Career advice: trader & cargo delivery

[mandoman]

I hate flying through Leesti...

Do it with a Merlin, all tricked out with military shields, lasers, sensor and detection enhancers, and any other nasty stuff you can get, like Field Missiles, and Leesti will be a walk through the park.

[Dragonfire]

Meh, those field missiles never did much for me. The standard ECM hardened ones seem MUCH more efficient.

[Disembodied]

Now I have Cobra Mk III with following:
Large Cargo Bay
ECM System
Extra Energy Unit
Fuel Injectors
Scanner Targeting Enhancement
Advanced Space Compass
Beam Lasers fore & aft

OXPs:
Cabal Common Library
Fuel station
Griff's shipset all-in-1
Rock hermit locator
Snoopers

Anything else to improve Cobra as space truck? (more like: van )

Fuel scoop! You don't have to use it for scooping fuel ... think of all that salvage out there, and every single Credit is pure profit. Then upgrade at least the front weapon to a military laser.

[Dragonfire]

If you really want to haul a lot of stuff, forget the Cobra Mark III and get a Boa Class Cruiser. They have a MUCH better cargo capacity, and are very similar to or better than the Cobra Mark III in regards to almost all the tech specs (I think they're marginally slower than the Cobra, tho).

[Matti]

If you really want to haul a lot of stuff, forget the Cobra Mark III and get a Boa Class Cruiser.

Can't afford it yet

[Dragonfire]

Mm, that's when you go into your save file and manually up your credits. (After all, in the real world, who starts with a mere $100? I have SAVINGS!)

[Matti]

Following from Status Quo:

Fuel was cheap, and you could scoop it anyway, but the running costs of five ships were huge, and that was before wages, food, air recyc, maintenance, insurance, tax, docking fees, berthing fees, flight permits, space lane tolls... it all added up. You had to trade damn smart to turn a profit. Sometimes you lucked out. Once, a market crash had cost them almost three months worth of credits. Many of their colleagues went bankrupt

I fly Cobra Mark III, I'm rich and ship is damn near iron ass (short of side lasers and energy bomb, and money's not problem there). And I get better & easier money from cargo runs than from blasting offenders and fugitives. So why such big difference between novel and game, aside costs of fighter escort?

[Switeck]

Oolite has (almost!) no taxes/fees/permits/tolls/insurance.
...Or crew wages, though on the smaller ships there is presumed to not be a crew.
Even the Cobra 3 is supposedly a 1 or 2 person crew.

[Disembodied]

I fly Cobra Mark III, I'm rich and ship is damn near iron ass (short of side lasers and energy bomb, and money's not problem there). And I get better & easier money from cargo runs than from blasting offenders and fugitives. So why such big difference between novel and game, aside costs of fighter escort?

Because the novel is a novel, and the game is a game. They are different modes of entertainment, with different requirements and different priorities. The novel is set in a universe where it takes years of hard graft and grind to get anywhere, and even then you might not make it, because life is tough and being a space-bum is out there on the less fragrant end of the stick. The game is set in a universe which is ludicrously dangerous (seriously, if life was actually like this, no-one would be a starship pilot) because we all like dogfighting when we can just Press Space, Commander, and you can get cash, new kit, new ships and push on up to Elite in a few weeks or months of gameplay because we all have other stuff to do, too.

[Matti]

Oolite has (almost!) no taxes/fees/permits/tolls/insurance.
...Or crew wages

Any OXPs that add those?

The game is set in a universe which is ludicrously dangerous (seriously, if life was actually like this, no-one would be a starship pilot) because we all like dogfighting when we can just Press Space, Commander, and you can get cash, new kit, new ships and push on up to Elite in a few weeks or months of gameplay because we all have other stuff to do, too.

But game time can progress rapidly, particularly between jumps and when equipment is fitted on ship. There is time and date indicator if you haven't noticed.

[Alex]

I recon you can't go past the Python Class Cruiser as a stepping ship, it has big enough cargo hold with expansion, can be made ironass and handles much better than the standard Python. I used it for months to save up for my first super cobby. at that time it was 1.6 mill for the super cobby. Then went back to it when the Caddy (Caduceus) was released. Took no time atall with the PCC to get the dosh for my beloved Gertrude Oblitz (Caddy Omega)
The supper cobby is now hangered gathering dust.

[Disembodied]

The game is set in a universe which is ludicrously dangerous (seriously, if life was actually like this, no-one would be a starship pilot) because we all like dogfighting when we can just Press Space, Commander, and you can get cash, new kit, new ships and push on up to Elite in a few weeks or months of gameplay because we all have other stuff to do, too.

But game time can progress rapidly, particularly between jumps and when equipment is fitted on ship. There is time and date indicator if you haven't noticed.

Yes, I've noticed. Without particularly thrashing things – only shooting pirates and Thargoids, for example – I got from Harmless to Elite in somewhere around 1,100 days, the vast bulk of which were clocked up making witchjumps. Just over three years of game-time. I'd guess a ratio of 18 hours of game-time where I'm not doing anything to every 1 hour where I'm flying and fighting (assuming an average of 6 hours for a witchjump and an average 20 minutes spent flying from the witchpoint to the station). So that's Harmless to Elite in around 1400 hours of flying (at a very rough guess: probably much less. I think my averages are out of whack. If we have 12-hour average witchjumps and 10 minutes on average per system, that works out at Harlmess to Elite in 360-odd hours of flying). Actual real time passed: somewhere around three-and-a-half years (I wasn't playing every day, obviously! ) ...

The point is, a game and a novel are different things. A novel about one man's experience of war, say, can dwell on the long stretches of boredom, the companionship, the importance of things we take for granted elsewhere, like hot food, or hot showers, or a bit of music. A computer game of one man's experience of war will tend to focus on the running, jumping, dodging and shooting. In the same way, a (god help us) film based on a computer game will make at least some attempt to have a plot, and not all situations in the film will be resolvable by running, jumping, dodging and shooting.

Edit: fixing dodgy arithmetic ...

[Commander McLane]

In the same way, a (god help us) film based on a computer game will make at least some attempt to have a plot, and not all situations in the film will be resolvable by running, jumping, dodging and shooting.

One of the neat details about the contract between B&B and Acornsoft back in the eighties is the B&B insisted on keeping the film rights. So, who knows... (Although I think they did sell the right eventually.)

Oh, and on the "god help us" part, see here.

[Disembodied]

Oh, and on the "god help us" part, see here.

Eech!

Mind you, thinking about this some more, most situations in most Hollywood films tend to be resolved by someone running, jumping, dodging and shooting, whether or not they're based on a video game. One of the worst things, though, in this shiny new era of media cross-ownership, is watching a film and spotting all the bits they put in so they can have it in the inevitable game spinoff. So far this only seems to affect "action" movies: but don't be surprised if someone does an adaptation of Hamlet where the Prince has to jump and swing about the battlements of Elsinore so his father's ghost can give him a blue keycard ...

[Matti]

The point is, a game and a novel are different things. A novel about one man's experience of war, say, can dwell on the long stretches of boredom, the companionship, the importance of things we take for granted elsewhere, like hot food, or hot showers, or a bit of music. A computer game of one man's experience of war will tend to focus on the running, jumping, dodging and shooting.

Have you tried that in Operation Flashpoint and Jagged Alliance?

At least Oolite has parts of boredom. But we can use that for multitasking: when my Cobra is mass locked without hostilities around, I read book or this forum. And in order to make serious money with Cobra3, thargoid busting seems to be way to go. Gotta try Q-mines and energy bomb... Do I get bounties with those?

But any OXPs that add costs mentioned in Status Quo?