Oolite Bulletins

Do any of the OXPs that add unique details to individual systems deal with the ones that are isolated due to lack of direct witchspace routes?
It feels a little odd if, for example, Oresrati turns out to be a fairly typical system despite being effectively cut off from the rest of GalCop.

As far as I know, no. But I've not done very many of the missions OXPs, which may do something (Xeptatl's Sword, for example).

The commodities for buy-and-sale at the (few?) stations in the isolated systems should also be odd -- with potentially much higher demand for say computers due to nobody regularly delivering any...and what they DO have piling up with almost nobody showing up to leave with them.

List of Systems:
G3: The Prodigal Suns
G6: The Lost Worlds
G8: Oresrati

(The two dozen systems over G7's  The Great Rift include TL14 Articeso, and would perforce be much less isolated than the above).

So how might they be different?

1) Commodity Markets: dealt with by Switeck, above.
- But one would also expect a great deal of excitement when an (extremely rare) ship arrives in-system. Especially if it has cargo for sale!
See Cherryh's novel,  Alliance Rising, about the 10 years taken to fly from Earth to Alpha station, the tumultuous reception they get on arrival at Alpha, and the effects on the culture of the "pusher ship" crews of the decade in space.

2) Local shipping: What would there be?
Asteroid miners, yes. Some sort of (local/GalCop) Navy defending against Thargoids, yes. Police? ...really? Traders? ... really?

3) Piracy: would there be any? Especially in Oresrati! For the others, it presumably depends on government stability.

4) Thargoids: one could presume that the Thargoids are there in force, making up for the dearth of pirates.
- And what about the bounty on Thargoids? Do the local impoverished systems have enough money to pay it? Are they sufficiently part of GalCop for GalCop to pay while you are still in the system?

5) Money, law & GalCop:
- To what extent can one draw on credit reserves built up in the wider GalCop G8 in these isolated systems? Is the money I can locally access that obtained from selling commodities/detachable equipment locally?
- What about my legal status? If I start murdering hapless local traders (what local traders? With whom do they trade?) by the bucketload, my local legal rating is impacted. But what about my GalCop status? Is it only impacted when I return to the normal GalCop systems? Or is it not impacted at all?
- To what extent can impoverished GalCop support or even maintain any presence in these systems? One scenario might involve GalCop pulling out while the player was visiting!

6) Exit: Since the only way out is Galactic Hyperdrive (or Generation Ship, but you won't survive that journey - even with  Naked mole-rat DNA), there might be shady back-street chandleries selling unreliable bootleg versions for ridiculous prices. You will die of old age before you can make enough money trading around (eg) Oresrati. You might have to sell your ship and trade down to a second hand adder to buy the drive to escape!

7) Ships for sale: Second-hand Rusties only?

2) Asteroid mining might be the most common local shipping. The system pairs might have some regular shipping between each other, but it'd be at a pathetic level compared to the rest of the Galactic Charts.

3) Piracy would likely be very low, with so few targets.

4) Thargoids might not bother too much with the lone system pairs and Oresrati, simply because they're already cut-off from everything else. Hard to say though, depends on how much trouble they have getting there!

6) Exit would be booking a passage on whatever ship has a Galactic Hyperdrive. If your ship doesn't, you either somehow buy one at a huge (black market) price or leave your ship behind!
Some might be willing to leave in a slave container...at least from the lone Oresrati?

7) I'm sure escort type ships that cannot have hyperdrives or galactic hyperdrives stuck in these isolated systems wouldn't be terribly useful there, so any stuck there would sell cheap. The Galactic Navy might once-a-year send a Behemoth carrier loaded with supplies there and load up on ships to go elsewhere. Might even be profitable for them to do so...instead of purely charity/diplomacy.

Switeck wrote: ↑Fri Oct 10, 2025 9:48 am

7) I'm sure escort type ships that cannot have hyperdrives or galactic hyperdrives stuck in these isolated systems wouldn't be terribly useful there, so any stuck there would sell cheap. The Galactic Navy might once-a-year send a Behemoth carrier loaded with supplies there and load up on ships to go elsewhere. Might even be profitable for them to do so...instead of purely charity/diplomacy.

Will they make the ships there? Or import them?

Leaving aside the peculiarities engendered by Robert Holdstock's wonderful  The Space Traders Flight Training Manual (such as Cowell & Mgrath manufacturing the Cobra Mk.III at TL5 agricultural Lave...), Oresrati's TL of 5 seems to preclude any space ship manufacturing (or even maintenance - needs a TL of 7). The other three pairs have one system with TL9-12.



Reference:  TL