Oolite Bulletins

First up I'm well impressed with Oolite. Much respect and thanks to all involved.

After a couple of weeks playing a few things have come to mind that might improve game-play a little and add a little extra spice into the system.

1. I like the idea of a space lane from the witch point to the space station that the majority of traffic takes. It would be nice if this was made more visual, maybe as a series of navigation beacons so that its easy to keep track of where the lane is.

2. Pirate encounters when in the space lane seem to be too frequent (especially in the supposedly safer systems). Similarly, encounters with pirates when outside the space lane seem to be as rare as hens teeth even in Anarchy or Feudal systems. This doesn't quite feel right, and so I'm wondering if the current AI needs to be tweaked a little. The following would be my suggestion:

- When in the space lane of safer systems encounters with pirate groups should be rare due to the amount of "honest" ships (safety in numbers) and Viper patrols (which would be more frequent in richer/safer systems).

- When outside of the space lane, the likelihood of a pirate attack should increase as you would expect that pirates would be on the lookout for a lone ship that they can pick off away from the attention of any patrolling Vipers rather than risk a police encounter. Of course if you are in a dangerous system then the likelihood of an attack should increase even further (and decrease in safer systems).

This gives the player a choice, take the slower, safer route to the station or the quicker more dangerous route. It also would make it more difficult to get to the station in Anarchy or Feudal systems, which at the moment is way way too easy.

3. It would be nice to tweak the commerce system to a little to add a little more variety to the game with some items being considered contraband in different systems depending on the species living there. For example, on planets populated by Felines, you would expect Furs to be a banned item. I'm sure there are others. This would add some variety to the different systems.

I have a couple more, but will see how these go down before posting more.

the likelihood of meeting pirates (or any ship for that matter) outside the
lane is slim because 'outside the lane' is huge.

that is: if you were to fly from the plane in any other direction than the witch
point, you fly into empty space.

if pirates were to lurk for victims they might do this _just_ outside the lane
on the side where the station is not. or between the witch point and the
sun to catch those who want to scoop the sun for fuel.

if they were to have a hang out that would be in a place where theyre not
bothered by the police or anyone, like behind the sun or in the shadow cone
of the planet.

lots of pirates in the lane at rich and stable worlds does seem odd.

rexpop wrote:

I like the idea of a space lane from the witch point to the space station that the majority of traffic takes. It would be nice if this was made more visual, maybe as a series of navigation beacons so that its easy to keep track of where the lane is.

I've been thinking along these lines too. I'm going to add something like this to one of the rich systems in the Ionics OXP and see how it goes. I think I'll add beacons (ones that don't mass-lock you) at regular intervals along the space lane and billboards like these as well (more of them in corporate systems, none in communist, etc.).

Another thing I've been considering is have something like petrol stations near the witchpoint, I'm thinking of using one of those rings made for racing. There would be a big billboard stating the price and you'd you just fly through the ring to refuel. I hate being mass--locked after a long jump with bugger all fuel left.

I don’t like the fuel station idea. It would seriously alter gameplay balance.

I suppose it could alter the gameplay balance, but I wouldn't say seriously!. I usually just detour the spacelane if I don't have much fuel so there's no real risk of me getting killed if I make a big jump (and even if I do die, I'd just reload the game from the last save).

What about Rock Hermits, you can get fuel there. How would you feel if the fuel cost ~50Cr?

The thing is the fuel situation makes you have to take decisions. You're not guaranteed to find a rock hermit (and if you've got the Pirate Coves OXP, the rock hermit might be very hostile indeed) so you can't make your fuel planning dependent on them. If there was a nice guaranteed fuel station (even at 500cr a fill-up) then it would remove that element of decision making. Putting a fuel station in would simplify the game too much.

On the other hand, a reasonably expensive fuel station with < 10% chance of showing up would be kinda cool.

I was only planning on putting them in corporate (and maybe democratic) govs with 13 & 14 tech levels, only places where a lot of traders would visit frequently.

but wouldn't such a place be a tempting target for plunder? wouldn't it need a lot of protection.

and refuelling?
how does it work exactly?

That'd be a rock hermit then.

Murgh wrote:

but wouldn't such a place be a tempting target for plunder? wouldn't it need a lot of protection.

and refuelling?
how does it work exactly?

It just sits there, like a station (except not spinning). Unlike a Rock Hermit, all you can do there is refuel (expensively). It might be a tempting target for plunder if it wasn't only found in the most well patrolled and richest of systems. It seems to me a logical and profitable business venture considering how far witchpoints are from stations and the benefit of fuel with pirates and mass-locking.

Whether or not it's a good thing to have in the game or not is another thing though.

Galileo wrote:

It might be a tempting target for plunder if it wasn't only found in the most well patrolled and richest of systems. It seems to me a logical and profitable business venture considering how far witchpoints are from stations and the benefit of fuel with pirates and mass-locking.

With pirates, yes, if it weren’t for the best-patrolled system thing. As for mass locking, real honest traders wouldn’t even consider buying extra-expensive fuel to save a few minutes by afterburning.

Time is money

Right now in Oolite we generally don't encounter ships off-lane because it's essentially impossible to find anyone, or anything off-lane.

There's a simple solution to this - long-range scanners. Equip all cops with them, most pirates, and a few traders by default. That would allow for ships to be scattered far and wide. The lanes should still get an emphasis in ship placement, but would no longer be the only place things are placed. I'd have thought, for example, that you'd be more likely to encounter a thargoid away from the shipping lanes.

Long-range scanners would also help with real asteroid belts, instead of the clusters we have now. Pirate coves would likely be off-lane, rock-hermits more random in their location.

I think that a sensible maximum range for such a scanner should be planet to WPB. It would be nice if it was zoomable and displayed a central sphere to indicate your normal short-range scanner range.

Naturally if you still wished to avoid contact you could use the long-range scanner to plot a course avoiding other ships.

The big plus would be more life in the universe for you to encounter. The big minus would be more life in the universe to simulate, taking up more processing time.

Whilst I'm at it, I'm sure other versions of Elite had multiple stations around some planets... We should really have that in Oolite too...

More asteroids would put more strain on the collision detection system, which is already Oolite’s main time drain.

Then again, this could possibly be reduced by putting asteroids in groups; first test colliders against the group’s bounding volume, then against individual asteroids if there’s a hit. Asteroid groups far from the player could be marked non-collidable. Other things could be grouped, too, like formations, or the entire TOGY.