Discussion - Trade Lanes or "the corridor"-good or

[Noldunar]

Hi everybody, not so long ago I started playing Oolite. I think it is a great game but I am not so sure about the "trade lane" thing.

Here is why: When you jump into a system, I was told that a number of pirates, police etc. is added to the system and I have found that all of the action happens in the inflight corridor from the hyperspace entry point to the planet. If you avoid the corridor, it is entirely possible to get to the planet without running into anything, not even pirates in anarchy systems. Also, if the corridor is "clean" (all pirates destroyed, transporters at their destination, cargo scooped etc.) the system is practically empty. You can jump-drive to the sun and back and everywhere without running into anything. I think that does not really capture the "feel" of the original Elite.

I have played Elite on the C64, the Amiga and I am now also playing Elite - The New Kind and at least in those versions, pirates, traders and asteroids appear randomly anywhere in the system. You could practically stray for hours in an anarchy system and there is always stuff happening. I have no programming skill and don't know how this is programmed, but it seems that the more unstable the system, the less time between random pirate formation encounters. This way, a system is never "empty" and it is not the player's choice if he wants action.

For example, if you play unrestricted and ferry passengers, it is not really eventful because you can just decide to avoid the corridor and just fly right through.

To make a long story short: Oolite is great but I think it would be even better if you don't have this trade lane corridor but instead random events and encounters anywhere in the system. It would capture more the feel of the original elite where anything can happen everywhere.

What does the rest of you think?

[LittleBear]

Personally I think using the out of the space lane weeze is cheating!

It was a trade off. Elite was "player orientied". Oolite is "Object orenited", hence the name - Object Orentied elite.

In Elite everything happened around the player. In Oolite every (I and do mean every!) ship follows its own AI and get on with its own thing whatever you do as the player. So pirates kill traders, police ships shoot down pirates, rebels fight govenment ships, the Thargoids and the Military duke it out and so on. All this happenes, whatever you do. Wheather you are just trying to get your Furs to the System or joining in on the rebels side as part of a mission.

This is cool, but it does limit the ships that can be added. There are only so many "inteligent" ships a system can track!

This is the big difference between Elite and Oolite. In Oolite a pirate may spot you in your Cobra III with 3 tones of Computers as you fly by a python loaded up with 100 tones and thinks to himself: That Cobra only has a small bay and could be a difficult kill, I'll attack the python! You see the pirates decend on the python and hear his pleas for help over the comms link. Will you help out or leave him to his fate?

[dajt]

In as far as you can talk about "realism" when discussing a sci-fi game, I think the trade lane concept is mostly good.

Why would a pirate be out in the middle of nowhere, when all traders enter the system at a defined point and head either towards the main GalCop station or the star?

As for having cleared the system of pirates, this is annoying if you want to get your kills up, but again isn't too far wrong if we assume pirates are a local gang.

But it is reasonable to expect the odd pirate jumping into the system - escaping a fight, clearing the legal status, random hunting, returning to home base (anarchy systems), etc.

[Killer Wolf]

corridor has good and bad points. i like being able to stray off it for a quick run to get a lot of trades in. even in Ensoreus, i need to do this cos there's a constant stream of Vipers and Vampires all over the place, it's extremely frustrating when you're budgetting an hour's play a night. logically it makes sense too. it's like shipping lanes on Earth - you keep to the known safe(ish) bits and don't stray. granted, the more you stray off the more you SHOULD encounter pirates in safer systems, as they'd be keeping away from the patrolled Corridor, where as if you go to Anarchies, perhaps they should be MORE prevalent in the Corridor as that's where most traders would be and the police presence is less.

mebbes someone could generate a simple OXP - just generate a randome set of new ships of random types/AIs for every (x) mins of game play?

[dajt]

To work like the old-school Elite the OXP would have to generate the ships in the immediate vicinity of the player's ship, otherwise the system will just fill up with AI ships doing nothing useful.

[Killer Wolf]

doable tho, innit? someone had the code for making ships appear at specific locations for testing ships i'd built so surely you could interrogate the player's position and add on a specific value so they don't appear right up your tailpipe(!)?

[LittleBear]

Think it would have to be put in the exe rather than an OXP.

You can in an OXP specify that ships are added at particular places, but I don't think you can have a "add within a certain distance of player" command.

[dajt]

Well, it might work. I just looked at the wiki and it has:

Code: Select all

spawn: <role> <number>
// adds a number of ships matching <role> near the ship
// that's the target of this script (as script_actions or death_actions)

The player's ship is the target of most scripts, and certainly all script.plist ones.

I'm not sure what "near" means though.

[LittleBear]

I have used spawn: in an OXP in order to get a destroyed ship launching splinter missiles when it dies. The missile appear where the ship died, but I don't think this would work to put ships near the player.

[Wiggy]

Oolite gives you the opportunity either to head down the space lane and take your chances, or to wander outside the lane for a quicker safer journey.

That first trip to Zaonce can take ages if you don't have fuel injectors.

I guess, for the advanced player, it can be good to have ships popping up everywhere, but if you want to meet other ships, you know where to go.

It has been mentioned before that there should be more pirate ships between the witchspace beacon and the Sun.

[LittleBear]

Dr's Sunskimmers (on Oosat2) does that. Well worth installing as its only a couple of k and livenes up trips to the sun!