Oolite Bulletins

Apologies for strange subject title but I was trying to encapsulate everything I wanted to ask and get some broad thoughts on the subject.

As a spare-time writer (which I currently have none) I've got a short story running around my head but I'd like a consensus on E(oo)lite engines or at least a "it's a piece of fiction about a fictional u(oo)niverse do what you need/want" before I progress.

I know we've had and will have again, the rolling discussion about Newtonian v non-Newtonian physics and why Elite ships appeared to be effectively inertialess while FE ships do not.

In my own little mind and therefore the story I'd like to write the story with the following "facts" as the cornerstone of how the ships in the ooniverse work:

1) The thrust out of the back of the ship is not what drives it forward - these are exhaust ports for a complicated engine somewhere else in the ship - this is also why there are no "thrusters" for steering

2) the ships are "effectively" inertialess because of the "engine" mentioned in "1" - this allows for simplified controls seen in the actual game and matches the effect (ignoring FE/FE2) seen in-game

I think this goes against much of the canonical stuff, anything in the future of Elite i.e FE/FE2 and indeed some of Drew's current work - but given the number of times Wolverine's back story (or indeed much of the Marvel universe) has been edited to fit the current writer's taste this is not unique!

I would obviously want you guys to see and comment on the story but if my chosen take on the ooniverse doesn't suit I may keep it to myself and just stick it in my portfolio.

Any pre-writing thoughts much appreciated.

DaddyH

I voted for 'Use canonical stuff as much as it can, but bend the rules for artistic interpretation'.

I think you should stick to canonical stuff whereever possible and not make it a free for all otherwise I feel you loose the some of the integrity of the environment. Having said that, there is very little 'Canonical' stuff, and some of it is very contradictory anyway.

I think you have to bend the rules if you're going to write for Oolite as it is more advanced than either original Elite or FE2/FFE, yet 'historically' falls between them. This is what I did for Status Quo and continue to do in Mutabilis.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

1) The thrust out of the back of the ship is not what drives it forward - these are exhaust ports for a complicated engine somewhere else in the ship - this is also why there are no "thrusters" for steering

2) the ships are "effectively" inertialess because of the "engine" mentioned in "1" - this allows for simplified controls seen in the actual game and matches the effect (ignoring FE/FE2) seen in-game

I never liked this explanation for two main reasons.

A - This 'space drive' technology is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the reaction engines in FE2/FFE - so why was this engine abandoned? This simply doesn't work for me. (You don't need thrusters for attitude control - giros work fine)

B - If the cyan plume isn't engine thrust, why do you need to turn around to move in a different direction? A real space drive would allow you maneouvre without altering the pitch or yaw of your ship. Why does something as advanced as a space drive need a plume of venting plasma/gas/energy anyway? If you are venting something with any mass (gas/plasma) then you will get a thrust from it too...

I think this goes against much of the canonical stuff, anything in the future of Elite i.e FE/FE2 and indeed some of Drew's current work - but given the number of times Wolverine's back story (or indeed much of the Marvel universe) has been edited to fit the current writer's taste this is not unique!

In Status Quo and Mutabilis, I made a conscious decision to portray Elite and Oolite ships as reaction driven vessels (other than witch-drive) in the same vein as Star Wars / BG / Babylon 5 etc. i.e. They are 'flying' through some medium which makes them behave in a way similar to aircraft. Thus, if you cut engines there is some kind of friction analogous to 'air' that slows you down to a stop eventually, you have also have a top speed limited by the same friction and the friction allows you to 'steer' in some pseudo aerodynamic fashion.

This is equally impossible and implausible, obviously. But I think it's more aethetically pleasing. It's how we 'feel' spaceflight ought to be like and has long been established 'on-screen' in films/TV.

I would obviously want you guys to see and comment on the story but if my chosen take on the ooniverse doesn't suit I may keep it to myself and just stick it in my portfolio.

Any pre-writing thoughts much appreciated.

DaddyH

Definitely want to see it! I think we're big enough to accomodate several viewpoints on this kind of thing. There is never going to be a definitive decision one way or the other!

Cheers,

Drew.

I say full steam ahead, and damn the torpedoes! Personally I'm kicking around a story idea which (hopefully) will explain – to my satisfaction at least – the existence of the Elite/Oolite inertialess drive, 7-light-year wormhole limit and Torus jumpdrive on the one hand, and the Newtonian Frontier setup on the other. Canonical Shmanonical! As Chairman Mao said, "Let a hundred flowers bloom, and a hundred schools of thought contend". Just before having people shot for disagreeing with him.

I like DaddyHoggy's explanation of the Oo(E)lite spacedrive - makes as much sense as anything else and at least it's reasonably internally-consistent. I'm sure an explanation can be found as to why ships can only fly in the facing direction.

For me, FE2/FFE are in a separate universe to Oo(E)lite considering the huge switch in environments (realistic solar systems vs 1-planet/1-sun) and physics/technology. Hence I have no issues with Elite/Oolite diverging from FE2/FFE and running down a different Leg in the Trousers of Time, as it were.

I voted for 'keep it canonical but diverge for artistic license'.

You could make your engine system experimental, that way it doesn't touch on estabished understanding of propusion in this particular world.

9 times out of ten you can bend a story to fit any rule. If you had 2 ships with this type of drive, then you've got a mexican stand off. If you have a large number of ships sold with these type of engine (because it's cheap) then you've got a conspiricy, cover up story. That's at a basic level, 101 ways to make the story you want to write fit this. What you have here is flow idea, a medium to drive a story forward. Flow ideas can be easily tweaked. I'd write the story you want to. Then hammer the bitch into the ooniverse with a club hammer if nessessary. Flow ideas are resilient and easily manipulated.

If you want to PM me about this to bounce some ideas around then that's cool.

hmmm...one possibility how to make FF2/FFE work with Oolite universe. Oolite ships use something similar to warp technology of star trek, creating a "warp field" around ship, reducing its mass (and inertia) up to almost 0. This field is generated by hyperspace drive, that in fact acts like normal drive too. Torus drive also uses this technology. Since these three parts work together closely, they cannot be used individually. At the time between Oolite and FF2, new, much faster hyperdrive has been researched, and since it is cheaper and smaller, all ships has been quickly fitted with it. But is is not possible to have both new and old hyperdrive on one ship due to some interaction between those, so all ships had to be equipped with new sub-light speed drive too.

Sarin wrote:

hmmm...one possibility how to make FF2/FFE work with Oolite universe. Oolite ships use something similar to warp technology of star trek, creating a "warp field" around ship, reducing its mass (and inertia) up to almost 0. This field is generated by hyperspace drive, that in fact acts like normal drive too. Torus drive also uses this technology. Since these three parts work together closely, they cannot be used individually. At the time between Oolite and FF2, new, much faster hyperdrive has been researched, and since it is cheaper and smaller, all ships has been quickly fitted with it. But is is not possible to have both new and old hyperdrive on one ship due to some interaction between those, so all ships had to be equipped with new sub-light speed drive too.

If you made the warp bubble as big as the scanner array, it would explain Mass lock pretty well too. 2 distortion fields cannot interact.

yeh, interaction of warp fields might be it. Also explains why asteroids etc. don't trigger it. Another thing, reducing mass to 0 also explains that 7 LY limit constant for all ships regardless of size.

Sarin wrote:

yeh, interaction of warp fields might be it. Also explains why asteroids etc. don't trigger it. Another thing, reducing mass to 0 also explains that 7 LY limit constant for all ships regardless of size.

If you've got name issues (who the hell wants to use warp anyway) Then you could go with:

Quantum mass displacement field
Inertal halo
A.R.C. drive (Altered Relative Corona)

Loving the ideas guys! Much appreciated! Keep 'em coming - I hadn't even though of some of this - it's great!

ClymA, Sarin - I like the way you two orbit together!

@Drew - your belief about the engine being reactionary is clear and great and comes out in your writing very well and creates some wonderful imagery in the space battles - very SW, ST, BSG, B5 - but as I'm only going to be writing some self contained short stuff I want to write it the way the actual game "feels" - ignoring the laws of physics but consistent within itself - and the lads have come good - some fab ideas.

Getting the ideas, having the inspiration and having time to put fingers to keyboard is a different matter of course - I'm struggling to just keep up with a weekly RL blog for the local rag!

Sarin wrote:

yeh, interaction of warp fields might be it. Also explains why asteroids etc. don't trigger it.

So why do planets & suns trigger it? And in original Elite, asteroids triggered it as well. Hence the term 'mass' lock - anything reasonably massive breaks the jump-drive effect.

@Micha - as suns and planets (all things in fact) bend the fabric of space-time perhaps this unbalances the "warp" field - preventing it from forming evenly or safely (this is why apparently ships "jump in" at the witchpoint - to allow for an error of margin) - may be large asteroids or other large "unpowered" entities do to - I don't ever remember being mass-locked by an asteroid in the original Elite (C64/Amiga versions at least)

Micha wrote:

So why do planets & suns trigger it? And in original Elite, asteroids triggered it as well. Hence the term 'mass' lock - anything reasonably massive breaks the jump-drive effect.

Because it's not the overlapping of distortion fields per se that causes a failure of the Torus drive, it's encountering any significant curvature of spacetime – e.g. another warp bubble or a sufficiently massive gravity field. No doubt improvements have been made to the drive since the days of Elite, allowing us to scoot past asteroids now in the same way that a modern 4x4 can overcome obstacles that would have stymied a Model T...

Ah yes.. I keep forgetting Oolite runs a few years post-Elite and hence has improved Tech. I actually hacked my copy of Oolite to mass-lock on asteroids from a certain size upwards for that feeling of nostalgia *g*

Then again.. if I have an older ship, wouldn't it still have the old-tech in it?

Anyways, that's what I love about open-source - everyone can take the base idea and tweak it to their own requirements

Disembodied wrote:

Because it's not the overlapping of distortion fields per se that causes a failure of the Torus drive, it's encountering any significant curvature of spacetime – e.g. another warp bubble or a sufficiently massive gravity field. No doubt improvements have been made to the drive since the days of Elite, allowing us to scoot past asteroids now in the same way that a modern 4x4 can overcome obstacles that would have stymied a Model T...

Aqueezon looked up from his laminated notes, as the colonel entered the room. A man used to being saluted was slightly taken back by this amphibians relaxed and somewhat smugly intelligent repose.

"Colonel" he croaked quietly, "we have some interesting results to show you". "Well get on with it!”, Colonel Sanders snapped. He was distrustful of scientists at the best of times, a feeling compounded by this creatures apparent lack of respect and some what slimy physical disposition.

"As you well know the Quantum mass displacement field, despite being one of the most revolutionary inventions does have one or two minor shortcomings."

The Colonel leaned heavily on the door frame, his indignation at being tutored in cadet level astro-physics by a frog was palpable.

"Really it's only a minor tweak, thanks to some recently acquired processing components we've managed to boost the field emitters, so that 90% of asteroid fields will no longer cause an emergency cut off."

"In plain speak, please"

"if it's got a working field of it's own, sizable mass or has certain types of power generators in it, you'll still mass lock. If it's a rock in space however, then you'd better take evasive action, or you'll fly right into it."

The Colonel stood upright, "so, of what strategic value is this?".

The frog narrowed it's eye slits, "negligible, as soon as someone sees you powering through an ort cloud then they'll know somethings up. The processors came by mass shipment, any mechanic worth their license would eventually put 2 and 2 together.”

“Write up your report and send it to civilian marketing, and get back to that automatic threat assessment firing circuit. That is what we're paying you for after all”.

Visibly crest fallen the amphibian slumped dejectedly in his waterproof chair. "Yes sir".