This has probably been mentioned before but...

[Mephistopheles]

I assume that it has struck the developers, not to mention a hell of a lot of players, that the game lends itself to a massive multiplayer game. As it stands, there is a very real sense of other entities existing as "people" within the game (distress calls and so on). It would be ambitious but very worthwhile to expand the marvellous work that has been done so far into a multiplayer game that would warm the hearts of the old bastards (like me) who loved the original and would see it take its rightful place above the geeky, overdone nonsense of WoW and others.

You could choose your own modus operandi as a trader, a lone-wolf space pirate; team up with others, do your own thing. The possibilities are staggering.

I love this game, even if it is a hell of a lot harder than BBC Elite, upon which I cut my teeth as a nipper.

[Rxke]

Hi, Mephistopheles. Glad you like it, prepare to get addicted

re: MM gameing, this is a recurring discussion, so much it has pride of place in the F.A.Q.: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t= ... 4518e05c35

In a nutshel: it would be very hard, and few people with the coding knowledge have time to actually implement it. Maybe a LAN-version, but a net-version is much harder (lag issues, mostly)

(EDIT:) this one describes it best: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=964

[Selezen]

Can we sticky one of the MM-Oolite discussions? We seem to get asked this a lot. Maybe if it was stickied it would answer the question faster...

[Rxke]

it's already stickyfied, in the F.A.Q....

[TedJ]

Unfortunately, it's a fact of life that FAQs often contain IRAs... that is, infrequently read answers.

[Selezen]

Yeah, I meant sticky it on its own. Visible, see? Saves us having to redirect folks.

Never mind though - it's in the FAQ.

Soz.

[winston]

I assume that it has struck the developers, not to mention a hell of a lot of players, that the game lends itself to a massive multiplayer game.

As others have mentioned, this has been discussed at length in the past (indeed, I wrote a two page rant on the very subject).

In summary:
A non-massively multiplayer game - practical, has some tricky aspects (coping with lag), would need some extra game features to allow for worthwhile game styles.

A massively multiplayer game - well, technically possible but financially totally impractical and out of the question. The cost of the servers will be staggering, and Oolite can't be monetized (for many reasons, one of which is it'll surely bring a smackdown from the Brabster). Of course if someone wants to donate a dozen dual Xeon servers and 8 Mbit of bandwidth that would change