Oolite Bulletins

Borrowing ideas from here...

"In the Dark Wheel, Alex Ryder jumps only 0.1 Ly effectively into the middle of nowhere"
This implies he could set arbitrary locations of any distance inside his max jump radius.

While jumping to totally arbitrary locations is too powerful, a far lesser form might be easily added so all a .js script has to do is choose a destination system within 7 L.Y. and a multiplier, like this:
[b]this.ship.exitSystem(destination, multiplier);[/b]
The "[b], multiplier[/b]" part would be completely optional to not break existing OXPs.

If the multiplier is between 0 to 1, the jump ended short of its destination system.
If the multiplier is exactly 0.5, the jump is identical to current misjumps.
If the multiplier is 1 (the default), the destination system is reached.

This would give missions or special equipment an easier way to script "unusual" destinations in interstellar space (like Alex Ryder's 0.1 LY jump) without resorting to multiple misjumps between 2 systems.

Oh yes. I suggested the same thing long ago. So it has my vote.

This post is almost certainly what you're referring to.

2 major issues need to be discussed+decided before coding a distance multiplier:
1.How much fuel should shorter or longer misjumps use?
2.How long should shorter or longer misjumps take?

Fuel can simply be the same amount as a normal misjump if the distance is longer than a regular misjump.
When the distance is less than a regular misjump, to keep things semi-consistent...the fuel used could be 2 times the misjump distance. This is already the case for regular misjumps and would give a clean transition from regular misjump to slightly less distance than a regular misjump.

The time taken is a tougher question. It can't be misjump distance squared or it would be exploitable -- you could repeatedly do ~1 LY misjumps instead of a 6-6.8 LY single jump and accomplish the total distance in less than 20% of the time.
Current misjumps take 3/4th the time of the full jump distance, so maybe that could be used as a baseline measurement?

I vote yes for this one, too. In the near year I've been playing, only once have I experienced a misjump and wound up in interstellar space. It was thoroughly fun though - Thargoids and witchspace jump blockers all over .

What is the difference between this and Switeck's misjump inducer?

Edit: this post made me "elite" on the forum. In the Ooniverse I'm only "dangerous" - I should post less and shoot more

Switeck wrote:

This post is almost certainly what you're referring to.

It was probably the last time that I mentioned it, but in that post I was referring to this post, in which I was referring to this post, in which I was referring to this post.

So this is a really old and often-repeated request.

Much of the point of this request is to simplify the handling of jumps/misjumps by OXPs.

It's already possible to do multiple misjumps to reach distances other than ~50% between 2 systems, but it can cost a lot of fuel and time.

Going from A to B, misjumping 2 times results in being ~75% from A and ~25% from B. Misjumping BACK towards A would then place the player's ship ~37.5% from A and ~62.5% from B.
That could be replaced with 1 misjump using:
this.ship.scriptedMisjump = 1;
this.ship.exitSystem(destination, 0.375);

Starting over, and misjumping once from A to B, then misjumping 2 times going back to A would end up being ~12.5% from A and ~87.5% from B.

Gimbal Locke wrote:

What is the difference between this and Switeck's misjump inducer?

My Misjump Inducer is equipment that can only cause a "normal" misjump to happen, going ~50% of the distance to the target system. It is an alternative over using full pitch on jumping to cause misjumps and works on npc wormholes as well as the player's ship jumping on its own.

This should be practical - there are formulae for time and distance that Micha put together which prevent exploiting it for fast travel. Fuel usage I would probably have as the full cost of the normal jump, regardless of misjump length.

It would have limitations in that currently interstellar space composition in planetinfo.plist can only be set to affect all points on a line between two systems equally. That's probably not too bad, since OXPs can still check system.info.coordinates and change most things after arrival. Similarly, there'd always be a Thargoid ambush (and depending on OXPs, probably various other things)

Why should a mis-jump need more fuel than a normal jump?

I would look at the whole thing of jumps and mis-jumps this way:

The engines can jump you any distance you like in any direction you like. The onboard computers of a ship give you a safety mechanism so you don't accidentally jump outside a system. It's like a GPS that controls the direction and distance of the jump. This is also helped by the Witchspace beacon in every system.
When you open a wormhole for 5ly, you use 5ly of fuel.

Why couldn't you simply punch in the numbers for distance and direction into your own drive computer.

Personally I think mis-jump is not really a correct thing to call an intended jump of less than the distance to your plotted destination.
A mis-jump is when something goes wrong with the engines or the Thargoids deliberately collapse your wormhole.
If you intend to only travel 1ly to a 2ly destination then only 1ly of fuel should be used because you intended it.

If you want a simple method of interfacing then when you pick your destination for a jump, you could also select the distance to jump. 100% or something in-between.

!m!

My 2Cr.
When you jump, the ship's computer calculates the details of the jump and how much fuel is required. The required amount of fuel is then fed into the jump engine which opens the wormhole. If all goes well you appear where you want to, and if all does not go well you don't - you end up somewhere between the system you have left and the target system. Either way the amount of fuel required for the planned jump is used.

Smivs wrote:

My 2Cr.
When you jump, the ship's computer calculates the details of the jump and how much fuel is required. The required amount of fuel is then fed into the jump engine which opens the wormhole. If all goes well you appear where you want to, and if all does not go well you don't - you end up somewhere between the system you have left and the target system. Either way the amount of fuel required for the planned jump is used.

Agreed, but if you only put in 1ly of fuel for a 2ly destination, that's where you'd be.
If the Thargoids pull you out of your wormhole then I think the entire amount of fuel would have been used.

!m!

maaarcooose wrote:

Agreed, but if you only put in 1ly of fuel for a 2ly destination, that's where you'd be.

Not quite, because you couldn't set a 2LY jump with only 1LY fuel on board

Smivs wrote:

maaarcooose wrote:

Agreed, but if you only put in 1ly of fuel for a 2ly destination, that's where you'd be.

Not quite, because you couldn't set a 2LY jump with only 1LY fuel on board

True but what's to stop you pointing your ship in the right direction and activating the jump?

!m!

maaarcooose wrote:

Smivs wrote:

maaarcooose wrote:

Agreed, but if you only put in 1ly of fuel for a 2ly destination, that's where you'd be.

Not quite, because you couldn't set a 2LY jump with only 1LY fuel on board

True but what's to stop you pointing your ship in the right direction and activating the jump?

!m!

Er, well you 'point your ship in the right direction' by setting the jump, which you can't do with insufficient fuel.

What you are suggesting is in fact a way of being able to target specific locations in interstellar space. This would potentially be a useful feature I agree, but as the game stands this is simply not an option, and my instincts are that it would not be an easy thing to incorporate into the game.