Oolite Bulletins

ok there are misjumps that take you to thargoid witchspace

but what i'd really like is misjumps that just took you somewhere random- and i mean really random - anywhere in all 8 galaxies

I can't see a random misjump to another Galactic Chart being feasible.. You simply don't have sufficient energy in your jumpdrive for that.. A Galactic jump is basically a massive one-shot overload of your jump-drive. Most of the cost is for the giant alkaline Duracell battery that gets hooked up to the drive.

As for mis-jumps within the same chart, I'll let somebody else argue about that..

yeah, but there's no reason why we cant think up a perfectly good gobbledegook justification

just think it would be cool, especially if it didnt tell you what galaxy you'd landed in

thinking out loud

It's been established (sort of), that wormholes link your start point and end point directly.

When you suffer a 'mis jump' you 'fall' out of your wormhole early, and get stranded somewhere en-route.

So you can only ever mis-jump to a point on the line between your start and end points.

This domain is interstellar space, and you always seem to get unlucky and find yourself surrounded by Thargoids.

Rumours have it that the thargoids are able to yank ships out of witchspace - hence the co-incident number of Thargoid encounters.

Cheers,

Drew.

phonebook wrote:

just think it would be cool, especially if it didnt tell you what galaxy you'd landed in

Most probably not cool: If you have to do a mission and are thrown out of your galaxy, you will not only have to spend many credits on buying galactic jump drives, you will most probably also have the next mis-jump before you arrive back in the area where you are expected to continue the mission.

Thus many missions would become impossible to do!

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well its probably better than your ship exploding because of a misjump

I offer an amendment to the suggestion - if you have a Gal H/drive fitted there's a chance that a normal misjump actually activates your Gal H/drive and jumps you to a new chart (possibly therefore in a "not good" location!)

see i knew you wouldnt fail me! excellent idea

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I offer an amendment to the suggestion - if you have a Gal H/drive fitted there's a chance that a normal misjump actually activates your Gal H/drive and jumps you to a new chart (possibly therefore in a "not good" location!)

As I said: This would break missions.

Thus the result would be the same as if the player would instantly die upon a misjump: reload the old file.

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DaddyHoggy wrote:

if you have a Gal H/drive fitted there's a chance that a normal misjump actually activates your Gal H/drive and jumps you to a new chart (possibly therefore in a "not good" location!)

I don't like that idea at all. I always carry a GHD, as it's the method of last resort if trapped in interstellar space.
First thing I buy on arrival in a new octant is a GHD.

It's best not to muck the player about too much. It's OK to spice things up with a little misfortune now and again, but it shouldn't be taken too far. All it achieves is annoying the player and forcing a restart from saved.

The original Elite misjumps were badly thought out. Occasionally, you'd be pitched into a sudden, unexpected and difficult firefight (generally a good thing, from a game point of view). With luck and skill a player could survive (another good thing). Then there was a good chance that the player, despite his heroics, was still stuffed and would have to reload, losing all the kills he'd fought so hard for and losing the feeling of coming through against all the odds. That's a really bad thing.

Oolite can cure this to a certain extent, via certain OXPs, but it would be better, IMO, to fix this original boo-boo at source. Maybe the intercepting Thargoids have some sort of wormhole jammer operating in their ships: if you kill all the ships, then your wormhole reappears nearby and you can shoot down it and escape for no extra fuel cost.

Disembodied wrote:

Maybe the intercepting Thargoids have some sort of wormhole jammer operating in their ships: if you kill all the ships, then your wormhole reappears nearby and you can shoot down it and escape for no extra fuel cost.

That is a very good idea.

whats so bad about breaking missions? its hard cheese!

phonebook wrote:

whats so bad about breaking missions? its hard cheese!

The problem is that it's no fun when you want to do a mission and can't. Really, it would be virtually impossible to do missions anymore. Many even require the player to stay in the galaxy he is in!

Do you know what's worse? You could end up in one of those sub-parts of the galaxy which are normally not reachable. If that part does not have a high tech world, you could not buy another galactic hyperdrive to get out there!

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as i said! hard cheese!!

ok ok you have a point