Paddling Pool

Effect of Paddling Pool on Lave region: click on any map to enlarge it: see Short Range Chart for key

Lave region without paddling pool

Lave region system names

What it Does:

Turns the Milkrun from Leesti to Diso into a much safer route for the beginning player (as it used to be before Oolite v.1.80 changed things).

Leesti & Diso are within jump range of the following planets:

Riedquat - Anarchy (with Paddling Pool this becomes a Confederacy)

Uszaa - Anarchy (becomes a Confederacy)

Reorte - Dictatorship (becomes a Democracy)

Orerve - Feudal (becomes a Democracy)

Oresque - Multi Government (becomes a Democracy)

That's some dangerous neighbours when it comes to visiting traffic. Note that I haven't included Lave in this as I didn't want the pool to extend to the more lucrative Zaonce/Tionisla to Isinor or even Isinor to Ensoreus trade routes. Lave forms a simple barrier to dissuade (rather than blockade) the path to Tionisla with its higher tech level (Leesti is just high enough to acquire fuel injectors).

Furthermore, being so close together, Leesti - Diso can make good use of fuel injectors (once purchased). The long distance between Isinor to Ensoreus would make their use almost pointless.

This oxp neuters the piracy influence of the dangerous systems listed above by altering their government types (and occasionally their economies to prevent further lucrative safe routes emerging).

Rationale:

It's not uncommon for the player to be attacked by large groups of pirates even in the early game (when the player ship is especially vulnerable). Having a safe space to learn the ropes, within a single jump of Lave, is what this oxp attempts to provide. The similar nearby but potentially more lucrative milk runs of Zaonce/Tionisle - Isinor and of Isinor - Ensoreous should be largely unaffected.

For the future:

Written in Jan 2021

It may be a little too easy now and so some fine tuning may be needed in future.

No threat is not necessarily an improvement over too much threat but for an early release it makes sense to err on that side of the equation.

The usual applies:

• Feedback welcomed
• If you don't like it, don't install it - your game, your business
• By Redspear

Musings

Oolive v.1.80 changed a number of things from the older versions of Oolite which were more similar on Classic Elite. One of the most significant was a major toughening up of the NPC's combat skills - combined with a new propensity for pirates to raid safer systems (democracies & corporate states) from surrounding dangerous systems (anarchies and feudal states). This change made the area west of Lave much, much more dangerous, especially for new players with poor combat skills. As Disembodied famously said: "Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck."

The first attempts to fix this were (i) Spara's Start Advice oxp (2016) which suggests travelling east to Zaonce and avoiding the paddling pool region like the plague and (ii) the new game "Easy Start" option (2017) which begins at Zaonce with 1,000₢ (Oolite v.1.86). Note that this side of Lave is still dangerous: Tionisla and Isinor have dangerous neighbours.

This oxp rehabilitates the western side of Lave, making the milkrun from Leesti to Diso almost as safe as it used to be before Oolite v.1.80 (the pirates are still better at combat), but also changing the governments and other trade possibilities which used to exist.

Links

• BB discussion thread
• Redspear
• Short Range Chart for icon explanation
• Milkrun

• Dangerous Galaxies by Erick Costa does a similar thing, but to the Galaxies (Galaxy 1 easiest, Galaxy 8 murderous).

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