Ship explodes after shutting off systems and leaving it in SRV

[fennster]

Haha, still not an instancing problem. Yes the ship must be ruled out somehow, but instancing does not dictate destruction. If a set of unicorns flew down and skipped off into the event horizon with your ship, is that still instancing?

No, that's program by design. Decision in progress.

I do understand that an eventuality must happen to you ship, but without decision it will continue to exist until owner is removed from the game.

 

[Kristov]

I think you're looking at it from a different angle. Its not as much about 'realism', as it is about 'doing things'. Its an artificial mechanism that allows you to RP you're preparing for a new session, even if it makes little sense in and of itself. I'm sure people who consider doing this (like the OP and myself) might also have their character walk to the canteen and grab a cup of coffee if it were possible, or look over our shoulder into the cockpit and turn off the HUD. Ideally our aux fuel tank would drain much slower, but drain real-time regardless of being logged in as long as you're not docked. That would have turning things off make sense, although it will obviously be way too punishing for people who can only play sporadically. At this point in development it is more about doing *something* and suspending our disbelief no man has ever suspended his disbelief.

I'm all about the 'doing things' bit, that's why I'm in an Anaconda this time out in the Black, I want to be able to wander around the ship and go sit in that skybox, sit down, sip some bourbon and watch the galaxy burn while I listen to something, maybe some Moonlight Sonata, maybe some Sickness, maybe some Sober, or just the sounds of the cosmos itself. Walk around, nod to the crew as I pass them, maybe chit chat a bit with some of them, hit on that sexy little chick down in Engineering...yeah, I'd love to do all that. Can't right now, just sit there and look around, but even if I could do all of that, I wouldn't be shutting of life support anywhere outside of a docking bay or a planet with a breathable atmosphere, but that's me, we all do RP in our own fashion and it's never right or wrong.

fennster, FD decided if we leave our ship while it's on it's way to destruction, it blows up. That's how they deal with the instancing removing it from the game when we leave that instance in that particular case, for now, and it made sense both programming wise and thematically originally, empty ships floating around in space are navigation hazards, destroy them to prevent that. It needs to be revamped however, as the OP found a situation where it SHOULDN'T be blowing up but it does, FD overlooked that particular case, like I said, can't blame them, I never would have thought to do what he did and cause that particular case to arise. Thinking on it now, I can see that it WILL be a massive issue when we do get planets with atmo, especially breathable atmo, as that IS a situation where I would shut off life support, so would many others. Me, I'd do it to get my ship aired out, pretty sure it's probably not the nicest smelling place after a few hundred hours being self contained, even Glade Air Freshener only goes so far, and that pine tree hanging from the dash probably smells like last week's beans. Others would do it for whatever reason, like the OP, because he doesn't like leaving systems running and using fuel when he's not onboard. Can you imagine how this board would explode if that happened in that situation? I'd be raising some hell about it, that's for certain.

 

[nosleepdemon]

Still not understanding why anyone would expect the ship to explode. That's an internal game mechanic chosen by FD to send the player to the rebuy screen, it's an autokill. The timer is merely signalling how much o2 the pilot has, that's all. There is nothing else wrong with the ship, and it certainly would not be expected to self destruct to stop itself from falling into enemy hands, or due to any sort of powerplant malfunction.

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

It pretty much is. If containment fails, the reaction stops. The outcome may not be pretty, however, as the fuel and waste products are quite hazardous.

If you want something big enough to go boom if the reaction stops, you'll be looking at something the size of a star. And not just any size of star - they need to be quite large before being capable of (naturally) going nova.

S

A failing containment would probably release very very compressed gasses which would rapidly expand inside a container (the ship) so air tight it keeps hard vacuum out...

My guess is it would not expand much before the hull popped like a overfilled balloon.

 

[Kristov]

Still not understanding why anyone would expect the ship to explode. That's an internal game mechanic chosen by FD to send the player to the rebuy screen, it's an autokill. The timer is merely signalling how much o2 the pilot has, that's all. There is nothing else wrong with the ship, and it certainly would not be expected to self destruct to stop itself from falling into enemy hands, or due to any sort of powerplant malfunction.

FD's design decision, logical in some aspects as it's thematically proper, don't leave empty ships cluttering up possible space lanes. WHY the lack of life support would cause that is beyond me, but I don't work for FD and wasn't privy to the decision making process that came up with this one, silly as hell if you ask me, I'm obviously not the only one who thinks that either, but we weren't asked by FD on the subject, so...

I'd have gone with a different approach, and it would be a varied approach depending on WHAT caused the lack of life support. Massive damage to the ship due to attack or collision, ok, self destruction makes sense there, leave that alone. Life support gone due to JUST a busted canopy, don't self destruct, give X time as it does now and force ejection. NOW, at this point, a timer kicks in, you have X time to get back to your ship and fix it OR the computer will cause it to self destruct so it's not a navigation hazard if in space or on a dead planet. Instead of the standard Insurance Rebuy screen, have an option, Rescue OR Insurance Rebuy. Rescue puts you in an NPC controlled ship which will take you back to your ship for a price and repair the canopy and restore life support, PROVIDED that your ship is within X light years of human habitation. This means deep exploration, you ain't getting that baby back, but if somewhere inside the bubble or fairly close to it, you can get your ship back for, hmm, 2% instead of 5%? Less if you are whatever rank it is with LYR in Power Play? 1% in that case? Sound good? Seriously, any thoughts, toss em out, I'm just spit balling here, trying to come up with something that would be a little more realistic and less explodey

If you turn OFF your life support, NONE of the above happens, it simply goes off and that's it. If you are on the ship and there's no breathable atmo or a docking bay, you die after your RemLock exhausts itself, no rebuy screen, commander data wipe and you start over again with a Sidey and some credits, as you just committed suicide. If there's a breathable atmo or you are in a docking bay and you stay in the ship, nothing happens, you've got air to breath, RemLock systems don't kick in. If you leave the ship while the life support is off, well, you've left the ship, no self destruct, you've simply shut down your ship and left it. When you get back on, you turn on the life support or see above per applicable situation.

Thoughts, ideas, holes in the ideas?

 

[Ian Skippy]

FD's design decision, logical in some aspects as it's thematically proper, don't leave empty ships cluttering up possible space lanes. WHY the lack of life support would cause that is beyond me, but I don't work for FD and wasn't privy to the decision making process that came up with this one, silly as hell if you ask me, I'm obviously not the only one who thinks that either, but we weren't asked by FD on the subject, so...

I'd have gone with a different approach, and it would be a varied approach depending on WHAT caused the lack of life support. Massive damage to the ship due to attack or collision, ok, self destruction makes sense there, leave that alone. Life support gone due to JUST a busted canopy, don't self destruct, give X time as it does now and force ejection. NOW, at this point, a timer kicks in, you have X time to get back to your ship and fix it OR the computer will cause it to self destruct so it's not a navigation hazard if in space or on a dead planet. Instead of the standard Insurance Rebuy screen, have an option, Rescue OR Insurance Rebuy. Rescue puts you in an NPC controlled ship which will take you back to your ship for a price and repair the canopy and restore life support, PROVIDED that your ship is within X light years of human habitation. This means deep exploration, you ain't getting that baby back, but if somewhere inside the bubble or fairly close to it, you can get your ship back for, hmm, 2% instead of 5%? Less if you are whatever rank it is with LYR in Power Play? 1% in that case? Sound good? Seriously, any thoughts, toss em out, I'm just spit balling here, trying to come up with something that would be a little more realistic and less explodey

If you turn OFF your life support, NONE of the above happens, it simply goes off and that's it. If you are on the ship and there's no breathable atmo or a docking bay, you die after your RemLock exhausts itself, no rebuy screen, commander data wipe and you start over again with a Sidey and some credits, as you just committed suicide. If there's a breathable atmo or you are in a docking bay and you stay in the ship, nothing happens, you've got air to breath, RemLock systems don't kick in. If you leave the ship while the life support is off, well, you've left the ship, no self destruct, you've simply shut down your ship and left it. When you get back on, you turn on the life support or see above per applicable situation.

Thoughts, ideas, holes in the ideas?

As part of Ironman: great! As part of normal gameplay: why would lack of oxygen result in instant-death, and ship-explosion allow you to use the escape pod?

 

[fennster]

..........................

 

[Kristov]

As part of Ironman: great! As part of normal gameplay: why would lack of oxygen result in instant-death, and ship-explosion allow you to use the escape pod?

If you turn off the life support and have no other breathable air except your RemLock system, which is in your flight suit, you'll die. There's no logical reason to turn off your life support system manually without having a source of air, so if you do that, it locks out the ejection sequence due to lack of oxygen(the timer), and you'll just plain die. It's realistic, you don't turn off your air when you've got none and NOT turn it back on. If people want to do that, well, that's fine, there's a price for being suicidal, it's called death, data wipe/restart.

Otherwise, the ejection sequence is always there for you in my idea, accidents, damage from combat, canopy breach, the ejection sequence kicks in when it should, it's only by manually turning off your life support that that system is disabled and only for the actual timed oxygen ejection we have currently. Turn off your life support and get shot up, ejection works, smack into a rock, ejection works, canopy breached while life support is off, ejection is reactivated by that canopy breach.

In other words, if you are so stupid that you turn off your air and have none otherwise, you die because you literally committed suicide.

 

[Ian Skippy]

If you turn off the life support and have no other breathable air except your RemLock system, which is in your flight suit, you'll die. There's no logical reason to turn off your life support system manually without having a source of air, so if you do that, it locks out the ejection sequence due to lack of oxygen(the timer), and you'll just plain die. It's realistic, you don't turn off your air when you've got none and NOT turn it back on. If people want to do that, well, that's fine, there's a price for being suicidal, it's called death, data wipe/restart.

Otherwise, the ejection sequence is always there for you in my idea, accidents, damage from combat, canopy breach, the ejection sequence kicks in when it should, it's only by manually turning off your life support that that system is disabled and only for the actual timed oxygen ejection we have currently. Turn off your life support and get shot up, ejection works, smack into a rock, ejection works, canopy breached while life support is off, ejection is reactivated by that canopy breach.

In other words, if you are so stupid that you turn off your air and have none otherwise, you die because you literally committed suicide.

I still don't get it. You have three sources of air:

1) Life support
2) Remlok
3) Escape pod

When Life support fails for any reason, Remlok is activated. When Remlok fails for any reason (oxygen drained, or damaged in FPS/EVA in the future) you can go to the escape pod. When the escape pod fails (currently impossible) you'll die. I get the impression that you want limited Ironman only in this very specific situation where people turn off their life support for no reason other than you find it stupid, and stupidity bothers you. It doesn't seem like a logical result, but more an ad-hoc punishment for something that irritates you on a personal level. Suppose if I were so stupid to turn off my life support, and suppose my remlok also fails, what prevents me from getting into the escape pod?

 

[Saiidin]

The reason why the countdown continues is because the oxy tanks keep circulating oxygen into the cabin, regardless of if you are in it or not... so all that keeps 'working'

Except that nothing is consuming the oxygen, so air would just be recirculating without being used up.

You also make the incorrect assumption that the life support timer has anything at all to do with cabin air.

Ship systems actually seem to replenish that indefinitely as long as you have fuel to run the systems that either scrub the air or separate fresh air from the fuel when you scoop it from a star(hence why you can survive a month long trip to Sag A* without docking to ressupply volatiles).

The life support system TIMER is actually Emergency Life Support, piped directly into your pilot's suit in the event of a hull breach (canopy go boom) causing the cabin air supply from the primary life support system to be evacuated into space before the pilot can actually breathe it.

Alas, for some reason future spacecraft engineers have been unable to engineer a way to connect a pilot's suit to the main life support systems supply feed and seal the vents into the cabin in the event of a hull breach in order to provide indefinite air to a pilot whose craft is otherwise perfectly flyable, just shot full of holes.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

It pretty much is. If containment fails, the reaction stops. The outcome may not be pretty, however, as the fuel and waste products are quite hazardous.

If you want something big enough to go boom if the reaction stops, you'll be looking at something the size of a star. And not just any size of star - they need to be quite large before being capable of (naturally) going nova.

S

Actually, if the containment on a fusion reactor fails (and we assume it isn't a mythical Cold Fusion reactor) the star-hot, star-pressure hydrogen being fused into helium to produce energy would explode...like a fusion bomb. Same nuclear reaction.

And if your containment system is being powered by your reactor, and your fuel runs out, there may be a point where there is no longer enough fuel in the reactor core to sustain sufficient reactor output to power the containment system, but still sufficient fuel to be fusing when containment breaks, causing a markedly smaller fusion explosion.

The reason small stars don't tend to go nova is because their gravity is great enough to overcome the force of the explosive POOF! when they burn out. Think of your gas grill, it doesn't just die quietly, there's always a POOF! as the last bit of fuel goes up in a runaway reaction as the air hits it. You probably wouldn't want to be next to a small star when it happened, even if it won't burn any planets within a half dozen lightyears to cinders like a supernova would.

 

[excalibus]

ahh yes of course the closed remlock system, After re-reading the Dark wheel, it would seem the 3 systems are, Ship Life Support, Escape Pod Life Support and Remlok Helmet / Suit...

When the oxygen in the Cabin is depeleted through canopy breach / turning off ship life support, you switch over to the remlok suit. which has 5 to 25 minutes of air depending on your ship module fitted (which seems stranges in itself really). If you can make it to your escape pod in that time, then you would be using the escape pods life support system and the remlok timer should turn offf.

If the escape pod is shot to pieces while you are in it then the remlok system would begin working again automatically.

A quick question for the OP, when you say you turn off everything... do you turn off your main power plant too? (Not tried doing that myself to be honest).

And yeah on reflection I agree with sluetelbos that perhaps it is a case of how it was coded to work Pre 2.0 want not allowing for this edge case scenario...

It would be extremely rare scenario for a pilot to lose life support (without blowing out the canopy) unless they let their ship get damaged to that point without an AFMU, and in that case, not having the AFMU for such a deep exploration mission would be the cause and the lesson...


What the OP says about his ship being unable to be recalled (I would hope he does not mean after it has exploded) every time, that would be a valid cause for alarm, and should be ticketted for support.

OP if you need to make your ship 'cold' turning off FSD, Shields, Thrusters, Cargo Hatch, Weapons, Utility Points is perhaps the best way to go. leaving the reactor and life support enabled will show very very little heat and your ship would be essentially 'cold'

 

[CMDR_Amanath]

So you make a habit of turning off everything on the ship before you leave in an SRV, including life support, which automatically kicks in the self destruct timer, and you can never get your ship to recall when you this?

That's not a bug, that's you setting your ship to self destruct and leaving it in an SRV. I can see how that might be confusing the FIRST time you do it, but HOW many times have you done it with the exact same results now?

That is certainly a valid way of looking at it too. Im not sure why anyone would want to turn life support off when docked. In saying that switching all systems off doesn't seem to be unusual to the point of destroying the ship either. I recon its and oversight in design, not a bug.

 

[crushdepth]

but if you think about it, just for a moment, it's not a bug, its working as it should... If you turn off life support, regardless of if you are in your ship or not, why would the countdown magically pause when you leave the ship? Surely it would keep counting down... It would be a bug if it did indeed stop counting down when you left the ship... And of course if your ship explodes while you are in the SRV it would indeed leave you 'stranded' on the surface and are you suggesting it shoudln't? what do you think should happen?

Of course if you 'self destruct' the SRV you should then be back at the rebuy screen for your ship.

I would say that your 'work around' is actually a bug...

If there's nobody at the helm consuming the air supply shutting down the life support shouldn't do anything. Much less make the ship explode.

 

[DaveL]

Hey. OP back there, i was in work
I didn´t expected this thread to turnou to be this detailed philospohy thought out... Anyway, the former thing is, when i am exploring out, i am used to leave the game running, with the ship in normal space, running with FA off and everything except LS off.. just to save power.. yeah and i mean it in RP sense.., so when i literally wake up, i get back to my bridge, boot every system up chagre to SC, and jump away again...
This time i attempted do same thing on the planet with the addition of shutting the LS off because... its really not needed when im not present on the ship right?

So the question from the replies on previous page is... Yes the ship does explode for that very reason... but WHY? Why does that happen? i understand when that happen when i have broken canopy after battle or after several failed jumps into the Neutron stars.. but when l leave it on surface?

Its just like.. imagine ship as Truck, with the trailer.. where is the car in it (Knight Rider says hi). You want to leave the truck with the car stored in trailer... so you shut off the engine.. heater.. raido... lights.. whatsoever.. Yet you wont run out of gas and your truck wont explode right? Wont that make no sense to you? Same applies to your ship..


I am not complaining about "    just happened", i am contemplaiting about "Why it happens?" because really, there´s no reason for it.. imho.. and as i´ve read several posts before.. many people agrees..

 

[Sysmon]

I guess the moral of the story is that the ship is exactly a truck then...

S

 

[Kristov]

I still don't get it. You have three sources of air:

1) Life support
2) Remlok
3) Escape pod

When Life support fails for any reason, Remlok is activated. When Remlok fails for any reason (oxygen drained, or damaged in FPS/EVA in the future) you can go to the escape pod. When the escape pod fails (currently impossible) you'll die. I get the impression that you want limited Ironman only in this very specific situation where people turn off their life support for no reason other than you find it stupid, and stupidity bothers you. It doesn't seem like a logical result, but more an ad-hoc punishment for something that irritates you on a personal level. Suppose if I were so stupid to turn off my life support, and suppose my remlok also fails, what prevents me from getting into the escape pod?

And that's why I asked for ideas and to poke holes in it! Yes, it's a punishment for being stupid, which WAS one of the defining features of all the previous Elite games, stupidity in space is deadly. We've both commented on the fact that we can get too close to black holes and other astronomical features that should kill us, but for some reason FD has kiddy proofed the universe in this version of Elite, lets get some of that padding off the corners shall we?

 

[vernonator]

You dont die, you use the escape pod. The destruction could indeed be a 'safety procedure'. But not one intended to keep the pilot safe, but to keep the ship from falling in enemy hands.

Enemy hands? Yeah my independent trader sure needs that. Its a game mechanic pure and simple - nothing logical about it.

 

[DaveL]

- Ship oxygen supply no longer depletes while the player is out of the ship (i.e. in a buggy)

Yey fixed!

 

[Yaffle]

As this is nearly a year ago I'm closing as a necro. Please start a new thread as if this was a new issue.