Oolite flavours...

[Greyth]

I was thinking... don't panic! It didn't last long...

Could there be flavours of Oolite? Like with Linux? It must be confusing for other noobs exactly what OXP's to load. So I wondered if there could be a 2 or three versions already equipped with a suitable range of OXP's. Like... vanilla, light, candy shop, novice, intermediate, expert player?

I'm guessing that it's not really a supportable idea but I feel it would be remiss of me not to offer it.

[Gimbal Locke]

This sounds like a variation on Crommie's OXP RPM idea: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... it=oxp+RPM

[Smivs]

Bundling things can be a nightmare and of course everybody ultimately wants something different so I would not recommend it.
However as the subject of OXPs for newbies often crops up, perhaps a sticky thread might be in order, giving good general advice rather than suggesting/recommending specific OXPs.
The advice would be to go for suitable eye-candy first, then add OXPs one at a time to get used to them. It should be stressed that grabbing every OXP in sight straight away is not wise.

[another_commander]

This is basically the same question as "which is the best OXP"? Which OXPs would go in the novice flavour, for example? Why this OXP and not that? Won't be long before we start getting remarks like "how were you able to forget to put X OXP in Y flavour?" The potential for generating confusion to rookies would be even greater than whatever it might be right now. At least now we are giving away the very basic stuff that one needs to play the game on a low-end system, have everyone start at the exact same base and let everyone chose what they need as extras.

[Greyth]

Yeah, the more I think about it the less I think of it... It's just fine as it is.

[SandJ]

Could there be flavours of Oolite? Like with Linux?

Hmm. But another idea comes from that ... Ubuntu and Canonical. Canonical commit themselves to providing a supported subset of all that is available for Linux.

The .OXPs are in a variety of states from:
- author is frequently online, reads threads on here, and provides patches within days of a bug report
to
- the author is not known and the licence forbids amending their code
and
- the download site no longer exists.

We could have a sub-set of the OXP List which fall into the first category AND the author says they will commit to best endeavours for bug reports AND the community feels it is a good OXP AND it is suitable for newbies.

These could be divided into suitable categories such as:
a) "do these first if you have a good spec of PC. They add skins to the ships and surfaces to the planets. They make the game pretty."
b) "these add to the immersion by adding more things to the Ooniverse, but do not make it harder. Do these next. You do not need a fast PC for these."
c) "these will add some more challenges and give you more things to do. We recommend you do NOT install these until you have docked successfully in an Anarchy / completed the constrictor hunt / cloaking device / nova mission / bought a Military Laser."
d) "Once comfortable with the above, you will be ready to investigate which of the full OXP list suit your style of play."

The items in (a), (b) and (c) should be stable, high quality, few in number and have a firm commitment from the relevant authors to provide support and/or identify proxies permitted to do so.

[Thargoid]

It's a topic that will have as many answers as there are people, as everyone is different in what they want from the game, let alone what their machines can handle. The flexibility that the OXP system gives is one key strength of how the game is set up.

For example some are purists who don't want anything that goes against Elite canon (e.g. my Planetfall OXP) whereas for others the same OXP might be indispensable. Equally some people have hardware issues with certain OXPs (mainly relating to shaders and drivers) but again it mitigates against such things.

Also authors come and go. I'm lucky enough to at the moment be able to spend a reasonable amount of time to support my far-too-wide plethora of junk, but if work or life gets busy that may change without notice (either temporarily or permanently). Plus people take sabbaticals, and as all of this is voluntary people also just loose interest and drift off.

And lastly of course at the end people like different things, and people whose OXPs are more specialised could end up being alienated and disheartened. That's certainly not what we should allow by any type of rating of OXPs.

[Diziet Sma]

However as the subject of OXPs for newbies often crops up, perhaps a sticky thread might be in order, giving good general advice rather than suggesting/recommending specific OXPs.
The advice would be to go for suitable eye-candy first, then add OXPs one at a time to get used to them. It should be stressed that grabbing every OXP in sight straight away is not wise.

Perhaps once the thread has been hashed out, an edited version of it might be turned into a PDF and bundled with the game, as I'm sure there would be many people who install the game without coming to this forum at all.. Particularly since now that we have a new 'Stable' release, 1.76 will soon be made available for all Linux users to install via their normal repository systems, if it hasn't already..

[Cody]

an edited version of it might be turned into a PDF and bundled with the game

Heh... and it probably wouldn't get read, just like the other pdf and readme!

[Diziet Sma]

Some do. Some don't.

I did/do. Last time was when I installed 1.76 last week. Even though I've read 'em before...

[Cody]

Some do. Some don't.

Ain't that the truth!

[Gimbal Locke]

Some do. Some don't.

Ain't that the truth!

This reminds me of this quote by Ernest Rutherford: "The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't."