Generation Ships OXP

Generation Ship
Size (W×H×L)	6412.532m×6416.008m×30276.727m
Cargo capacity	Unknown
Cargo bay extension	Unknown
Maximum speed	0.06 LM
Manoeuvrability	Roll: 0.5 Pitch: 0.5
Energy banks	Unknown
Energy recharge rate	Unknown
Gun mounts	None
Missile slots	0
Shield boosters available	No
Military shields available	No
Hyperspace capable	No
OXP or standard	OXP
Available to player	No
Base price	N/A

Generation Ship majestically ploughing its way through the vastness of space. The small grey vessel in front of it (top right) is actually a Navy Behemoth!

Shadows from the past

Space holds many mysteries: all spacers learn this, some sooner, some later. Ships take off from a station and are lost without a trace; some are wormholed across the galaxy, or even between galaxies, leaving the pilot stranded; some pass through witchspace in seconds and have aged a thousand years, the ship's crew aged to dust on the consoles.

And then there are the legends...

There is a legend of ships containing cities, fields, rivers and forests, launched into space in the first flush of mankind's outward urges. Ships that would travel at a snail's space across the light years bearing its fragile cargo to other worlds. Ships that would be so long in flight that hundreds of years would pass between their launching and their planetfall, and that in the intervening time its cargo would have replaced itself dozens of times over, generation succeeding generation succeeding generation, each one accepting the torch of hope, each one keeping the dream alive.

The generation ships.

In these enlightened times, of course, no-one believes a word of them.

But sometimes, a grizzled spacer, deep in his cups and trying to forget the image of a Fer-de-Lance bearing down on him or the swarm of Thargoids in that asteroid belt at Oninre, tells a tale of a witch-space jump gone wrong, his engines depositing him in that nowhere place between the dimensions. He will speak of a massive ship, kilometres long, that ignored his hails as it crept along at a snail's pace, its hull battered and scored and blackened by space. And he will speak of a name still visible, just, on that hull.

... Then perhaps another spacer will buy him a drink, and whisper quietly of another ship, another name...

... another shadow from the past...

Introduction

"Before the development of the WS Thru-Space drive, in all its various forms, interstellar travel occurred in large, self-sustaining environment ships—Generation Ships—most of which have now been logged and their progress monitored. There are more than seventy thousand of these immense vessels ploughing their way through the galaxy, some of them into their 30th generation. The penalty for interference with such a vessel is marooning." (Webster's Space Dictionary, 324th ed)

Notable Features

This OXP adds the mysterious, majestic and magnificently massive Generation ships to your Oolite universe. These immense vessels are encountered only rarely in the vast tracts of Thargoid-haunted interstellar space between inhabited systems, so seeing one may be a once in a lifetime occurance for many commanders. Few who have reported seeing these vessels have ever been unchanged by the experience, to be dwarfed by the sheer magnitude and awed by the stately grace these ships exhibit is something that remains with the viewer forever.

The genship.oxp was written and first published by Draco Caeles, then lost in the maelstrom of various collapsing Oosats, and soon became equally legendary and rare to find as the ships it brings to the Ooniverse.

Starting from version 1.1, the scripting part was completely overhauled by Commander McLane. For a changelog please read the readMe.

At over 30 kilometers long, it is currently the biggest ship in the game.

Minimum Requirements

Generation Ships.oxz v1.4 needs at least Oolite 1.80.
Generation Ships.oxp v1.3 needs at least Oolite 1.74, and it is recommended that you upgrade to the latest Oolite version.

Download Location

• Download Generation Ships_1.6.oxz (downloaded 0 times).

Previous Versions

• Generation Ships.oxp v1.3 is available on box.com.
• Also, the original genships.oxp is available on box.com.

Film

• By author Draco Caeles

Fiction

• Alien Items anthology - see Schism by Drew Wagar
• Beusrior (Rough Guide)

I said I want to dock the player with a Generation Ship, so I made them dockable. The (unwanted) result is that there are traders randomly launching from the Generation Ship. Yesterday it happened that one of those traders went a short distance forwards and ... jumped. Now as also the Generation Ship moves forward -- painfully slowly, of course -- eventually it got caught by the trader's wormhole and disappeared, leaving the most gigantic wormhole I've ever seen! Its blue dot was at the very edge of my scanner, but it filled the sky! And I got sucked in when I came closer than 20 kilometers! WOW! Commander McLane (2007)

Links

• BB Thread Generation Ship (2008)
• Generation Ships 1.1 OXP (2009-date: Commander McLane » Sun Oct 11, 2009 3:42 pm outlines his projected ghostsfromthepast.oxp)
• Analysis of Generation Ships (on our BB for another Elitish game - 2012 - several posts)
• Catching a Generation Ship (2018)

• Lore:

see entry in Legends of Elite

Beusrior (Rough Guide)

Lave (Rough Guide): Seat of Government - Hermione

Sector1/Biarge: And now for something a little different

Sector1/Digebiti: Fiction

Alien Items (anthology) - see Schism

Quick Facts

Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
1.6	2023-11-23	CC BY-NC-SA 3.0	Generation Ships	Ships OXPs‏‎	Draco Caeles	Oolite BB

Gameplay and Balance indicator