User:Simon B

Neolite Sidewinder

Neolite Adder

Re2dux ships

Simon B's Behemoth (in front)

Oolific Princess liner

Simon B has designed entire flotillae of ships for Oolite.

Simon first joined the community in 2008, living in New Zealand

Imagine my delight at finding that Elite is well and thriving as a FOSS project - Free Software no less. But, of course, you don't need to imagine, you've been exactly where I am. Intros: I am an eldritch old-school hacker living on a clifftop overlooking the Pacific. With me is a wifie and three (count-em) cats.

(SimonB)

He had the following suggestions for improving Oolite back when he joined:

All right - some ideas I may get around to:

Ships -

UFO - basically a light or bunch of lights that follows a player (or other ship) around annoying the capt since it blocks the jump drive. Possible they could choose to have an escort role though. IFF name is "Unknown Object".

(Note - it is possible to have a ship with no visible model and just a flasher)

Doomsday machine - big and slow, powerful enough to take out a station or a planet.
(Related: have some systems sans stations/planets.) Would also suit a mission - you follow a trail of destroyed stations and rumour... hit it with lots of nukes...

Berserker - another robot death machine, I know we already have thargons. But but but - berserkers are a sci-fi canon...

Military Anaconda - with turrets. The anaconda is big, slow, and not very manouverable. Turrets are only sensible. Armoring them makes sense too... so it takes a lot of hits to take one out.

Systemships available:
By which I mean - no witchdrive.
This could create another path through the early game for players lucky enough to end up in a system with many dockable objects. One could fly a transport between them and an asteroid field.

Missions:

Rich Tourist - you get a tourist as a passenger. They have no fixed destination and stay with the ship as long as the ride is "interesting". They also pay more for very interesting rides. If you have a cool ship, that helps: "Wait'll my friends hear I rode a Flangewort class Pedant!" Your rep also helps.

The planet descriptions go someplace towards that. But if you become a fugitive... engage in some piracy, get in a firefight, go on a mission... visit the graveyard, pulsar, etc.

The neat thing is that this is a way to make things which are otherwise a bit ho-hum more attractive. Suddenly you care that the blue wingnutoids live on a boring little planet, and you need to remember where the nearest hoopy casino is.

Occasionally pops into the bridge ... "can I fire the lasers? ... whoops... my bad... what does this button do?"


Planetfall...
Script - flying too close to a planet in a witchdrive ship is an offense. Police fly up from the world to shoo you off. But what if you have a permit (like those adders with role: shuttle?) Then - fly close enough and you land... perhaps you have to follow a beacon?


Item:
Thargon Wormhole projector
how do thargons get from place to place - especially considering that they can turn up between stars.

Perhaps thargons have controllable wormholes? A captured generator could trigger a wormhole ahead of the ship - B5 style... but players still cannot control the destination. Uses energy like ECM. Perhaps it displaces cargo?

Some carriers when destroyed could leave a wormhole behind as a death action... or the wormhole projector is on a special ship. Even if the device could not be recovered (as a mission?) this would justify how they appear.


<rant>
Collision boxes - did something happen in 1.7? In 1.69 I was able to fly between the spokes/rings of the torus station. It was a good shortcut to get to witchdrive range.
</rant>

OXP's

Simon B's most famous oxp's are his Neolite series and his Re2dux series. Both are mostly retextures but with new ships added to the mix.

• Neolite Ships is an Oolite ships replacement set. 2012

Neolite Wolfies were an update of Marko Susimetsä's Wolfwood's Variants

• Re2dux Ships is an Oolite ships replacement set. 2011
• Croydon Starsoarer adds a ship that is similar to the Asp in specification (2010)
• Oolite Princess is a liner - see Brilliant but broken... under Dockables

Simon B's contributions to other oxp's

• Old Ships 2010 was shadered by Simon B
• He also contributed to Behemoth

Later oxp's by others

• Simon B's Favorites is a later collection of sb-faves by Spara & Keeper
• Simon B's Ships OXP is a later collection of Neolite ships by CaptSolo
• Cougar ST OXP was based on a Neolite Companion.oxp ship
• Navy Asp was partly based on Simon B's work
• Random Hits OXP contains some of his work

Other Work

• Textures in GIMP (Tutorial, 2009)

Links

• Simon Bridges' re2dux ships collection in Box

taniwha

oolific.oxp - the Oolite Princess liner

re2dux.oxp - his re2dux shipset

sb-navy - carriers & ancillary ships

wakapiko-redux

sb-faves (cobra variants)

re2dux-vipers

constrictor

sbdestroyer-pre2 - naval destroyer

ubertharg-pre1

katipo

• Simon Bridges' neolites ships collection in Box

neotextures

neolite

wakatoro

wakapiko

typhoon

galcop

blade

arachnid

neolite-concepts

neolite-companion - rejigs of ships from the non-BBC Elite games (Bushmaster, Ghavial, Iguana etc)

neolite-wolfies - SB's rejig of Wolfwood's variants