How busy is too busy?

[FluffyFreak]

This video got sent around at my work via the message board.

24 hours of flights over Europe in compressed into 2 minutes.
http://vimeo.com/88093956

This is only commercial aircraft today.
I think we could really do with trying to aim a bit higher with Pioneer in the future to have a lot more traffic around planets, intra-system and inter-system.

Something to think about only, not suggesting we immediately start ripping things up to try it out :)
I think we've all got plenty on our hands already!

[impaktor]

I've been thinking along the same lines for a long time.

However, how would one cope with the limited number of landing pads? Have a
queue system or sorts, to let player land in busy ports is what I've seen
people mention, I think.

[Marcel]

Wow! I think a queue system is the way to go. The player would hover and wait and accelerate time until they get landing clearance. Perhaps a VIP landing pass could be purchased which would move you up to the head of the line. As far as coping with the limited number of landing pads, just add more spaceports! ;)

[FluffyFreak]

Well up to 240 landing pads per station should work with the current system - it just needs another station modelling, the one from Paragon is a good example of what kind of density is possible.
It does need some kind of queue system to handle the load. I've been meaning to do something more with the docking but realistically it could just do with someone else having a look as I'd completely swamped with other things right now.

Also yeah, just having a LOT more space stations, I think we should merge in the Hometowns mod to Pioneer Marcel :)
Then increase the number that get generated for each world perhaps.

[FluffyFreak]

I got frustrated with some terrain stuff I've been working on so started to hack around on this https://github.com/fluffyfreak/pioneer/tree/moar

Sets a base number of terrestrial starports at 60 (up from 6 maximum!), then scales that up/down based on the ratio of the planets radius vs Earth (super simplistic).

Also it allows for as many space stations in orbit as it an randomly pick, although they seem to be clumping up so I think I got the maths wrong for separating them in their orbits! :)

Of course you need to get away from the home system of planets, I found that Beeth (scroll right a bit) has one inhabited system... with a bunch of towns and 6 space stations!

Whole thing might need some refinement.

[impaktor]

More is better, but I think this will lead to some problem with finding the starport to land at, if there's a list of 50-ish to choose from. Also, the procedural name generation might be too obvious when you see the pattern of the names all lined up in a long list of starports.

Shouldn't number of starports be proportional to planet population, rather than planet radius? (I assume each starport has one city associated to it).

[FluffyFreak]

Yeah that was just a quick hack to test things out :)

[FluffyFreak]

Yeah looked into this a bit closer, the trouble is that the radius of a planet is a nice and simple thing, easily understood. The population however is pretty much just pulled out of someones arse...

So using it is a bit of a pain... great

[DraQ]

TBH, with the scale of the systems (compared to that of a single planet) in mind, there is no such thing as too busy.

The main problem (inherited from Frontier) is that there are way too few starports and points of interest in any given system - with much more surface starports, with more landing pads, cities as basically a terrain type, numerous stations, various facilities scattered about, both surface and orbital, some with their own landing pads or docks, and more celestial bodies (it would be nice to have at least all the named moons, planets and significant minor planets, plus randomized ring thicket here, with equivalent level of generated detail in other systems) the traffic will have a lot of places to move around.

There should also be more missions around those to appreciate both the traffic, sights, and combat in more interesting environment.

More locations should go along with better generator and better navigation aids (I'm thinking of collapsible, hierarchical tree).

[FluffyFreak]

Oh i know, it's not the idea that's the problem it's finding time to work out how to use the planet populations rather than their radius to determine the number of starports reliably.

As I said it's unfortunate that it's so random as opposed to procedural. With a procedural system you can understand it, with a random one it's just pulling number out of it arse.