Oolite Bulletins

Pirates hiding in asteroid fields, with their ship systems shut down. This makes them white popsicles on the scanner which an incautious commander might be inclined to ignore until he's far too close and they all power up and attack.

Could the AI handle this trick? A fast ship such as a fer-de-lance or maybe a sidewinder patrols ahead of an asteroid field toward the witchpoint beacon and engages an enemy ship, then about faces and runs full speed toward the asteroid field, where his wingmen are hiding in ambush.

Very interesting, would be like an advanced "Naval" cloaking device then, which as you say could implement "silent running"

I well remember in Elite when other ships were as fast or faster than you, that acting very docile in a non threatening way, delayed their attacks enabling your shields to recover, it was very cat and mouse.

Excellent idea.

Possible tradeoff of going into silent mode: shields and energy banks are nullified. So until the ship powers up for a while, it's vulnerable. Another question is what to do with mass lock...

Odo987 wrote:

Possible tradeoff of going into silent mode: shields and energy banks are nullified. So until the ship powers up for a while, it's vulnerable. Another question is what to do with mass lock...

By the time you're mass-locked you would be in sight range of them anyway, so it would be sort of too little warning, too late.

Mass-lock occurs as soon as they’re on the radar, so if that’s too little, too late, the entire idea (appart from the bait bit) is pointless.

Ahruman wrote:

Mass-lock occurs as soon as they’re on the radar, so if that’s too little, too late, the entire idea (appart from the bait bit) is pointless.

And you can see many types of ships before they're even on the radar... But if they're hidden behind asteroids, the ambush thing could still work - at least the first time.

Hmm, I wouldn't want to work out the quaternions for hiding ships behind asteroids, from a player's point of view!

Mass lock doesn't happen for unpowered objects, though.

However, a pirate could remain silent (white, non-mass locking), then power up just as you are about to hurtle past, meaning you get mass locked really close to them.

But with the delay in systems coming online from silent running (see the Oolite fiction piece) then an alert commander can probably paste the pirate before he can do an awful lot of harm.

I think silent running should trigger mass lock, you would know someone is hiding, it means you have to find them....search and destroy!!

Ditto effect if you are silent running yourself, very persistant bounty hunters/pirates would try to find you others may just not be bothered.

It would add another decision point in your gameplay/strategy.

"Mass lock" would imply the issue is the mass of something...

Do you consider suns and planets powered?

Just being silly... I know gameplay takes precedence over "reality". It is a bit silly taking about reality when discussing a space trading game. Perhaps there is an implied "perceived" in front of it :)

Already ships that have been abandoned (and are now unpowered) do not mass lock your ship. I think really it's an 'engine power and mass lock' - a ship normally wouldn't mass lock you from mass alone, but rather it's the power generation that allows something as tiny as a ship to lock your drive. Not even a large asteroid will mass lock you, and a rock hermit is significantly larger (and likely more massive) than an Anaconda.

However, something the size of a planet or a star is a different matter.

The planet and stars are of course actually “atmospheric friction locking”. :-)

I've always thought of it as a "density lock".

That way, you can have asteroids and cargo which don't lock you, and ships/planets/suns, which do.

This also implies that jumping uses some kind of radical Gravity engine.

Unpowered ships would presumably not have their gravity device on line.

Density? So your theory is that the asteroids are made out of styrofoam? :-)

(Also, why would powered-up ships travelling at subjump speeds – NPC ships never hyperspeed – have this gravity drive active?)

Errr..

I just thought it made sense to explain why some things cause mass lock and others don't.

Given that we are trying to create a physics based on the rules on the game....

The Mass lock effect is encountered when J-jumping. If a ship has its engines powered-up, you mass-lock. If it isn't powered-up, you don't mass-lock. Therefore there must be something inherent in the engines that causes the mass-lock. Hence: Gravity drives.

As some objects with mass don't cause mass-lock, it must be some other mass-related feaure, which I suppose to be density.


(Asteroids are made out of compressed power-station ash, as every fule no.)