Station Models

Cambragol (who has been doing the cluster setup) and I have been discussing the station models to leave out of the cluster. Some are flat broken, missing things like docking ports.

We are looking for input on our latest idea, which is to remove all stations that do not have a working Pod Spewer. This would include all asteroid stations. (Instead, all mining stations would be placed into orbit over the asteroid they are mining.)

I know this will cause some outcry, because the stations are pretty much all exactly alike. And docking onto the surface of asteroids is pretty cool.

There are a few reasons for doing this. The main one is to get everything consistant for later traffic code and pod handling code.

The other is to change the emphasis away from a station as a single monolithic entity. And instead change it into a cluster of nearby modules. A sort of city. The central core becomes the reactor and pod handling facility. Living spaces and other pieces are placed nearby in space. Which makes building stations with a new "feel" much simpler. They don't have to be complex models.

If you want a refugee station, you put in a basic station with a bunch of refugee habitat modules floating around it. They can be all junked up. The project is much smaller and simpler. The player should still soak up the graphical complexity - despite the lack of physical connection. Perhaps even more, as they must pilot around all these objects.

And the tools already exist to do this today. The same ones that are used to place asteroid fields near stations and place wingmen for hire.

It sounds fine to me. For now it doesn't really matter, we can change and add onto the cluster as testing progresses.

How many modules are functional and how many are broken? Can they be fixed later? Do all of the modules really need to be functional? We could use some for ambiance and remove their ports alltogether (if this is possible).

Frankly I think visuals should come into play as well as functionality, especially if someone has some interesting ideas for layouts or functions. Who's to say we can't have a brothel floating nearby so you can dock and, er, relax? Or a mined out asteroid with living space towed into orbit for someone's personal use?

Cambragol has figured out how to add pod spewers. So it no longer and either/or choice.

One item I should explain a little more about is stations as Places with a capitol P.

Stations (sims of type T_Station) are not just graphical objects, like ships. They are the only places that exist in the game in a permanant fashion. In essence they are like the chessboard itself. Each station makes up a square on the chess board. Sometimes I get reluctant to whip together a whole mess of stations, or just use anything as a station. And the reason is that stations make up the chess board. They control when ships are created, when they are culled. They control the traffic scripts that are generated. They change the economy. They must be placed with the Map tools or they tend to crash the engine. They have a much deeper meaning than just how they look.

What I would like to see is for stations (type T_Station) to be very consistant. They make a plain vanilla chessboard location. Graphical complexity is achieved by putting non-station objects near stations. Those non-station objects can look just like stations. They can look like modules or asteroids. But they are not type T_Station and they don't control traffic scripts or ship culling. They are not placed with the map tools. And they don't exist when the player is not at the proper location.

Ok, long digression away from station models. But I should have stated those items before.