Oolite Bulletins

Is there a guide to the ooniverse for new writers who wish to contribute fiction while remaining faithful to existing standards and customs regarding details of the world? I wrote four or five paragraphs and found myself gripped with panic about committing faux-pas over basic details, such as the materials ships are made of, the languages spoken across the galaxy, the significance of the different governmental systems, whether space stations are considered "in orbit" or just loitering in space, whether currency is called "credits" or "money", whether "Earth" is a thing (even in in-game mythology) — stuff like that. Are there some fairly agreed-upon norms of representation, or are authors encouraged to play fast and loose? I know there's probably no authoritative answer — I just wanted a view or two before I committed. I have read through much of the existing fiction, and trawled the wiki pages, but I still can't get a really good sense.

Cheers.

Essentially, no. There are plenty of discrepancies between existing bits of fiction: so long as your fiction bears some resemblance to the game no-one will mind. Given that there are over 500 OXPs and most of them can be installed in any combination, everyone will have a different opinion over exactly what's canonical, and won't let the differences distract them from a good story. Go with whatever works for what you want to write.

For your specific questions:
Ship materials: Most ship textures suggest a metal of some sort for at least some of the outer hull; the Dark Wheel novella names it "duralium". Internally, could be anything.

Languages: the evidence in game suggests that either there is a common language spoken by space pilots (though not necessarily also by most planetary inhabitants), or there are reasonably good translation tools built into ship computers. Beyond that, whatever suits the story. Most stories so far have just had people able to understand each other and not gone into detail about how.

Governmental systems: they're really vague in game, so make of them what you want. Some works (e.g. "Commies OXP", "Factions OXP", etc.) suggest that they are 6 factions, each spreading their own government type across the worlds - with Multi-gov and Anarchy being undominated by any one faction. Others have them as extremely broad classifications where Feudal A and Corporate State G might be more similar to each other on the planet than they are to other systems of their own type - and it's mainly just a measure of how safe the orbital space is.

Stations: there's certainly the in-universe tech to make them hover if you want (though even if they do "orbit" may well be used as a colloquialism for "hanging around not far above the surface")

Currency: the currency unit is the credit. The phrase "I need some money" still makes sense, though.

Earth: I think pretty much all fiction so far assumes that at least the "Human Colonials" are originally from Earth, though other than the name there's no in-game evidence for that. Where Earth is in relation to the stars in game, whether it's possible to reach from those stars, etc. varies considerably. Most stories so far either say "unreachable" (with a variety of opinions on where it is in relation to the 8 charts) or use the positioning implied by Frontier Elite 2 and have it some way north of Inera in G1. (No-one's yet written one where Terea in G1 is a drift of spelling of "Terra", but it's human-populated and about the right size...)

would the stations be considered to be in a geosynchronous orbit? or hovering at a La Grange point ?

spud42 wrote:

would the stations be considered to be in a geosynchronous orbit? or hovering at a La Grange point ?

Either would do, I think - depending where you are. It might depend on the tech level of the system, or the government type ... for example, a multi-government planet might not like a geosynchronous station, as it would (or might be seen to) prefer one nation over the rest. Or they might not care, or it might be the source of ongoing tensions on the planet.

Cim, thank you so much for the detailed response and the reassurance. So long as no major plot points hinge on anachronistic details, looks like I will be fine.

I'd welcome other details if anyone has a keen sense for intergalactic mimesis.

The Ooniverse is your ooyster!

The important thing is that it feels right in your head. Think of what sort of universe you want the story to be set in, and pick your details accordingly. Do you want things to be high tech or low tech? The former would suggest invisible auto-translation devices; the latter would work better with a common trade language. Do you want a strong Co-operative, with a central governing body, or a loose mesh of agreements and conventions with little or no force behind it? A strong Co-operative might mean a strong meta-culture, with a more-or-less common approach to things like political structures, currency, etc.; a weak Co-operative might mean greater variations from system to system, in attitudes, technologies (do you think a TL1 planet is at the dawn of spaceflight, or the dawn of agriculture, for instance?), laws and so on.

OK. I am making some progress on this fiction. I have a few more questions and am looking for both authoritative and creative input. Where possible, I have searched the forums and wiki. For all of these questions, I could just make stuff up, but I want to contribute to a shared mythology.

1. Calling the galaxies "Galaxy 1" "2" etc. doesn't work well in fiction. They'd have names for them. Have there been any attempts to give names to, not only galaxies, but also other regions of galaxies etc.? I'm looking for some galactographical texture.

2. I have noticed a few company names cropping up in various OXPs. Should the various manufacturers of ships and weapons be observed as they are?

3. Units: I presume "m" means "meters" in the wiki. I'm struggling with how a 1km-cubed coriolis station could possible house all of the ships it has for sale given some of their massive sizes (Boas are over 100m long for example). I know it's just a game, but I'm trying to decide how to make it believable in fiction (toyed with the idea of ships being "moored" to the outside of the coriolis for a while…)

Time: Oolite uses a 24 hour clock, right? Are those standard hours?

Economy: If it's 3 credits for a tonne of food, then 3 credits sounds like it would be about half-a-year's wages of the average low-level worker. That suggests that things like owning a spaceship would be absolutely out of the question for most ordinary folk. I'm wondering if I should invent a sub-denomination of money, or just disregard the in-game prices and invent my own.

4. Slimy frogs: I had an idea to interpret the species names differently. I wanted to retain an all humanoid galaxy (for the most part, and "humanoid" does not necessarily mean human) but I came up with the idea of "frogs" being a sigil or a motif of a particular tribe (anyone who watches Game of Thrones knows where I'm coming from). This struck me as an interesting way to introduce a tribal element to the galaxy, and to cut down on the weird alien aspect (which doesn't completely float my boat, creatively-speaking). Does this sound like a good idea, or one that people would take kindly to?

I dislike using 'Galaxy' to describe what can only be a sector - I prefer 'Octant', but that's not in-game, or in any fiction that I'm aware of.
Archimedes Elite did have names for all eight of them though:

• G1. Santaari
  G2. Colesque
  G3. Lara’tan
  G4. Angiana
  G5. Proximus
  G6. Sol
  G7. Jaftra
  G8. Xrata

Most of those are okay, but not all - I think I used some of them in Kaxgar, as it happens.

For some local colour that many players would recognise, see ClymAngus' vector maps here. Oh yeah - it's standard time, as far as I know.

staggerlee wrote:

3. Units: I presume "m" means "meters" in the wiki. I'm struggling with how a 1km-cubed coriolis station could possible house all of the ships it has for sale given some of their massive sizes (Boas are over 100m long for example). I know it's just a game, but I'm trying to decide how to make it believable in fiction (toyed with the idea of ships being "moored" to the outside of the coriolis for a while…)

A cubic kilometre is a really big volume. If the Boa was a 100m cube - and it's quite a bit narrower in the other dimensions - you could stack 1000 of them inside a cubic kilometre, after all.

Here's some comparative screenshots I took a while back which might make the scale a bit clearer. There's certainly room for a few hundred ships inside.

staggerlee wrote:

Time: Oolite uses a 24 hour clock, right? Are those standard hours?

Yes.

staggerlee wrote:

Economy: If it's 3 credits for a tonne of food, then 3 credits sounds like it would be about half-a-year's wages of the average low-level worker. That suggests that things like owning a spaceship would be absolutely out of the question for most ordinary folk. I'm wondering if I should invent a sub-denomination of money, or just disregard the in-game prices and invent my own.

Not worrying too much about it is by far the easiest approach.

I had a closer look at this a while back and concluded that you could get most of it to be reasonably consistent by:
- assume the "productivity" figure on the planet info is GDP per standard day
- this gives a daily mean wage in the 1-10 credit range, depending on the system (though doesn't say anything about the distribution, of course...)
- this is low enough that the hundreds of credits achievable from a single good trade run could inspire people to buy a ship in an attempt to get rich quick despite the ridiculous dangers, but high enough that you can buy a pulse laser, a few missiles, and a bit of starting trading capital by having a middle-class salary and saving up for a few years. After a few months of trading you're probably now very wealthy by planetary standards (millionaire-ish, perhaps), though more likely you're very dead.
... the big problem here is the ship prices. They're way too high compared with everything else. I assume (very roughly) that everyone except the player ignores the last two zeroes when buying ships, and then most of the rest fits reasonably well.

Very helpful cody and cim, thanks a lot. I will probably drop the first chapter later today

cim wrote:

A cubic kilometre is a really big volume.

Can fit into 1307 bricks with Anacondas or 92592 Adders.

I've always thought of the "galaxies" as "sectors", but Cody's "octants" is good too. If you want more galactographic detail, I suggest taking a look at ClymAngus's excellent vector maps, which have a number of named regions. Some of these names have definitely appeared in other oofic:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=6053

I made reference to Clym's maps in my stuff.

Cheers,

Drew.

Facing the usual dillemma: fake gravity on ships or not? And if so, how/whether to bother explaining it?

Here's a quick bit of writing I figured out.

Smith flew through the cloud of fire and hull fragments of his latest victim. He thrust his pelvis rhythmically while biting his lower-lip in his usual victory dance. "Nice shot!" said co-pilot Jones. "Say, captain, I always wondered: how is it that there's gravity on board this ship and we don't pass out from all the G-forces, what with these ridiculous sharp turns you insist on doing?"
Captain Smith frowned. "Jones, is it really plausible that a co-pilot—and grown man, to boot—could have lived his entire life without ever learning such a basic fact of his own day to day existence?"
"Well, when you put it like that sir…"
"What have I told you about boring exegesis! Boom!" said Smith, keying the co-pilot ejector seat.
In the sudden coldness of space, the last thing Jones saw before his head exploded was the implausibly sharp turn of a Cobra, and the fire of its lasers bearing down directly toward him.