FarPlanets

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"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Description

Planets near witchpoints are discovered first and used most often, but many systems has other interesting places, especially out of normal sight. Using the newest technical improvements these are reachable today.

Your new pursuit is to deliver contracts to far planets, very far from the witchpoint.

You can spend many time for travel: your clock will be forwarded to help tolerate it, or buy "Micro-G" equipment to arrive in reasonable time. Be wise: pirates can attack you in both way.

Contracts are acquisitable from trader ships in space lanes if you go near them. Sometimes traders tell rumors only but if you hear the same information from many source then you found a valuable tip. The most important advices are coming from traders if attacked by pirates and you save them.

Far planets are in realistic sizes and distances: 100 times larger than main planets and several million km far from the sun. Dwarf planets and moons are 10-50 times larger and gas giants are 400-1000 times.

Orbits of stations are as high as the masslock range of the planet so possible to dock without planetary masslock regardless of the planet size. If the station is at the opposite side then go around enough far to stay in green alert.

Micro-G Torus equipment

Your Torus Jump Drive can obtain extreme speeds with this extension if you are far from planetary masses and nothing is near you. Need some internal space so can fit into ships over 30t mass only, like Cobra Mark I.

Speed is vary with the distance of the sun and the nearest planet at long ranges and reduced if a ship or any entity is approaching over scanner range also. You can earn more speed farther the sun but the gravity field of your target planet will slow you before your goal.

Sun has very large mass so you can earn Micro-G speeds farther from the sun than sun-witchpoint and sun-main planet distances. Forwarding will be turned on over this border also if you have not Micro-G equipment, so the common travels from witchpoints to main planets are not faster.

If you leave the main planet then turn your back to the sun, hit "j" key and your Micro-G will start when you are enough far. If you arrive to the main planet from a far place then align the planet into the center of the sun for the shortest travel. You should go around if the main planet is farther than the sun.

When you approach a far planet and you want to dock on a station over the planet then check distances: if the station is farther than the planet then you must go around to avoid the masslock of the planet. Better if you start avoid the planet early when your multiplier is high. Lock the station (you need Telescope OXP to lock it over scanner range) then turn until the station will be at the border of your screen and the planet are farther in the same direction even if out of sight. Then go forward and turn slowly to keep the station near the border of your sight until arrive into the center of the planet or the distance will be less than 200km where you can turn straight to the station.

If you get masslock in between then turn your back to the planet and go away until you will be in green alert. Then place the planet into your port or starboard view where the station is before you regardless of it is not in your forward screen. Go forward and turn a bit periodically to keep the planet in your sideview. You can view forward if you keep the lollipop of the planet exactly at your side in your scanner. After some time the station will be in your forward sight. Keep it near the border of your view until you arrive.

Your performance will be better and better next times until you will know the best way to go to the station in a few seconds after you behold the planet.

This equipment is primeable (with Shift+N), you can change the level of displayed messages using the activate key ("n"). The speedup is always working automatically as soon as possible regardless of the message settings.

You can reach interstellar space between systems if you request it by prime this equipment and press mode ("b"). Sometimes there are "planets" (large asteroids, comets or other kind of rocks) with stations in these dangerous places, maybe with high rewards but with hazards also.

You will be warned before jump if you forced to set your destination between systems using this mode. If you cancel the countdown then this setting will be cleared also so you must set it again to confirm your will.

Cost: 1000.0 Cr.
Techlevel: 5

FTL Torus equipment

Some far planets are too far even if you use Micro-G speeds due to your ship can not move faster than 90% of lightspeed without using Quirium fuel. The Faster Than Light extension of Torus can do it until you have some fuel left. Half of the fuel used for acceleration so at maximum need 50% than at just over lightspeed. Do not forget to fill up your tanks before a long journey.

FTL can engange only if your energy banks are full and use more energy at higher speeds. You will be slowed below lightspeed if less than the quarter of your maximal energy remain. Wait until your banks are filled and your FTL will be restarted.

There is a minimal gravity everywhere due to the mass of the galaxy which set the maximum of FTL Torus to 10 million times of your standard Torus speed. In a Cobra Mark III this is equal with 374 times of lightspeed. You will hit this limit in the case of the farthest planets so you need patience and refuel to reach these than others which are accessible in a few minutes.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-g_environment for a precise gravity table between galaxy, sun and planets. Micro-G is use rough linear approximations to get similarities with this table.

Multipliers are applied to the maximum speed of your ship so you will be arrive sooner in a faster ship.

Need more internal space than Micro-G so can fit into ships over 130t mass only, like Cobra Mark III.

Contracts with time limits need to use FTL but this equipment is vulnerable in combat so better if you keep your shields up on your long way and avoid fights.

Sometimes there are a few repair staion near lanes from sun to far planets, else worth to jump into a nearby system, get repairs and jump back to go along the road again. A hyperjump is done within a few days but without FTL or Micro-G maybe require years to arrive, and need several minutes to finish the time adjustment in addition to the minutes of forwarding if no Micro-G.

Suggested to set a jump destination before travel to get a mark on your fuel gauge where you should save it to avoid stick in the middle of nowhere in the case of a damaged FTL.

There is a mixed mode of Micro-G and forwarding if your FTL is damaged which can help a bit: you travel with lightspeed using Micro-G Torus and get some forwarding (9x in Cobra Mark III) to reach exactly 100000 times of the normal Torus speed. If you run our of fuel not so far from a station then you can wait until you arrive.

This little help made also safe travels to the nearest far planets (within about 200 million km): you can reach these in acceptable time without fuel.

At last resort you can consider to use your Escape Pod (make sure you have one before a long journey!) but in this case you will lose your cargo.

Systems with low tech levels are harder due to no local repair available but the payments of far contracts are higher in these systems if the government is bad as a compensation of the risk.

Cost: 10000.0 Cr.
Techlevel: 10

Dependencies

Depends on Oolite v1.77 but v1.79 or later strongly recommended.

You can not use normal docking computers due to the inaccurate floating-point arithmetics in v1.77 (else you will collide with the station). You must use the "instant" version (which will add 20 minutes) with "Shift+C" to dock.

Far planets in 1.77 are max. 20 000 km far from the witchpoint to prevent serious problems. Gas giants are leaved at its original distances which is unreachable in 1.77. There is no way to bring these enough near due to the radii of giants are larger than the maximal usable distance.

From v1.79 there are several million times more space, as in real solar systems: there are some planets 100 000 million km far!

The "Sensors have detected x planets" message after undock with System Redux or Deep Horizons Systems OXPs is not count far planets. You get separated message from the number of far planets.

Planets with large radius has problems in both Oolite version: -artifacts appear in Earth and Pluto, a puzzle-like atmosphere which changing rapidly if player is moving. -Jupiter is completely disappear within 300.000km.

Textures

FarPlanets use very high quality textures but these are placed into separated OXPs due to the size.

FarPlanetsLave OXP is 110MB and contains:

• Charon (farplanets_0_7_4_1.png): by John van Vliet
• Earth (farplanets_0_7_2.png): from Planettool which is get it from http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/ .
• Jupiter (farplanets_0_7_3.png): from celestiamotherlode.net

• Laonce (farplanets_0_7-129_0_1.png, the interstellar rock between Lave and Zaonce): oolite_boulder_diffuse.png in Oolite 1.79.
• Lavemoon (farplanets_0_7_0_1.png): oolite_asteroid_diffuse.png in Oolite 1.79.
• Mercury (farplanets_0_7_1.png): from celestiamotherlode.net
• Moon of Earth (farplanets_0_7_2_1.png): from celestiamotherlode.net
• Pluto (farplanets_0_7_4.png): by John van Vliet
• Sedna (farplanets_0_7_5.png): from celestiamotherlode.net

Recommended OXPs

• Deep Space Pirates to make some traffic into far space.
• Planetfall to land on far planets.
• NumericHUDv3.16 to show Micro-G speeds in HUD instead of in messages.
• Stations for Extra Planets to get another markets over far planets.
• Telescope to lock planets, show large distances and masslock borders of planets.

Instructions

In Oolite v1.79 or later do not unzip the .oxz file, just move into the AddOns folder of your Oolite installation.

In Oolite v1.77 make a FarPlanets.oxp subfolder in your AddOns folder and unzip the .oxz file into the newly created subfolder.

Copy FarPlanetsTest.oolite-save file into your oolite-saves directory, then load this savegame to get a Cobra with all useful equipments for a test flight in Lave.

Setings in farplanets.js

this.$FarPlanetsDistanceInOolite177 = 20000000; //maximum usable space in Oolite 1.77 this.$FarPlanetsLaveDemo = false; //planets in Lave will be near in Oolite 1.79 also this.$FarPlanetsMessages = true; //show forwarding and Micro-G messages, startUp set it to false with NumericHUDv3.16

License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License version 3.0. If you are re-using any piece of this OXP, please let me know by sending an e-mail to norbylite@gmail.com.

Changelog

2014.01.17. v0.3  FTL Drive and fuel required to get speeds over lightspeed.
2014.01.15. v0.2  Improved gravity approximation.
                  Generating longer planet names.
                  Added handler of interstellar planets.
2014.01.07. v0.1  Far travel test, planet names in planetnames.js.

Download FarPlanets and FarPlanetsLave from here.

Quick Facts

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Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
0.3	2014-01-16	CC BY-NC-SA 3	Far planets and fast drives	Activities OXPs	Norby	BB-Link