Oolite Bulletins

Smivs wrote:

The upgrade from reserve to auxiliary costs 40 000Cr, most of which is labour costs, so in theory removal could be quite expensive as well. I'll leave it to you to decide if removing them should cost money, or whether you get any refund for the removed tanks.

Thanks, Smivs. Tweaking the save file seems easiest. I'll deduct 20k from my account while I'm at it -- along with the secondhand value of the tanks, that should cover the cost of removal. I haven't had the Aux Tank long, so it must be in pretty good nick. (Somebody's getting a bargain there!)

If you want your equipment included in the next version of sell_equipment.oxp, just drop me a line.

Alternatively, you could include a selling option in your own OXP. There are some OXPs which do that as well.

Out of curiosity, is there a particular reason why one cannot transfer fuel the other way? Someone (I) might like to be able to fill the tank by skimming just as main tanks are refilled.

Rese249er wrote:

Out of curiosity, is there a particular reason why one cannot transfer fuel the other way? Someone (I) might like to be able to fill the tank by skimming just as main tanks are refilled.

There is no technical reason why not. The handwavium is that the tanks are pressurised, hence the need for the main tank to be suitably empty before the ExtraFuelTanks are used to refill the main tank.
Having said that it seems like it might be a useful feature to add sometime, so maybe I'll have a look at that when I get a moment. Thanks for the suggestion.

Smivs wrote:

Having said that it seems like it might be a useful feature to add sometime, so maybe I'll have a look at that when I get a moment. Thanks for the suggestion.

Getting an option to refill the aux-tank cause I spoke up? Believe me, it's my pleasure!

Just a reminder that there have been a few bugfixes to this OXP. Current version is v1.4.1, so users might want to check they have the current version installed.

With this being able to unbalance the game and give the player an advantage over NPC's that they don't don't have, my preference is that to fill it it should cost. To be able to fill free would give another advantage to the player.

Redownload after a f-up on my comp, revisiting the "skim-refill" question. Any word on that?

Rese249er wrote:

...revisiting the "skim-refill" question. Any word on that?

No.
As I explained previously, at stations the tanks are pressure-filled with liquified quirium gas and due to the size of the equipment required to liquify and pressurise the quirium, and safety considerations, there is no ship-mountable mechanism available to perform this function.

Ah. K. FYI, in 1.77, larger-mass ships like my own would actually refuel for cheaper by refilling the tank, launching, transferring, redocking, and repeating...

Rese249er wrote:

Ah. K. FYI, in 1.77, larger-mass ships like my own would actually refuel for cheaper by refilling the tank, launching, transferring, redocking, and repeating...

Yes, that is possibly the case However, launching and re-docking takes time, and in business terms 'Time is Money', so I question whether this is really a viable option.
You might also be aware that in 1.77 equipment can take up cargo space. With space available in the ship, it might be that the Beinbaagh Fabrication and Ductwork Co will be able to offer a ship-mountable quirium compressor which will allow the tanks to be refilled when sunskimming, but as mentioned this equipment is quite large.

Quirium is very dangerous stuff - there would be risks involved with onboard compression, I'd think.

Beinbaagh Fabrication and Ductwork Co
Internal memo

Feasability study into designing and marketing a ship-mountable quirium compression system.

The studies so far carried out suggest that the equipment, including all necessary safety systems, even when optimised in terms of size, would require a minimum of 25TC cargo space for installation for a standard ship. Large vessels with proportionately sized main tanks would require a larger unit.

In terms of cost, the basic (small/25TC) unit is likely to retail in the 50 000 to 75 000Cr range. Market research suggests that this price is untenable and would not be considered value for money by most potential customers.

The studies assume triple-redundancy for the safety systems is required as an absolute minimum. However preliminary experiments and tests suggest that even with this high level of safety, in a compromised environment such as a moving (sunskimming) ship the failure rate is likely to run at around 5%.
To avoid any confusion this means that the unit would fail catastrophically leading to the total destruction of the ship once in every twenty attempts to use it.

Our conclusions at this time are therefore that in-flight compression is not a viable process.
The concept should be reviewed from time to time to consider whether changing or new technologies could be applied to improve the likelihood of this equipment becoming available.

Beinbaagh Fabrication wrote:

Beinbaagh Fabrication and Ductwork Co
Internal memo

Feasability study into designing and marketing a ship-mountable quirium compression system.

The studies so far carried out suggest that the equipment, including all necessary safety systems, even when optimised in terms of size, would require a minimum of 25TC cargo space for installation for a standard ship. Large vessels with proportionately sized main tanks would require a larger unit.

In terms of cost, the basic (small/25TC) unit is likely to retail in the 50 000 to 75 000Cr range. Market research suggests that this price is untenable and would not be considered value for money by most potential customers.

The studies assume triple-redundancy for the safety systems is required as an absolute minimum. However preliminary experiments and tests suggest that even with this high level of safety, in a compromised environment such as a moving (sunskimming) ship the failure rate is likely to run at around 5%.
To avoid any confusion this means that the unit would fail catastrophically leading to the total destruction of the ship once in every twenty attempts to use it.

Our conclusions at this time are therefore that in-flight compression is not a viable process.
The concept should be reviewed from time to time to consider whether changing or new technologies could be applied to improve the likelihood of this equipment becoming available.

Freelance test pilot stating willingness to provide test piloting for such a device, forgoing any compensation in favor of retaining equipment.

Rese249er wrote:

Freelance test pilot stating willingness to provide test piloting for such a device, forgoing any compensation in favor of retaining equipment.

Great! We'll be in touch. (Make sure we have your next-of-kin's contact details)