Oolite Bulletins

any chance for permanent wormhole gates to be built? ala buck rogers or sg1.... maybe only in tech level 13 and up, and only outgoing up to 7ly range.

What should that be good for?

If I imagine something like this, I would only agree to permanent connections between two 14+ worlds (within the 7LY range, of course). Don't know from my head whether such combinations exist, apart from the planets changed by Ionics.oxp.

Or how about interstellar waystations? THey would have to be supplied, so fuel would be very expensive, but they could provide links currently inaccessible planets.

Might be useful to have such structures to allow you to go beyond the 7 ly limit, as part of a mission to one of the remote constellations.

SCENARIO:

The military have been using systems in a remote constellation to test weapons and have developed an experimental jump gate system to break the 7 ly limit (presumably the Thargoids have a more elegant way of doing this). Jump gates are one way: they basically dump you at the witchpoint in the destination system rather than emerging from a matching gate.

So, the military have lost contact with one of the research stations, and since all their pilots are currently occupied zapping the Thargoids in intergalactic space, you get sent through the gate (maybe locate the gate behind the Sun so the locals don't know it's there).

Gate malfunctions slightly, dumps you in the remote constellation but in the wrong system. You have to make your way through the constellation to the system that was supposed to be your destination, and get back through the jump gate in that system.

Of course, the twist is that every system in the remote constellation has been invaded by Thargoids, and when you get to the research station there is a pitched battle going on - you have to save the station (perhaps by destroying some kind of Thargoid mothership). And if the Thargoids destroy the research station, there won't be anyone to activate the jump gate (so you'd better have a galactic hyperdrive)... plus you lose the mission.

You can always galactic hyperspace into the remote constellations, if you want to visit them.
I have a strategic plan go for a trip around the universe and visit them all.

Can you? I thought in Oolite the system was rigged so you'd always end up in the main block of planets. Has that been changed?

Think that was the case in BBC Elite, but in Oolite when you Galaxy Jump you appear at the same place in the Chart as where you were in the Old Chart. So for example there is a cluster of unreachable systems in the bottom left hand corner of G7. If you were at a system in G6 in the bottom left hand corner then you'd appear here and could fly to these systems. But if you were in the top right hand corner of G6 and GH jumped you coudn't then get then get there as they are all more than 7 ly from the neighbouning system. Buying an Advanced Navication Array is well worth it, if you have credits to space as it shows you the reachable and unreachable systems by hiting SHIFT 6 on the Long range chart.

I don't recall it being changed, but I might be wrong.

Different versions of Elite handle it in different ways, IIRC Giles made it so that you arrived at the same coordinates in the next galaxy as those that you left from, so providing you line up correctly you could be sure of getting to the remote constellations you wanted to, otherwise large portions of th galaxy would be no go areas. I think I used this tecnique in one of the missions, but cannot remember which one.

You say Oolite works like that, but what about the claim made here, where the programmer clearly claims that the galactic jump is rigged to avoid remote constellations.

That was a while ago, has the situation changed?

The situation has not changed, unless a bug has changed it.

On the Spectrum you jumped to the corresponding position of the next Galaxy. I think that the same went for the DOS version.