Oolite Bulletins

I've been eyeing Ore Processor lately and plan on adding 1T cargo requirement to it. It almost feels like a bug for it not taking any cargo space while operating with cargo. Especially the current version that allows you to stop and start the processing whenever you like.

The space requirement is very easy to put in, but as always I've been pondering how it is presented to the player. Oolite adds a text about the requirement automatically to the description, but the core equipment Passenger Berth has the requirement also in it's market name. As consistency means much to me, this annoys me a bit. I can always tweak it so that the Processor too has the requirement in it's name, but that feels a bit silly extra work and I would like the other equipment to follow that pattern too.

Would it be possible that the game itself automagically adds the cargo requirement to the name of the equipment? So that equipments with that requirement would follow the pattern of the Passenger Berth.

Nah, you see the passenger berth is qualitatively different. Passengers are carried for profit, cargo is carried for profit; it's converting one form of carrying capacity into the other form. So the conversion factor has to be stated. It's wrong to think of the passenger berth as the same as other equipment items.

spara wrote:

Would it be possible that the game itself automagically adds the cargo requirement to the name of the equipment? So that equipments with that requirement would follow the pattern of the Passenger Berth.

Sounds sensible to me. If I am going to buy equipment, it would be helpful to be told how much space it requires at the point of sale.

Wildeblood wrote:

Nah, you see the passenger berth is qualitatively different. Passengers are carried for profit, cargo is carried for profit; it's converting one form of carrying capacity into the other form. So the conversion factor has to be stated. It's wrong to think of the passenger berth as the same as other equipment items.

I kinda understand your reasoning, but in this case mined cargo (minerals) is profit and processing that is making more profit. So firstly I think that the 1TC is a fair deal for such a converter and secondly it's only fair to warn about the cargo space cost just like it's warned with the passenger berth. Or to make things equal, maybe remove that warning from the passenger berth and only show it in the description field. Or maybe, now that there's a time column column, there could be room somewhere for the cargo space cost too. Especially if cim's equipment proposal goes forward.