Oolite Bulletins

Has anyone ever noticed that when one scoops gold, platinum or gemstones, each scoop takes up one space of cargo regardless of scooped amount? It seems to fill one space regardless of amount and per time you scoop such a cargo type. Neither do these items carry over when using the Vortex multibay or the hypercargo system. Is this intentional by design or can this be addressed?

Solonar wrote:

Has anyone ever noticed that when one scoops gold, platinum or gemstones, each scoop takes up one space of cargo regardless of scooped amount? It seems to fill one space regardless of amount and per time you scoop such a cargo type. Neither do these items carry over when using the Vortex multibay or the hypercargo system. Is this intentional by design or can this be addressed?

It's intentional - you scoop up the canister, which contains 23g of gemstones, or whatever - but the canister itself takes up 1TC of cargo space. When you get to a station, you can go down to the cargo hold, unload the canister and put the gems in your safe where they no longer take up space, and then leave the empty canister on the side.

Solonar wrote:

Has anyone ever noticed that when one scoops gold, platinum or gemstones, each scoop takes up one space of cargo regardless of scooped amount? It seems to fill one space regardless of amount and per time you scoop such a cargo type. Neither do these items carry over when using the Vortex multibay or the hypercargo system. Is this intentional by design or can this be addressed?

The Vortex and HyperCargo bits are both by design.

The logic being that (at least for gold/platinum/gems that haven't been scooped since the last launch) they are stored in the ships safe and not in the cargo hold (hence why you can hold many more units of them than your cargo hold size).

cim wrote:

When you get to a station, you can go down to the cargo hold, unload the canister and put the gems in your safe where they no longer take up space, and then leave the empty canister on the side.

In the past, that safe was unlimited in space. You could fill it up with several tonnes of gold etc. Not realistic, so in current Oolite versions, when you have too much gold, platinum etc, part is also stored in your hold. In the past you could only dump gold that you just scooped. Now every full ton of gold from your inventory is placed in a container in your hold on launch. There it can be destroyed in combat or accidentally dumped.

That makes gold transportations above one ton a bit riskier. And compensates for the easy money earned in the lucrative contracts.

I can see the point, Eric, in part; you scoop a canister and don't know what's there until you dock. As for shuffling an excess out of the safe, that's more of an issue. Gold and platinum are extremely dense materials (fifth and third most dense of the stable elements in the periodic table; in fact platinum is denser than any actinide) so should not occupy much volume. Gems are far less dense but then they're dealt with by the gramme so can probably be ignored. Not sure how one might deal with relative densities sensibly within the game, but the one-tonne canisters look like they would make a spaceship incapable of moving if full of platinum. Okay, maybe not, but 1 ton of food occupies about 20 times the volume of 1 tonne of platinum so the size of the cargo canisters is up for debate, too. Particularly with "pods" and the bulk containers. Also 20 grammes per cc (ish) for either gold or platinum is a 50 by 50 by 20 cm block which, okay, might need a big safe but isn't crazy. Another thing, if you blow up an innocent trader a pirate and scoop a canister with solid metal (not exactly fragile) in it doesn't that mean you'd get 1 tonne not just a few kilos every time? Just throwing it into that mix . . . Rich. BTW - apologies if this debate has been done and dusted and I missed it.

I thank you for your replies.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

I can see the point, Eric, in part; you scoop a canister and don't know what's there until you dock. As for shuffling an excess out of the safe, that's more of an issue. Gold and platinum are extremely dense materials (fifth and third most dense of the stable elements in the periodic table; in fact platinum is denser than any actinide) so should not occupy much volume. Gems are far less dense but then they're dealt with by the gramme so can probably be ignored. Not sure how one might deal with relative densities sensibly within the game, but the one-tonne canisters look like they would make a spaceship incapable of moving if full of platinum. Okay, maybe not, but 1 ton of food occupies about 20 times the volume of 1 tonne of platinum so the size of the cargo canisters is up for debate, too. Particularly with "pods" and the bulk containers. Also 20 grammes per cc (ish) for either gold or platinum is a 50 by 50 by 20 cm block which, okay, might need a big safe but isn't crazy. Another thing, if you blow up an innocent trader a pirate and scoop a canister with solid metal (not exactly fragile) in it doesn't that mean you'd get 1 tonne not just a few kilos every time? Just throwing it into that mix . . . Rich. BTW - apologies if this debate has been done and dusted and I missed it.

All of this sort itself out if you think of the Oolite tunne as a unit of volume rather than mass.

Yes, I see that but it's not volume, it's specifically mass - 1 tonne - that's shifted out of the safe into the hold where the volume argument is more relevant perhaps. So I'm not sure that it does all sort itself out. Most aspects of it do, probably, and I'm not even particularly disagreeing with the way it is now, just thinking that if you apply some realistic aspect to proceedings then you open it up for debate a bit. The point is the game is saying you are specifically filling a cargo container based on mass that's in the safe, innit? You aren't going to fill in only 5% of the available volume of the canister, are you? And even if you do, gold and platinum are less sensitive to getting blown up than most materials - if you can scoop a tonne of food and sell it then there's no way you're going to cause problems to a lump of solid metal. So you should be more likely to scoop a very hefty amount of platinum or gold. I don't mind being told I've got it all wrong or missed a point, I just can't square the justification for that bit of the system. Well, not if I spend too much time thinking about it.
Rich.

It's game balance reasons. If you scooped 1 ton of Gold or Platinum (or crazier still, Gemstones!) then you'd be gaining crazy amounts of credits from probably limited risk. Even getting 10 kg of Platinum from a cargo canister is still really good -- roughly 800 credits value if sold at close to its highest value.

Plus, with all the size scaling inconsistencies in Oolite, do we really care about the point of mass/density of goods? As Switeck said, it makes for good gameplay and that's all that is important.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

Yes, I see that but it's not volume, it's specifically mass - 1 tonne - that's shifted out of the safe into the hold where the volume argument is more relevant perhaps.

Well, remember that 1 tonne of gold is worth about 40,000Cr. I imagine most of the rest of the space in the canister is taken up by various security measures to ensure that unauthorised access to the canister's contents is unprofitable.

As regards the low quantities in salvaged canisters, it wouldn't surprise me if the "ship's safe" was just a precious metals canister bolted into the crew areas rather than placed in the hold. So the ones you scoop are the safe, not contract canisters, and won't contain much.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

Yes, I see that but it's not volume, it's specifically mass - 1 tonne - that's shifted out of the safe into the hold.

That's precisely the point. It's not specifically mass. Nothing in the manual suggests that the letter "t" in Oolite stands for a unit of mass. Precisely for this reason—and because it sorts out the problems of assuming masses so nicely—it makes much more sense to assume that every time when the letter "t" or a word resembling "ton" is used in the game, they refer to a volume, not a mass. The alternative spelling as "tunne" is there as a reminder to the fact that we never ever should think about mass in the context of cargo.

Masses simply don't exist in the Ooniverse, at least from a cargo hauling point of view.

And of course this:

another_commander wrote:

Plus, with all the size scaling inconsistencies in Oolite, do we really care about the point of mass/density of goods? As Switeck said, it makes for good gameplay and that's all that is important.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

You aren't going to fill in only 5% of the available volume of the canister, are you?

Why not? all machinery used to handle the containers is designed of handling containers of 1 ton. If one would be filled with 20 tones it probably would choke on its weight. Maybe even collapse. Same you see on lorries. If they transport very dense material, they are just filled half full. Unless they are specially designed for is and have extra wheels etc.

Let's assume the containers have internal frame stiffeners to hold 1 ton of "stuff" in place.
Place 20 tons of rather dense material inside of that and subject it to random acceleration forces.
Maybe the ship has acceleration dampeners/artificial gravity so it doesn't have to deal with this, but loading/unloading of the container probably does not.
That 20 tons is going to smash around like a rabid sledgehammer in a china shop.

On another note...
The value of 1 ton of Gemstones might be worth starting a multi-system war over. But it'd be almost impossible to sell off, since you can only sell up to 127g per station visited.

Switeck wrote:

The value of 1 ton of Gemstones might be worth starting a multi-system war over. But it'd be almost impossible to sell off, since you can only sell up to 127g per station visited.

Gems that have been scooped are hardly legitimate items, and in Real Life™ one very small bag of blood diamonds come with a free supermodel and her entourage.

(Also, somewhere in the fluff it explains 1 tonne of slaves includes the life support systems required for each slave.)

And there's lots of photos online of container ships listing to the side in dock because the weight of the containers was not properly distributed. I can imagine how someone being 'clever' and saving money by putting too much weight into a container could cost lives.