Oolite Bulletins

If so, what numbers should I give it, to make it have a visible effect?

It is loaded, iff the station has “station” among its roles. The default value is 0.4.

Herm, so does "station" predefine any other behaviour, Ahruman?

The only other case I can find is that in order for something to be considered a StationEntity – i.e., a ship which can be docked with – it must have "station" or "carrier" among its roles, or have a <key>isCarrier</key><true/> in its definition.

Do you need a dockable/station-like thing that doesn’t have a "station" role? For what purpose?

On closer inspection, it looks like ''station_roll'' also requires <key>rotating</key><true/> to have an effect (or a role of "rotating-station", but that’s deprecated).

Thanks for clarifying that. I have a large carrier that rolls as it flies. I suppose that makes it a flying space station. It is already defined as a carrier - and it wil roll, when asked to - but when asked to roll at a specific speed, this is ignored.

I am assuming they both inhertit from the same basic class, but that the ability to define station roll-speed is hard wired into the station?

I should just try it and see (or, indeed, look at the source code, to see if I can work out what will happen). I just had visions of creating a ship that could only ever fly along facing the planet, or something :-/.

Internally, any dockable ship is a station. As far as I can see, a constant rolling effect can be applied with the “rotating” key and modified with the “ station_roll” key if the thing has a “station” role. This is an effect of stuff that happens in various bits of StationEntity and Universe, though, so it’s quite possible I’m missing something.