Confessions of a cheater - WARNING: contains spoilers

[SandJ]

Having clocked up my 6400 kills, I shall do penance and edit the saved game file to knock that back by a couple of thousand, because quite a few of those kills weren't completely honest. I have never edited my saved game file before, so I'm not a complete fraud!

I shall also salve my conscience by publicly confessing how I cheated - or made it easier for myself - so that others can profit from them ensure they are not tempted.

1. The Hired Guns Cheat versus Asteroids Cheat
Install the Hired Guns.OXP and go asteroid mining. When you have lock on an asteroid, fire your laser once at it. Eventually the hired guns will realise it is your target and go and shoot it for you. You are then credited with one kill. If you are lucky and it breaks into boulders, repeat the exercise. You will be credited with one kill for each boulder too. While you destroying asteroids does not give you kills, when wingmen do it, it does.

2. Using Hired Guns to Milk the Wasp Nest Cheat
Install the Wasps.OXP and go wasp hunting. Dock and launch from the Wasp Nest to make this even easier, you will have emerging wasps lined up with you so you can target them more easily. With your Hired Guns wingmen helping you, shoot the wasps around the wasp nest. One by one others will emerge, and they are easily killed. Eventually they seem to run out of wasps. That was when I edited the files for the Wasps.OXP to increase the number of defenders by a factor of ten. Once you've worked out the AI behaviour they are dead easy kills. Eventually, your wingmen will decide the nest itself is a target and set to work on destroying that too!

3. The Thargoid Invasion v Quirium Bomb Blast Cheat
Not really a cheat, perhaps, but not possible in vanilla Oolite. With the Galactic Navy OXP installed you can go on missions which include dealing with a major Thargoid invasion. Take a Quirium Bomb with you on these. When you get to the target system, make your presence known to the Navy, then head for the Thargoids as fast as you can, on your own. Drop a Quirium Bomb in the middle of their fleet. If they are far enough away and close enough together, sometimes you can take out the entire fleet with that one bomb - and get a bunch of easy kills in the process. If the Naval fleet also gets blown up by the secondary explosions you don't get any kills, but you don't become a criminal either.

4. The Kill the Dead Tharglets Cheat
This feels like a cheat to me. When the parent Thargoid has died and the baby Tharglets go off-line, you can scoop them for credits or shoot them for kills. Shooting a dead droid Tharglet is hardly the toughest assignment in town, but after a major Thargoid invasion there can be scores of these to be shot up through the system, for far more kills than can normally be accumulated in a short space of time. Obviously, you can't profit from this feature of Oolite if you've Quirium Bombed the Thargoid fleet to dust!


While the confessional is available, does anyone else have anything they wish to confess to?

[Cody]

<sighs... wanders off, shaking his head sadly>

[sdrubble]

Well, I don't have exactly 'confessions' of my own...

Just a number of publicly available reports, which I have made without even a grain of doubt or guilt... the game is there for me for the purpose of plain FUN, and certainly not to provide opportunities for self-pity or moral questionings.

So (not sure if this will make you feel any better) - go take a look at this and this .

The 2nd link would not be originally considered a cheat 'per se'... however all that's described in there was performed with a ship that's described by pure souls(tm) as a 'cheat in itself'. I couldn't care less.

Oh, and BTW I didn't explicitly tell anyone how I was able to afford that ship. Didn't think it was even necessary.

Have fun, man !!!

[Mauiby de Fug]

I remember in ArcElite, asteroids counted as a kill. And so did minerals. So you could buy out all the minerals from the station's market, launch, eject them, and then shoot them. A quick and safe way to increase your count... But the rankings were higher, so I didn't lose any sleep over it.

With Oolite, I've done the Thargoid invasion one before now. It was too easy with a Q-bomb, and one of the reasons I stopped doing Navy missions... And as far as Tharglets are concerned, I'm quite happy to do that - it feels like the prize for surviving against the 'goids!

[Wildeblood]

And as far as Tharglets are concerned, I'm quite happy to do that - it feels like the prize for surviving against the 'goids!

But going to the trouble of scooping up tharglets, ripping out their thargoid robo-brains and taking those to the nearest galcop station for analysis nearly always pays less than just shooting them up. Where's the incentive? Maybe galcop is run from Canberra.

[Mauiby de Fug]

I was referring to the fact that dead Tharglets are easy pickings - a free bounty and an extra kill. That's what I considered the prize.

[Thargoid]

And version 1.26 of HG will remove at least the first route. The second one I have left, as it is arguably not a cheat but a combat scenario.

[Makara]

4. The Kill the Dead Tharglets Cheat
This feels like a cheat to me. When the parent Thargoid has died and the baby Tharglets go off-line, you can scoop them for credits or shoot them for kills. Shooting a dead droid Tharglet is hardly the toughest assignment in town, but after a major Thargoid invasion there can be scores of these to be shot up through the system, for far more kills than can normally be accumulated in a short space of time. Obviously, you can't profit from this feature of Oolite if you've Quirium Bombed the Thargoid fleet to dust!

Heh heh - agreed that this does feel like a cheat. So in completely the opposite spirit of the confessional, I removed the possibility. Now they all go "pop" instead of waiting for slaughter.
There'll be no easy kills for this commander

[m4r35n357]

I was referring to the fact that dead Tharglets are easy pickings - a free bounty and an extra kill. That's what I considered the prize.

Interesting, I find they're far too fiddly to be worth wasting time over, is my collision detection really that much worse that average?

[Azathoth]

I've been a very very bad boy in graveyard . Just so tempting. What a firework display!

[SandJ]

I've been a very very bad boy in graveyard . Just so tempting. What a firework display!

Was it a "Whoops, was that the Quirium Cascade Mine launch button?" moment, by any chance?

[snork]

4. The Kill the Dead Tharglets Cheat
This feels like a cheat to me. When the parent Thargoid has died and the baby Tharglets go off-line, you can scoop them for credits or shoot them for kills. Shooting a dead droid Tharglet is hardly the toughest assignment in town, but after a major Thargoid invasion there can be scores of these to be shot up through the system, for far more kills than can normally be accumulated in a short space of time.

To me that feels just like an increased bounty for motherships, justified with it being about an Alien Invasion and all.
And with Switeck's AI-mods I sometimes have to hurry to collect them before everyone else scoops them.

maybe have to add that I can not do intentional/ accidental hyperspace misjumps with the gamepad, so I do not meet the Thargoids often.
-----------------------

Using a Q-bomb to me feels like rendering the game pointless, I removed it for me-player.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

3. The Thargoid Invasion v Quirium Bomb Blast Cheat
Not really a cheat, perhaps, but not possible in vanilla Oolite. With the Galactic Navy OXP installed you can go on missions which include dealing with a major Thargoid invasion. Take a Quirium Bomb with you on these. When you get to the target system, make your presence known to the Navy, then head for the Thargoids as fast as you can, on your own. Drop a Quirium Bomb in the middle of their fleet. If they are far enough away and close enough together, sometimes you can take out the entire fleet with that one bomb - and get a bunch of easy kills in the process. If the Naval fleet also gets blown up by the secondary explosions you don't get any kills, but you don't become a criminal either.

I've done a variation of this, but with an energy bomb.
The E-bomb toasts the weaker Bug ships, while leaving cruisers, battleships, carriers, ect heavies stung and Very Pissed Off(tm). So you're going to be in a hell of a fight when the fleet arrives.

That's not quite a cheat, as the Bug cruisers and battlewagons are tough and seriously armed, and resistant to E-bombs.

[Duggan]

Well being as we are all fessing up...I would like to own up to currently piloting a Wonder Worm.
Nuff said I guess.

[sdrubble]

... I can not do intentional/ accidental hyperspace misjumps with the gamepad, so I do not meet the Thargoids often.

Well, even after 900+ kills the frequently described pitch-up trick had NEVER worked for me (either with a joystick or keyboard). So after installing Misjump Inducer last week I can attest it works like a charm (toggling the next jump on and off as a misjump).

Being in witchspace for the first time was quite an interesting experience BTW.

Using a Q-bomb to me feels like rendering the game pointless, I removed it for me-player.

... and in the 'confessions' chapter I must say that I never felt interested in learning how the much-described Q-bomb explosions look like, and indiscriminately killing everything around me never felt like an interesting prospect anyway. Ditto for the E-bomb. So I never even bothered to test either of them.

Now, what I really enjoy is my personally tweaked flavor of the Uni Bomb... THAT allows for a really fun battle move against 3 or 4 clustered targets.