Oolite Bulletins

I don't know if anyone's mentioned this before, but what about the possibility of a new piece of equipment for ships that allows a portion of the cargo hold to be used for extra witchdrive fuel? This would give you the ability to make a long jump and still have some fuel left to make a get-away if really needed without having to use the escape pod, or for time-sensitive missions would allow you to avoid taking time to refuel as many times along the way.

I can imagine two levels of this capability. A basic level would be like the extra passenger cabin -- it would take up a defined amount of space even when it's not being used, but could be removed if you decided you didn't want to have it. A more advanced extra fuel tank could be collapsible, allowing you to store lots of extra fuel if you wanted to, but when the extra capacity is not being used it would only take up a nominal amount of space.

The issue I see is how you'd figure out a fair way of determining how far you could get per unit of cargo capacity given how many different sized ships there are. Maybe a ratio of the ship's mass per light year of witch fuel is the way to approach that.

Any thoughts?

Good idea. It would be as simple as allocating a "tank" for the fuel and storing it in the hold with a pipe to the appropriate connections. Alternatively, you might want to consider externally mounted fuel tanks, which in a battle situation might be targetted by an enemy, although to be honest, any fuel tank of this kind might best by a long flat, and wide tank rather than a bulbous spherical or cylinder shaped tank which could be attached to the underside of the belly of a ship (ventral surface), or possibly on its upper dorsal surface.

rabidvixen wrote:

Alternatively, you might want to consider externally mounted fuel tanks, which in a battle situation might be targetted by an enemy

You are assuming that Witchdrive fuel is explosive, an easy one to make given the primitive times in which we find ourselves, but it seems to me that a material that can propel a massive craft several light years across the galaxy is unlikely to be the kind that you burn or blow up.

PS: I love the idea of extra fuel tanks. Mainly for the injectors, though. I'm concerned that if you can hop from one side of the galaxy to the other in one jump it might take away some of the fun in the game. But I do hate running out of injector fuel. Maybe a separate type of fuel could be used for injectors, instead of using up your witchdrive fuel, it would have it's own supply. It's always bothered me that the injectors could possibly run on the same fuel as the Witchdrive engine, it just seemed unlikely.

Why do injectors use Witchdrive fuel? <technobabble>Just call it nanojumping. You see, the witchdrive engine is also the most economical way of moving around in-system because it acts on the fabric of space itself so there's no reaction-mass expended: the plumes of exhaust you see behind ships are simply exhaust and any propulsion they generate is incidental. Even ships without interstellar capability posess the core of a witchdrive for in-system movement, only without the expensive and bulky control mechanisms that interstellar travel requires.

The disadvantage is that a witchdrive, even turned off, distorts space-time which causes a drag on forward motion,</technobabble> which also explains the non-newtonian physics of the game.

<TECHNOBABBLE>Ships have hybrid engine technologies.

Low speed manouvering is handled by clusters of reactionless thrusters (they provide an impulse without relying on Newton's third law by acting to directly manipulate the local curve of space-time). These thrusters are powered by one or more engines which, by consuming microscopic quantities of the fuel Quirium, provide the energy necessary to bend space (and incidentally it is the charged exhaust from these engines that appears as a glow streaming from the engine exhaust ports). To make navigation simple for the ship's pilot, control over pitch, roll and velocity are micromanaged by the navigational computers, dispensing with the need to thrust and counterthrust to accelerate or tilt the craft.

Higher speeds can be obtained by allowing the same thrusters to act over a volume of space-time that extends beyond the hull of the ship, unfortunately this can have unpredictable effects when two ships drive-fields interact or the drive-field enters a steep gravitational drop-off like that near a planet. Wired to the ship's scanners the 'torus jump drive', as it is known, shuts down near other ships with the same drive or near large astronomical bodies.

Temporary boosts of speed can also be achieved by allowing unreacted Quirium fuel to mix with the charged exhaust flow from the main engines. This generates a temporary burst of thrust in a 'normal' Newtonian reaction, however as the main thrusters work constantly to cancel this effect the efficiency of 'fuel-injection' is decidedly wasteful.

Intersystem travel relies on the 'Witch-drive' technology, where the main engines are sent into 'overdrive' to power the curving of local space-time in upon itself. The resulting 'knots' unravel when the engine shuts down, flinging any object nearby across intersystem space without the ship actually occupying any point between the destination and the point of arrival (typically this is just the ship, but very close nearby objects may be caught up in the same effect). The arrival point is usually selected as being at a point in the destination system where the local curvature of spacetime is at or near zero - a far Lagrange point or near the system's edge.</TECHNOBABBLE>

(typically this is just the ship, but very close nearby objects may be caught up in the same effect)

Oooh - does this mean dragging escorts and hapless traders through witch space is still in the pipeline?

aegidian wrote:

<TECHNOBABBLE>. . .</TECHNOBABBLE>

BRAVO!!!

Mad Dan Eccles wrote:

aegidian wrote:

<TECHNOBABBLE>. . .</TECHNOBABBLE>

BRAVO!!!

Absolutely - I particularly like the idea of a space/time twisty 'rubber band' drive, but I do think the fuel should have been called Quirkium...

While we're at it, why don't we employ the bloater drive too? This works by bloating up the molecules of aship until it pushes through witchspace to the destination and then snaps back the aft end of the craft so that it snaps back towards the nose. Ask, Bill - the Galactic Hero. He would happily explain it if he was sober.

I also believe that, in the past, Giles pointed out that cargo/passenger contracts would break if you start messing about with increasing hyperspace jump distances.

Imagining a multiplayer situation where all ships are using fuel injectors I can see that the game might get very hard and thus very boring.

For what its worth I've discovered that you can, in some systems, fuel scoop from the sun and still escape the teperature increase while remaining in the same system. You just have to make sure you head directly away from the sun (using the advance space compass).

Sukebe wrote:

(typically this is just the ship, but very close nearby objects may be caught up in the same effect)

Oooh - does this mean dragging escorts and hapless traders through witch space is still in the pipeline?

Now it is possible, just witchspace in front of a trader...

(digging up old thread, because I saw Sukebe online and it triggered a memory)

Rxke wrote:

Sukebe wrote:

(typically this is just the ship, but very close nearby objects may be caught up in the same effect)

Oooh - does this mean dragging escorts and hapless traders through witch space is still in the pipeline?

Now it is possible, just witchspace in front of a trader...

(digging up old thread, because I saw Sukebe online and it triggered a memory)

Hehe - thanks! Yeah, Oolite really is starting to get rather good isn't it?

extra fuel may be in the offing, but it won't be easy to get enough to get an edge on competitors.
And it won't be very safe either, you could be better off scooping fuel from a sun.

Wreckages will sometimes spawn fuelcannisters, which will potentially add one fuel to your tanks.
However:
-they will explode on collision!

-Such hazardous material cannot be stored in the cargobay , so if it cannot be shunted directly (and completely) into the tank, the entire cannister will be ejected, with added risks of detonation.


Thusfar the plans for fuelcans in Wreckages_oxp.

_________________________________
Other ideas, leave me to wonder about:

-can scripted items be held in the cargohold? [ed:NO]
if so
-how does ejecting cargo work?

This could have players stockpiling fuelpods in their holds [ed:NO]
/to use after a witchjump malfunction. (eject (!), scoop, get fuel)
/to break speedrecords
/to eject at swarms of enemies.
/to eject into a station dockingbay.

EDIT: uploaded work done so far to my webspace, comments are welcome. (http://home.tiscali.nl/arexack/Wreckage_OXP_dev/)

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

uploaded work done so far to my webspace, comments are welcome.

I had a look at your shipdata.plist (damn that thing is long!) and it looks like it will be really good. I took the liberty of cleaning up the indentation cause I couldn't read it otherwise. I would suggest using a decent text editor, they can automatically indent and highlight tags and other useful stuff. I've heard jEdit is pretty good, others might be able to suggest a good Windows text editor (I use Linux so I wouldn't have a clue)

I've uploaded the properly indented file here if you want it.

That is cool, I can only open the first page though. something about xml not being supported.
(edit: it's my incorrect use of <!--- comment---> again, I fear.)

I hope you edited the latest version(v1.2) I made a LOT of typo-corrections etc in that last version late last night.

I currently employ ms-word for editing in UTF-8 mode.
This prog has the added value (forme) that it will make it readable.
Lots of trouble with auto-indentation though, as you already noticed.
I'll check out that tool you mentioned. It needs Javascript, checking out crimson_editor.

It is also still not totally complete, several entries have (intentional) blank spaces.
(these: anaconda,boa2,python_bd,cobra1&3)

If you (anyone!) are inspired, have a go and post a pic of your wreck in this thread, I'm happy to include any half decent wreckage. The more variety the beter.
EDIT: sorry, not THIS thread, but the SPACE_JUNK thread please.