A Humble Question. ... and maybe another.

[Antares_Captain]

Hello, hello! I'd like to introduce myself as Antares_Captain, but just call me Antares, or Captain... or Commander, being my alternate Antares_________ name.

Well, my .oxp question is:

Is it possible to set a new starting ship, possibly equipment, or the starting credit amount? I'd think that, if its possible, it wouldn't be too bad to edit, would it?

As for the second question... hm... I'll ask after my first question is answered. Thank you for your time.

[CaptSolo]

Hello, hello! I'd like to introduce myself as Antares_Captain, but just call me Antares, or Captain... or Commander, being my alternate Antares_________ name.

Well, my .oxp question is:

Is it possible to set a new starting ship, possibly equipment, or the starting credit amount? I'd think that, if its possible, it wouldn't be too bad to edit, would it?

As for the second question... hm... I'll ask after my first question is answered. Thank you for your time.

Greetings Antares and welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat. I think your question is more general game play rather than OXP related, but here goes:

How long have you been playing Oolite and are you having any difficulties? It isn't easy when you start out from Lave and actually for quite some time after that. Some take shortcuts by padding their credit account and you are free to do that. Your saved game is basically a text file. I would encourage you to try the challenge of equipping your ship the hard way by trading goods. You can avoid combat for the most part until you feel ready. Pirates lurk in the space lanes - the direct route from the witchpoint beacon to the planets station. As soon as you arrive at a system take an indirect route about 45 degrees for about 10 or 15 seconds and then turn towards the planet. I know it's rather boring that way but you will be surprised how quickly you can begin to equip your ship. The first thing you might want to buy is an extra cargo bay but others on this board may have alternative suggestions.

Good luck!

[Antares_Captain]

Hm... a text file? These are getting more and more common the more I try to dig into game! I must note that for my future programming career.

Well, I assumed you'd use the oxp for a... pre-packaged starting set-up... but now that I know its a text file, that may be useless.

As for my more OXP related questions, is it possible to have a npc path a certain distance from the player, without getting too close. I.E. Getting a fuel tanker to follow the player a fair distance from behind, stopping when asked. Maybe a small, dockable fuel tanker that follows the player. That'd work, right? Behemoths move, and they are dockable, and they refuel. Don't see why a moving fuel tanker with "free" fuel to simulate a player owned fuel tanker wouldn't work.

Of course, I've seen things that seem simple on paper turn out to be scripting messes in reality. (Seen. I'm... waiting to dig in to the arts of programming.) I'd assume it would have to have a repeatable... acquisition process, lest you get "rudely interrupted" by those obnoxious aliens, and lose your precious fuel tanker, but not your head. It can't be mission given, unless the mission repeats itself.

[Capt. Murphy]

As opposed to direct editing a save file you could always use OOcheat_OXP to give a new Jameson a credit boost to make start-up a bit easier, but as the Good CaptSolo says the struggle of the early days is worth it in terms of satisfaction.

Re your second question, the concept would certainly be scriptable, but does a player owned fuel tanker really make sense in terms of immersion? How would the player owned fuel tanker replenish it's own tanks? Presumably it have to be hyperspace capable itself and so would use it's own fuel, or alternatively fast enough to keep up with the player to tag along on the players jumps. Would it make economic sense when fuel is really very cheap in the grand scheme of things. If the player has one they so should NPC's and I think it would be odd to see lots of these things following NPC's around.

There are quite a few OXP's that offer additional options for refueling, eg Fuel_Station_OXP and Fuel_Tank_OXP, as-well as anything that adds more dockables to the Ooniverse.

What is missing and would make a good OXP, even if only for local colour I think are fuel scooping space stations near to the sun, with transports/tankers (which could be dockable and sell fuel at a discount) running that fuel from the sun to the system's stations. Would also open the door to little mini missions where for example pirates are choking off the supply of fuel, either by pirating said transports or by hijacking the fuel producing stations raising prices at the normal outlets.

[Disembodied]

One quick word of advice about editing game files: if you're a Windows user, DON'T use Windows Notepad to edit them with: it's liable to add in special secret extra characters which may cause Oolite to refuse to read the files. Notepad++ is commonly suggested as a better (and free) alternative.

[maik]

Welcome, Antares. You might want to check out Switeck's Shipping OXP for inspiration. It comes with three save games of varying difficulty.

[Amaranth]

Hi Antares, one other thing you could try is maybe using a 'cheat' method to get used to the game and learn what everything does and ways of making / saving money, dangerous and safe areas of space etc, and then creating a new Jameson at Lave and starting from scratch when you feel confident to do so. Another thing, get yourself fuel scoops asap. That way you can arrive at a system, go to the sun, refuel, then go to the station and trade without being mass-locked all the time or hitting pirates .

Murphy, I like your OXP proposal. Perhaps a fuel processing plant that looks a bit like the one being towed by the nostromo in Alien, (which is a dockable, but you cant get much there except fuel and Q-based weapons at knockdown rates), with an array of solar particle collectors, tanker ships (Texacoo perhaps) and private security guards (using a cop AI). In the same way that commies oxp only adds certain ships and stations to communist systems, fuel refineries and associated tankers could be limited to corporate systems (kind of like oil-states on Earth).

I am not experienced enough to do scripting or 3d work but I'd be happy to help flesh out an oxp for this and contribute graphics.

[Antares_Captain]

Hi Antares, one other thing you could try is maybe using a 'cheat' method to get used to the game and learn what everything does and ways of making / saving money, dangerous and safe areas of space etc, and then creating a new Jameson at Lave and starting from scratch when you feel confident to do so.

You hit the bullseye. That is one reason I used the oocheat.oxp. The other was... well, I wanted to show the vortex to a friend, but I checked 5 systems with a tech of over 12, and at least 2 were corporate states, and no vortex. One system was tech level 15! ... then again, there were no behemoths or Captured-Thargoid hangars either. Only normal drone hangars.

... well... the fuel tanker was just an example. I didn't expect it to catch on into something... better.

Can large ships, like behemoths, be outfitted with missiles, drone hangers, or bombs? That's something else I wanted to know.

(Yes, I'm building up to something bigger.)

[Capt. Murphy]

Murphy, I like your OXP proposal.

I should be clear it's not an original idea - I'm pretty sure it was first suggested by Ahruman.

Antares - the Vortex is deliberately rare in shipyards. If you explore the OXP files you'll see it's shipyard.plist includes a line that says chance = 0.05;. You would need to set it to 1 to ensure that the Vortex always appeared in the Shipyard with an appropriate tech level.

I'm not quite sure what you mean in your second question? Do you want to be able to buy this stuff from say a Behemoth (I think you can currently)....or want the Behemoth to be equipped with them. Both can be done.

[tonyhippy]

What a lot of folk do with a new Commander is sell the Cobra Mk3 and buy a cheaper ship, and use the spare cash to outfit it with the extra equipment. I've found the OXP ship Eagle2 (or the version without missile slots in ADCK's FFE Ships V1 OXP) to be great little starter ships, especially if you want to be a bounty hunter.

[Cmdr James]

The economics of downgrading are pretty bad. I think it costs a minimum of 25% loss on the value of the ship, and you normally end up in a turkey.

[Antares_Captain]

I'm not quite sure what you mean in your second question? Do you want to be able to buy this stuff from say a Behemoth (I think you can currently)....or want the Behemoth to be equipped with them. Both can be done.

Really, the idea I had in mind was an obtainable carrier-type capital ship, not so armed to the teeth with plasma cannons (2?) or laser turrets (3, for that beam spam effect?) but using long range strike capabilities like lots of drone fighters and maybe long range missiles. It also functions as a refill-base for the player, giving you free fuel and low cost repairs...

of course, if possible, you'd have to pay for the carrier to be functional first, as the original story idea involved it being a derelict space craft. But that is complicating things-no use doing that until the basic functions are possible.

Which reminds me, can more than one drone hangar be active at a time?

[tonyhippy]

One of my Commanders flies a slightly modded Anaconda (just too boring to play in otherwise). All I did was add a few missile slots in exchange for some cargo space: It's a big ship, and is otherwise a sitting duck for the most part. Commander HonestJohn is a principled trader and uses the extra slots for fuel tanks, drones and the excellent reprogrammed Thargons from the Armoury OXP, and frequently hires wingmen (Hired Guns OXP) as an extra backup. It's still a flying pig, but no longer a pushover and much more fun to play.