BuoyRepair

Introduction

Trading goods between worlds is an extremely dangerous and hard job and most of the trading companies are losing ships by accident, pirate ambush or thargoid attacks. In 2084003 GCT (Galactic Coordinated Time) mostly all traders guilds decided to counteract to the increasing number of accidents by establishing the space buoys as a marker for safe space lanes.

But systems are always slow in replacement of destroyed navigation buoys. It is very frustrating when you are at the main station and have to meet a ship on the way to the witchpoint when the witchpoint buoy is destroyed. It is almost impossible to orientate yourself in this situation. The authors (Cmdr Walch and Cmdr Svengali) found this very annoying and made a little investigation for the reasons. The main reason seemed to be a systemwide shortage of buoys, so it always took much time to bring in a new buoy from far away and installing it.

In most cases the pilot was already in an other system when replacement started.

Buoy Factories

Both authors looked for systems that were prepared to build buoys for a reasonable price. They were found with industrial systems with a medium technical level. Systems of low technical level didn't have the skills to build the buoys and those of high level found it to inferior work to do. An other selection criteria was the availability of metal ore on the planet so alloys could be extracted from it. The buoys itself are not strong enough to lift off the planet surfaces so they had to be assembled in space.

Cmdr Svengali designed a whole assembly station for this purpose. Parts for the buoys are pre-fabricated on the planet surface and then flown in to the assembly station with shuttles. Those factories are in a constant need of alloys and will also buy alloys flown in from other systems.

The assembly stations have a technologic advanced docking bay sealing: A force-field that keeps the air inside and still allows for a ship to pass trough. This makes it possible to load / unload ships with normal cloating instead of using pressurised suites. Disadvantage is that an approaching pilot has no visible view of the landing bay and has to use special guiding technology to find its right flight-path or use his docking computer.

Buoy Transport vehicles

Buoys are of the size of a medium ship like a Cobra. This means they don't fit in the cargo bay of a normal ship. It would need a spaceship carrier to transport them. This was rejected as to expensive so we choose for the low-cost solution of towing the buoys. For this job Cmdr Svengali designed a powerful tugging ship that is capable of deliver the cargo in place at reasonable speed.

Distribution System

Meanwhile Cmdr Walch build a distribution system that send new assembled buoy from the factory to other systems before they were actually needed. Once docked in another system, the replacement buoys are stored in a safe place in the main stations. Now, when a buoy gets destroyed, a new one can be brought in place without much delay.

When the main station buoy needs to be replaced a new one can be retrieved directly from the station. And when a witchpoint beacon is destroyed a new one will be brought in by hyperspace jumping with a buoy from an adjacent system.

Installation

Take the file "buoyRepair.OXP" and put is in the AddOns folder of Oolite. After a restart the new factories are in place and the distribution of the replacement buoys start. Now, when a buoy gets defect, a replacement sequence is started within 2 minutes. Sometimes replacement takes longer when traffic around stations is to busy. But this is on to the local station manager to schedule dockings and launches.

Version requirement

This OXP needs Oolite 1.71 or higher to work.

Download

Comes very soon (the next days) - so stay tuned.

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