Oolite Bulletins

Although there are many oxps that can customize systems per government (commies, dictators, anarchies ech) there are very few that can partially customize a galaxy (I can only recall Ionics that actually add some galaxy 2 dedicated ships)

I think it would be a very nice idea to create some ships packs with ships (and even stations) dedicated to specific galaxies. It would motivate further the players to change a galaxy in order to see the new ships.

Imagine 8 deferent sets with deferent ships (in deferent styles and from deferent creators) giving a unique color in every galaxy. Right now everyone who creates a new ship set just add those ships everywhere hence the more ship oxps you have installed the less often you can encounter one of them.

It's not a bad idea but why would ships stay in just one Chart (I don't like "galaxy" since they're not individual galaxies) - surely people would buy them, explore, Galactic Hyperspace - it wouldn't take long before a significant portion/number of these chart specific ships ended up everywhere else.

Perhaps chart specific ships that can't have galactic hyperspace drives fitted? Or a "Trade Embargo" on the technology that gets you the very highest of Fugitive status if you jump out in a chart specific ship - with some of the other OXPs fitted this means you'd be having a bad time in your new chart.

I am talking mostly for NPC ships.

Thargoid wrote:

The prime candidates here could be system/police vessels perhaps?

Yes and no.
Maybe also some big ships like the ixian battle cruiser, or deferent generation ships for deferent galaxies, or some pirates from deferent pirate clans. If I remember correctly it was kaks intention to do something like that with the hotrods oxp (that currently is still in a beta state although fully functional) before aliens kidnapped him. The ionics adds a variety of ships that can only be found in galaxy chart 2 and also the capistata oxp adds those pirates only in galactic chart 4. As for the explanation I am sure that we can create a plausible background story.

Ark wrote:

Thargoid wrote:

The prime candidates here could be system/police vessels perhaps?

Yes and no.
Maybe also some big ships like the ixian battle cruiser,....

The ixian battle cruiser will get a new release once the wiki can be written again. That oxp is one big bug. Two of the ships have the exhaust defined inside (e.g. the cruiser itself). Because it defines escorts of escorts, what is impossible in Oolite, the surplus of escorts just become bounty hunters. And because all ships have a bounty defined the escorts start attacking their mother and each other. I corrected this escort cascading and also removed all bounty because bounty hunters with bounty start to attack each other.
And as this is an explicit military force I gave it scanclass military.
The noship has according to the dune legends the ability to make itself invissible: this asked for a cloak with this ship.
Turnrate of the cruiser will be more realistic and only a patrol AI so they don't dock anymore.

Good work Eric!!
For the record the ixian battle curser was just an example.
Out of curiosity did the package of ixian omnibus that you upgraded also has the ixian freighter inside because there are 2 versions of the ixian omnibus one with the freighter and one without it

Ark wrote:

I am talking mostly for NPC ships.

do NPCs never Galactic Hyperjump then? Although I think this is probably an irrelevant question i.e. Oolite does not create all 8 charts just the one system you're in (although ships jump in and out of your system - from and to different system destinations) - I was just thinking if you're in G1 could an NPC ship Gal Hyperjump from G8 into your system...

I think that's all nonsense - it was a very late night last night - my better half couldn't get the printer to print out her Masters degree coursework at 1.30 this morning...

Ark wrote:

Out of curiosity did the package of ixian omnibus that you upgraded also has the ixian freighter inside because there are 2 versions of the ixian omnibus one with the freighter and one without it

I explicitly downloaded the ixian omnibus from the wiki last weekend. It does not contain the freighter. I even noticed that the page about the freighter is pointing to the omnibus without the freighter. I wanted to correct it past weekend but the wiki is currently read-only. I'll re-upload it without the freighter as it was. Without the freighter it stays below 2MB and can be uploaded to the wiki directly. But I change the freighter link on the wiki to the right package and keep that separate. ixianfreighter. For the freighter I only see one bug: it is frangible, resulting that you can shoot off the engine but than the exhaust plume stays. Looks stupid! Should be frangible = no

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Ark wrote:

I am talking mostly for NPC ships.

do NPCs never Galactic Hyperjump then?

No.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Although I think this is probably an irrelevant question

Not that irrelevant, actually. If NPCs could do galactic jumps, some of the wormholes left by them would lead to the next galaxy. Which would be a nice feature, actually; especially if it could explicitely be scripted.

I had a brief exchange with Drew about this in the wake of Mutabilis. I was wondering why nobody (including Drew, although it is essential in his story) yet had mentioned the obvious solution to the what-happens-if-you-jump-to-an-isolated-system problem (like—most famous—Oresrati in Galaxy 8 ). If you think just a little bit it is so obvious. You need two ships. Ship A does a galactic jump and ship B follows in its wormhole. To get out again you do the same thing vice versa.

In order to make this possible in-game, however, it would be necessary to script a galactic jump by an NPC.

Is this time for yet another suggestion in the Suggestions Box?

DaddyHoggy wrote:

do NPCs never Galactic Hyperjump then?

The technical answer is that they don’t. I’d say the gameplay answer is that they do, it’s just that it happens so rarely you’re never around to see it. :-)

There may be problems with sharing a galactic wormhole – otherwise there would be Galactic Hyperdrive clubs, where a whole bunch of ships share the cost and agree a time and place where they can all jump together...

It's a big galaxy - maybe they do - we just never see it happen... (as Ahruman stated earlier)