Satellites

Surveillance Satellite

Overview

This OXP adds satellites to the main planet, plus any secondary planets that may be available through Additional Planets.

Ideas with a revolutionary potential sometimes remain underestimated or just unnoticed! This is the case for the Satellites OXP (author – Rorschachhamster). Seemingly just a nice exercise in coding and just one more OXP in the Ambience category. But, it is a jolly hard task to simulate true orbital dynamics in Oolite: In the real world, the calculation of orbital dynamics is based on the integration of acceleration vectors and on the energy conservation law. If you have no acceleration produced by a propulsion engine, your total energy (sum of kinetic and potential energy) would have a constant value. So on an elliptic orbit you’ll trade velocity for altitude and vice versa. In Oolite we have no gravity nor energy. Acceleration is limited to propulsion acceleration/deceleration parameter thrust and this is not a vector value – it is just the rate of change of ship speed. So we need some trick to simulate true orbital dynamics – calculating the ship's position for the next frame and placing the ship directly into it. Unfortunately JavaScript is not a suitable instrument for smooth dynamic simulations! It generates only 4 fps, so you’ll see the jerky sequence of frames instead of a decent illusion of smooth movement. Bad idea. Forget it. Satellites OXP uses a more elegant approach, based on AI behavior. It generates a realistically looking pattern of circular movement around a planet without sophisticated mathematics.

Source: Stranger's introduction to his Orbital Stations OXP

COMLR Satellite

Satellite Types

There are 4 different types of satellite that can be added to a system.

Surveillance Satellites

These satellites are designed to map and scan planetary regions, down to a very fine detail level.

COM and COMLR Satellites

These satellites aid and facilitate intra- and inter-planetary communications.

Satellite Telescope

These satellites are designed to scan deep space for anomalies (like Thargoid invasion craft or rogue comets and asteroids).

Download

• Through the in-game Expansions Manager, or
• Download Satellites.oxz v1.10 (downloaded 1773 times).
  

License

This OXP is released under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike 3.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

Version History

1.10

• Fixed small bug that was preventing 2 satellite types from having their beacons hidden on secondary planets.

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1.09

• Fixed bugs with Library interface.

1.08

• Destroyed satellites will stay destroyed in the current system until you leave.
• Small bugfix in the save game routine.

1.07

• Small bugfix in the new populator.

1.06

• Reworked populator methods to use new functions, and to make the number and types of satellites the same in each system.
• Added satellites to any extra planets in the system.
• Added Library config options to turn off beacons and control the number of satellites spawned.

1.05

• Added check if mainplanet is existent, in case of nova system... and corrected versions in scripts.

1.04

• Added AI-code by Dr.Tripsa, that will let spy-sats work as police, and reduced texture size with Optipng thanks to a tip from Shipbuilder. Cleaned up the shipdata.plist, as well.

1.03

• ...and if you change the texture names, you should change the names in the model.dats as well... and I should probably test before I release a "fixed" version. Sorry.

1.02

• --and deleted a paste and copy error...

1.01

• Changed the roles, models , textures etc. to more unique names to avoid compatability issues, thanks again to Eric Walch. Corrected the demoship.plist, so that all 4 satellites can be seen...

1.0

• Original release.

Links

• Dragonships - Rorschachhamster's other oxp

Quick Facts

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Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
1.10	2017-10-12	CC BY-NC-SA 3.0	Satellites	Ambience OXPs	Rorschachhamster, phkb	Oolite BB

Gameplay and Balance indicator