Oolite Bulletins

I was wondering if it would be possible to tie some pieces of equipment with model subentities, so that when you buy, for example, a cargo bay expansion, you could actually see this expansion on those ships that might have it as an external feature.

This would need some additional tags to the shipdata.plist as well, I presume, to differentiate the ships that have subentities defined for certain pieces of equipment.

In essence, I was thinking about a hauler ship that could basically "haul" big crates of cargo attached externally to its hull (if the owner had bought the cargo bay expansion - otherwise it would just carry stuff that fits inside the hull). Also, some smaller craft might get bulky attachments in order to be able to carry more cargo.

Naturally, going for realism, this would also necessitate (at some point, not necessarily there immediately) some sort of adjustment to the ship's abilities (thrust, roll, pitch).

Wolfwood wrote:

Naturally, going for realism, this would also necessitate (at some point, not necessarily there immediately) some sort of adjustment to the ship's abilities (thrust, roll, pitch).

True, but one should be careful about making these tweaks. You can make things really complicated but if it doesn't add much to gameplay, why go through all of the effort. Oolite isn't Flight Simulator .

Best wishes,
Oscar

I personally can also make a case for 'realism' that would involve not changing the ship statistics for such things. We're still theoretically dealing with a weightless environment. It doesn't take much effort to turn a ship, really.

Wolfwood wrote:

I was wondering if it would be possible to tie some pieces of equipment with model subentities, so that when you buy, for example, a cargo bay expansion, you could actually see this expansion on those ships that might have it as an external feature.

This would need some additional tags to the shipdata.plist as well, I presume, to differentiate the ships that have subentities defined for certain pieces of equipment.

It's a good idea, I'll give it some noodle time.

Mentioned it once....in a 'lasercooler' thread IIRC.
Nobody took notice though.

Hacking this for standard features could work easilly through death_actions and subunits.
For buyable equipment upgrades more 'hard' coding would be needed.

Code an IronAss ship fully fitted out with kit in sipdata/shipyard lists.
Then add subunits to the basic model.

radar dish/antenna for advanced compass.
exhaust manifolds for injectors
a few lumps, bumps and accesshatches on the hull for various energybanks and shieldboosters.
scoop can go underneath, as could a missiletube.
etc.

might even be fun to try this out for the C3-pimp.

The changes wouldn't even have to be dramatic, they could be very subtle and still make a significant impact on the variety in ship visuals, and even add a certain tactical utility for visually scoping out prey to see what they have equipped. Good texturing could do wonders for very geometrically simple additions.

I suggested missiles launching from external hardpoints once. Giles nearly had a virtual heart attack. :-)

magamo wrote:

I personally can also make a case for 'realism' that would involve not changing the ship statistics for such things. We're still theoretically dealing with a weightless environment. It doesn't take much effort to turn a ship, really.

<physicsNerd>Ahh, but manoueverability would be affected by mass, not weight - which is the name we give to the net gravitational force exerted on a a mass by all other masses. Inertia still exists, whether you are in a gravitational field or not</physicsNerd>

On a derail, does anyone think it would be a good idea to change the turning rate/acceleration of ships with respect to loaded/unloaded mass?

IE. a Cobra Mk III with few missiles, add-ons and no cargo or cargo bay expansion would be much more manoueverable than a fully kitted out Cobra with extra cargo bay - full cargo and loads of equipment

That would be more realistic, for sure, but I wonder how well it could be represented to the player (in an easily understood way).

Also, I would not hurry with such realism-increases until some other areas of Oolite start getting that way...

Presenting it to the user would be very easy – they’d notice that a heavily-loaded ship is more sluggish than a lightly-loaded one. Very intuitive.

radar dish/antenna for advanced compass.
exhaust manifolds for injectors
a few lumps, bumps and accesshatches on the hull for various energybanks and shieldboosters.
scoop can go underneath, as could a missiletube.
etc.

Like this! There is a precident in 'The Dark Wheel' too. It mentioned the external fuel scoop and 'the squat dome of an energy bomb housing' attached to a Cobra mk3.

I also like the idea of a fully loaded ship being more sluggish than an empty one. I don't think that is 'too much' realism.

When my wife's VW Passat is loaded to the gills with duty free booze there is a definite differencing in the handling!

Cheers,

Drew.

If you want to talk realism...

I'd suggest introducing gravity for massive objects first.

Entities such as suns, moons and planets....maybe dredgers and gererationships.

As it is, you can generate asteroids 2m from a planet surface and they will just hover there.

Hmmmm... well maybe, but...

The original Elite never had gravity, so there is no precident there. Introducing gravity would require orbits and such like which would be a massive change and probably rather frustrating to cope with.

However, the original Elite did have the concept of inertia in terms of roll and pitch (though obviously not subject to the changing mass of a ship vis-a-via cargo).

I think a sliding scale of maneouverability unladen > maneouverability laden makes sense. Though it would be a bit tricky to work out exactly what it should be given the 'tun' not being a 'tonne'.

Or maybe the 'tun' is a good reason for leaving it exactly how it is...

</ramble>

Cheers,

Drew.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

I'd suggest introducing gravity for massive objects first.

Entities such as suns, moons and planets....maybe dredgers and gererationships.

suns, moons and planets yes, but no gravity for ships whatsoever. No ship in Ooniversum is big enough to have its own gravity field, me thinks... At least detectable one (as in affecting your ship very much)...

Not gravitas perse.

Just a way to stop stuff from hanging in midair near a planet.

for example: have a damage occur to objects in atmosphere of planet if they have no heatshield, irrespective of speed.

or objects without thrust move towards planets/sun at low speed if within 1km range of surface or something.