Oolite essay: game lore, features and mechanics

[stranger]

Initially this text was written on Russian Roolite.org forum with purpose to explain Oolite features and peculiarities to Russian newbie gamer. Sadly, this game is almost unknown in Russia outside small community and such information is very scant. But Cholmondely’s interest helped me to realize that this essay can be interesting for some gamers in Western community too.
This text is based on Google translate prepared by Cholmondely. Google translate is not so bad in case of technical text, but in some cases you get too fuzzy sentences, sometimes with meaning opposite to source text. Russian and English have too different structure for machine-generated translation. I fixed such issues. All remaining issues are my fault, gentlemen.

You can find this focument in PDF fornat on my Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OEyNeF ... sp=sharing

[stranger]

I will briefly talk about the game world – mainly in order to help describe what to expect from the game and what not to expect from it.
First of all, let me remind you once again that Oolite is a game made by Elite veterans for Elite veterans. This is a conscious decision of the game developers: Oolite is, in the first place, the game world of Elite, and not just another amateur space sim. In Oolite, the game world of the Elite has been recreated in detail – its maps, economy, technologies, politics, the gamer's battle rating system, a basic set of ships and equipment, and even a package of built-in game missions (however, several additions have been added to the equipment that were not in the original Elite).
For beginners, who have no Elite experience, this simple fact, upon first acquaintance, evokes a range of emotions from charm through polite bewilderment to violent rejection. Please, just accept this fact, or if that proves impossible, look for another game more to your liking.
The game world of Oolite is 8 charts with 256 systems on each chart. In the old canon of the Elite, it was 8 "galaxies", now the term "sector" has become established. Each sector is approximately 100 x 50 light years across. There is no transport system of stable hyperspace tunnels connecting the systems. The gamer's ship jumps between systems, independently opening a short-lived wormhole, and can reach any system within a radius of 7 light years. The maximum jump range is determined by the quantity of special fuel (witchfuel) and in any case is forcibly limited by the same 7 LY (you have no possibility to overrun this hardcoded max value adding extra fuel). You can also travel between systems through a wormhole opened by another ship, in which case no fuel is consumed. Navigation between sectors is carried out using disposable "intergalactic "drive, which does not consume fuel. The sectors are arranged into a ring with one-way traffic only: once, for example, you jump from the first sector to the second, you will not be able to return to it until you jump to the eighth sector – and only from there you will get back to the first ...
Within the system, by default, there is only the sun, main planet and a main station in its orbit. Actually, the main game object is the station, not the planet – you can save only at the station. There are also asteroids and asteroid hermit bases (rock hermits, starting with Oolite 1.82, you can save on them), but they still need to be found. Therefore, the main activity of the player at the beginning of the game are cargo flights between the main stations in neighbouring systems for a profit reliant on the difference in prices for goods in the markets of these main stations. In addition to free trade, you can also earn extra money with contracts for cargo and passenger transportation to a specific port of destination, but such contracts require a lot of ship upgrades. As the ship is retrofitted and one's combat rating grows, other types of activity open up for the gamer.
Events in the game universe of Oolite take place somewhat later than in the canonical Elite, but before the collapse of the single Galactic Co-Operative of Worlds, or GalCop, into three opposing large blocks – the Galactic Federation, the Empire and the Union of Independent Worlds, as it happened in the sequels to Elite. Accordingly, GalCop in the game is the main and, in fact, the only force. Eight types of political systems are mixed on maps without any visible order and are linked into a unified legal field. There are no large-scale geopolitics as such in Oolite. There are no political blocs, factions or guilds. Large-scale wars, open military confrontation, risky raids behind enemy lines, sabotage, intrigue, espionage – there is none of this in the game either. The two main challenges of the Ooniversum are pirates and thargoids.
There are also no system of developing meaningful reputation with different groups and guilds in the game. More precisely, you can earn a reputation for certain types of activities – for example, regular successful fulfillment of cargo contracts opens up the possibility of obtaining more interesting and profitable contracts. But usually these reputation systems operate locally within their area of competence and do not affect the reputation of a gamer outside of it. The basic gamer reputation system only takes into account combat rating and the "clean – offender – fugitive" legal status. The legal assessment criteria are simple. You can not trade prohibited goods, rob and kill peaceful traders with a clean legal status and attack the representatives of the law. You can kill any targets with a tainted legal status and use weapons for self-defense. Any cargo picked up by a gamer in outer space is considered his legal property (a gamer, however, has no right to start from a station with a prohibited item on board, even if it was picked up in space). These simple rules apply globally in any system, regardless of its political structure.
There is no technological development in the game in any form. Not in the form of a technology tree, not in the form of artifacts. Everything is initially available to you – any ship and almost any equipment – if you get to the right place with the right amount of money in your account. There are technological bonuses for completing special tasks that cannot be obtained in any other way, but this is really an exception. There is no resource management in the game either: there is nothing to build and develop in the game.
There are essentially no deployed epic missions in the game either. The missions built into the game, inherited from the old Elite, do not approach that of the epic and occupy the gamer with meaningful activity only for a while. Moreover, the Ooniversum is a static world. The activity of the gamer in it does not change anything at all. Despite the openness of the gaming world, declared since the time of the Elite, illegal business in it is simply unprofitable, you will play on the dark side solely out of sporting interest.
Oh yes, I almost lost sight of the most fundamental annoyance. There is no multiplayer and it is not planned.
The main question that really annoys the newbie is – well, Jameson flew out of Lave with a hundred "Credits" in his pocket, and what should he do next? And the answer? Do what you want! This game is a sandbox in its purest form. Nobody sets you tasks: have fun for yourself as you see fit.

I think after listing what is not in the game, it makes sense to describe what is in it.
First of all, Oolite is a constructor world. Yes, the default game is quite austere compared to other games in this genre. This shortcoming is more than compensated for by the multitude of OXPs that add new objects that the gamer can interact with, new ships and equipment, and new activities (including large-scale missions!). There are also add-ons that add new planets, moons and stations to the system and, most importantly, new ports on them with their own markets. The game engine allows you to create an interesting game world with locations in which there is an incentive to stay for a game evening, or even for a couple, instead of passing through in transit on the way to the destination port, slowing down only for refueling. The gamer has the ability to customize his Ooniversum to his liking, which has everything you need – and nothing more. For gamer-consumers, who are used to fast food, of course, this approach will not appeal, but for a gamer who loves and knows how to experiment, this "constructor world" will be to their liking.
For the ambitious modder, the open architecture of Oolite allows bold experimentation far beyond the canon. The game engine allows not only adding new objects and new types of activity to the game or changing the visual design of existing ones, but also editing game mechanics and economics. At the extreme limit, it is really possible to implement a completely different game using the Oolite engine but with totally different rules and using very different maps.
Going beyond the default rules of the game, however, is exclusively the area of competence of addon developers: the concern of the game developers is to put in the game engine a degree of freedom to implement these possibilities outside the canon, and this degree of freedom grows with each update of the version of the game. The engine's capabilities, of course, are not limitless. However, this is a separate topic.

[stranger]

Populator

Let's start with the fact that Ooniversum is a 3D world. Now this is not surprising, but in the era of arcade platformers, Elite, even with its wireframe graphics, looked incredibly cool. This degree of freedom, where the gamer does not follow a pre-designed single path, actually poses a difficult task for the game developer: how to fill this vast world with objects and events?
In the Elite, the task of filling the game world with objects and events was solved simply: the ships appeared randomly within the bubble surrounding the gamer and disappeared after being outside it. The radius of this bubble was equal to the radius of the scanner field. Hence, by the way, such a strange mechanism for detecting objects that migrated from the Elite: the scanner sees all objects, including the smallest ones, within a certain radius – and does not see anything outside of it. All events in the game were tied to the gamer and took place around the gamer; outside the bubble, absolutely nothing happened.
I already said that Oolite with default settings looks like Elite and behaves like Elite. But just the populator in Oolite works differently: the system is seeded by ships at the moment of starting from the station after loading the game or at the moment of exiting the wormhole. And these ships live independent lives: they interact with each other independently of the gamer and switch attention to him only when the gamer is within the scanning range and is classified by AI as a priority target. But since the population size is limited due to technical reasons, the ships are seeded not randomly throughout space, but within certain zones – this is primarily the vicinity of the main station and the entrance beacon, as well as the vicinity of the line connecting the entrance beacon and the planet. A small population of ships is also seeded in the vicinity of the system's sun and along the rest of the planet-beacon-sun triangle. This feature of the populator’s work opens up a radically new survival tactic for gamers: if in Elite the chance to get stuck in a meat grinder was a pure lottery and did not depend on the actions of a gamer, then in Oolite an observant gamer can at least detect a possible danger ahead of time, or even bypass it and quickly and safely get to the station not in the general traffic flow, but in a roundabout way. Add-ons such as Deep Space Pirates and Deep Space Dredgers close this cheating loophole, here in them the ships, and at the same time small clusters of asteroids, are really sown along the course of the gamer, not within the scanning radius, but at a distance of several radii, which guarantees interesting meetings even at a great distance from the main planet and the main line along which the main traffic in the game moves.

Ooniversum Physics

Speaking of interesting encounters, it is worth noting: an open world travel is, of course, great, but an ordinary gamer expects from a game of this genre, first of all, dynamic battles in space at a visual range. It is believed that Newtonian physics as such is completely absent in the game. There is also an opinion that honest Newtonian physics is not needed in combat space sims, because real physics is incompatible with the canons of the genre. And it is unfair to make claims in this regard exclusively to Oolite: a crafty relationship with real physics is a birth trauma of the genre of space sim as a whole. Demanding real physics from space sim (and at the same time technologies based on real physics) is like demanding that fantasy combat be honest, on pieces of iron and without any magic.
In fact, you will be surprised, the developers of the game didn’t completely leave out physics, and did what they could without sacrificing the gameplay. The fundamentals of Newtonian dynamics are present in the game, and they are simulated quite adequately. Containers and debris of asteroids in open space scatter in a straight line, and ships accelerate to a steady speed and slow down not instantly, but for a certain quite noticeable time, and strictly obeyed the formula of uniformly accelerated motion. The very phenomenon of steady speed, of course, confuses the gamer who has not completely forgotten the school physics course – it would seem that what prevents the ship from accelerating to any speed in the absence of drag forces? But even this paradox is easily resolved by a simple assumption that the ships in Ooniversum use non-jet thrust for movement (for the creation of which ejection of some mass of propellant is required, which is not observed in Oolite!), and surfing on a wave of space disturbance. And the arcade model of flight "where I turned, I flew there" is explained by the same surfing: the ship glides along the wave where its nose is directed. But there is really no trace of gravity in Oolite. There are zones of influence of massive celestial bodies – flying on a jump drive in the vicinity of planets and moons is impossible – but there is no gravity. For a world-exploration game, it is rather bad, but for a combat space sim, it is rather good. So there is one thing: either Oolite with its dynamics of space battles, or Orbiter with its honest mechanics of space flight. I repeat: for me, it’s better to have an honest absence of real physics than something that is sometimes similar to physics (otherwise, it’s a schoolboy who isn’t accustomed to reading textbooks and will really believe in the existence of terrible gravitational traps, who are sucked to death).
There is no gravity in Oolite, but ships and stations have inert mass. True, it is not a basic parameter, but is calculated very approximately through the dimensions of the ship and its density (yes, this is exactly how it is not the volume of the ship's hull that is calculated, but the volume of the box enclosing it). The mass of the cargo taken on board and the equipment and weapons installed on the ship is not taken into account in this formula. Fuel consumption does not affect the dynamics of the ship either, so the mass of the ship or station manifests itself only in indirect effects, on which the gamer rarely fixes his attention. Technically, the game engine starting from version 1.82 allows simulating the influence of the variable mass of the ship on its dynamic characteristics (thrust-to-weight ratio, maximum speed, turn rate along the axes), but the implementation of such a model rests on the problems of game balance. The standard equipment is in no way tied to the dimensions of the ship, the entire basic set can be put on even a tiny Adder, even a heavy Anaconda. In this situation, a handicap on the mass of equipment, barely noticeable for a heavy Anaconda, would be prohibitively large for a crumb Adder.
The arcade model of flight in Oolite, of course, looks archaic, if not primitive, in the light of more advanced space sims like the same pretentious Elite Dangerous, but much depends on subjective preferences. For a fighter who has been honing the art of stomping keys in meat grinders for years, it is really a sorrow, for an aviation simmer who is used to a joystick – the least evil. What is the use of an advanced flight model in six degrees of freedom (aka 6DOF), if the gaming industry is somehow not happy with game controllers with an intuitive implementation of this very 6DOF? In reality, the opposite trend is observed: avionics relieves the pilot from the mechanical work of piloting, freeing his attention to make critical decisions. Where I turned, I flew there – just the quite expected concept of piloting ships of the distant future. If there are objections to this thesis, try flying in Orbiter, where the real dynamics of the spacecraft is simulated, including the aerodynamic forces in the atmospheric phase of the flight, then decide for yourself whether you need real dynamics in combat space. In the exploration world, yes, real dynamics would be an interesting feature, but then forget about epic battles with pirates.

Weapons and combat mechanics

Space battles in Oolite take place at visual range. This is the canon of the genre. The main weapon of the gamer is a laser gun, this is also a canon. Missiles are auxiliary weapons, rather as a last resort for self-defense. For a jet simmer, who usually starts an air battle with a missile duel beyond visual range, of course, savagery. But it just so happened in space sims genre: the exchange of missile strikes beyond visual range for the gamer is of little interest. There are also plasma turrets on space stations and large ships, but they are almost useless. Again, in comparison with advanced space sims, the choice of weapons is very ascetic. The veteran of post-Elite space sims are accustomed to the fact that the ship has an armored hull and active protection (force field). Direct energy transfer weapons (laser and beam) effectively burn through protective fields, but less effective against armor. Kinetic weapons (electromagnetic guns and missiles), on the contrary, are ineffective against a force field, but inflict great damage to the hull. Sometimes you can find selective weapons – for example, burning the electronic circuits of the target ship, leaving its hull and cargo intact. There is nothing of this in the default Oolite, first of all, because the damage to the hull as such in the default game mechanics is not handled in any way. The only criterion for the effectiveness of a weapon that is taken into account by the game engine is energy damage. The choice of weapons in this situation comes down to upgrading the starting pulse laser to a military laser capable of pumping maximum energy into the target in a minimum of time. Any wishes of a novice gamer "give me more different weapons" meet a completely reasonable phlegmatic counter question: why? What is there in Ooniversum besides the stations that cannot be destroyed with the proper patience with a military laser? The gamer's ship combat damage model actually boils down to accidental destruction of cargo or accidental damage to equipment. After the power shields are burned out, energy is consumed from the energy stack, and when it is completely depleted, the ship is considered destroyed. However, it is worth breaking fire contact and leaving the battle, as the levels of the energy stack and shields are regenerated to their original level, even if the ship was on the verge of death, so repair after the battle is reduced to repairing damaged equipment. Bots are generally simulated as solid blanks with a given level of energy and the rate of its regeneration. Especially this feature of the game mechanics is annoyed, when an unfinished bot, which a couple of minutes ago was leaking plasma, catching its breath aside, again takes up a gamer with the same fervor and by all indications with the same good health. Add to this an inexhaustible supply of energy to replenish its losses in battle and inexhaustible gun ammunition – an obvious legacy of arcade shooters. There is nothing you can do about it, the 42 KB of the 8-bit Elite is not much to roam. And laser weapons with instant energy transfer are also from this eight-bit past: there is no need to count the lead when firing, it is enough to check whether the target was in the center of the reticle at the time of the shot. In the updated manual Oolite Reference Sheet, which comes with the distribution of the game, by the way, the speed of ships is given in light velocity units (LM) – "the maximum speed that a ship can reach without being affected by relativistic effects" (in the game, this is, just don't laugh, 1 km/s). Forget it. The military laser beam reaches the target at the edge of the scanner's field not after 25 seconds, but instantly.

Equipment

There is no equipment compartment as such. The equipment has no dimensions and does not consume energy. You can easily take the little Adder and turn it into an iron ass with naval shields and a military laser. You can go beyond this and attach a bunch of add-on equipment to the ship – unless, of course, their authors have provided for checking the ship's class (they usually do not consider it necessary to do this, assuming by default that the gamer will fly the default Cobra Mark Three). The essence of the problem in some cases is precisely this: it is assumed by default that the gamer will start his career on the default Cobra Mark Three. In the Elite it was so: a default ship with no options and a set of default equipment. It was assumed by default that this entire set of equipment will be in demand one way or another, but there will still be no other, therefore, it didn't make sense to complicate the code by simulating an equipment compartment of limited capacity. In Oolite, the possibility of acquiring another ship also did not appear initially, but when it was finally realized, it became clear in hindsight that a good intention to carefully preserve the spirit of the legendary Elite in the new Ooniversum opened a logical hole. In the space sims of the generation that followed the Elite, where the possibility of customizing the configuration of the gamer's ship was initially laid down, this trap was avoided. Another example of game rules absurdity is the story of the fuel injector (Witchfuel Injector, WFI). The Elite did not have this device, but the thing is really useful. Veterans remember very well that the anarchic systems in the old Elite were passed as lucky – if there was no way to choose a safer workaround, the gamer stocked up on an energy bomb, but sometimes it helped only for a while. Then there was only one thing left: to eject, having lost all the load. The fuel injector does not give a complete guarantee of safety, since the bad guys often have it too (and rightly so!) And sometimes tenaciously chase the gamer until the fuel is completely depleted. But still, the opportunity to soberly assess the likely outcome of the battle with a dozen pirates and dump away can only be welcomed. There is only one bad thing: with the purchase of a fuel injector, even a low-speed Python easily escapes any missile attack (the speed of the Python with the injector is 200 * 7 = 1400, the speed of the missile is 750, almost half the speed!), which, you see, is somehow strange. Well, that is, you yourself can chase the pirate Python with the afterburner, but the missile you launched can not! I can’t give you a proof link for how long ago, but I remember that Giles Williams himself complained on forum in hindsight that he was too drastic with a sevenfold speed multiplier. And again, the problem of an unrealistically overestimated flight speed multiplier with afterburner is quite solvable at the current stage.

Game interface

The most serious problem of Oolith as a combat space sim, in my biased opinion, is not a simplified game mechanics in itself (which can be easily finished through add-ons to a really hardcore level, if there is a desire), but a depressingly primitive interface. Yes, it is possible to simulate a customized ship with an equipment compartment of limited capacity with proper patience, but while the gamer does not have the opportunity to fully interact with the equipment through the clickable cockpit or at least through the assigned hotkeys, there is little sense from this equipment.

So, given all of the above claims, can we say that the amateur Oolite as a combat space sim hopelessly lose competition with more advanced games of this genre? In my biased opinion, no. The important question here is: how do bots behave? Bots in the current Oolite, even in the default configuration, behave quite interestingly during combat contact: they are well-aimed, agile, show the ability to cooperate and sometimes quite adequately assess the degree of threat, and not stupidly stick into a frontal attack. Taking into account this really interesting AI behavior, the primitiveness of the flight model is forgivable issue and intuitively simple control is perceived rather as a plus of the game. Scanty set of weapons? The issue is controversial. Well, in the space shooter Descent there were five types of guns and five types of missiles. This was not enough for some of the fans of the game, and in the sequel Descent 2, the developers added the same amount. Aviation simmers shrug their shoulders: two types of missiles (radar-guided and thermal) are enough to kill any aerial target. Here's the truth, the radar in the air combat can work in four different modes, each of which requires thorough study and regular practice. Should we strive for something similar in combat space? In truth, the Elite's target acquisition and recognition system is the thing if you like to feel like a fighter, and not an operator of high-tech weapons systems, for understanding of which you need to thoughtfully read a manual of 500+ A4 pages. There are, of course, a bunch of cheat add-ons that automatically sort targets by threat level and kindly report not only their status, but also the current level of protection (and this is before the first shot!), But fortunately, installing them is purely voluntary. And yes, I said it already, but I repeat: the ascetic HUD interface from the old 8-bit Elite is a great example of how a functional HUD should look: everything you need and nothing more, without these Hollywood design delights that have nestled in modern space sims.

[stranger]

How Ooniversum can be interesting for a researcher?
The endless game world, in which the gamer is free to choose the path, sounds great, but nowadays it is already slightly worn out. This journey began in boundless space – yes, you guessed it, it was with the legendary Elite. Let the wireframe graphics – but the 3D world without barriers, fly wherever you want. And there was where to fly, 8 charts of 256 systems, each of which could become a bright adventure of the evening. Let the descriptions of these systems were generated according to the template, but the then gamer, who still found the times of text adventures, had a vivid imagination and knew how to entertain himself on his own. As one of the old-school gamers recalled at the Elite Veterans Forum, he flew in, unloaded at the station, saved and went to bed. And in the passport of the system, a tropical rain forest is mentioned – and now a person, falling asleep, imagines how this forest looks, sounds and smells and how cool it would be to fly there on a shuttle. When processors were eight-bit, programmers took care of every byte of memory. When I first encountered Elite, I was shocked and fascinated: how the hell did they manage to do this? Just think how many kilobytes should only a complete catalog of all 2048 systems take? Let's take at least Diso with her

This planet is mildly noted for its ancient Ouza tulip plantations but ravaged by frequent earthquakes.

I will not bore you with calculations, but according to estimates, it turns out something like 128 bytes for the system and 256 KB for the entire directory. Array of information unbearably huge for a tiny 42 K memory of the Spectrum. Procedural generation is the secret. The entire vast world of the Elite is essentially grown from a tiny six-byte seed, and what looks like a game database is a shell that transforms the bits of the seed into many unique playable locations according to certain rules. 6 bytes is actually a lot, it is 2^48 unique keys, each of which creates a unique chart at the output. In total, there is potentially not just 8 charts with 256 systems in each, but 281,474,976,710,656 unique charts, among which there is a chart with the planet ASSHOLE (there is one in my working archives!). But the legendary planet RAXXLA in this boundless ocean of probable worlds is not and cannot be – the algorithm for generating the name of the system excludes such a combination.
Nowadays, procedurally generated space will surprise no one, but the situation has turned inside out. Three decades ago, a procedural generator was used to dynamically fill content onto memory space that was too small for manually created and customized game worlds. Now game universes created on the server side can already take up terabytes of memory. Filling such colossal amounts of memory with meaningful content manually is a hopeless task. The current procedural generation algorithms no longer just create unique configurations of solar systems in general terms. They are used to generate unique planets with their own relief, climate and unique biota. Amazing progress ... and mostly pointless. In the truest sense of the word. No Man's Sky. Space, in which a person, by and large, has nothing to do. I don’t mean to say that procedural generation is a waste of time. It creates the foundation of the world, freeing the demiurge from the unbearable volumes of monotonous technical work. But procedural generation only sets the stage for meaningful content. Plot, history, cultural layer, lore – call it what you want, without this there is no game. And it is precisely the persistent misunderstanding of this fact that is the reason for the fiasco of the Parallel Reality 002 project (game set developed by Tch in Roolite). Some kind of motivation is needed to stimulate the gamer to wander not just at random no matter where.
What was the motivation for the gamer in the canonical Elite besides a set of kills, bringing him closer to the coveted legendary rating? Well, at first, the gamer was simply not up to global reflections about the meaning of life, the Universe and everything else. Having grasped the basic rule "take electronics in the industrial world, sell in the agricultural world, collect alcohol or furs, fly to the industrial world, profit!" the gamer was busy looking for the best route with the optimal balance of profit and risk. Basically, this part of the game was learned quickly by trial and error. Having pumped the ship to an “iron ass”, the gamer set off on a free journey. Well, then, in the exciting anticipation of the missions that were legendary (very few people knew at least approximately how many there are in the game, what they would be, where and when they were given!), Whoever could fill the time as best he could. For example, why not cross the entire chart diagonally from corner to corner before jumping to the next one? Or even cross all four corners. There is a goal, there is a choice of a route to it, each game session moves you towards its achievement. Of course, no discoveries were expected on the way of the gamer: no matter what system you take, in fact they were not much different. The only sun with a single planet, and even that was interesting only insofar as it was necessary to look for the only station of the system next to it. This did not prevent the gamers from filling this world with meaningful content on their own: people were looking for the legendary planet RAXXLA and even an analogue of the Earth, they discussed vague rumors about meetings with generation ships in deep space and wondered where the thargoid home nest was, and undertook ultra-long-distance expeditions, trying to check whether it is possible to get from one system to another through ordinary space, not through a wormhole.
And what about Oolite? What can the explorer's game do? Oolite no longer needs the old procedural generator to create a game universe from a six-byte seed. Information about systems is stored in a huge planetinfo.plist, which can be edited to the best of your ability. But in the default game, the first impression is the same as in the old Elite: the sun with a single planet and a single station. For a novice who has looked into Oolite from the outside, such asceticism is discouraging. The base game provides only a skeleton, which the gamer completes with loadable OXP modules and customizes to his liking. The concept of a constructor world is designed for a gamer who loves and knows how to come up with tasks for himself. Not everyone is willing to understand and accept this approach.
If you look at this ecosystem as a whole, the game plus half a thousand add-ons, you get a potentially rich world. Each of the 2048 Ooniversum systems is no longer just a sun with a single planet and a single station, but a fully-fledged model of the solar system with planets, moons and stations, which now opens up an additional dimension to the gamer – interplanetary flights. The game engine technically allows these systems to be as spacious as you like, and the procedural generator allows these systems to be unique. The question is still how to fill this procedurally generated kaleidoscope of locations with interesting meaningful activity. The procedural generator by itself, as we noted above, cannot do this. Designing all these 2048 systems by hand, customizing them individually, saturating them with meaning and plot – well, you know, this is too ambitious not only for a lone amateur, but also for a team of game developers. But the good news is that you don't need to meticulously design all 2048 systems. Cosmic wonders do not have to come across at every step. Interesting hand-sculpted locations, separated by routine procedurally generated intermediate points – why not? Let's drop it offhand. 16 individually configured systems on the chart, maybe even only 8 systems – this is already enough to stimulate long-distance flights within the sector. And it will be a completely meaningful game goal as opposed to the meaningless infinity of No Man's Sky, where it doesn't matter where one flies.
Let's face it, the potential of this open world is poorly realized. And here the claims are not against the developers of the game, but against the community of addon developers. At first, addon developers drew inspiration from the lore that grew out of Holdstock's Dark Wheel. In Ooniversum, in addition to the hermit asteroids, which are in the default game, there are deep space dredgers, generation ships, thargoid craft – all these legends of the old Elite have been brought to life. If anything, now, the legendary planet RAXXLA can be technically created – of course, linking its search with a non-trivial plot. There is a legendary space graveyard in the Tionisla system, there are three more systems with individual settings, and finally, there is a promising, but alas, abandoned project The Famous Planets. There are finally some epic missions like Trident Down. Alas, this is practically everything that now exists and almost all of this has become so outdated that it urgently needs at least a cosmetic update. Ooniversum is not attracted by the concept of world-exploration. The first meeting with the colossal generation ship, of course, is impressive, but only just – I saw it, took a screenshot as a souvenir, uploaded it into the gallery and forgot. This meeting gives neither answers to old secrets, nor ties to new plots. The pulsar in the Tianve system, the orbital cemetery in the Tionisla system – the same issue. The first time one look's it is interesting, but nothing more. There are no storylines for these locations.
Commander Vasig might remind us: well, since we are talking about Tionisla, the mission of Tionisla Reporter is connected with this system. Right. There are other missions that start when the gamer enters a certain system. But the fact is that in Tionisla herself there is absolutely nothing unique, anything unique which makes it possible to receive the mission only there – except that it is system number 124 in the First Sector. Now imagine that it is possible to get and pass a mission not just by being in the desired location, but by collecting and analyzing a bunch of information in order to catch a pattern and calculate this location. The default Ooniversum is an interesting world for a fighter or an achievement-oriented traveler. To be registered visiting all the Famous Planets or even all 2048 systems is quite a goal for yourself. But the researcher in this world, by and large, has almost nothing to do. There are secrets in the Ooniversum, but there is no mystery in it. What mystery can there be if Ooniversum is a densely populated world in which everyone knows about everyone? Gamers do not need to go on long expeditions to unexplored areas of the chart to find high-tech worlds in which to upgrade or purchase a new ship. There are no unexplored areas of the chart in Ooniversum – the entire chart is revealed immediately. All high-tech systems of 13+ level, all agricultural systems that need electronics, all anarchic pirate-infested systems – all this a gamer can discover right away without leaving Lave, and without any navigational database upgrades. I do not mean to say that Ooniversum is boring and does not provide food for the mind. Due to the stochastic behavior of the populator, even a routine trade trip in a well-known system can turn into a bright adventure, and, on occasion, an unplanned profit or loss, it’s as lucky. But skirmishes with pirates and raids of thargoids also become routine over time.
Could there be any terra incognita in this densely populated world? Why not? At the very least, there is a spacious solar system outside the well-trodden path of the entrance beacon – the planet, and in this spacious solar system you can place a lot of things, even while remaining within the canon. Ships and stations of aliens somewhere on the distant outskirts (other aliens, not thargoids), planets and moons, potentially suitable for industrial development and even for terraforming, and maybe even with their own xenobiology. There was a definite movement in this direction. Interesting planets and moons for the explorer, however, never appeared, but Smivs, with the help of other developers, was noted for his interesting packages Aliens and Star-jelly, in which there really are mysterious alien ships (possibly of organic nature) and huge organisms – inhabitants of open space ... Alas, the potential of these packages has not been developed. What's wrong with these packages? Yes, in principle, the same thing as with dredgers and with the generation ships: meeting with these seemingly unique creatures is in no way tied to certain locations that a gamer needs to calculate, find and explore. A meeting with them does not portend any mystery, but remains a pure whim of roulette.
I think the time has come, from grumbling “this is all wrong,” to finally move on to a concrete conversation: how, at least approximately, do I imagine the world of exploration? At least something like in the Star Trek universe. Something about the destination system is known, but only in general terms. There is information about the spectral class of the star and, possibly, about the presence of planets in it. It may be known that this system has a station or colony on the planet, but contact with it will need to be established upon arrival. The gamer arrives at the system, scans it in general terms, approaches the planet and scans it remotely. Launches drones for additional reconnaissance on the planet and finally lands himself (yes, I know, in Star Trek, the budget was poorly allocated for drones and planetary shuttles and we had to invent quantum teleportation, but the train of thought is clear).
And here the scope of imagination runs into tough reality. The problem is not even that such a scenario is far beyond the scope of Oolite's lore. Much worse is the fact that full-fledged development in Oolite occurs only in space. Landing on the surface of the planet as such, or extra-vehicle activity, the Oolite engine will not dare to process any of this – instead, a temporary port is created and the gamer's ship is docked with it. So, alas, no trips on an all-terrain vehicle and hiking with a geological hammer or tricoder, no survey of abandoned alien objects, no contact with local flora and fauna. All that can be done is to schematically illustrate the landing process with a package of prepared in advance pictures. With the generation of beautiful cryptic graphs, diagrams and something similar to the computer interfaces that captivate Hollywood scriptwriters, it is also a complete disappointment. But scientific reports in the form of texts and even in the form of tables can be created. Of course, they will look archaic, but why not give the gamer an extended passport of the planet, which he will see after exploring it? Not just the radius of the planet, but its equilibrium temperature, gravity on the surface, density and composition of the atmosphere, composition of the soil, the presence of water, the index of habitability.

[stranger]

So, the Oolite engine allows you to create spacious, unique solar systems. You can finally explore the charts step by step. You can even make full-fledged alternative charts with alternative topology and alternative system passports. But the essence of Ooniversum remains unchanged: it is a densely populated game universe, in which all 2048 systems are just variations on the theme of the solar system with the sun and an inhabited terrestrial planet. Just what you need for the genre of space opera. But if you are at least minimally interested in astronomy, then you will not argue: the variety of astronomical objects in the real world is immeasurably richer than the wretched fantasies of workers in the genre of space opera. Let's dare to go beyond the lore and figure out if it is possible to bring at least some of this variety into Oolite? What astronomical objects, in principle, can you try to simulate in Oolite?

Star field and nebulae

The star field and nebulae appearance reveals simple fact: Oolite is not a planetarium. And in the starry sky of Oolite, this fact is clearly visible. Let's start with the obvious fact that all systems on the chart lie in one plane, and do not extend in depth. So the dizzying sensation of space, in which there is no habitual top and bottom, is realized only within local systems. If we add to this that, technically, each system has its own isolated game space and movement between them occurs through wormholes, it will not work to simulate something similar to more realistic interstellar flight, in which the sun of the destination system gradually appears on the star field backgtound. The star field pattern is pseudo-randomly generated based on the random_seed parameter unique to each system in the planetinfo.plist. There is no correlation between the patterns of the star field in neighboring systems, so the skills of astronavigation using conspicuous stellar configurations work only in relation to this one individual system. Meanwhile, in reality, the skeletal lines defining constellations are usually composed of high luminosity stars, distant from the terrestrial observer for tens and hundreds of light years. If you move the observer from the Solar System to the Alpha Centauri system at a distance of 4.4 LY from the Sun, then the outlines of the Big Dipper's bucket will be almost unaffected (highly likely you will not notice any change without precise astrometry measuring!). The zigzag pattern of Cassiopeia will also remain recognizable, except that an extra bright star named the Sun will be added to the letter W. The constellation of Orion will also be easy to read if you get used to it, that the bright Sirius will be next to Betelgeuse (this will be a very spectacular configuration!). In general, the skills of orientation in the terrestrial starry sky, after a little adaptation, will work in neighboring systems. Alas, it is impossible to correct this situation with the hands of an amateur, since the Oolite engine does not support anything similar to the texture maps of the starry sky edited by skilled user.
The nebulae in Oolite are also pure Hollywood scenery. Nebulae, in general, are a rather rubbishy historical concept, where they dumped all extended objects that are not resolved through a telescope into individual stars. And if the Orion Nebula is indeed a cloud of luminescent gas, then the Andromeda Nebula is a galaxy, containing billions of stars and molecular clouds like Orion Nebula in our Galaxy. The Orion nebula is about one and a half thousand light years away, and the Andromeda nebula is two and a half million, so you can fly not only to the neighboring system, but also walk around the entire chart – and their relative position in the sky will practically not change. But in Ooniversum we have our own home nebulae in each system. The only thing that can be done with this meaningless beauty is to turn it off altogether, or leave one nebula with a good quality texture for the entire Ooniversum (alas, it is also impossible to define your own nebula for each of the 8 charts).
But something similar to dark dust nebulae (coal sacks), in principle, can be simulated. A real astronomical fact: for the last 5 ... 10 million years, the Sun has been in the so-called Local Bubble about 300 light-years in size, filled with rarefied interstellar gas (which, by the way, gives very favorable opportunities for astronomical observations). In a different scenario, we could find ourselves in a highly dusty region of the Galaxy with limited visibility. The size of the Local Bubble exceeds the size of a typical chart (about 200x100 LY) and it can be assumed with a clear conscience that all 8 charts fit in such a vast area, so declaring the number of sky_n_stars stars and the background illumination level ambient_level as global parameters is quite justified. It is possible, however, to accept the opposite rule – individual charts or even island regions like the worlds behind the Great Rift on Sector 7 can be located in dense dust nebulae, where it is dark and there are few stars in the sky. But there is a technical problem here. The number of stars in the system can be selectively adjusted using the star_count_multiplier coefficient without affecting the global parameter sky_n_stars. You can selectively correct their colour, bringing them closer to red in highly dusty regions. But the lighting level ambient_level can only be set directly, the coefficients of its selective correction are not provided. This means that a gamer who does not like the default lighting level of ambient_level = 1 will not be able to adjust the lighting level in such systems through the global setting. This is just the thing which I tried unsuccessfully to explain to Tch – his concept of Dark and Light worlds bends the gamer under the author's vision of the game, which is absolutely unacceptable for me personally.

Suns

About half of the stars in our Galaxy are binaries or multiples. Technically though, the Oolite engine allows only one sun to be identified within the system, so the simulation of close binaries in Ooniversum is impossible. But in reality, the orbits of planets in a binary star system with close components are unstable, so in any case a choice arises: either a close binary system, but no planets in the habitable zone, or a single star with planets.
In the Ooniversum, there are systems separated by a distance of about 0.1 ... 0.2 LY. On the map of the First Sector, for example, these are the Legees and Laeden systems (coordinates 4 253 and 4 254). In reality, stars separated by this distance are often physically connected. Technically, the Legees and Laeden systems are independent playable locations, but in the alternative Ooniversum they could be interpreted as a wide gravitationally bound pair Laeden A and Laeden B with a very long orbital period.
In principle, you can also simulate a system with an ordinary star and a brown dwarf if you add a large planet with a suitable texture to the system. This is how the pulsar was added to the Tianve system – technically, in game code terms, it is a planet.
Since there is only one sun in the system, then there can be no eclipsing variable stars. But what about physical variability when a star changes its luminosity? The radius of the sun of the system is fixed in the planetinfo.plist and cannot be changed through JavaScript, so pulsating variables like the Delta Cephei or Mira cannot be simulated in the Ooniversum. The only kind of space fireworks that can be controlled through the script is the spectacular explosion of the Nova.
Something similar to solar activity can be simulated by changing the size of the solar corona through a script and even adding spots to the sun's disk.
The suns in Ooniversum are coloured. The line of stars in the main sequence, from the Sun's twin stars (yellow star of spectral type G2V) to red dwarfs of spectral type M, in principle, can be simulated with careful observance of relative sizes, as is done in the Sun Gear package. In principle, it is possible to go beyond this line and simulate red giants – but such a system must be made very spacious, since the radius of the red giant is tens and hundreds of times the radius of the Sun. I'm not sure that such a huge system would be interesting in terms of play. But with hot blue and white stars there is a technical trouble – it is difficult to simulate their natural blueish hue. The same goes for dim, almost extinct red dwarfs, which shine mainly in the infrared range. Perhaps this limitation can be circumvented, taking the System features: Sunspots package as a basis and covering the red dwarf disk with many large spots. But unfortunately, the lighting model in Oolite is primitive: a point in the center of the solar disk is taken as a light source, so the lighting changes according to a discrete on-off principle. Therefore, you should not count on believable lighting in such exotic cases.
What about the fascinating space wonders from popular astrophysics articles? The pulsar in the Tianve system, as I said, is just a rapidly rotating planet. The only danger it poses to a gamer is from a direct collision. In reality, pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars with colossal gravity and a very powerful magnetic field. An excursion of a living observer to the proximity of such objects, generally speaking, is ruled out, if only because of the intense ionizing radiation. But if you really want cosmic wonders so much, you can simulate a black hole in the same way – and, in principle, even a passable wormhole, which will transfer the gamer to one of the systems within 7 LY radius-neighborhood without spending fuel (I think you yourself will figure out how this could be done by fiddling through the EliteWiki documentation). But if you definitely want a black hole with the visual effects of a gravitational lens and relativistic time dilation effects, as in the Interstellar movie, then I'm sorry. You can make something similar to an accretion disk around a black hole or pulsar using the System Features: Rings package as a basis, but again, in real life, a living observer will be able to look at this cosmic miracle only from a distance and for a very short time, since the accretion disk is heated to tens of millions degrees and shines very strongly in X-rays.
Let me note in consolation: cosmic miracles are not found at every step. The famous X-ray source SS 433 – a binary system with a black hole – is 18,000 light years away. The stellar population in the immediate vicinity of the Sun is mostly red and orange dwarfs, and these same stars dominate the population of the Galaxy as a whole. However, red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri also have not sweet character: these stars produce frequent solar flares with intense radiation in the ultraviolet and X-rays. The flux of ionizing radiation associated with solar activity in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri is tens of times higher than that of the Sun at the level of the Earth's orbit, which is fraught with a complete loss of water and atmosphere of the recently discovered exoplanet in this system.
It must be said that when calculating the equilibrium temperature in the vicinity of the sun, the Oolite engine does not pay attention to the color of the star. In the default Ooniversum, all suns have the same temperature and the critical overheating of bodies in their proximity is determined only by the distance to the sun, expressed in its radii. Likewise, refueling according to the default rules begins at a distance from the surface of the sun less than 0.15 of its radius, regardless of its color. So if you want to simulate habitable zones around the stars, where water on the planet can exist in liquid form, you need to write an OXP script, as is done in Sun Gear. The same is with the mass of the sun: in the default Oolite, the sun has no mass, and if you want to simulate something similar to celestial mechanics, this must be done through a script.

Planets and moons

The system description that the gamer sees on the F7 screen – is there anything in it which relates to real astronomy? Nothing but the radius of the planet, and this radius in the default Ooniversum is frankly a fantasy parameter. An Ooniversum planet with a radius of less than three thousand kilometers can easily have not only a dense atmosphere suitable for breathing (all 2048 main planets of Ooniversum have a dense atmosphere suitable for breathing!), but also a well-developed agricultural economy. In reality, such a planet would be hellish hot airless dry world like Mercury, or a frozen world with an extremely rarefied atmosphere like Mars, or an airless ice world like Ganymede with a water-ammonia ocean under an ice crust, or again an ice world with an ocean in the depths but with a dense cold atmosphere like Titan. But to be a small copy of the Earth, with small oceans, continents, lakes, rivers, forests, meadows, fields, gardens, pastures – sorry, this is impossible. A small planet cannot maintain a moderately dense and warm enough atmosphere for liquid water to exist on the surface. The small planet also quickly loses its internal heat and becomes geologically dead, which leads to serious consequences. First, when the molten core solidifies, the planetary dynamo is turned off and the planet is deprived of the magnetic field that protects the atmosphere from the solar wind. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, when convection in the mantle is turned off, tectonic and volcanic activity ceases. Leakage of the volatiles that form the atmosphere and oceans into space is not replenished by degassing the subsoil, and besides, the geochemical cycle of carbon is broken – carbon is removed from the cycle and irreversibly buried in sedimentary rocks.
If we take the planet – the Earth's twin in radius, then the space of options is much richer and some of them simply have no analogues in the solar system. A garden planet in the Elite Dangerous classification system, an M-class planet in the Star Trek universe – this is approximately our Earth. Of course, there are vast territories on Earth that cannot be called a garden, but if you look from the outside, from somewhere like the Moon, yes, we are lucky with our home: the planet is blue and green, with a suitable temperature and a rich biology. But Earth twin could be also an extremely hot world with a monstrously dense atmosphere like Venus. Or the Snowball Earth, completely enclosed by ice from the poles to the equator, with oases of the simplest life in the areas of geothermal springs. Or a desert supercontinent. Or an ocean planet completely covered with water. Or a volcanic world flooded with vast pools of lava. Or a cryovolcanic world with a very cold and very dense atmosphere and lakes of liquid ethane on the surface – a large version of Titan. How about a version of a planet-ocean heated to a state of supercritical fluid? Or planets in extremely elongated orbits, when at the maximum distance from the sun in aphelion the temperature drops so much that the atmosphere completely freezes out? Or a planet whose axis of rotation is tilted to ninety degrees and a season of extreme heat at the poles alternates with a season of extreme cold, and glaciers are deposited in a ring around the equator, instead forming polar caps? There are many options, because all these Earth twins arose and existed in different conditions. How long ago was the planet formed? What was the composition of the protosolar nebula in this region of space? From what sources was the supply of volatiles on the planet formed, was it enough to form the atmosphere and oceans? How intense was the asteroid bombardment? Have there been catastrophic collisions with large celestial bodies? How did the planet's orbit evolve? How did the luminosity of the sun change?
I think you get what I mean. If you take into account this vast space of options, you get a completely different Ooniversum, in which rare worlds suitable for colonization are separated by worlds suitable at best for the extraction of raw materials on a rotational basis and the placement of robotic production complexes. Most of the uninhabitable systems in this Oneiversum will be too far from inhabited systems to be of any industrial or resource value. There will be other plots in the alternate Ooniversum. Instead of long-distance passenger and cargo transportation – long-distance risky expeditions through the galactic wastelands in search of other inhabited worlds. Or maybe uninhabited, but suitable for terraforming. It may be so – individual colonies will wage fierce battles among themselves for control over strategically important systems or conclude agreements on their joint exploitation, or even unite into clusters that control a significant part of the chart. In any case, the Galactic Commonwealth will not exist in its current form.
What are the technical possibilities to implement such an alternative Ooniversum? At the very least, you can develop the potential of the smart System Makeup, which is able to select the texture of the main planet based on its insolation. Unfortunately, in the absence of support for multilayer texture maps, the planets will still be painted matte balls, but that is what it is.
The Oolite engine does not support such tasty options as the density of the atmosphere, its effective height, and even more so the temperature and chemical composition – all atmospheres are generated according to the same template. So the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere will have to be simulated through JavaScript and the dissonance between the simulated instrument readings and the visually observed blue sky will be inevitable. Until recently, when classifying large celestial bodies, Oolite used a simple rule: all planets have an atmosphere, all moons do not. With this approach, such real celestial bodies of our solar system as Mercury (a planet, but there is no atmosphere) and Titan (a moon, but there is a dense atmosphere) cannot be correctly simulated in the Ooniversum. Now additional planets can be set to have no atmosphere, but the main planet still necessarily has an atmosphere, so completely airless worlds cannot be simulated correctly. But in principle it is possible to weaken the requirements for the model and lay in it that the smallest main planets do have an atmosphere, but extremely rarefied, like that of Mars.
But with such a variety of relief, geology, weather and climate, the situation is actually much worse. First, as already noted, technically there is no landing on the planet's surface as such – instead, a phantom port is created above the surface. Secondly and more importantly, there is no simple way to convert game coordinates, based on witchpoint – main planet – sun triangle, onto coordinates on surface of rotating planet. This means that you cannot bind these phantom ports to specific areas on the planet's texture map either. Alas, it is also hard to simulate the local weather forecast: the best that can be done without hardcore coding is to determine whether the ship has landed on the daytime or on the night side of the planet. So the processing of locations is obtained at the level of the lazy imagination of the creators of the space opera: this is an ocean planet, this is a desert planet, this is a jungle planet, and this is an ice world. Nothing like the Earth with its variety of climates and biomes can be simulated within the framework of this model, so when simulating a scientific expedition to the surface, you will have to limit yourself to a pre-fabricated report.

Small bodies

In the real world, these are asteroids and comets, in the Ooniversum – only asteroids. But these asteroids in the Ooniversum, if desired, can be given a quite convincing variety from a scientific point of view.
In the real solar system, asteroid matter has undergone partial separation by chemical composition. The population of the asteroid belt is divided into groups:
C-asteroids enriched in carbon (carbonaceous chondrites). They are typical of the outer margins of the asteroid belt and are closest in chemical composition to the primary protoplanetary matter after the loss of volatile ice. They make up about 75% of the number of observed asteroids.
S-asteroids enriched in silicates. The absence of a noticeable amount of carbon in their composition suggests that these asteroids have experienced heating and remelting. They make up about 15% of the population.
M-asteroids enriched in metals – sources of iron-nickel meteorites, make up approximately 10% of the population of the asteroid belt. Presumably fragments of planetesimals that partially underwent chemical differentiation and were shattered by subsequent collisions.
Finally, the rare mysterious V-asteroids enriched in basalt. Basalt is a volcanic rock, asteroids of this class are similar in their spectral characteristics to the large asteroid Vesta (hence the name of the class), but lately there are suspicions that this class of asteroids is associated with several sources.
Unfortunately, according to the rules of the default Ooniversum, only S-class silicate asteroids (Minerals material) and M-class asteroids enriched with metals (Alloys material) can be convincingly simulated, but in principle this is enough to simulate variations in the chemical composition of asteroids depending on their distance up to the sun of the system. A tool for a space geologist, in principle, already exists: you can take the Ore Processor package as a basis and rewrite a piece of code that sets the content of minerals and alloys in fragments of asteroids broken by a mining laser.

[stranger]

This text was written before release Oolite 1.90, so some parts of text are obsolete. Since Oolite 1.90, for example, game engine provides support for planet texture maps with reflections and pseudo-terrain. No more custom textures looking like matte balls. You can create cool planets with reflective water bodies and terrain shadows now! Moreover, you can develop planets with custom atmospheres – not only vanilla blue skies, but dark blue skies for planets with rarefied atmospheres and black skies for smallest planets with extremely rarefied atmospheres, and skies with reddish hue for Martian-like worlds. These features are not supported on JavaScript yet, but progress is very impressive.

[another_commander]

Amazing work, stranger. Thanks for these posts. I think that's a very valid representation of what the game is and offers.

Just a a few small comments from me:

• You mentioned that turrets are almost useless, From my experience with a Griff Boa Prototype, they may be actually overpowered. I can take the GBP to an anarchy system and kill any attackers just with turrets, without using lasers even. I only have to turn the ship so that targets get into the range cone of the turrets and that's it.
• Ambient light can be changed by script per system and in real time.
• Atmosphere density can be changed per planet by script and in real time (visual effect only, no gameplay changes).
• Atmosphere color can be changed per planet by script and in real time.

[stranger]

@another_commander
Thank you for your comments! It is very valuable info!

[montana05]

I do agree with a_c, turrets are pretty useful and, in some cases, overpowered. Before I got myself decent lasers, my turrets killed a lot of attackers.

[Cody]

I think that's a very valid representation of what the game is and offers.

Yep!


Never used turrets, but I once had a Constrictor with what I presume was a plasma cannon instead of the laser.
Once you'd mastered the shot leading (as you had to with the Railgun), it was lethal.

[stranger]

“Turrets are almost useless” was biased declaration, agree. Changing my mind seeing several episodes of criminal trying to attack Navy frigate. In less than one second poor bastard was pulverized. So turrets are impressively effective weapons against NPCs.
But not against human player. Killing rogue frigate is easy task for green Jameson with Cobra Mk I equipped with only pulse laser AND fuel injectors. Open fire beyond turret range, dodge hardened missiles salvo, repeat.

[Cholmondely]

Exploration
Leading on from Stranger's comments above...

I've just added a TO DO list on the Exploration page on the wiki.

This is what I have so far:

Things to do
* Explore the Tionisla Orbital Graveyard (with the three OXP's loaded - ''and'' equipped with BroadcastComms MFD to interrogate the monuments). You can throw in the Tionisla Chronicle Array for good measure!
* Explore the Tianve Pulsar (with Tianve OXP loaded)
* Try and find a Generation ship (don't forget to load the oxp first!)
* Visit Sector3/Ribiara|Aqualina in Galaxy 3 (with Aquatics loaded)
* Load either FarPlanets or the Strangers World suite and visit some far-out planets (in Stranger's World you can make excellent profits on alcoholic drinks if visiting a station!).
* Try and find the HIMSN naval stations!

Any ideas for additions?

[Cholmondely]

Stranger: You have a pm!

[Cmdr Wyvern]

...the most fundamental annoyance. There is no multiplayer and it is not planned.

Here's where we'll have to agree to disagree.

For me, multiplayer IS a "fundamental annoyance"; I'm playing for fun, and being a target for idiot psychopaths before I even begin to pump up my ship, IS NOT fun.

Put multiplayer capability into the game if you want, but you'de better give me the option to turn it OFF, and I don't mean pulling a Braben with some halfassed solution, I mean OFF, or I'm out.

Let the idiots grief each other for stupid laffs, hard pass.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

“Turrets are almost useless” was biased declaration, agree. Changing my mind seeing several episodes of criminal trying to attack Navy frigate. In less than one second poor bastard was pulverized. So turrets are impressively effective weapons against NPCs.
But not against human player. Killing rogue frigate is easy task for green Jameson with Cobra Mk I equipped with only pulse laser AND fuel injectors. Open fire beyond turret range, dodge hardened missiles salvo, repeat.

Stick enough turrets on a capship, and it's a flying porcupine. Although they have the severe disadvantage of a very limited range, that a laser outside of that range can exploit.
But the NPC criminals aren't that bright, and bumrush the thing to be blasted.