Size is everything!

[Killer Wolf]

Okay - about my ship model. i want a few opinions about what's "uber" in the universe. the gen on the ship is it's specifically to be a fast hunter type thing w/ custom big engines, so i looked over the standard Oolite basics PDF wotsit and made its top speed .625l : given that the Viper Interceptor was 0.5l. now- i've read somewhere that some people consider anything >0.4 in the military class and perhaps too much so, i wanna few opinions as to what i should do, cos i don't want to make an OXP that jars w/ the rest of the game for all your purists. i know some ships are given just wildly improbable stats (X-wing has SIX missiles?! where do they fit?!), but i was trying to be logical in my mind, in that the theory is the ship is fairly large but internals space cut down cargo area and side/rear weapon mounts in favour of engine space etc.

but anyways - thoughts, opinions....??

[Dr. Nil]

Besides seeing scales sorted out so the big classes of ships get bigger and the small classes get smaller, I'd also like to see the smaller ships get a lot faster and the larger ships get a lot less agile.

I don't really care about any 'true' physics. I just want my gaming to look like if I was watching a good action sci-fi movie or series.

Fast paced space battles with small fighters zipping about and huuuge freighters struggling to turn.

It might require some completely new ways of controlling crafts and acquiring targets, but it would make for a lot more realism (in the fictional sense of what we are used to seeing in the movies and series).

I think that this change should start with the original ships, so oxp'ers could use the basic ships for comparison when introducing new ones.

My own Teretrurus MK1 is currently uberspeed at .405 to make up for this, cargo is at 10t and non-expandable (because everything is taken up by engines) and to buy one and fully equip it will cost you more than 800k - that makes for some quite expensive maintenance bills which it can be quite hard to make enough money for, given the small cargo space.

I think anything uber should come with serious drawbacks. Like the Anaconda which clearly has such a cargo capacity that it does not make sense that it should be able to dock. Therefore it should not be seen as a really existing ship at the shipyards. Instead when someone is suckered into believing that such a ship is really docked at a station and chooses to shell out for one, a Game Over should be scripted telling the player that he now after being the mark of this scam is completely broke and has to spend eternity sweeping corridors and waxing hulls at the current station.

[TGHC]

Like the Anaconda which clearly has such a cargo capacity that it does not make sense that it should be able to dock.

It would make sense for there to be an external docking point and a series of tug ships transferring cargo cannisters to the space station (at a cost of course), for all ships too large to dock.

There's something like this in Assassins.

[Killer Wolf]

Like the Anaconda which clearly has such a cargo capacity that it does not make sense that it should be able to dock.

It would make sense for there to be an external docking point and a series of tug ships transferring cargo cannisters to the space station (at a cost of course), for all ships too large to dock.

There's something like this in Assassins.

that'd be interesting - your profit could be compromised in having to pay the Coriolis for it's robotugs, until you bought some of your own, maybe.
given the spin of the stations, how'd you do the external docking tho? i always though it unfeasible to have the station spinning like that, a static one seemed much more likely. i suppose the spin is meant to be generating gravity, but in the future surely they'd have a grav generator or something instead?

[TGHC]

how'd you do the external docking tho? i always though it unfeasible to have the station spinning like that, a static one seemed much more likely.

I would think something like a navigation beacon or a Hoopys would do the job, (wait for it I've had a brainwave) call it a Cargo Terminal!

[Roberto]

@Killer Wolf - personally, I think 0.625 is *way* too fast. You'll be able to outrun just about anything, and by a fair margin. I'd say 0.45 maximum, but anything that can do 0.4 or above ought to be pretty damn expensive. (I'd class the Wolf Mk II as a "fast hunter", and that does 0.38.) But that's just my personal view!

@Dr Nil - yep, the Anaconda really ought to be a lot bigger, with a capacity of 750TC. So the stations *definitely* should be bigger, for it to fit inside!

[Dr. Nil]

@Dr Nil - yep, the Anaconda really ought to be a lot bigger, with a capacity of 750TC. So the stations *definitely* should be bigger, for it to fit inside!

Which of course might also be a reason to make the planets a lot bigger and then make the distances in-system greater and up the average speed of ships. All of which are things that would get my vote - at least atm.

The Taranis station is huuge as I recall it, but it might well be closer to the size the game should aim for than the default system stations.

[Killer Wolf]

speaking of stations and all that stuff, when you model one intstead of a ship is it east to give it an attribut so that if your ship goes to point x you trigger the dock/trading bits? is there a bit in the shipdata plists?

could quite fancy building a few stations, ones you could interact w/, not just there for eye candy.

[Griff]

Hi KW
i don't think there is an attribute you set so that oolite knows you're safely inside the docking bay, i think it just sort of sees that your co-ordinates are now inside the model and that you didn't hit any walls or anything so you must be docked.
Dr. Nil posted up a link to a great tutorial in a thread i started when i was having bother making a station, you can see it here https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p= ... ties#20007

[Roberto]

@Dr Nil - yup, I designed it to be more the sort of size I think a station should be. Although it could probably do with a bit more "parking space" around the entrance! If I get around to a v2...

[Killer Wolf]

cheers Griff, will look into that. got an idea for a huuuge station but it won't have spinny docking slots, i just wanted to know how the game would recognise it AS a station and take action, rather than trating it as a big ship.

[Dr. Nil]

Perhaps if we get more large stations, someone will eventually make the planets and other scales larger to make everything fit

@Roberto: I still haven't played the mission though. I visited when I was to green to get it offered. It'll probably be beyond v.2 before I get back to G1. I've been stuck in G4 for ages (all the time that I can fit in for Oolite is spend on playtesting, oxp'ing and reading on this BB.

@KW: You can give your station "station" as one of it's roles.