Oolite Bulletins

From the discussion on Commies

ramon wrote:

...for the Corporate States? Party ships full of girls on their hen nights? Limo's carrying rock stars like jjagged edge?

Ramirez wrote:

I've had some thoughts about populating dictatorships along similar lines so any tips on keeping things optimised would be very useful.

Dr.-SPACE-Nil wrote:

I look forward to your dictatorships. I have a loose idea to throw in - junta style dictatorships with some Latin American flavouring for the Agricultural and more European Fascist style for the Industrial ones.

Other ideas:

A single or group of feudal systems oxp'ed to be a shogunate.

A group of or all feudal or other fitting system type as a theocracy under a megapope or supercaliph or even a precolombian type ultrahigh priest (you know what those slaves you just sold will be used for there).

Single feudal systems oxp'ed as individual kingdoms with their own unique markings.

Hillbilly convoys of caravans in Poor Agricultural worlds.

More of everything!

OK, so I did a bit of thinking over the weekend about the dictatorships and here are some early ideas (warning: this is bit of a long post, with pictures!)

As per Dr Nil's suggestion, I have the industrial dictatorships following a Roman model, not disimmilar to the Italian Fascists, with the dictator taking on the trappings of an Emperor surrounded by magistrates and civil servants such as Aediles, Quaestors, Lictors and the like - I figured this would be slightly less offensive than the obvious route of simply plastering swastikas all over the place.

Here is a standard police unit (which has ended up resembling a viper mkII) for the industrialised dictatorships:



I could repaint the StarSeeker shuttle in Imperial colours to act as a senatorial transport (complete with purple flashes as befitting a senior megistrate) with bounties/rewards for captured/rescued passengers and crew.

For the agricultural states, we have a full-blown military dictatorship, a People's Revolutionary Junta headed by a Generalissimo. A quick repaint of the basic police vessel results in a Junta Enforcer:


The symbol is one lifted from the alternative history project Ill Bethisad, which is itself based on a Latvian military emblem. I was going to use the Yugo y las Flechas (Yoke and Arrows) emblem that was used by the Spanish Falange party in the 1930s, but I thought the sword and sun symbol looked more exotic and so more in keeping with the Latin American feel. I may redo this model with a more weathered metal texture and some additional colour.

I've just started playing around with Wings3d, having finally found a version that works with my OS, and so have been able to make use of the more interesting modelling features. An early idea I have are asteroid farms (for the agricultural states) and asteroid factories (for the industrial ones). Both would consist of an asteroid or boulder with with a settlement placed on top of it, and a dock built into the side. I'll probably need to tone down the polys on the final model and the transparency won't work in-game, but this gives an idea:



Finally, both types of system would need freighters to transport goods to the main stations. I've sketched out a number of variations, but for starters here's a potential model for a tanker - again I'll probably need to tone down the polys in the final version:



On the billboards front, a 'Big Brother' style one for the industrials and a sycophantic 'glorious leader' portrait for the agriculturals would seem appropriate. I did build a monumental fasces as a potential witchpoint beacon but I went completely overboard on polys, however it might still come in useful.

I'm mindful of systems becoming too congested, so where possible I'd aim to replace the existing ship population rather than adding to it through specific scripts. I often travel through less stable systems simply to avoid the traffic, and remember not everyone has fuel injectors!

Comments and suggestions welcome.

That looks really good!

I look forward to those farms and factories.

And yes, you can use transparency. I used it for the SLAP-U in commies I've kept it pretty opague for now, because I've still got some aligning to do, but you should be able to see eg. the sun through it as I recall it.

Dr.-SPACE-Nil wrote:

And yes, you can use transparency.

You can!!? Well now, that opens up a whole new avenue for design. I'm thinking cockpits with pilots inside for the smaller ships. Passengers for the larger ships.

Ramirez wrote:

I thought the sword and sun symbol looked more exotic

It does, and very nice it is too. Could you (and should all we OXPers) make logos available for all so we can keep the oxps with a degree of uniformity?

What do you think?

IE: I could do a special version of the Mosquito Trader that the "People's Revolutionary Junta" use with that symbol on it.

Thanks for the comments. If transparency's an option I'll try modelling some interiors for the farms and factories, then. It'll take me a while to get up to speed on building stations and docks, and all the other exciting things that can be done these days, but I should be able to crib the details from other OXPs that are out there.

On the logos front, I does seem sensible to make them available to anyone who wants to get involved in these potential flavour expansions - it doesn't stop anyone else developing their own ideas but it would help to keep each OXP consistent. When I get a moment I'll post up some pics of the ones I've done so far for people to play around with.

I'm currently working up some back story using the Foreign & Commonwealth Office's country profiles as inspiration. This should help to work out exactly what kind of ships and structures are appropriate for each type of system, as well as getting an idea of the imports/exports and commodity prices for the new stations.

In the meantime, here's another freighter, with even more transparency:



And, just for the sake of it, here's the monumental fasces model I was talking about:

Have you done some tests at how it works in-game at the higher transparencies? I'm not quite sure on the games ability to have other objects within transperant ones. Just so you don't spend too long on the details to discover that it won't let you.

If you get the fasces down, it could be the witchpoint beacon in the system where The ... Empire has it's capital.

And bringing up the subject this game being between Elite and Frontier who's going to do the EARTH.OXP? It's not really that far from Lave, is it? I look forward to it Gas giants and all. Perhaps somebody has already got one running in their own private add-ons folder?

I've been forming some ideas on the dictatorships and I've been looking into the possibility of spicing things up by changing the legal status of certain commodities.

I know these are controlled by the illegal_goods.plist, and this can be modified manually to create a new set of illegal commodities that would apply universally. In order to apply this to specific systems, though, I wondered if this plist could be modified on the fly as a result of a script, like the planetinfo?

For example, as well as manually modifying the planetinfo data for each system, it's possible to modify parts of the planetinfo via a script, which can be triggered once a specific condition is met. This means that instead of having to identify and modify every planetinfo entry that relates to a say, a dictatorship, you can automatically identify such systems via the script and then use the 'setPlanetinfo' script method to make the relevant changes.

What would be really good is if a similar script could check the government type and then instead of modifying the planetinfo, it goes into illegal_goods.plist and say, sets the narcotics integer from 3 to 0 (which I assume would make them legal). Even if this could only be applied to the system the player happens to be in at the time (as illegal_goods.plist has no reference to individual systems) the effect on the player would be the same.

Do people know if something like this is remotely possible through an OXP, or would it need a change to the code to support a new 'setIllegal_goods' script method?

If this is a no-go, I guess the effect of having different illegal goods could be simulated to some extent by replacing the usual space station with some new variation and then creating a modified commodity market specifically for that variant.

Any thoughts?

The "illegal_goods" list is read when the Universe is init(). There aren't any functions to re-read it or change it (that I can find in the code).

Sorry.