The ship concept topic

[DaddyHoggy]

As somebody's whose first and only attempt at an Oolite ship, a ship, which, because it was based on a comic creation, and was piloted by a small boy, really did fit inside a cargo pod (definitely not what I had in mind!)

[Shipbuilder]

I was thinking of something on the lines of a ship which when damaged could separate in to two leaving a derelict section floating in space while the section remaining could continue to fight, flee etc.

[Smivs]

I was thinking of something on the lines of a ship which when damaged could separate in to two leaving a derelict section floating in space while the section remaining could continue to fight, flee etc.

Sounds a bit like the Disco Volante from the james Bond film Thunderball.
What you suggest is certainly do-able in Oolite one way or another, and is actually something I have thought about in the past. Just haven't found a use for it yet.

[CommonSenseOTB]

I was thinking of something on the lines of a ship which when damaged could separate in to two leaving a derelict section floating in space while the section remaining could continue to fight, flee etc.

Sounds a bit like the Disco Volante from the james Bond film Thunderball.
What you suggest is certainly do-able in Oolite one way or another, and is actually something I have thought about in the past. Just haven't found a use for it yet.

Sounds like the oxp ship "velocity".

[cim]

I was thinking of something on the lines of a ship which when damaged could separate in to two leaving a derelict section floating in space while the section remaining could continue to fight, flee etc.

There's the Lynx Bulk Carrier from [wiki]Bulk Haulers[/wiki] which does that sort of thing. (Being an unarmed trader, it just flees)

[Shipbuilder]

I was thinking about something on the basis of groups of pirates which would create ships using parts of their damaged crafts and also ships that they had captured in order to construct ships of their own.

Basically they would use the parts they come across to maintain their own fleet of ships. To that end this group of hybrid ships could, for example, consist of a battered Cobra Mk3 which has been modified by adding sections of other core ships.

An OXP consisting of a group of these ships could be produced (Especially if the 3D models for each were available to be adapted so that the hybrid ships would truly use parts of the various ships).

[Cholmondely]

As for concepts, I remember the last project I was hung up on was a mothership for the tiger-gang.

The concept was to be a carrier with a flat open landing deck on the upper deck (launching port obscured somehow to avoid popping into existence of launched ships, possibly by an overhanging bridge section),
The idea was to allow launching only forward and docking only from behind.

Spars and masts with flashy lights,
a holographic/neon pirate flag (which would now be possible with the new shader developments!)

A bit of a cross of the HW1 destroyer (taiidan) a wooden manofwar/frigate and a modern carrier.

The overall appearance should be a bit shoddy and cobbled together, they are just pirates after all.

I'd love to have it fire broadsides, but Oolite AI would not handle sidemounted subentity lasers well at the time. Any change in that?

Maestro, Alnivel and I are trying to make sense of your Hotrods OXP.

His analysis is as follows:

My short summary of the ships in the HotRods OXP and some thoughts about them

"Tigers" gang
Krait - 2 variants, with and without ECM
Mamba - 2 variants, the small difference is only in the max speed
Python - 2 variants, one for boss role, but they have no significant difference
Gecko - 2 variants, essentially hard and easy versions

This is the only gang that has more than one type of ship, so I'm assume that other gangs should follow this approach - several types of small and fast ships and one slow cargo ship. However, the question is, maybe there are other viable options for pirate packs?
I also doubt such a slow ship is suitable for the role of a boss. Is it bosses as a game term or as a significant figure in the gang? Of course, a Python is a serious opponent, but it seems that speed is held in high esteem in these guys, so maybe it makes sense to put another faster ship in this role?

"Jagged" gang
Sidewinder - 1 variant
"Bloods" gang
Krait - 1 variant - they don't seem to be very creative - it's just a Krait dyed all red.
"Grims" gang
Cobra Mk.I - npc and player variants
"Flames" gang
Krait - 1 variant

"Hoods" gang?
Spitting Corba - seems to be not based on any standard ship or other OXP ship - 2 variants with different textures
The name of the ships is "Hood-SpittingCobra", which seems rather the name of the ship model than the name of a gang. I think, hoods (and spitting) refers to cobras (animals, not ships) and their notable ability to expand their neck ribs and muscles. However, if there are a few more ships that are fit for the theme, it can be presented as a gang that only uses cobras (ships this time).


If we go by Cholmondely's concept about large and small gangs, how many gangs do we need? These 5 (or 6) gangs are only enough for the role of large gangs, but there will be more small ones. Can we use the standard texture + one or more decal sets to generate small gangs? I only have a superficial knowledge of how to work with shaders, but I think I can at least try to implement it. Or maybe someone who excels in this technique can help?


Currently I'm working on new AIs for gangs and something like a player reputation system - at low reputation, gangs prefer to rob the player before other npc's or generally attack as they see them. Do you have any other ideas of how reputation might show itself?
I have an old idea that if a player earns a some amount of money in a short period of time, there may be people who will offer to share their profit for "protection". Non-cooperation can be another reason for them to dislike the player.


There are also a bunch of ships in this OXP that don't really fit into the concept of gangs on their own, a result of the OXP's forerunners being sets of racing ships. But I think we should try to keep the racing theme of OXP, although this is not the first thing to take on.

"AGR"
Adder - 12 variants in different colors
They don't look like a gang to me, they seem just plain race ships without distinctive differences. Maybe they belong to racers who don't belong to any of the gangs and aren't famous enough to have their own designs? But why are they in the same style then?
As one of the justifications, they can be used to participate in competitions where participants are required to be in the same ships / ships of the same class and be rented (or bought for one-time use), if a participant doesn't own one. They also can be, due to the dangerous nature of the type of some competitions, one-time use ships.

Famous Number Five, Krait XR1 Turbo, Grimcobra
These are the ships that have the player variants - could they be a reward for winning a competition? "Famous" suggests that such a ship may belong to someone famous, have a history behind them, or be just part of some limited and iconic series of ships.

There are a couple more ships that I didn't mention, but they all seem more related to racing than to gangs.

AH, can you remember anything relevant?

And, heh!, what about this (KW's Scorpius):

[toudi_sk]

Hello everyone, I haven't been here for a few years (I played version 1.7 maybe 7y back) and I'm rediscovering with "a new PC" the forum and the game itself.

Meanwhile, a friend finished a sci-fi novel Starship Vltava and even published it as a book, unfortunately not yet in English.

A short summary of the plot of the book, which takes place in an alternate reality:

"In 1996, the Izhevsk Space Engineering Plant fulfilled the five-year economic plan by 125%, which means that instead of four heavy cruisers of the Krasnoarmeyets class, five were built in Earth orbit. The feverish armament, with which the UN states faced the threat of alien invasion, completely exhausted the personnel reserves of the Warsaw Pact, except perhaps in Czechoslovakia a few people with the necessary qualifications could still be found.
Thus, on May 1, 1997, the Czechoslovak warship Vltava left Earth's orbit and headed into deep space on a standard mission testing the capabilities and functionality of the new vessel.

From that moment on, no human ever saw him again..."

Review:

A huge surprise for me. A space opera that boldly compares to foreign works and for our people has an additional bonus in the form of Czechoslovak realities that you simply cannot find in Anglo-Saxon literature. A story where something is always happening, non-violent humor and a kind of hunch that everything will turn out well in the end throughout the reading, this is exactly the kind of reading that makes you relax. I would compare the world of the novel closest to the world of Mass Effect, but it is definitely not a copy. I really enjoyed this book and I'm kind of sad that there isn't a sequel yet.

The other friend modeled the starship in the Blender program according to the book description and the author's comments

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/vltava- ... 5_p35xUHc0

All hyperspace, radar and gravimetric antennas are folded into the fuselage during acceleration and extend only during unpowered inertial flight.

I even discovered my Sketchup image on the Elite Wiki page, where I put all the ships and stations from Oolite to one scale, and there is also a Vltava cylinder, which is 270m long, so maybe it could be used as a ship for Oolite

https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Ship_size_chart

Over time I might make a few more suggestions of spaceships I'd like in Oolite.

[Cholmondely]

Over time I might make a few more suggestions of spaceships I'd like in Oolite.

There are lots of unfinished ones (some of which need only a little touch of the brush). See here: Brilliant but Broken and here: https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Guide ... isted_OXPs (in ships and in collections).


Edited to add:
There are also some inspiring stations. See Hathor, Colonization, Amaranth's Refinery & gsagostinho's efforts.

[Cholmondely]

... If you're new to Oolite's internal workings you should know that sizes and distances are totally messed up. The two short rules of thumb are: (1) ships are very much oversized, and everything else is very much undersized; and (2) none of the sizes makes sense in relation to human size.

...

The scales of sizes in Oolite are bent deliberately because of playability. Ships are much bigger than it would seem sensible in order to allow the player to see them (and hit them). Realistically sized ships would practically always be just single pixels on your screen. Almost impossible to see any detail, almost impossible to hit. A waste of beautiful models. Planets and distances between bodies in space, on the other hand, are much, much smaller than it would seem sensible in order to allow the player to ever interact with anybody. A realistically sized space would be so huge and empty that you would spend most of your time completely on your own on very boring journeys. Both would make for terrible gameplay. Thus the lack of realism is the price we have to pay for making Oolite a playable game in the first place.

Just reposting this as it seems to me a succinct synopsis of the arguments for the scale problem in Oolite.



Refefence: Realism