Oolite Bulletins

Taxi Galactica Corporation

History:
The Taxi Galactica Corporation was founded in the late 2800's by Rufus Skywelder, a reputable businessman from Leesti. He envisioned a network of ships ferrying people around the Galactic Co-Operative of Planets, and making a tidy profit from every single passenger. By 2943 the Skywelder family had expanded their business to cover most corporate worlds in Galaxy 1, and by the end of the century they had a Taxi Station in every system that was ruled as a Corporation throughout Galaxy 1 (this was due to licensing agreements and safety issues).



Recruiting:
Any pilot is welcome to work for the Taxi Galactica Corporation. There are no requirements, so anyone from Harmless to Elite, or Clean to Fugitive can earn money delivering passengers from Taxi Stations to other Taxi Stations in Galaxy 1.

Version History:

v0.4 - Changed mission requirements: you now take passengers to the Taxi Station in the required system. It made more sense this way, as you have to start at the Taxi Station anyway. Also added Taxi Cabs to the traffic in Galaxy 1. Rankings have been added, as well as a Pilot Stats board viewable a the Taxi Station. The more contracts you complete, you eventually go up a level. Each level determines how many pirates may be waiting for you. Also added the excellent logo designed and created by Disembodied to the Taxi Station.

v0.301 - Fix added for multiple destinations appearing all over the place. The mission intro text, the objective text and the system locator all match, as does the passenger name in both the intro and obective texts. Also added a fix for multiple Taxi Stations being created everytime the player launches from a station in a corporate system in Galaxy 1.

v0.3 - Complete restart, Taxi Station now only in corporate systems in Galaxy 1. Rebel Frigate and Rebel Viper removed from OXP, inlcuding mission. Taxi missions are now offered at the station, to take passengers to the Main Station in other corporate systems in Galaxy 1. 2000 credits per journey, provided you make it there in less than 50 jumps.

v0.201 - Fix for Rebel AI causing mass jamming of the comms. Also improved on minor script errors/mishaps.

v0.2 - Mission added to take a war criminal of the Galactic Navy to naval captivity, without getting blasted by the Rebel Frigates and Rebel Vipers.

v0.1 - Taxi Station and Taxi Cab ingame. Taxi Station in every Corporate, Democratic and Confederate systems.

Download
Taxi_Galactica_Beta_v0.4.zip - Version 0.4 Beta Release



Notes:
So far I have only placed Taxi Stations in Corporate systems in Galaxy 1. Credit goes to Dr Nil for his Pi-42 Station for which I used as a base for the Taxi Station. Also further credit is due to matt634 as much of the scripting for the layout of the missions is 'borrowed' from his most excellent Galactic Navy OXP (my favourite!). Admittedly I need to start to get to grips with JavaScript but it took long enough to get to grips with the old way...

*** IF YOU HAD THE TAXI GALATICA TEASER INSTALLED PLEASE DELETE THE Taxi_Galactica_Teaser.oxp BEFORE PLAYING THE GAME ***

Please report any bugs/errors that this OXP has/produces as it will help me to refine this into a fully working OXP. Future releases will include harder taxi missions (based on your rank, which is sort of coded in already, just you'll never see it!) and better models. If anyone is unhappy for me using their work (models, script tid-bits, etc...) please notify me at once and I shall remove the OXP from the net.

Nice one! Downloading now

I forgot to mention, if anyone has any ideas on what to add/take out of this OXP I would also be most grateful. Some idea I have had have been some sort of equipment (similar to the Passenger Berth) that is required in order to be a Taxi Galactica pilot.

Another (and this requires me learning some JavaScript) is to include planet-side locatons from the alos excellent PlanetFall OXP by Thargoid.

If anyone else has some better ideas, please let me know...

EDIT: My spelling is seriously bad...been years since I was at school! (Doesn't help when you drop out at 16 just to work to finally leave home and get my own place...)

Mission idea: Man jumps into craft immediately upon docking and yells, "FOLLOW THAT CAB!!!"

Indecisive customers? They first ask to be dropped to a particular station in system X, then - on getting there - they ask to go somewhere else... Could be a neighbouring system, or a hoopy casino, or a planet etc, depending on whether the player has got the corresponding OXP or not...

One thing I'm slightly confused about: is there a reason for the big black square on the right hand side of the sign?


By the way, thanks for providing a much needed service!

I would suggest replacing the black square with ads. You know how taxis always have ads on them, so should the taxi stations!

Another idea would be, your pay is not fixed but rather based on how many light years you travelled to your destination, and if you want to sneak up the profit a lil' you can take a more long-winded witchspace route, but take this too far and the irate customer lodges a complaint with the taxi company and you are barred from running missions for them for one day of real time

pleb87 wrote:

I forgot to mention, if anyone has any ideas on what to add/take out of this OXP I would also be most grateful. Some idea I have had have been some sort of equipment (similar to the Passenger Berth) that is required in order to be a Taxi Galactica pilot.

Another (and this requires me learning some JavaScript) is to include planet-side locatons from the alos excellent PlanetFall OXP by Thargoid.

If anyone else has some better ideas, please let me know...

EDIT: My spelling is seriously bad...been years since I was at school! (Doesn't help when you drop out at 16 just to work to finally leave home and get my own place...)

Firstly thanks for the kind words

Adding PlanetFall locations isn't too difficult. What you're probably best doing is looking over the add-on for Oo-Haul that I wrote.

That'll give you a good idea of both how to add a location, and also offer a mission from it. That mission is between the planet and either the witchpoint or constore, and you could perhaps offer something similar to your taxi station (if it's at a suitable location).

Also have a look at the PlanetFall Taxi (via the box.net link in my sig) mission add-on. That offers intra-system taxi runs. You could perhaps build on that to do a system-to-system version, either planet to planet or main stations or other locations. But the code might give you some ideas anyway.

Also if you need any help in writing for PlanetFall, just let me know.

I've tried to download Planetfall..but get the dreaded:

The requested URL /planetfall_1.11.zip was not found on this server.

Is there somewhere else I can obtain it?

H

http://www.box.net/shared/3vy6er8of2

i have another idea for the taxis: Real-life taxis, apart from charging by the meter rather than by actual distance, also charge surcharges like midnight surcharges.

What about a System Surcharge? 50% additional fare if ferrying into Anarchic systems.

More pain, more gain!

Hemlock wrote:

I've tried to download Planetfall..but get the dreaded:

The requested URL /planetfall_1.11.zip was not found on this server.

Is there somewhere else I can obtain it?

H

All my OXPs are available via the box.net link in my sig. The link above is for the main OXP, but you may want the add-on ones too (and anything else there that takes your fancy of course, it's a fair back-catalogue).

The wiki page is outdated, but due to the hardware problems it's read-only and I can't update it at the moment.

Love some of the ideas above too, should make a nice OXP, distinct from both my intra-system example and also the built-in passenger contracts. But the question of midnight where would of course come up from the canny passenger, and paying for an interstellar trip could get expensive

ANYWHERE! The discerning taxi driver then ensures he leaves the home system at midnight and reaches the target system at midnight, hence reaping double surcharges.

The ideas I've suggested are from my own nasty experiences with Sol's ground-based taxi ships (also known as 'taxi cabs'): sometimes they take the roundabout route and charge you $3 extra for it, and during the 10pm-11pm period, they are mysteriously absent, and the midnight surcharge only applies after 11.

sometimes they yell at you when you tell them they're going the wrong way too!

Hello pleb87,

just had a quick look and got my first mission, but I'm a bit confused now.
The mission screen told me to transport this passenger to Qube, the mission description says go to Rarere and the mark on the LONG_RANGE_SHORT shows a third system.

Decisions, decisions :-)

Wow, thanks people I didn't expect this much response so quickly! Sorry I haven't been on for a few days, tis the weekend and all that lol. I'll try to respond to as many as I can here:

Kaks wrote:

Indecisive customers? They first ask to be dropped to a particular station in system X, then - on getting there - they ask to go somewhere else... Could be a neighbouring system, or a hoopy casino, or a planet etc, depending on whether the player has got the corresponding OXP or not...

One thing I'm slightly confused about: is there a reason for the big black square on the right hand side of the sign?

By the way, thanks for providing a much needed service!

Thanks Kaks, I always thought that Oolite needed a better passenger system and I always wanted something to contribute to Oolite, and ths seemed like a good place to start. The Black square is where I was going to put a logo for the company, but I haven't designed one as graphics/art isn't something I find easy. As for the idea of indecisive customers, I think this would be great. I also like the idea of incorporating other OXPs, like the forementioned hoopy casino or maybe a seedy bar...

overmage wrote:

I would suggest replacing the black square with ads. You know how taxis always have ads on them, so should the taxi stations!

Another idea would be, your pay is not fixed but rather based on how many light years you travelled to your destination, and if you want to sneak up the profit a lil' you can take a more long-winded witchspace route, but take this too far and the irate customer lodges a complaint with the taxi company and you are barred from running missions for them for one day of real time

A I mentioned before, I was going to put a logo there, but I did want to have ads on the station somewhere. It seems that the galactic co-operative is full of adverts, wih constores and billboards everywhere you look, lol! Not that this is a bad thing, very modern (look at the big cities here on earth!). As for the long-winded route idea and taxing by jump...it is something to consider, unless there is some sort of JavaScript command that calculates the distance and then deducts credits based on how long/how many jumps you take?

Thargoid wrote:

Firstly thanks for the kind words

Adding PlanetFall locations isn't too difficult. What you're probably best doing is looking over the add-on for Oo-Haul that I wrote.

That'll give you a good idea of both how to add a location, and also offer a mission from it. That mission is between the planet and either the witchpoint or constore, and you could perhaps offer something similar to your taxi station (if it's at a suitable location).

Also have a look at the PlanetFall Taxi (via the box.net link in my sig) mission add-on. That offers intra-system taxi runs. You could perhaps build on that to do a system-to-system version, either planet to planet or main stations or other locations. But the code might give you some ideas anyway.

Also if you need any help in writing for PlanetFall, just let me know.

Thanks Thargoid. I was wondering about your PlanetFall Taxi script, as I knew this would be the place to start to understand JavaScript and how it will fit into my OXP. I know the principle of your script is that it chooses a random in-system destination; between the planets, moons and the main station. Would that script be easilly modified to choose out-system locations? (I'm only interested in the choosing part of course, I would still script a whole mission selection and rnking system myself - In case you thought I was trying to use that whole script as my own OXP lol!)

Svengali wrote:

Hello pleb87,

just had a quick look and got my first mission, but I'm a bit confused now.
The mission screen told me to transport this passenger to Qube, the mission description says go to Rarere and the mark on the LONG_RANGE_SHORT shows a third system.

Decisions, decisions

Ah, this is something I didn't notice at first but now I see it is partly my own fault. I have used the same method of choosing destinations to deliver passengers to that Galactic Navy OXP uses to select which mission to send you on (see this thread for more details). There is also another bug in the script, as when you complete a fare it doesn't remove the map locator dot. I will release a patch to fix this at some point this weekend.

Well, thank you to everyone who has downloaded this beta release and those who have contributed here. Sorry if I haven't answered everyones replies here, I will try to monitor this board more frequently.

i got the same triple-system problem too yeah fix fix !

if i have time, i may get my hands dirty with a logo, if that's fine with you.

Yeah that sounds good, as i said i suck at art, lol. I have managed to locate problem and will upload the fix later (im on the psp atm, hence the shortness of this post - anyone with a ps3 or psp will understand!)