Oolite Bulletins

Now that I've been playing again, I'm starting to notice things that might be improved .

In the Ship Outfitting screen Oolite hides stuff that I would like to see. And I think it would be an improvement to show that stuff.

The item that is dependable on some other equipment could be presented indented and under that equipment and it could not be bought, but you could see the description and price.

Like this: It would also be nice to see equipment that is not suitable to your ship at all, so that you would know it's there, but it would require you to buy a new ship first to be able to install it.

Also equipment with cargo restrictions would be nice to see so that the player would realize that by freeing space they would gain access to that piece of equipment.

These should be in different colour or otherwise marker. The reason for the item to be non-installable should read in the description box.

spara wrote:

The item that is dependable on some other equipment could be presented indented and under that equipment and it could not be bought, but you could see the description and price.

Like this:

Code: Select all

Fuel Scoop
  Ore Processor

I generally like the idea. I'm not sure about the indenting thing though... how would you handle multiple dependencies?

- Neelix

Neelix wrote:

spara wrote:

The item that is dependable on some other equipment could be presented indented and under that equipment and it could not be bought, but you could see the description and price.

Like this:

Code: Select all

Fuel Scoop
  Ore Processor

I generally like the idea. I'm not sure about the indenting thing though... how would you handle multiple dependencies?

- Neelix

Ah. Did not thought of that really. Just "greying" them out would then be the way to go. And automagically telling about the dependencies in the description.

Whichever way it's done, I'd love to see it.

As a new player I'd love this. It would let me see all the stuff I could get, if only I could, and give me more drive to achieve the necessary conditions, hence giving me more compulsion to play the game.

In terms of core equipment, this seems a bit pointless as the standard Cobra III can have all equipment fitted, and a player choosing another ship would surely check out the ship before buying it and would therefore know if equipment can't be fitted (eg mil shields if you fly a Python).
If you are talking OXP equipment, again a player surely knows what they have installed, so knowing about equipment isn't an issue. Being reminded that something you downloaded can't be installed until you have installed something else first also seems a bit redundant TBH.
Also, of course, this would probably require major changes to to core, enabling it to interrogate installed OXPs (it couldn't know about not-installed ones) for dependencies etc to be able to do this.
Sorry if I sound a bit negative, but it does not appeal to me personally, and I can't see how it could work anyway.

I just installed everything I could see in the OXZ list in-game that didn't look like it would give me a massive advantage. Don't have a clue what half of them are. If they sounded good and weren't incompatible, I'll have some of that. Why not? In time my gameplay will change but what's the point in vanilla when there's all the goodies that you've not experienced, that weren't in Elite? Even if it's not easily doable, it's still a nice idea. BTW I did play vanilla for about 24 hours of total play before I allowed my hand in the cookie jar For mod-soup'ers like myself that have no idea yet what they're doing, good feature. For old hands, maybe not so necessary.

Smivs wrote:

In terms of core equipment, this seems a bit pointless as the standard Cobra III can have all equipment fitted, and a player choosing another ship would surely check out the ship before buying it and would therefore know if equipment can't be fitted (eg mil shields if you fly a Python).
If you are talking OXP equipment, again a player surely knows what they have installed, so knowing about equipment isn't an issue. Being reminded that something you downloaded can't be installed until you have installed something else first also seems a bit redundant TBH.
Also, of course, this would probably require major changes to to core, enabling it to interrogate installed OXPs (it couldn't know about not-installed ones) for dependencies etc to be able to do this.
Sorry if I sound a bit negative, but it does not appeal to me personally, and I can't see how it could work anyway.

As a relatively recent player I'd have to disagree. it's all very well to say "it can have all equipment fitted" but when you're just starting out you don't necessarily know what "All equipment" is (or necessarily remember details) Also just because it's unavailable doesn't mean you couldn't make it available.

Take missiles for example... if I have 3 missiles and a cargo-shepherd installed I can't see if ECM hardened missiles are available from the ship outfitting screen without selling "all pylon mounted weapons" first. It would be nice if they were on the list but marked unavailable so I know the option exists there, and have an easy way to check what conditions need to be met to obtain it.

As for major changes to core I seriously doubt it, at least not in the way you're describing. All OXP equipment details are enumerated on startup when the plists are merged, and the conditions of each piece of equipment need to be evaluated each time the Ship outfitting screen is loaded anyway. It should just be a matter of changing what happens when the equipment doesn't meet certain conditions that would normally be required for it to be displayed.

- Neelix

One more way of seeing things. Currently it's like a shop that hides stuff from the view of the customer when some of many different kinds of restrictions are met. TL restriction is understandable as there is nothing on the shelves. Empty pylon restriction is a little funny as they really got the goods for sale. If one likes to imagine F3 as a physical shop then you can see in your mind personel carrying missiles away from sight when a customer with full pylons enter the shop.

I haven't got the slightest idea how much work this idea would require and it's actually not my concern. It's an idea that might improve the game and if one of the devs likes it and feels that it's worth doing that's cool. If not, that's fine too.

I've been playing the game for a long time and I still have some trouble with remembering this. Why ist't there a passenger bert on sale anywhere? Oh, your cargo is full of computers.

Mainly it would be pylon/cargo restrictions in the core game, and occasionally ship restrictions [1]. (There is one piece of core equipment which actually requires other items to be installed first, and one piece which can't be installed if another is, but that's it, and those two aren't that big a problem)

The question would be what to do if a condition script blocked purchase (e.g. the naval energy unit before Thargoid Plans is completed) - do you display the equipment greyed-out or not? I'm not sure what the answer should be in that specific case, and I expect OXP equipment will want it different ways.

[1] Other than reading the Wiki or the source files, there's no way to find out that the Python can't equip military shields, so it may well not be obvious to people.

cim wrote:

The question would be what to do if a condition script blocked purchase (e.g. the naval energy unit before Thargoid Plans is completed) - do you display the equipment greyed-out or not? I'm not sure what the answer should be in that specific case, and I expect OXP equipment will want it different ways.

That's a tough nut indeed. Maybe the line could be drawn to show equipments that have ship restrictions, cargo restrictions, pylon restrictions or other restrictions defined in equipment.plist. Conditions script blocks could be hidden by default, being special. I would also hide equipment that depends on equipment restricted with a condition script.

After a bit more pondering, this would probably require something like "always_show_equipment" = yes in the equipment.plist. With condition scripts there should be something like allowShowEquipment function.