Oolite Bulletins

I do like the idea they've got for docking, though:

FD wrote:

Ships land on pads within the yellow marks (shown here is one of the largest dock-able ships in the game – more details soon!). …

What the team liked about this solution was how grounded and mechanical it felt; there’s nothing fictional about how it operates and for that reason adds a level of believability to a world that is firmly rooted in a science-fiction setting. Whilst this is still only proof of concept and will be subject to a lot more refinement before the game is released, being able to look out the window of your cockpit and see exactly how the functions of a station operate will add a layer of depth to the game that will make the Elite galaxy a much more believable place.

Cody wrote:

Not to my taste, that's for sure!

I like it. I like the way they keep a common design theme for the different factions, and I think this one fits in.

The docking pad is very reminiscent of Space: 1999 and the Eagle launch pads on Moonbase Alpha.

(Oh, and I took a look on the wiki for their new Anaconda design... "No sir, I don't like it." It just doesn't feel big enough )

Ranthe wrote:

(Oh, and I took a look on the wiki for their new Anaconda design... "No sir, I don't like it." It just doesn't feel big enough )

The Anaconda isn't actually that BIG, scalewise. It's only ten metres or so longer than the Cobra 3 is wide...

I'd have to check to be sure...

Ranthe wrote:

The docking pad is very reminiscent of Space: 1999 and the Eagle launch pads on Moonbase Alpha

Actually, the docking animation is very similar to the planetary landings in the Frontier games when you landed on a planet with no atmosphere and was thus taken into an underground bay.

Just wanted to mention that Episode 11 of Lave Radio is now live at http://www.laveradio.com

Notable because yours truly is a guest presenter and managed to mention Oolite at least three times...

Selezen wrote:

Just wanted to mention that Episode 11 of Lave Radio is now live at http://www.laveradio.com

Notable because yours truly is a guest presenter and managed to mention Oolite at least three times...

Good man. Hopefully listen in the car tomorrow morning on the way to work.

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

Good man. Hopefully listen in the car tomorrow morning on the way to work.

Aren't you driving to work by train (and writing your novel while doing so)?

Commander McLane wrote:

drew wrote:

Good man. Hopefully listen in the car tomorrow morning on the way to work.

Aren't you driving to work by train (and writing your novel while doing so)?

Monday to Thursday I take the train, Friday's I currently have to go to a satellite office by car - no writing other than my blog in the lunch hour.

Cheers,

Drew.

Selezen wrote:

Ranthe wrote:

(Oh, and I took a look on the wiki for their new Anaconda design... "No sir, I don't like it." It just doesn't feel big enough )

The Anaconda isn't actually that BIG, scalewise. It's only ten metres or so longer than the Cobra 3 is wide...

Well, the Elite one isn't that big. The Elite Dangerous one, on the other hand ...

... is huge. It looks about the length of an Elite Coriolis, since the Sidewinder is still about the same size as in Elite.

It'll be interesting to see how it works in a fight. The Frontier (or Oolite, for that matter) approach of treating them like very big fighters doesn't seem plausible, but point defence weapons are much trickier to make fun for everyone.

cim wrote:

The Elite Dangerous [anaconda], on the other hand is huge. It looks about the length of an Elite Coriolis, since the Sidewinder is still about the same size as in Elite.

The Sidewinder in Elite is 35/15/65 ft (10.6/4.5/19.8 m)

The new Sidewinder is about the same (15/5/21 m). The big ships in relation to a Coriolis (which is 1km in diameter) look like this (with an Elizabeth Tower thrown in for perspective):



Apologies for the roughness of the drawing and the use of mockups rather than accurate ship shapes. Coriolis is blue, docking bay (approx) is black, Big Ben tower is brown, Anaconda is green and Panther is yellow. All scales here depicted (apart from the docking bay, which is approximated) are accurate.

Sorry, but I have to refute your claim. The Anaconda is still a relatively small ship.

Selezen wrote:

The big ships in relation to a Coriolis (which is 1km in diameter)

Is it? I assumed that like every other object in Oolite it had been scaled up from feet to metres, so the Elite Coriolis would only be 1000 feet in diameter....interestingly, the Elite manual claims they're a kilometre wide. If so, then you should be able to fit a foot-scale Cobra III into the docking port sideways. Time to go back to the emulator and see how long it takes to cross the station from one side to the other, I think. (Does this mean that the Oolite Coriolis stations are around 40 times smaller than they should be, then?)

Hmm, checking my maths I do appear to have put one more foot/metre conversion in than I should have . With the clock tower for scale, the Anaconda looks around 125m long, 40m high, 60m across, which is around 300-400 times bigger than the Sidewinder, and around 15 times bigger (by volume) than the Elite Anaconda. I don't think that counts as "small"

cim wrote:

Selezen wrote:

The big ships in relation to a Coriolis (which is 1km in diameter)

Is it? I assumed that like every other object in Oolite it had been scaled up from feet to metres, so the Elite Coriolis would only be 1000 feet in diameter....interestingly, the Elite manual claims they're a kilometre wide. If so, then you should be able to fit a foot-scale Cobra III into the docking port sideways. Time to go back to the emulator and see how long it takes to cross the station from one side to the other, I think. (Does this mean that the Oolite Coriolis stations are around 40 times smaller than they should be, then?)

I do think that the stations in Oolite could be bigger in relation to the ships, but not so big as to allow a Cobra to dock sideways. On the other hand, increasing the dimensions more than threefold (foot to metre), would make them far too big in relation to the planets, which is visually very important, because we see the station next to the planet.

Thus I think that the current station size is a good compromise between the scale of ships (which is too big) and the scale of planets (which is too small). Naturally, stations are between those two scales and therefore have to compromise between the two opposing aberrations in scale. There is no way out of this trap. And this means, that while we can make small adjustments to their size (making them 1200m wide would work), a big change (making them 3300m wide) would break their relation to planet size.

Remember that in THIS thread we're talking about Elite Dangerous, not Oolite or even Elite. The scale issues have been given some attention, and metres are metres, not some cobbled variant thereof. Measurements are in metres for the most part, and my measurements are taken from a preview of the official ship specifications (which I neglected to mention before, sorry).

cim wrote:

(Does this mean that the Oolite Coriolis stations are around 40 times smaller than they should be, then?)

No, as far as I am aware, in Oolite the stations are the right scale compared to the ships. It's the measurements that are screwy all over the game (as we all know).

cim wrote:

Hmm, checking my maths I do appear to have put one more foot/metre conversion in than I should have . With the clock tower for scale, the Anaconda looks around 125m long, 40m high, 60m across, which is around 300-400 times bigger than the Sidewinder, and around 15 times bigger (by volume) than the Elite Anaconda. I don't think that counts as "small"

That all looks about right. Interestingly, the Frontier boffins HAVE scaled up the Annie compared to the Elite version - almost a 1 for 1 replacement for feet to metres. It's now canonically (in 3300) comparable in size to the Panther, which accurises the cargo capacity.

Commander McLane wrote:

I was thinking the same. The Anaconda looks about twice as long as Big Ben is high. And one thing I know for sure is that Big Ben is not 500 metres tall. (Wikipedia gives its height as 96 metres, which would make the Anaconda roughly 200 metres long.)

Yup, again, about right.

Selezen wrote:

which accurises the cargo capacity.

Accurises! Accurises?

I'm pulling my pledge, sir!

Cheers,

Drew.