Not enough "large" haulers?

[Griff]

@ Lestrade
you can get the busy ports oxp here: http://www.box.net/shared/j6zrjibym9
a lot of the textures etc have found their way into other oxp's, i think the prison became the black monk monestary and various bits of the hauler became the balrog in assassins!
at the moment the oxp is totally useless, if i remember correctly it generates a large station far out past the witchpoint beacon with a few cargo bots milling around

[Lestradae]

Hi Griff & Disembodied,

thanks for the link(s)!

I was thinking about using the Bulk Carrier for the upcoming (well, in a few months, that is) RS 3.03 alias Oolite Ships Extension V1.0 ... as a kind of super trader.

I am aware that the "docking looks awful and has problems" still is a problem for the bigger ships I give normal roles, but no solution just yet until one of you really good guys comes up with something.

One thought: What about making the docking ports of stations bigger, simply? Would that take away from the game, in anyone`s opinion? The "learning to dock" experience is not THAT long a time, especially when you can buy the odd Cobra MkI and have a docking computer from Zaonce onwards ...



L

[Thargoid]

If it helps as a stop-gap, feel free to nick the big ships AI out of Aquatics v1.01.

Both the Man O' War and Hawksbill are too big to fit through the Coriolis letter-box, so they run under an AI which stops them going splat (at least after Eric's kind suggestions for V1.01 so the auto-AI doesn't subvert things back to traderAI).

Or I'm sure there's other big ship AI's out there by better coders than me, there are enough big ships around after all (e.g. Amen Brick's ones).

[Lestradae]

Hi Thargoid,

thanks very much!

I have the idea to implement into Oolite Ships Extension all the (non-Thargoid ) ships ever done for Oolite - I do this oxp as a salute to ALL ship-creators and for those players who have a system that can take the load and who want "everything in".

I would find other "Extension Packs" that combine all oxps for a given topic a cool idea, "Oolite Equipment Extension" would be a logical possibility, etc.

Such extensions need people dedicated to their upkeep, changes made by the creators of the oxps merged etc., which is why I won`t do anything beyond what I already do - but I would find it cool if it was done. I believe many players would like something like that, I sure would have when I started playing Oolite!

Actually, I get a more and more strange feeling when I say "my oxp" about RS ... I would like it to be the oxp of all the creative, brilliant people who actually created its contents, not only of humble me who merged their efforts and gave them a bit of framework ...

Thanks for your offer again

L

[Captain Hesperus]

My thoughts on the 'Star Hub' are:

• Super-Hauler arrives in system and crawls to Star Hub.
• Super-Hauler arrives at Star Hub and docks.
• Dock-bots scurry to and fro loading and unloading cargo from the Super-Hauler.
• In-system ships (Transporters, Worms, Shuttles) start off-loading cargo from the Star Hub to the Main Station in amongst the rest of the inbound traffic.

This way you could have the Dock-bots zipping back and forward 'out of harm's way' around the Super-Hauler and then having other ships, bearing the Star Hub livery ferrying carco to the Main Station.

Captain Hesperus

[Eric Walch]

Why would a large hauler be docking with the station anyway? My impression was that the stations were supposed to be " gateway waypoints" rather than huge orbiting megacities? Surely a super freighter would either just planet-land or would park in orbit and then employ shuttlecraft, like Griff's OXP? Docking a large hauler at a station is the equivalent of trying to dock and unload a Hercules cargo plane at a passenger gate at the airport of your choice.

I agree, a mega ship with the size of a station will probably act as a station and transfers part of their cargo with shuttles to the station but the majority will go directly to the surface. A station is mainly a port to the surface and can be bypassed when the magaship has its own shuttles.

With my new scripting for the Dredgers 2.0 I was working along this line. The ships heads towards the planet and launches a large bunch of shuttles that head for the surface.
This part of the scripting I already had in the dredgers when LB launched the idea of using it for salvaging. But after docking of the salvaged ships, they keep heading for the planet to launch their shuttles. (Only the part of returning shuttles I still have to add. And also the trader traffic between the dredger and the station)

[ClymAngus]

Well, it's the big ship with it's own dock then a squad of smaller transport boa's.
Maybe a specific ship that is just a cabin-cargobay-engine for shunting stuff back and forth.

I would love a solution for the big ships docking conundrum that fits with original Oolite, but until now, nothing really workable

[Thargoid]

Just in preparation for this, I've now got larger capacity cargo container pods working (part of pods.oxp, link in my sig). At the moment they're just 1-10t cargo/1-100kg precious meta/1-200g gems, but it's trivial to make them different capacity ranges (max and/or min).

[Gunney_Plym]

Up and coming Heavy ...


The Goliath Class.

A modular design with a basic hull onto which can be mounted a variety of pallets, this one has three standard cargo units and a dry-dock. The pallets should be capable of fitting through a Station Port.

The plan will be for the Goliath to pull up close to the station and the pallets to then move independantly to the station. As I say that's the plan but I'm not up on AI writing yet so will probably be a later version of the OXP.

[Thargoid]

The plan will be for the Goliath to pull up close to the station and the pallets to then move independantly to the station. As I say that's the plan but I'm not up on AI writing yet so will probably be a later version of the OXP.

Nice design (although your texture needs a little work with the text mirroring), very military.

I may be wrong, but I don't think your plan for the pallets will work (at least with the currently available code of 1.71.2, who knows with 1.72 ).

For the ship in flight the pallets would have to be sub-entities (so they kept their place attached to the body of the main ship), but when at the station they'd need to be separate ships (with their own AI's). So unless you could get very clever with scripting and spawning to make the sub-ent pallets disappear and be replaced by spawned "separate-ship" pallets you may just have to settle for frangible pallets that spew their cargoes when destroyed (like the conger pods).

I suppose you could do a slight-of-hand and jump the loaded ship to witchspace and instantly spawn-replace it with the unloaded version plus the separate pods, but it'd be complex to do...

[Gunney_Plym]

Nice design (although your texture needs a little work with the text mirroring), very military.

Thanks Thargoid.

I've found that on my previous imports of textures that the text gets turned around. Creating the text backwards gets the correct result 'in-game'. The military style isn't entirely surprising for me, I've currently got HMS Albion outside my office window!

As for the handling of pallets, I completely agree that it may not be possible. But isn't everything until you try (Blimey that was a bit deep for a workday)

I didn't think you could dock with another ship until I grabbed 'HoOpy Casino's'. That one gave me more Mission ideas and hence then dry dock pallet appeared for later use.

[Eric Walch]

I suppose you could do a slight-of-hand and jump the loaded ship to witchspace and instantly spawn-replace it with the unloaded version plus the separate pods, but it'd be complex to do...

It's all possible when you take the time in scripting. In fact, what you describe is exactly what I do with buoy repair when I "release" the buoy. And that already worked in 1.70.

And currently I am reworking the ships from military fiasco. When you shoot away one of the subentities, I replace them with a loose fresh copy, on the same spot, that tumbles away and then explodes. Very nice visual effect.

[Thargoid]

Hmm, I like this idea... So potentially as the "replacement" ship doesn't have to have the same capabilities as the original, you could (for example) shoot the engines off a ship to stop it's flight?

Could get a little complex if multiple bits were shootable, but I'm sure that can be worked-on via mission variables.

** wanders off scheming, before he remembers he promised not to release any more OXPs for a bit **

[Gunney_Plym]

OMG

Eric's post has just sent my meager brain into overdrive with possiblities. And I can't even get a simple ship OXP sorted yet

[Captain Hesperus]

Up and coming Heavy ...


The Goliath Class.

Ooops. New trousers needed.... Very nice! Like the 'dry dock' idea too.

Captain Hesperus