Oolite Bulletins

Hello folks!

One thing that bother me for quite a time and I have to ask for your opinion.

As far as know, witchspace travel is a nasty thing. Poke a hole in the
very space-time, go through witchspace to another star without those
pesky relativistic time problems, and return to normal space. I can't
really imagine what sort of mumbo-jumbo the hyperdrive does, but
it's serious business!!

So, let's get to the point: Why we can depart to witchspace so close
to the planet and the station? Why is not required to go through the
space lane again to depart to your destination?

I know that you need some distance from the stations, though, but I
think still too close to perform such operation!

Forcing commander's to go through the space lanes again to travel to
another system should be a hard thing? a bad thing?

I think that will bring a little more 'reality' to the game, in the sense
that since you need to be far from the planet and station to arrive in
a new system, why not to depart too?

Comments, please!

Well, this is kind of hard-wired into the game... you could do it in the original Elite, so you can do it in Oolite. I don't suppose it's any more "unrealistic" this way than any other, really. Pretend physics is pretend physics, after all! It just requires a bit of rationalisation:

You can open a wormhole near to a large mass like a station or a planet (within limits), because your witchdrive engines are right there with you. However, although the other end of the hole is in one sense in exactly the same location, in another it's up to 7 light years away. So that the hole stays open long enough for a ship to travel through, the exit point has to be created at a point of minimal spacetime distortion, i.e. at a considerable distance from the planet or the star or any other large mass like a station. Otherwise people would just open wormholes from the surface of one planet to the surface of another and send their goods through on a trolley.

@Disembodied - a very well reasoned explanation

@Micaelis - it's become the excepted norm in most SF themed un(oo)iverses - Star Trek(no jumping but warp engines don't work too close to a planet - although this got better in the later series), Star Wars, (to a lesser extent) Farscape, Babylon-5 - big masses prevent whatever-you-call-your-jump-capability from working so you jump in outside their effect. As Disemebodied said, if it wasn't for this you'd open up the two ends of your jump mechanism and push through your goods, or your bomb, or your pathogen or your armed assault force, etc.

Pretend physics is only pretend physics until somebody can make it work, using Carbon Nanotubes it should be possible (given enough cash investment) to build a Space Elevator - the technology now exists. When I was at uni studying physics, Quantum Lasers where theoretical , 10 years later I did a course on something unrelated and the visiting lecturer brought with him a cheap, COTS Quantum Laser.

JET - the Joint European Torus, can produce stable plasma for 30s at a time and is almost breakeven (energy in = energy out) - the bigger one they're building now in France should actually produce real +ve energy out for energy in ratio. I'm hoping it does.

When I worked at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) - 15 years ago our sister site at CERN in France produced several anti-hydrogen atoms (anti-proton orbited by a positron) and contained them for several seconds. The papers were full of Star Trek inspired stories.

Meta-materials should be impossible (classical physics) but they're not - I've seen and used some - it is possible to cloak an object (although only from microwaves and only if the object is perfectly symmetrical) but it's one hell of a start!

Physics does have laws but what we discover as we push against them, is that some of them are more like guidelines - we have yet to actually reach the stops in several areas.

Just the two penny's worth from a rather rusty ex-physicist/scientist.

By your responses, I'm start to think I wasn't clear enough...

I think it should be more interesting if the ships should need to depart from
the same place where they arrive in a system.

I know that most of the sci-fi works out there permits you go to through
<your-ftl-travel-method-here> almost from anywhere in space, but I think it's a little odd. If you need a considerable distance to come from, why not to go to?

I'm trying to remeber if there's a sci-fi work that need this kind of rules
to do FTL travel, but my memory is not helping now...

This is just some thoughts that keep floating in my mind from time to time, not a real suggestion or anything like that!

Anyway, thanks for your responses ppl!

What I would like to see is that jumping within the Safety zone is not allowed. It should be fun if you have to lock on a 'jump out' beacon (just a little out of the S-zone). if 'space distortion' plays a role when jumping in it also plays a role when jumping out. The hyperdrive computers need to get a system lock.

Frontier Elite fined you when jumping to close to a base or station (I believe from memory)

Micaelis wrote:

By your responses, I'm start to think I wasn't clear enough...

Disembodied wrote:

You can open a wormhole near to a large mass like a station or a planet (within limits), because your witchdrive engines are right there with you.

I like Disembodied's explanation - it makes sense and has a nice in-game logic about it.

If you want to manipulate game logic to be more in keeping with your "sense" of what's right then here are some suggestions (which with a bit of jiggery pokery could be OXP'd I think):

Just like a docking computer ships may be fitted with a default (because it would be dangerous otherwise) - witchspace calculation computer (ala Hans Solo's Nav Computer in the M.Falcon), but why not make it so that you do have to travel a greater distance out before you can jump out - a jump out beacon like the witchspace beacon further out - from this point the computer makes minimal calculations because this is the optimum jump out point. If you want to jump from a different location or closer to the station/planet etc you need to fit a better jump calculation computer? Really big ships might have to travel all the way out to the witchspace beacon, would make for some interesting game dynamics - big heavily laden ships heading against the flow, ripe for a bit of pre-emptive scavaging....

Again, just my two pennies worth

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I like Disembodied's explanation - it makes sense and has a nice in-game logic about it.

I take this as scientific validation of my theories.

The real reason, though, Micaelis, is that Oolite does it the way Elite did it. I wouldn't bet too much on a change this big being made to the core game dynamics...

In scifi terms, there's no particular reason to prefer one method over another. The only reason to make the change would be if it enhanced the enjoyment of the game. In this case, I don't see that it would: it would just add a reverse leg to a journey you've already made. If you've had a humdrum trek through a crowded but (unless you have criminal tendencies) uneventful Corporate State, it would be a bit of a bind to have to chunter through the rush-hour traffic all the way back to the WP before you could skip off to anywhere interesting.

True enough, you'd gain twice as much combat in the dangerous systems, but to beginners without an iron ass this means they'd have to run the gauntlet twice if they wanted to risk visiting a less stable world. In any case, players who've run through an Anarchy and are itching for more trouble can either just go out hunting in the system they're in, or find another hairy system nearby and jump there: there are usually plenty to choose from!

I suppose, if you wanted to, you could always make yourself fly from the station to the WP beacon before jumping out anywhere. Of course, you'd have to studiously ignore all the computer-controlled ships merrily witching away from the vicinity of the station... which must create a fabulous light show for the groundies, on a clear night when the station's passing overhead. Be a shame to rob them of that.

Disembodied wrote:

Otherwise people would just open wormholes from the surface of one planet to the surface of another and send their goods through on a trolley.

Of course in the original Elite it was set up this way to give some combat opportunities on the way to the planet. After trading you could go out for a bit more pirate bashing before leaving. Or if a boring place, just leave. I dont think that option should be taken away.

To add to the science, like Han Solo's nav computer, you could imagine starting the jump is easy but it is really hard to get the other end of the jump correct, it is far away and errors escalate (apparently to an uncontrollable level beyond 7 LY). Hence the need to have a very large flat piece of space-time to arrive in, ideally with a witch-point navigation beacon aiding the 'capture' of arrivals to the system.

Hi Micaelis,

maybe vegastrike is for you. In that game you have to travel to special zones to jump to another system.

Althought it seems to have a more bad programming than oolite as it began dropping in fps from 200 to 10 in the first system as I approached the ataraxia figther base or so ...

best regards
krombart

I think the point is what Disembodied already said: While it may be more realistic to leave the system at the witchpoint, it would be quite time-consuming and - frankly spoken - annoying to have to make the journey through the corridor twice in each system.

So for me it comes down to realism vs. playing-fun. And in this decision the fun-factor is the clear winner (for me).