Oolite Bulletins

As mentioned in other threads, I've been working on some new missiles and I've had a surprisingly productive weekend. Here's a collection of some rather rather exotic hardware:



From left to right: Cascade stand-off missile, Multiple-warhead anti-Thargoid missile, Frag Mine, Frag Missile, EMP Missile, short-range defence missile, original Oolite missile (for scale). All of these are effective in-game with easily-tweakable parameters.

Other equipment not shown in the picture includes an in-flight refuelling system (which uses a rather convoluted but effective method), a strategic bomber AI and a rather nifty self-defence missile system which combines many of the features of the other weapons.

Of course, only a few of these weapons would be available on a routine basis in-game - really this is just an experiment to see how much can be achieved with the AI. I might put a little demo mission together to show off their capabilities - if anyone has any other ideas for weaponry and equipment to try out, give me a shout.

I'll put some of these on Oosat at some point for people to have a play with, though I don't know if the site is being updated at the moment - I think there are still some OXPs in the queue that haven't been uploaded yet.

Ramirez wrote:

<voice-over from off-post>Doctor! Captain Hesperus has gone into cardiac arrest again! Put out the crash call!

Captain Hesperus
"My heart, my poor, poor heart!"

Whoa - nice one R, nice looking models, interesting sounding capabilities and lots of Oolite expanding possiblities!

Well done. The more I see others do the more I'm humbled by my complete lack of skill in so many areas of the Oolite Ooniverse!

Great look and style! I Love it

Really great job Ramirez!

I like the textures a lot too. Being from a city where the shipyard has built the four largest container ships in the world ever (so far), I'm a bit concerned about the what looks like a future decline in the quality of metal working when I see textures with too many and too visible welding lines. The few and less visible lines used for these missiles, are a lot more realistic to my eyes.

I like the idea of rough textures, rivets, welds, etc. Surely in space it doesn't matter, neither does the conventional shapes which are more suited to atmosphere.

TGHC wrote:

I like the idea of rough textures, rivets, welds, etc. Surely in space it doesn't matter, neither does the conventional shapes which are more suited to atmosphere.

You're not much of a fan of Ramirez new missiles and the DW cobra then, I gather. To me those things are among the best looking stuff released for this game.

I didn't mention the shape of ships anywhere, but the fact that some textures make the craft look like they were fashioned from a very large amount of tiny plates. This would actually make more sense if we were talking about craft entering atmospheres (ceramic tiles covering) but as you point out yourself, this is not the case in Oolite.

To me rivets and welds would be really cool in the game if Oolite was about sailing ships in the period between the world wars. Taking place in the 32nd century, textures like those Ramirez use here make more sense to me, since they don't require putting new things into the plot about the retrograde technological development of mankind.

Well, that is what I think and why.

i made mine out of small plate (which would actually be fairl big, given the ship size, simply to GIVE texture. it's all fine saying no welds or rivets, but if you do a ship like that it ends up - to me - looking like...well, a ship in a puter game
each to their own, but my theory is thus : if you're flying inspace and travel at mega speeds (0.3 lightspeed!! etc), then you're going to get hull damage from micrometeors etc - not even taking into account pirate weapons! so, repairing bits of hull/wing by removing smaller panels makes FAR more sense to me than a smooth one-pice type hull that would need major cutting/welding to repair.
if you look at my Renegade Vampire, you'll see this kind of damage

Dr. Nil wrote:

You're not much of a fan of Ramirez new missiles and the DW cobra then, I gather.

Whoo Back!

That's your assumption, and miles off target. Ramirez and just about everybody else knows I'm a huge fan of the DW Cobra, do a search and read my comments.

As far as the missiles are concerned, I think they are excellent, but I repeat, they don't have to be streamlined to fly through space, they don't need fins, they can be any shape and texture that you creative guys want to make them, so why have limitations on their design?

I think part of the reason for the look of the missles is, to paraphrase the old Triumph TR7 motto "It's the shape of things that came." We as a global society are accustomed to missles looking a certain way, long pointy with fins. These from Ramirez look cool, these look mean. I like, alot. Where can I outfit my ship winth them?

IMHO to make missles look too different from our norms would look alien. Now this is an idea...alien missles (Thargoid, Orb, Krell, Narn, Romulan, you name it). They could look "outlandish" and "weird".

Also, the Military may somtimes want to bomb things inside atmosphers, like Pirate Bases, The Thargoid Homeworld etc. Although the missiles don't need fins when fired in space, you never know when you might need to use one in an atmospher so they are mass-produced this way.

TGHC wrote:

That's your assumption, and miles off target.

Kinda like how you assumed that my mentioning that I found 1920's level of expertise in working metal on the parts of the builders of spacecraft in the 3100s unbelievable, had anything to do with aerodynamics..?

I wasn't talking aerodynamic properties of rivets anywhere. Just saying that such bad welds, rivets and the idea of spacecraft build from unevenly sized randomly spaced tiny plates, don't really look as nearly as good or believable to me as these new missiles or the DW-cobra.

Ramirez wrote:

Wow.. excellent missiles! How did I miss these yesterday? Hope you release them soon.

LittleBear wrote:

Also, the Military may somtimes want to bomb things inside atmosphers, like Pirate Bases, The Thargoid Homeworld etc. Although the missiles don't need fins when fired in space, you never know when you might need to use one in an atmospher so they are mass-produced this way.

Er, no. Seriously. The idea of a spaceship-to-spaceship missile that also works in atmosphere “just in case” is ridiculous. This is not to say that Oolite isn’t full of physical silliness (mostly inherited from Elite), but trying to make up plausible explanations that aren’t doesn’t actually help. :-)

Perhaps they're pointy for when you're fending off pirates (or you're attacking helpless traders) at low planetary altitude or within the sun's corona? These are atmospheric environments which we can visit, where the sky isn't black.