Oolite Bulletins

Alnivel has very generously offered to help with improving the state of affairs surrounding escaping prisoners in Mining Pods. So some of the comments below are his.

I’d appreciate some feedback on the following musings!

Issue: What should the escapees actually do?


Information sources:

∝) OXP: At the moment there seems little that the escapees actually do, other than make a bee-line for the planet:

comminer-escapeeAI.plist:
ß) Lore: Captain Hesperus’ wiki write up (for Mining Pods) says this:

Most commonly, mining pods travel in formations of four or five, closing on asteroids and blasting them at close range, before peeling off to allow Scavenger Rays to scoop the debris.

Designed to be as minimalist to fulfil their primary purpose, these vessels redefine the term 'basic'. They are literally an engine with a laser and a pilot’s seat; all other systems are pared down to the absolute lowest standards required to maintain life outside an atmosphere. Air is supplied via an oxygen recycler that has an operational lifespan of 12 hours, heating is provided but at the requirement of firing the pod’s mining laser to allow heat to leach through the weapon’s heat sinks into the pilot’s compartment. The main purpose of this ultra-basic fitting is to prevent convicts from escaping. When you only have half a day’s air to breathe and the only way to keep warm is to constantly fire a laser, you learn that escape in a mining pod is futile. The fact that mining pods also have minimal shielding, something that is among many matters of contention with the liberalist branches of the GalCop Security Council, means that even a couple of impacts from a Pulse Laser can breach the paper-thin hull.

‘Accidents’ involving political prisoners and malfunctioning mining pods are common, as are summary executions by Mining Laser {Why Mining Laser? And by whom? Is this a punishment meted out inside the Astro-Gulag? Or outside by Regime-favoured criminals who get benefits for doing this). But while the Astro-Gulags continue to be productive, there is little chance that the Party officials will ever consider measures to improve conditions.

My musings:

1) Escapee escape routes.

So we have a mismatch between our two sources. How can a prisoner in a pathetic mining pod expect to survive landing on a planet with an atmosphere? And if there is no atmosphere, how can he survive the rocky landing?

The more I think about it, the more I think that the pod should burn up on entering a planet's atmosphere.

And, when Commies was first published (Oct 2006 - just before v.1.65), the player could not land on a planet (I’m not sure what one actually saw with NPC ships). That did not change until Thargoid published PlanetFall in Nov 2008.

So I feel given these two factors that the current situation is mistaken.

Alnivel has suggested that the AI planet-bound route was chosen to make the escapee more visible to the player.

An interesting point it that it is only the Mining Pods which try and make a run for it - not the Scavenger Rays. What is the difference? Captain Hesperus wrote: Scavenger Ray: ...With its depleted energy reserves and excruciatingly slow speed, even if someone by some miracle managed to stage an escape in it, it would be a long and perilous flight to the nearest safe haven.


So. What should the escapee be doing on escaping?


More musings:

a) The escapee is freezing while escaping, waiting to get far enough away to fire his laser to warm himself up, and hope that the local police are not watching. If he does fire it, maybe he does so from the other side of a large asteroid where it might be less visible (but this is probably not programmable).

b) Inside the communist system he is a criminal. Surely he needs to escape the solar system if he is going to free himself? So I would presume that he is looking for a wormhole. He is so desperate to escape that he will take the first one he finds, desperately gambling that it is not to another communist state or a pirate-ridden anarchy. I would presume that wormholes are his only escape route (unless he is scooped). His ship is far too fragile to land on a planet with atmosphere - and probably too fragile to survive a landing on Mercury, where he would die anyway of asphyxiation.

c) When should he be labelled as an escaped convict by my IFF/Scanner Targeting Enhancement? When my ship labels somebody as an Offender or a Fugitive, it is because GalCop has passed on that information to me. So that means that the Communist State has discovered that the escapee has escaped and passed that information on to GalCop at the main orbital station in the system.

And should he still be so labelled on escaping the system? He is not a GalCop fugitive. He cannot harm anybody other than himself. His "crimes" may purely have been crimes only in that system he came from (and maybe other Communist systems).

d) So what happens on the other side of the wormhole? He needs to get to a Rock Hermit or a Space Station. Depending on how much oxygen he has left (did he escape immediately, or did he wait/have to wait, using up oxygen? After he escaped, how long did he spend travelling away from his point of escape?) he can or cannot afford to try to get to the main orbital station. If not, he is looking for something much closer. And of course has no usable compass (he probably has a compass set only to his astro-gulag).

e) What equipment does he actually have? Does he even have a compass? If they are travelling in groups of 4/5, they probably have a police escort. Are the Mining Pods tracked by the Thought Police? It seems likely. But there will not be 5 police rays in a group of 5 mining pods. And if there is more than one escapee at the same time, the police ray will need to summon help. So maybe 2+ escape simultaneously, one being automatically doomed.



2) Scooping the pod
Alnivel pointed out the pod measures 12×14×22 - and the scoopable Thargon 38×9×36 (an Escape Pod is 7x6x6, a Cargo Container might be 9.6x3.6x3.6). Scoopable splinters can be 18x12x14 - one of the smaller boulders (unscoopable) can be 17x15x19). Are there maximum dimensions for scoopablity anywhere?

It would seem that the 3rd dimension can be 12m but cannot be 15m - so 14m might just make it! But then the Communists might have purposely made their Mining Pod unscoopable!

If I can scoop him: Can I release the prisoner from the pod and bring him into the oxygenated and warmed parts of my ship? (MaybeJannah Berihn's diagrammes are relevant to this - click on them to blow them up!).



3) Communicating with the Escapee.
Without communications (which are arguably not built into the mining pod), there can be no meaningful interaction until the pod is either scooped and brought on-board, or the escapee meets the player on docking.

Alnivel has been experimenting with flashers as a way to express a” thank you" by the escapee for an opened wormhole for him - it works badly - the pod is tiny and reasonable-sized flashers are too hard to see. But despite this, it might make sense.

But might this be a matter of the darkness of one's ooniverse? The ambient light is alterable.

Alnivel added: "But, to be fair, if the player does not rush to the station, but waits to see if the escapee followed them through the wormhole, it quickly becomes quite obvious that the escapee is trying to follow the player - it probably will be enough "thank you" for the moment, other thanks can be expressed after docking."

Communicating "Thank You":

In the UK, we use our car indicator lights to indicate our direction of turn. Flashing both at the same time is usually a "hazard warning" (beware - I've broken down, don't crash into me or beware - I'm slowing down because of a traffic jam/congestion ahead and I might need to brake sharply).

Some of the newer cars are programmed to flash the hazard signal on braking sharply.

I would guess that all this is universal, built that way into the car designs.

But in the south of the UK we also flash both indicators (just once, twice or thrice) to say "Thank you" - eg. when there is a long stream of traffic in the road outside my house and somebody brakes to allow me to push in ahead of them.

If this "Thank you" is pretty universal around our planet Earth then we could include it in Commies and mention it in "Hints" and maybe also include it in BroadcastComms with a "Thank You" response, as most players should recognise it (if they can see the dimunitive flashers!). But would this be enough?

Does anybody else have a suggestion regarding ways of indicating "Thank You"?


References:
Commies OXP
Mining Pods
Scavenger Ray
Law

An escaping prisoner might also be trying to connect with a previously arranged transport, that might be waiting somewhere in-system for the mining pod.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri Jun 16, 2023 5:20 pm

Are there maximum dimensions for scoopablity anywhere?

The properties of the entity will define whether an object is scoopable. I certainly don't think there's a size limit involved (other than the awkwardness of trying to line up a really big object).

Before planet fall, only the player couldn't land on planets. Shuttles have always been supposed to do so. While it's true that it couldn't be witnessed as such beyond their disappearance at low altitude, that's also how docking works (disappearance within docking slot).

Vulnerable as the vessel described is, a group of miners with a plan might do a little more than simply commandeer a vessel. Insulate or reinforce it perhaps, even amateurish work might make it stronger. Miners might occasionally mine or salvage alloys, or, if that were not possible, strip one vessel after it had met with one of the aforementioned 'accidents' in order to reinforce another.

Maybe the laser could be converted into a heater. The mining laser isn't lacking in power, only in rate of fire, in fact a thermostat of sorts would likely be essential to prevent overheating if such a conversion could be achieved.

Tedious as crawling to the planet is, 12 hours should be manageable, perhaps slightly more if a primitive autopilot were constructed and occupants restricted to minimal activity/sleep.

Heading to the planet also constitutes hiding rather than true escape (from the system), although as phkb points out, what arrangements or plans they have to go elsewhere, who knows...

So if the transport was waiting, it would either have a specially modified scoop (presuming that the mining pod was made to be unscoopable) or it would use the witchhole escape method - as the prisoners are presumably not equipped with space-suits.

I notice that Ship Configuration OXP says the following:

Fuel Scoops

Fuel scoops give pilots a means of replenishing their fuel supply by scooping fuel gasses from the corona of the sun. Each fuel scoop contains an 'accumulator'. The fuel scoop accumulator is the storage area inside the scoop where gasses are held prior to being converted into fuel. The larger the accumulator, the faster fuel is scooped.

There are 4 classes of fuel scoop available, each one having a different accumulator size:
Class 1 0.10 ly accumulator. Weighs 2t. This is the standard type of fuel scoop. (TL6)
Class 2 0.15 ly accumulator. Weighs 4t. (TL7)
Class 3 0.20 ly accumulator. Weighs 6t. (TL9)
Class 4 0.25 ly accumulator. Weight 8t. (TL11)

So perhaps make the pod scoopable by somebody with a scoop of Class 2 or better?

More general thinking.

What is there to stop would-be escapees escaping? Life in the original gulags was utterly hideous. Many people preferred to die rather than endure more of it.

1) Detection devices in the mining pods (nobbleable by those with the skills and tools)?

2) Loved ones back on the planet's surface who will be made to suffer in the event of an escape?



Redspear's Suggestion.

So 12 hours from the planet (I travelled 284km in 30 minutes at 0.24lm - the mining pods' speed) would be circa 6,800km.

So in a Redspearificatory-modified mining pod an astrogulag escapee might go for the planet. Over 6,800km they would not.

In an unmodified mining pod, say within 1 hour they might (680km).

And in Stranger's World, where travel and just powering the systems costs fuel, there is the question of how much fuel a pod actually has. Say 6 hour's worth (excluding fuel for energy for lasers, breathing apparatus etc.)? 3,400km.



Phkb's Suggestion

This seems to me the most likely - help from outside which can also do something about the hostages on the planet surface.



Concluding suggestion (please comment!)
Say 50% of escapees are being met and do not necessarily want the player's help (except in evading the guards until their rendezvous).
The other 50% are desperate for a witchcloud to fly into - or to be scooped - or for help making it to the planet (if they are close enough, as detailed above).

Say 50% of the mining pods have been Redspearificated, and 50% not. And say another random 50% have had their tracking beacons nobbled, and 50% not.

Is this realistic? And is it too complicated to model in-game?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 10:26 am

Life in the original gulags was utterly hideous. Many people preferred to die rather than endure more of it.

Maybe that's just it. Plan of escape is a bonus rather than a requirement.

Maybe you get rescued, maybe you don't.
Maybe your oxygen holds out, maybe it doesn't.
If they're desperate enough then they'll likely take their chances.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Jun 28, 2023 10:26 am

What is there to stop would-be escapees escaping?

And maybe once they're reached that point then they're of less and less use to their captors anyway as their motivation is spent.
As long as the risk is sufficiently high then only the desperate will attemp it and then there always more to find their way to the gulags.