Oolite Bulletins

Following this post about distances, it is possible to create a new activity: freeway building. I have no time to implement it right now but we can discuss further so here are my ideas.

Build personal freeways between planets, witchpoint, Sun, stations or any important places by deploying series of catapult rings. These are cloaked to be usable by authorized ships only (allies of the builder) and stay there when you go back to the same system - at least usually, if you have no personal enemies who willfully search and destroy some parts.

Buy a pack of rings, tow to the starting point, align yourself to your goal, deploy a ring and go through to get a velocity boost. Deploy the next ring when your momentum run out. If you placed enough rings to reach your destination then congratulations, you built your freeway. If you are out of rings then go to a station and buy the next pack of rings.

If you want to make a two-way freeway then build another line of rings backwards also. A catapult works strictly in one direction only to prevent fatal collisions when used by more ships. For example you can buy GalCop rings much cheaper than private ones due to you promise to share the usage with Vipers. Even possible to get free rings from some gangs to build freeways what they needs.

If you use Injectors or Torus during your boost then you will arrive even faster due to the total speed is the addition of your momentum and engines. These are added as 3D vectors, producing nice slides when you try to avoid a planet which is apporaching too fast.

Your orientation will be matched to the alignment of the ring before the boost so you always arrive to the same position regardless of your entering angle, if you are not use your steering controls while you are fast.

The boost is not so big, about Injector speed at start and decreasing but avoid masslocks: fun to see other ships swinging across the scanner.

Another possible case if the boost is available in green alert only, suffer emergency brake at masslock but give much higher speeds than Torus.

Even possible as an experimental feature to stock up more boosts: if you are enough brave to slip through rings with high speeds then the boosts are added to your momentum again and again. As your ship is a bullet in a very long railgun, you can reach astronomical distances at the end.

Here is a (bit dark) ring:

The ability to build freeways is like building a home system. There's little incentive to build a freeway in a random system (unless you make it a profitable activity itself). What if the presence of freeway rings can change the economy or the government type of the system (I see those properties are read/write, does it really do what I think it does)? You mentioned that the rings can be destructed, so it would be a reversible process (I'm sure rebels won't like them).

Astrobe wrote:

The ability to build freeways is like building a home system. There's little incentive to build a freeway in a random system (unless you make it a profitable activity itself).

I think a first "tutorial" building contract could be profitable, later some hard missions also (in Anarchy or very long freeways to far additional planets), but the main incentive is provided by other contracts imho, for example on the paths between the corners of galaxies for the longest and most profitable transport contracts. In the first part of the game the two systems of a milk run is ideal target also. In general, a good feeling if you arrive back to a system where a freeway is waiting for you.

Astrobe wrote:

What if the presence of freeway rings can change the economy or the government type of the system (I see those properties are read/write, does it really do what I think it does)?

I think this is out of scope, I do not want to make a big game changer addon even it is technically possible. Moreover I do not think these changes can happen just because I place a few rings, especially not if restricted to my personal usage. But thank you for the ideas, useful if we seek more reason to build freewas.