Oolite Bulletins

I just had a thought regarding a variation to some stations.

Main stations rotate, presumably to provide their inhabitants with an artificial gravity, however this rotation makes landing for less experienced, (or drunk), pilots dangerous.

My thought, that someone may want to pick up on as an oxp, is a station for higher technology worlds which will rotate in the normal way but the central landing section will be stationary. This would result in the best of both worlds i.e. artificial gravity in the main section of the station combined with easy landing.

I don’t suggest this for all stations as I think that it is part of the classic Elite gameplay to master the art of landing on the revolving stations however for a limited number of higher Tech worlds this could be a technological advancement.

The station itself would incorporate some system of getting people from the non-revolving landing bay section to the revolving section of the station however I don’t think that this would be an issue as this would be part of the internal design of the station that is not visible anyway.

I'm not sure the rotation is to provide artificial gravity. Here a discussion about this, which strongly suggests it is not for this purpose, and anyway if it was all those windows on the stations would be in the floor
Having said that, your idea sounds interesting so go with it.

I like this idea, but I always thought the reason stations rotate in Oolite and Elite was to make it harder to dock? The whole point about both games is that it isn't supposed to be easy! Otherwise it would only take a short amount of time to get that uber Ironarse ship and Elite-hood...

But this does sound like a cool idea for a space station, not sure how you'd keep one bit stationary and another rotating though? I thought if the main entity is rotating so are the sub-entities?

’S right. Pilots’ Guild would never stand for a docking slit that doesn’t rotate. If they didn’t rotate, anyone could do it. Job security, see?

(Rock Hermits and the like don’t need to rotate, since they cater to a less scrupulous clientele.)

Pleb wrote:

But this does sound like a cool idea for a space station, not sure how you'd keep one bit stationary and another rotating though? I thought if the main entity is rotating so are the sub-entities?

Then the answer is simple... make the rotating bit the entity...

How about two part stations, one within the other, that rotate in opposite directions. Same rotation speeds as now, but it might make docking a little more confusing and I imagine it will look good.

Gimi wrote:

How about two part stations, one within the other, that rotate in opposite directions. Same rotation speeds as now, but it might make docking a little more confusing and I imagine it will look good.

A counter-rotating dock would be the sensible solution. The ad-ring on Griff's Constores rotates in the opposite direction to the rest of the station, albeit slightly slower, but it should be possible to make a dock subentity that rotates in the opposite direction to the rest of the station, at the same speed (or make the dock the main station, and the rest of it the subentity). With a torus station, where the bit with the dock protrudes forward, that should be even easier. What it does to the docking AI might be interesting to watch.

Gimi wrote:

How about two part stations, one within the other, that rotate in opposite directions. Same rotation speeds as now, but it might make docking a little more confusing and I imagine it will look good.

I have tried it before as a test (not released - I'm not sure if I've even still got it) and I can say it does screw with your eyes, at least from a distance enough to see both bits.

My favorite space station had two contra-rotating parts

Hm, this goes into my log of ideas for HIMSN HQ station.

Babylon... All rendered on a farm of Amiga's.

Why can't we have a jump gate/witchpoint just like that in Babylon? The current blue disk is so Frontier.

Tricky wrote:

Why can't we have a jump gate/witchpoint just like that in Babylon? The current blue disk is so Frontier.

One was being worked on, my Null Gates OXP...but the fact I get regular Crashes-To-Desktop when I test it has almost killed my ability to work on it.

Gimi wrote:

Hm, this goes into my log of ideas for HIMSN HQ station.

<hint mode>
Speaking of this most excellent project, any chance of a progress report?
</hint mode>