Oolite Bulletins

So there I was, out in the system of Bebege. I decided to swing by the local seedy bar, which is an establishment called the Skull & Bones, to check for any interesting messages and have one of their famous Esozaian weasel sandwiches and a bottle of the local infamous vicious spirits and maybe hang around to catch the fully nude slimy feline striptease before heading out of system.

(Don't go giving me that look, you know that the profits from the striptease go to the Bebege Building Society. It's a sort of a local community fundraisier, as it were.)

Anyway, Bebege is one of those systems where the seedy bar is out past the witchpoint, and there is also a Black Brotherhood before you get to the witchpoint. A nice enough place to visit, but you probably wouldn't want to put your aged mother into a nursing home in the Bebege system if you know what I mean. (Well, unless maybe she's a slimy feline out to make a little extra cash on weekends.) So I was on my way from the planet to the bar with a load of liquor and food, when the scanners showed what looked to be some loose cargo. Well, I had a hold mostly full already, but free cargo is free cargo. Can't have it littering up the spacelane, and odds were that some of it would be worth more than I'd paid for some of the food at least.

But when I got sight of the "loose cargo", it was eight escape pods all heading towards the main station, and they were so close together they may as well have been flying in formation. They were all within easy line of sight of each other and all headed together towards the station. Sorry I didn't take a screenshot of that, because it was one of the more peculiar sights I've ever seen in the game, but I was kind of busy jettisoning food to make room to scoop up the castaways and ferry them safely back to the main station. At least one of them had a bounty, but mostly they were just rescues for insurance.

I didn't dally about to find out what had blown that many vessels all at once, since I now had a bunch of escape pods to take back to station, but I did have to wonder, since I've never seen anything hit even a convoy of ships that would have resulted in a bunch of escape pods all together like that. (Well, and whatever had popped that many hulls at once could likely make very short work of one scuffed old Cobra Mk III, so I was getting my tail back to safer parts since I'd rather "save" than "press space commander" in such cases).

I did see where a big cargo hauler had been broken up, but I'd already had a few fights on the way out, so figured it best to consolidate my gains rather than investigate further just then. Not all that unusual in a system like Bebege to see a bunch of the local boys and girls picking over what's left of a big cargo hauler foolish enough to try a shortcut through a rough system. I'd been in a few fights already, but the scuffles I'd been in on the way out there weren't majors, just the usual twosies and threesies.

Now, figuring that there's only one escape pod per ship (a silly thing, considering cruise liners and big ships) and that not all ships will manage to eject a pod when they get shot up.. Something had to have taken out an awful lot of ships within a span of just seconds to result in a little "flock" of escape pods like that..

What I'm wondering is anyone's thoughts on what could have popped enough hulls at once to result in that many escape pods that close together?

(Note: A special thanks goes out to all the developers and OXP writers for coming up with a game where one can write an account of a game event like this without *any* fictionalising or exaggeration. It's part of what really makes this game such a hoot to play some days! Bravo!)

There are two possible explanations (and yes, it is great what you can come across on this game ):

1) There was a furball between many ships, perhaps a bunch of pirates and a trader with a lot of escorts, and somehow everybody jumped out at the same time. Not tremendously likely, but according to the laws of probability it could happen somewhere sometime.

2) You're mistaken in one point only: Depending on what OXPs you have installed, there are ships with multiple escape pods (this is possible since a couple of versions ago). So maybe one of them got into a fight with a bunch of pirates, was ultimately destroyed, but managed to take at least one of the attackers out before.

EDIT: Ninja'd by the green one.

Maybe it’s the new Oolympic sport in Bebege system… synchronised ejection and formation pod flying.

Ah, that would explain it! So it's just something I've never happened to see before.

A brilliant change, since it's never made sense to me that cruise liners and such would only have one escape pod. I always thought the insurance companies at the least would require enough pods to save a reasonable number of passengers.

It made for one of those game moments where you're flying along and see something where you scratch your head and go "What the frOock happened here???" Delightful.

Ganelon wrote:

A brilliant change, since it's never made sense to me that cruise liners and such would only have one escape pod. I always thought the insurance companies at the least would require enough pods to save a reasonable number of passengers.

To have more than one escape pod is a feature already present in Oolite 1.65. But nobody reads the enclosed readme files, so none of the oxp's made use of this feature. I know for sure that the current "transports.oxp" adds multiple pods to all its liners.

One other unlikely explanation is that you have installed the Cobra Clipper Sar.oxp. That ship will only scoop escape pods. On death it would release all of them on one go.

And when you want as much revenue for your prisoners as possible, don't hand them over to police in an anarchy. The police in a confederate state will give you a much higher reward when bringing in prisoners. Only the insurance money for trader pilots is a fixed amount.

Eric Walch wrote:

And when you want as much revenue for your prisoners as possible, don't hand them over to police in an anarchy. The police in a confederate state will give you a much higher reward when bringing in prisoners. Only the insurance money for trader pilots is a fixed amount.

How do you do that? I thought you had to give them up at the first station you dock at.

Smivs wrote:

How do you do that? I thought you had to give them up at the first station you dock at.

Nobody tells you to dock at that local station. Get some free fuel at a hermit or the sun and do a few jumps. Anything pays better than an anarchy.

What about a rock hermit or worse...a pirate cove in an anarchy?
Would all those scooped escape pods be near-worthless there?

Switeck wrote:

What about a rock hermit or worse...a pirate cove in an anarchy?
Would all those scooped escape pods be near-worthless there?

Not worthless but less profitable. The payout for criminals is:
reward = (5.0 + government) * bounty
That means you'll get twice as much in a confederacy as in an anarchy for those pods. And a good conscience of bringing those outlaws to a system that treats their prisoners good.

(bounty is the bounty of the pilot, not of the pod itself)

A bird in the hand it worth two in the bush.. I'd usually rather get escape pods back to a station as quick as possible rather than worrying about at most a few hundred credits. Space can be a dangerous place.

Besides.. The sooner I can get them to a station the sooner they stop leaving their sitty-prints all over my nice cargo hold!

(PS via edit) And maybe I'm just maladjusted, but I've never lost any sleep worrying about criminals going someplace nicer.. Besides, how are we sure that in the Anarchy systems they don't just get a slap on the wrist and turned loose? They might view being turned over in an Anarchy system where getting a hacker to clear their records will be easier as being a lucky break.

Ganelon wrote:

A bird in the hand it worth two in the bush.. I'd usually rather get escape pods back to a station as quick as possible rather than worrying about at most a few hundred credits.

If it even is that much. I have rarely ever got more than a hundred credits bounty for a pod, so I guess the difference across systems would be a couple of dozen bucks at most.

I question the whole concept that a they should be "worth" more in a higher government system... You're dropping them off (most likely) at the main station and therefore to GalCop, NOT the local authorities.

This brings up an interesting concept. Does GalCop pay more because of 'who' is watching... I.e. - In a Corp State, they pay more and are tougher on crime (more patrols) because they can have a large single-body bureaucracy they can Tax, vs. an anarchy where they provide minimal services because there is no means for them to tax the individuals living planet-side?

Bulk haulers certainly do spurt out a whole shower of escape pods when they've been shot up. My nasty pirate Commander Cack (flying a Griff Boa) loves to attack BH's until they call abandon ship, "rescue" as many pods as possible and take then to a station for the insurance money. I know, despicable rotter, eh?