Masslock

Masslock - the negation of the Torus Drive by the presence of ship/station/planet mass in the vicinity is an inheritance from Classic Elite.

In classic elite you would fly from the exit of the witchspace tunnel to the planet. No beacons. The ships you would bump into would be coming in the opposite direction - except for stationary asteroids & rock hermits. You would be thrown out of Torus Drive and would have to decide whether to flee, fight or ignore the oncoming ship.

In Oolite, the picture is more complex with many ships heading from the station to the witchpoint. This is increased if you have OXPs placing stations (Feudal hunting lodges, Monasteries of St. Herod, RSS stations, etc) near to the witchpoint, or have liners with escorts, or convoys traveling between the witchpoint and the orbital station.

The mass-lock that Oolite inherited: Mass-lock comes from elite It enables encounters with other ships to occur Despite its flaws, it does its job The mass-lock that Oolite implemented: Mass-lock takes longer to escape (due in part to graphical upgrades as mentioned by cim) Mass-lock is more frequent (due to greater system traffic) Mass-lock with traders is more common (non player-centric design often suggests more prey than predators) Mass-locking of ships heading towards the station (rather than away as was often the case in elite) is far more common So mass lock has become: More frequent More time consuming More problematic (e.g. trying to overtake an Asp headed in the same direction) Less likely to result in combat

(Redspear (2016))

Vanilla game solutions

The simple solution in the Vanilla game to the traffic jam is to avoid it! When you come out of the tunnel, immediately turn away from the planet at an angle and whizz along for 10-20 seconds until well clear of the traffic lane. Then make your way to the planet, keeping well away from the traffic.

OXP solutions

There are a number of OXPs which have been written to try and ameliorate the joys of masslock:

• Variable Masslock (by Norby, 2015) reduces the masslock radius depending on the mass of the ship
• Traffic Redistributer (by Redspear, 2017) changes the speeds of different ships to help reduce mass-lock
• Masslock Compensator (by Redspear, 2018) is a highly complex OXP reducing masslock: passive (neutral) masslocks are less inhibitory than active (combative) masslocks.

• Telescope Extender (by Norby, 2013-7) enables you to see distant ships coming - and thus avoid them

Links

• Torus Drive
• Cheating for an analysis of non-player centrism & whether the NPC's lack of a Torus Drive counts as cheating!

BB Discussions

• Redspear's two OXPs listed above link to his BB threads with long complex analyses of the situation (one of Redspear's fortés!)
• Discussion on why so much traffic travels to the witchpoint beacon (2021)