Oolite Bulletins

Cody wrote:

Passenger ships/luxury yachts - there's something I don't like about them, which I can't quite put my finger on.
Something almost Jobsian about them, perhaps - or maybe I'm just grumpy today!

They look like a Russian Oligarch's private yacht. Maybe that's why.

Cody wrote:

Something almost Jobsian about them, perhaps - or maybe I'm just grumpy today!

Perhaps a bit of both?

I think they should have gone less for the luxury yacht look (too "obscenely rich boys toys") and more for the luxury passenger liner look..

Cody wrote:

Passenger ships/luxury yachts - there's something I don't like about them, which I can't quite put my finger on.

Let me take a guess: is it perhaps that they're just ugly?

Cody wrote:

Passenger ships/luxury yachts - there's something I don't like about them, which I can't quite put my finger on.
Something almost Jobsian about them, perhaps - or maybe I'm just grumpy today!

I think, for me, it's the wings: they're part of something which is just subtly wrong with a lot of the new ship designs, and I think it relates back to FD's "realistic" gimmick. These wings are not realistic: they serve no purpose. Even if we assume that eventually, planetary landings will be allowed, it's still not even vaguely realistic. They've made a big play out of "no artificial gravity", etc., which is all well and good, but then they blithely ignore the massive problems "realism" presents them with in regard to how the ships move and perform. Hyperspace jumping aside, without all manner of dodges to circumvent all sorts of laws of physics. there is no way that ships in E:D could possibly be driven by reaction engines, and taking these things anywhere near an atmosphere would be (again, without physics dodges) suicidal.

So we're left with a sort of half-hearted gesture towards reality, for no good gameplay reason, and wings'n'things stuck to ships for the same reason big chrome fins were added to cars in the 1950s: it Looks Cool. Why they didn't just go for magic reactionless drives to go with the magic hyperspace engines, so we could all have our dogfighty fun and not give a stuff about the physics, I don't know. Instead we've got this one blob of "Hey, kids, realism!" stuck on a confection of made-up fluff ...

Now that's grumpy!

Yep. The ridiculously small and therefore obviously useless wings have a lot to do with the ugliness.

Another problem for me is the giant dark parts. What are those supposed to be? They immediately remind me of windows on the panorama car of a train, or on a passenger ferry. So is that what they're supposed to be? Which would again be ridiculous. Who in their right mind would construct half the hull of their spaceship out of giant glass plates, where one tiny hole or scratch would automatically and immediately result in the complete loss of a considerable part of the hull?

Commander McLane wrote:

Yep. The ridiculously small and therefore obviously useless wings have a lot to do with the ugliness.

Why would small wings be useless? Once you consider that they are not used to generate lift in an atmosphere, they could just be control surfaces?

JazHaz wrote:

Why would small wings be useless? Once you consider that they are not used to generate lift in an atmosphere, they could just be control surfaces?

If these things are going to be atmosphere-capable, and need control surfaces, then why don't they need proper lift-generating wings, too? If they don't need lift-generating wings, because of magic engines, then why do they need somewhat random control surfaces? They look as if they'd be about as much use as control surfaces as a set of darts flights glued to the corners of a brick ...

The impression both of them are starting to give me as I keep looking at them is "luxury submarine". I can imagine them floating along just below the surface of some alien ocean, while through the giant windows the occupants watch the fish-analogues go past. The fins might help to keep it level, there.

As for what it's doing in space, well, it wouldn't be the first time.



On a separate topic from that newsletter, the trading interface looks to have a lot of information on it. I wonder if the subtleties to the economy are powerful enough to be interesting: will you get dedicated traders who spend more time in dock examining all the market prices than they do actually ferrying the cargo from place to place being able to make more money/hour than someone who shows up, grabs some vaguely industrial looking stuff, and jumps to the nearest agricultural system with about 30 seconds consideration?

On the one hand all that detail seems a bit wasted if "Robots to Sol; Luxuries to Barnard Star" or similar reliable and obvious trade routes can make you all the money you ever need, and while you could plot out a more profitable route, you're better off using that time to make three trade trips rather than one. On the other hand, it seems odd for the most successful traders not to actually do all that much trading. I think the main reason this ends up looking odd to me is that hyperspace is near-instant in E:D, while in FE2/FFE thinking for an hour before setting off on a multi-day jump and a multi-day haul in-system would seem entirely logical. It's going to be a tricky one to balance: the spreadsheet fans should do better than a "vague guess" sort of trader, but then if the game rewards people for not going into space something is wrong. What I'm hoping for - difficult as it would be to balance and implement - is that the system will be sufficiently learnable that an experienced intuitive trader could make decisions much quicker than the spreadsheet fan, and almost as profitable. So inexperienced intuitive < spreadsheet fan < experienced intuitive.

Still, looks potentially very exciting and able to make trading more of a career in its own right than as something you do to pay for the rest of the gameplay.

Disembodied wrote:

JazHaz wrote:

Why would small wings be useless? Once you consider that they are not used to generate lift in an atmosphere, they could just be control surfaces?

If these things are going to be atmosphere-capable, and need control surfaces, then why don't they need proper lift-generating wings, too? If they don't need lift-generating wings, because of magic engines, then why do they need somewhat random control surfaces? They look as if they'd be about as much use as control surfaces as a set of darts flights glued to the corners of a brick ...

Because they are lifting-body shapes - ie the curves of those liners is like a wing.

They aren't far away from the design of the HOTOL or Skylon spaceplanes. They have stubby wings too.

cim wrote:

Still, looks potentially very exciting and able to make trading more of a career in its own right than as something you do to pay for the rest of the gameplay.

Yes, if you must be relentlessly positive, their suggestions for trading do look interesting ... One thing which might help would be to add a bit more bargaining, especially in the fringier systems: even a bit of direct exchange, rather than having every sale mediated by money. You might get a better deal out of someone who could be cash-poor but asset-rich, if you were prepared to do a straight swap. I always liked the trading system in the Fallout games, where you would make a little pile of stuff you wanted, and another pile of stuff you were prepared to offer for it. You could mix in some bottletops (the in-game cash equivalent), but you didn't have to: you could trade for things using bullets, or meat, or shoes, or a mixture of all sorts if you wanted to.

JazHaz wrote:

Because they are lifting-body shapes - ie the curves of those liners is like a wing.

They aren't far away from the design of the HOTOL or Skylon spaceplanes. They have stubby wings too.

The designs aren't far away, no, but they're not exactly close, either, and a brick with a curve on it is still a brick ... My problem is that this is all just a gesture towards "realism", without actually bothering about whether it's realistic or not. These things just have a few of the features of real craft, without bothering whether they all fit together or not. It's what I meant by the reference to 1950s cars: the wings and curves don't have any real function, they're just pretend.

I'm pretty sure that, when and if planetary landings come in to the game, things like aerodynamics will be chucked out the window. That's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned: if I want to do that I can play a Space Shuttle simulator. But I am irked by the game pretending that these things matter, when we all know they don't. It would be better if they didn't pretend, and just had the gumption to use antigravity/reactionless thrusters/some other form of techno-magic in the ships, rather than stick with some spare fag-end of Newtonian physics.

Like I said, grumpy ...

Disembodied wrote:

... a bit more bargaining, especially in the fringier systems: even a bit of direct exchange, rather than having every sale mediated by money.

I think the player to player trading covers that a little:

Players can trade directly with each other

The player trade interface is available when both players are docked at the same market
The player trade interface is available when two players dock ships

The player trade interface is a secure swap allowing players to transfer credits/cargo

Both players must accept the trade before it occurs

Cody wrote:

I think the player to player trading covers that a little

Right enough ... it would be good to see that extended to other forms of trade, I think. Especially, as I said, in the fringier systems. It would add to the atmosphere, as much as anything else, to have places where you couldn't buy stuff with money, because the local economy had no need of it: you'd need to bring trade goods in, and negotiate.

Disembodied wrote:

...you could trade for things using bullets, or meat, or shoes, or a mixture of all sorts if you wanted to.

Very handy for you, Big D! You must have loads of clothes, shoes, nail-clippers etc left over after your 'accident', and I bet that robotic body of yours eats AA batteries like they're going out of fashion!

Smivs wrote:

... and I bet that robotic body of yours eats AA batteries like they're going out of fashion!

You mean that 'fully-configurable automotive environment'?