Oolite Bulletins

I've been playing Oolite for a bit now, but have not come across any black holes. Is there any oxps available to add them? Pioneer has Agamemnon at the centre of the galaxy and I do hope the devs add more, but does Oolite have them?

What benefit would a black hole have, other than a slow, lingering and ultimately messy death?

No, which is a good thing, surely

Not as such. The closest match is the  Tianve Pulsar OXP.

In terms of what it might do, maybe some mission might have a dangerous pick-up near a black hole, can some sort of gravity be encoded so you're drawn towards an object?

Wormholes of a different kind, maybe; pretend your ship can actually enter the black hole without being destroyed and you end up . . . somewhere. Actually I remember a bug of sorts in the ZX Spectrum version of Elite. You did a certain sequence of things, I think it was saving a game before you did anything at all, and then when you loaded the game you were in a completely new set of eight galaxies (you also got three souped-up lasers and were already Elite if I remember it right). Presumably the "resource seed" or whatever it might be called was different in that eight. If that concept is still in Oolite then perhaps it's possible to make this alternate universe. So, maybe that might be on the other side of a black hole, with a mission to find out how to get back or something like that. Rescue mission. Or like that Romulan bloke out of that recent Star Trek film, you have to stop someone like that making it back to the normal eight and putting red matter into everyone's planets. Ignore the fact that you have the same set of ships in an alternative reality. Various Doctor Who-ish possibilities, Stargate . . .

Rich

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

can some sort of gravity be encoded so you're drawn towards an object?

Yes. I heavily modified my own copy of the Cargo Shepherd to act as a Black Hole (but with the added bonus of gradually decelerating once stuff got within 30km so I could scoop it). Definitely code-able but desperately dangerous to get near, and the proximity safe-distance varies with the ship's maximum speed.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

pretend your ship can actually enter the black hole without being destroyed

Please, no.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

Actually I remember a bug of sorts in the ZX Spectrum version of Elite. You did a certain sequence of things, I think it was saving a game before you did anything at all, and then when you loaded the game you were in a completely new set of eight galaxies (you also got three souped-up lasers and were already Elite if I remember it right).

Your Speccy Elite was different from mine ... and that 'feature' has never been documented for the Speccy version. Could it have been the drugs?

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

perhaps it's possible to make this alternate universe. So, maybe that might be on the other side of a black hole, with a mission to find out how to get back or something like that. Rescue mission. Or like that Romulan bloke out of that recent Star Trek film, you have to stop someone like that making it back to the normal eight and putting red matter into everyone's planets.

A permanent alien witchspace jump point, that has a gravity effect, previously undiscovered, that needs exploring? Because people / someone special fell into it and nobody has come back ... yet?

SandJ wrote:

Your Speccy Elite was different from mine ... and that 'feature' has never been documented for the Speccy version. Could it have been the drugs?

I assumed everyone would know! It was easily repeated, that feature, and I had friends who got it - someone told me about it, I didn't find out for myself. As for drugs I think the nearest I had to a drug was Sainsburys tinned chicken curry with chips at the time, I did go for that in a big way; did the chips nice and thin, deep fry to half-cooked, cool, fry again, perfect . . . feeling hungry already and might have to order a curry this evening. Anyway, you had to load the game and press the button to save - rather than space - to get you immediately to the save screen; if you pressed space I am pretty sure it didn't happen. I could be wrong but I have a feeling it might have been recorded in ZX User or something at some point (perhaps where I found it out). I had a purchased copy rather than tape-to-tape so the end result seemed almost that it was meant to be that way - everything worked perfectly well in these extra eight galaxies. All the positions and names were different, that was all. Is this off-topic now? Rich.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

Actually I remember a bug of sorts in the ZX Spectrum version of Elite. You did a certain sequence of things, I think it was saving a game before you did anything at all, and then when you loaded the game you were in a completely new set of eight galaxies (you also got three souped-up lasers and were already Elite if I remember it right).

On the amstrad version, you got something along these lines if you loaded a saved game named Elite.

Cmdr James wrote:

On the amstrad version, you got something along these lines if you loaded a saved game named Elite.

That sounds familiar. Rich.

Interesting points guys. So Black Holes could exist within the Ooniverse. As for what good or purpose they would have, apart from being generally dangerous and cool, I loved the suggestions so far with regards to missions. Oh, and thanks for the Tianve Pulsar oxp link JazHaz. I will give that a try!

Geraldine wrote:

... thanks for the Tianve Pulsar oxp link JazHaz. I will give that a try!

Don't upset Rebecca... that girl is dangerous!

Geraldine wrote:

I've been playing Oolite for a bit now, but have not come across any black holes. Is there any oxps available to add them? Pioneer has Agamemnon at the centre of the galaxy and I do hope the devs add more, but does Oolite have them?

Can you expand on the idea? How would a black hole be added? As a substitute for the sun (not technically possible with Oolite's engine)? Or for the main planet (technically possible)? Or as an extra entity, like the Tianve Pulsar?

An what would it do? Just being there, waiting to be visited (like the Tianve Pulsar)? Or indeed sucking everything in? And if so, how would it do that? Oolite is—like Elite—non-newtonian in some areas (or should I rather say, non-keplerian?): orbital movements don't exist; thus also a black hole would only generate a linear movement towards it (which is what the Cargo Shepherd which was mentioned as an example does).

Also, the comparison with Pioneer is of course a little lacking, because there is no such thing as a centre of the galaxy in Oolite (absence of orbital movements again).

EDIT: fixed typo

Maybe make some intersteller locations have black holes, and make behaviour there weird, everything is drawn towards it, and contact is instant death...

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

Actually I remember a bug of sorts in the ZX Spectrum version of Elite. You did a certain sequence of things, I think it was saving a game before you did anything at all, and then when you loaded the game you were in a completely new set of eight galaxies ... Presumably the "resource seed" or whatever it might be called was different in that eight. If that concept is still in Oolite then perhaps it's possible to make this alternate universe.

See this thread; specifically, the second post, by Aegidian, and eleventh post, by me:-

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11185