Oolite Bulletins

Dear all

I've just had an idea. It would be great were it implemented, but perhaps it is not impementable. At any rate: how about being able to set the date at which one's game begins, and have what types of ships there are, and perhaps other things (war with the thargoids / no war with the thargoids?) indexed to that date? OXP makers, and perhaps the ships of the core game, would need to be given dates - dates of entering service, and perhaps dates of becoming common. Technology - equipment - might be similarly dated. And perhaps there could be some kind of cheat whereby the player can use a 'ship from the future' against technologically primitive non-player-characters. And/or we there could be the occasional time-travelling NPC ship. Just an idea (and perhaps one that has been suggeted before)?

It's an interesting idea, but the central problem would be getting everyone to buy into one timeline – now and in the future. Given that everyone's personal ooniverse is customisable anyway, it's probably best to leave this sort of thing up to individuals. Otherwise you could end up preventing people having a ship mix that they might want, just because of an artificial timeline they might not necessarily agree with.

I'm also not too keen on this.

While it's a very interesting idea and would certainly lead to a more realistic and evolving Ooniverse, the main problem I see with it is that it's forcing a particular storyline into the game - which will be the same every time you play. This, imho, will reduce the replayability of Oolite.

Right now the only given is that you start on Lave, with a Cobby3, and 100Cr (*) - but from there it's up to you and every game is different.



I wouldn't necessarily be averse to (optionally) randomising that somewhat - random starting location in G1, random ship (from a set of starter ships) and random Creds from 20-200?

I think the idea has merits. A more story-driven approach should be a possibility in Oolite. The key is "possibility". For instance there is already some in-built internal progression from the Constrictor mission to the Thargoid Plans mission. (I took the liberty to spin the wheel one step further with the Cataclysm mission.)

There is also a tool in form of Selezen's timeline. However, it is up to each player (and each OXP author) whether they want to subscribe to this part of the backstory or not (and in fact the same is true for any part of the backstory; the game itself doesn't even prescribe the existence of GalCop(!)).

I toyed with the idea of writing a mission OXP that would be set in the Thargoid Wars and reach until shortly before the end of GalCop. It would simply start when the game clock had advanced enough. The drawback is that you would have to play the game for a very long time until you would see the mission begin.

There is also the problem of technical viability. Currently Oolite isn't equipped to comply with a timeline (even if there was a canonic timeline in the first place). There are no dynamic changes of the Ooniverse, and there is no way to disable/enable certain ships and stations depending on the game clock.

At the end of the day, the result of implementing a fixed timeline would perhaps make for an interesting and attractive game, but it would be a game different from Oolite.

Micha wrote:

Right now the only given is that you start on Lave, with a Cobby3, and 100Cr (*) - but from there it's up to you and every game is different.



I wouldn't necessarily be averse to (optionally) randomising that somewhat - random starting location in G1, random ship (from a set of starter ships) and random Creds from 20-200?

I recently suggested something similar elsewhere. I think you should start from Lave as that's where the Academy is based, but my suggestion was that you start with just a sum of money (I'd suggest 150 100 Cr - the cost of your standard Cobra 3 plus cash), and then you can buy a ship of your choice (maybe a tooled-up Mk I Cobra and have some cash left over) to start the game. Obviously there should be a reasonable selection of ships at the Lave shipyard to allow this.

There are hacked savegames that can have the player start in various ships, though Cobra 1 and Adder seem the most popular.

As for time advancing, destroyed (3rd party OXP) space stations might stay destroyed...at least in the same galaxy. Well, they will if scripted with mission variables to retain destroyed/not-destroyed details.

Missions could be scripted to increase/decrease the pace of enemies and traders to represent changes in overall GalCop.

And as for going "far into the future"...just make lots of 6-7 L.Y. jumps on cargo contracts. You'll be living ~1 hour for everyone else's ~2 days.
Some of those Pythons made back around 2700-2710 are probably still in decent shape from making many jumps like that.

Smivs wrote:

(I'd suggest 150 190 Cr - the cost of your standard Cobra 3, three missiles, plus cash)

There, fixed that for you.