Oolite Bulletins

I was trying out my first attempts at sun-skimming yesterday when I got jumped by a band of pirates inside the star's atmosphere! This caught me by surprise so I dumped some cargo and ran for it, completing my sun skim refuelling.

My question is this: if I, say, finished refuelling, headed back to the station, bought a q-bomb and went back to the star to hunt down these pirates then would they still be there, barring any legit reasons why they might have gone such as witching out, destroyed by police etc?

I suppose what I am really asking is whether the entire system is pre-populated with these pirates etc so that they exist when I witchspace into the system or if they are created and removed "on the fly" just outside scanner range?

streb2001 wrote:

would they still be there, barring any legit reasons

Yes, but another legit reason is to fly far at normal speeds if you are slow.

streb2001 wrote:

the entire system is pre-populated with these pirates etc so that they exist when I witchspace into the system or if they are created and removed "on the fly" just outside scanner range?

The core game use the pre-populated way, plus add new undocking and arriving ships periodically, but these are restricted to the important places to keep the number of ships reasonably low and prevent too much background calculation which can drop your FPS unnecessarily.

[wiki]DeepSpacePirates[/wiki] add ships everywhere but use the second method due to the same performace reason.

streb2001 wrote:

I suppose what I am really asking is whether the entire system is pre-populated with these pirates etc so that they exist when I witchspace into the system or if they are created and removed "on the fly" just outside scanner range?

That was the way the original Elite worked.. everything was spawned on-the-fly, just ahead of your scanner range, specially for you.. in other words, it was a "player-centric" game.

Oolite, however, has never been that way.. when you jump into a system, a whole bunch of entities are generated, and randomly, if logically, positioned, and they then go about performing whatever tasks their scripts assign them.. be it traders, patrolling cops, pirates on the prowl, you name it.. new ships will arrive in-system as you play, and others will jump out. Unlike in Elite, as you tool along the spaceways minding your own business, there are often life-and-death battles raging around you, beyond your scanner range.. at times, off in the distance, you'll sometimes see hints of laser fire and the odd explosion.. (and sometimes more than hints.. I recall one time, off to the side, there must have been a big naval engagement going on.. and somebody set off a q-bomb, as blue globes suddenly erupted way off in the distance.. had to have been a big fight, as the fireworks went on for what seemed like several minutes, across hundreds of kilometers..)

Thanks for these answers. I have seen battles in the near distance too but never yet had the nerve to get involved! Obviously not player-centric and this makes the game feel much more immersive.

Do the ships that witchspace out of the current system actually go anywhere or are they removed? Does any AI take place in other systems in real time?

streb2001 wrote:

Do the ships that witchspace out of the current system actually go anywhere?

Yes, they do - and you can follow them by diving into their witchspace clouds. A free ride, leaving you with a full tank after the jump.
Buy a wormhole scanner, and you can see where they're going in advance - or just take pot-luck! A good way to see the Ooniverse!

streb2001 wrote:

Obviously not player-centric and this makes the game feel much more immersive.

It also makes it slow. A hybrid system where the amount & detail of non-player-centric activity reduced with distance from the player would be better.

streb2001 wrote:

Do the ships that witchspace out of the current system actually go anywhere or are they removed?

They're not finally removed until the wormhole ends, so, as Cody says, you can follow them through.

streb2001 wrote:

Does any AI take place in other systems in real time?

No. Although before the devs moved system population to javascript, Pleb showed a simple modification to core Oolite that would have allowed it. Worst wasted opportunity ever.

Diziet Sma wrote:

streb2001 wrote:

I suppose what I am really asking is whether the entire system is pre-populated with these pirates etc so that they exist when I witchspace into the system or if they are created and removed "on the fly" just outside scanner range?

That was the way the original Elite worked.. everything was spawned on-the-fly, just ahead of your scanner range, specially for you.. in other words, it was a "player-centric" game.

Oolite, however, has never been that way.. when you jump into a system, a whole bunch of entities are generated, and randomly, if logically, positioned, and they then go about performing whatever tasks their scripts assign them.. be it traders, patrolling cops, pirates on the prowl, you name it.. new ships will arrive in-system as you play, and others will jump out. Unlike in Elite, as you tool along the spaceways minding your own business, there are often life-and-death battles raging around you, beyond your scanner range.. at times, off in the distance, you'll sometimes see hints of laser fire and the odd explosion.. (and sometimes more than hints.. I recall one time, off to the side, there must have been a big naval engagement going on.. and somebody set off a q-bomb, as blue globes suddenly erupted way off in the distance.. had to have been a big fight, as the fireworks went on for what seemed like several minutes, across hundreds of kilometers..)

Am I the only one to find such things therapeutic and beautiful? I realize they're supposed to represent "dire sh*t happening to someone" but they do make you feel that oolite is quite happily ticking along with or without you. It's like watching a river.

ClymAngus wrote:

Am I the only one to find such things therapeutic and beautiful? I realize they're supposed to represent "dire sh*t happening to someone" but they do make you feel that oolite is quite happily ticking along with or without you. It's like watching a river.

No, you're not the only one.. and yes, I quite agree.

ClymAngus wrote:

Am I the only one to find such things therapeutic and beautiful? I realize they're supposed to represent "dire sh*t happening to someone" but they do make you feel that oolite is quite happily ticking along with or without you. It's like watching a river.

Definitely. It's a major contribution to the game's sense of scale, too: nothing makes you feel small and incidental like big stuff happening waaay over there, to someone else, that doesn't concern you.

<nods sagely>