyone happy. Those who want and those who don't can then choose.

Max Ship speed would have to become writable from JS which currently it isn't...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Max Ship speed would have to become writable from JS which currently it isn't...

But it, or an alternative way of doing it, could be made accessible in Oolite 2.

Gimi wrote:

I'm quite ambivalent towards removing the Torus drive. It was put into Elite for a reason, and replacing it may cause unpredictable results with game play. Anyway, I think I'm in favour of replacing it in the core game with something better different that is available to both player and NPC, but, since there seems to be some disagreement here, would it be possible to convert it to an OXP, making everyone happy. Those who want and those who don't can then choose.

Hmmm ... I'm wary of too much choice. Better I think to make the decision and make a game that works with it, rather than trying to make something that can work in different ways. I agree that it needs playtesting, but I think the main reason the torus drive works as it does in Oolite is because it's the only way a speedup system could work in an 8-bit machine running a 32K game. It was an elegant game-mechanic for such a small game on such a small system (like having a split resolution between the main screen and the console) but it's not necessary any more.

If the TAF playtests well, then it's time to drop the player-only torus-and-masslock and go with something new.

Disembodied wrote:

Gimi wrote:

I'm quite ambivalent towards removing the Torus drive. It was put into Elite for a reason, and replacing it may cause unpredictable results with game play. Anyway, I think I'm in favour of replacing it in the core game with something better different that is available to both player and NPC, but, since there seems to be some disagreement here, would it be possible to convert it to an OXP, making everyone happy. Those who want and those who don't can then choose.

Hmmm ... I'm wary of too much choice. Better I think to make the decision and make a game that works with it, rather than trying to make something that can work in different ways. I agree that it needs playtesting, but I think the main reason the torus drive works as it does in Oolite is because it's the only way a speedup system could work in an 8-bit machine running a 32K game. It was an elegant game-mechanic for such a small game on such a small system (like having a split resolution between the main screen and the console) but it's not necessary any more.

If the TAF playtests well, then it's time to drop the player-only torus-and-masslock and go with something new.

Agree. This is too 'core' to be optional.

Cheers,

Drew.

Disembodied wrote:

Hmmm ... I'm wary of too much choice. Better I think to make the decision and make a game that works with it, rather than trying to make something that can work in different ways. I agree that it needs playtesting, but I think the main reason the torus drive works as it does in Oolite is because it's the only way a speedup system could work in an 8-bit machine running a 32K game. It was an elegant game-mechanic for such a small game on such a small system (like having a split resolution between the main screen and the console) but it's not necessary any more.

If the TAF playtests well, then it's time to drop the player-only torus-and-masslock and go with something new.

I'm going to leave my reservations on the back burner and wait for a playable version of Oolite 2 to test. I suspect my worries are unfounded. When it comes to "too much choice", I disagree. As long as it doesn't "break" the game, there is no such thing. On the other hand, the Torus drive could possibly "break" the game in Oolite 2. Who knows.

leaving the spacelane so you will get faster or safer to the station is just as easy with TAF as it is with torusdrive, so i don't see any difference between TAF and torusdrive in that regard.

Lone_Wolf wrote:

leaving the spacelane so you will get faster or safer to the station is just as easy with TAF as it is with torusdrive, so i don't see any difference between TAF and torusdrive in that regard.

Well the difference is that you HAVE TO leave the space lane to use your Torus drive successfully and without interruption.

With TAF you can leave the space lane if you want, but much more enjoyably, you can stay in it - it will be briefly interrupted by another ship, to give you a chance to make a real-time decision about what to do with it, but if you're happy/confident/reckless you whack it straight back up even while the ship(s) are still on the screen/scanner. You will be flying through that spacelane, teeming with life, choosing to accelerate time and return to real-time as you see fit...

"Oh... that looks interesting..." out of TAF, pass by an OXP ship you haven't seen for ages or indeed at all - happy, whack back up the TAF, the ship may stick with you, it may slide past, it may drift away, doesn't matter.

Just think, you'll actually see all those ships the populator selected at random from the vast array of OXP ships you've installed, rather than them being completely missed unless you happen to encounter them at the station or witchpoint beacon... (if you have just the Torus Drive)