Oolite Darwin Awards

[Diziet Sma]

Then I was suddenly taking very heavy fire from nowhere - my shields melted and the energy banks drained in seconds! I'd completely forgotten that the Green Gecko was amongst my OXPs - slaughtered, I was! That it should appear on a virgin's first flight rather surprised me - and some! <face/palm>

I thought the GG only attacked players with a reasonable combat rating?

[Cody]

Good point, Diz - it doesn't look as if that made it into the OXP for some reason. <scratches head>

[Huntress]

Well, you all pretty much know that my computer crashed, yada, yada, yada. Well, I finally managed to load up all of the OXPs and decided to restart the game. BIGGEST. MISTAKE. EVER. I launched from the station, and jumped to the next system all right. Found the station far, far away and headed to it. Leaned back and relaxed, as it was a pretty high tech system so I wasn't concerned with pirates. Then I get a comm. Can anyone guess from who it came from? Yes, you're right! It was a boyracer! Okaaay, then. I'm just going to fly away and ignore you. I maxxed out my speed and hoped I could get away. No luck. I'd forgotten that my ship only went .3 LM, while boyracers could do .5 LM. That jerk shot his laser at me several times, and poof!

Press Space Commander.

You all have permission to laugh at my stupidity.

[ffutures]

Just had a fun one which fortunately didn't kill me, just wasted a few hundred credits. I got a new joystick, plugged it in, and on my first flight came in on the tail of someone else's fight and decided to fire at a powered-down Thargoid fighter and earn 50 credits. And my ship promptly fires an ECM-hardened missile at it...

Both looked a lot like this like this:



The old joystick had four buttons in a diamond arrangement on the right - 1 at 12 o'clock, 2 at 3 o'clock, 3 at 6 o'clock, and 4 at 9 o'clock. I had the game programmed to use 1 as fire laser, 2 as fire missile.

The new joystick also has four buttons in a diamond arrangement on the right - 2 at 12 o'clock, 4 at 3 o'clock, 3 at 6 o'clock, and 1 at 9 o'clock. And unfortunately it turns out they haven't just labelled them differently, they're physically wired that way.

Needless to say I didn't look at the buttons when I fired, I just pressed the one I always press.

I've now reassigned buttons to keep the layout the same, but it was VERY annoying until I got docked and figured out what was wrong.

[Absynthe]

Time to resurrect the board of Gene Pool removal.

Starting with myself.

As a part-time swashbuckling pirate (arrgh), I do have bouts of greed, and evil tendencies. I have Griff's ArcElite ships OXP installed, with Traffic control. I waited for an Anaconda to undock, hoping to follow it and... you know... do perfectly legal things. Arrgh.
It was an offender, and promptly dumped a trail of cargo before exploding in a cloud of cans.

After nearly baking myself in the planet's atmosphere trying to get those last few cans, I waited around to dock and sell my loot. An Ophidian and Iguana were ahead of me in the queue. I decide to use Morrigan's bow (My Cobra MkIII) to space the Ophidian, still quite legally. I went from 30 tons to 30 and some precious metals. I then decide to ram the Iguana.

I hate Iguanas with a burning passion. They are slow, have terrible cargo capacity, and are quite expensive. It's a pain to be stuck behind one, watching it struggle into the docking slot. I decide to ram it, and take its 21 tons of cargo. I found a new reason to hate Iguanas that day. They have a very, very high mass.

Press Space, Commander.

[Norby]

It's a pain to be stuck behind one, watching it struggle into the docking slot.

How about No more traffic jam?

[Cmdr. Aiden Henessy]

So my first thargoid attack is also my first Darwin Award in Oolite. Funny how that works.

I had just jumped into Recexela in G2 after "retiring" a stingy civil worker in a near by commie system. I was greeted by his vengeful family, one of which was sporting a pretty souped-up Wolf II, with some sort of purple laser that was unidentifiable, but packed quite a punch. I used up the remainder of my fuel and most of my missiles to stay alive, but in the end I was just barely saved by a timely squadron of Vipers and Frigates. As I flew away towards the station I ran across bunches of thargoid robot fighters. Chortling with my good fortune, I flew around and scooped them all up. It was looking to be a good day. I neared the aegis, and was taken aback by the MASSIVE Torus station... it was my first time having seen such a beast, and it was well and truly awe-inspiring.

Well, I got permission finally, lined up to dock, and sailed on in. I went AFK for a moment to work on a few things, when I'm rudely startled by an alarm bell. Checking back to Oolite, I see that... ohmygosh... the station is under attack! This is not a drill! Red alert, sound the war drums! I completely freak out and click to launch. Once outside, the scanner is just a flurry of blinking purple green red white and yellow dots, and I feel the adrenaline begin to pump.

My first mistake: Forgetting I was next to a torus station, which is significantly larger than a regular Coriolis station.

I flew around what would have been the width of the of a regular-sized station and proceeded to fly behind it to get to the fighting. All of a sudden my view screen is filled with a massive swinging arm, and a reflexive yank of the joystick is all that saved me from an untimely end.

My second mistake: Forgetting I was out of fuel, out of missiles, and had no special equipment since it was all damaged.

I was basically flying in to a full-blown thargoid invasion with little more than a military laser attached to a large rocket. My target-and-tracking system was down, my ID was down, my extra energy banks were down, even my advanced compass was down. And on top of that, I had no way to quickly get out of danger.

My third, and final, mistake: Going full on gung-ho into the midst of the fighting.

Yeah... needless to say, even if I had been fully equipped with my near-Iron-arse ship, I wouldn't have lasted long bearing the brunt of five warships, a frigate, and all of the complimentary little bug fighters. In my weakened state, though, it took all of about two seconds for me to realize I was in a BAD situation, and all of about three seconds for me to be pressing space.



And after all this was said and done, and I finally pressed space after staring at my computer in disbelief.... I realized that I forgot yet another thing when I was docked in the super-station..... I forgot to save. x_x Well, at least I get to play it all over again!

[RockDoctor]

While the tradition is to name Ooniverse ships after various snakes of reality, myth and legend, maybe the shipyards should be turning out a model of the Darwin Class spaceship.
18 pages of Darwin Awards, and many of them I recognise "been there, pressed that Spacebar".

[DavidG]

thought i'd resurrect an old thread - I don't believe no one has been a candidate for an award for two years!

Mine is not a true Darwin, as I haven't removed myself from the Gene Pool, but I have probably cost myself a small fortune!

So I'm making my way across the galaxy with lots of contracts of various sorts - picking up extras on the way as long as they are on route. I get notification that gold prices in beritere are sky high, so as it is on the way, I start hovering up any gold at less than market value. I'm now two jumps from the Beritere/Tierus bottle neck (I forget which Galaxy...), with a Fugitive score of 250 having just Q-bombed hundreds of ships and a space station as part of a mission, when I discover that Tierus has gone Nova, and I can't get through the bottle neck with 7ly of fuel! The detour is huge, and will no doubt put me out of time on various contracts and I'll miss the chance to cash in on the gold...

I think I can wave goodbye to my reputation for contracts...

[RockDoctor]

I'm now two jumps from the Beritere/Tierus bottle neck (I forget which Galaxy...), with a Fugitive score of 250 having just Q-bombed hundreds of ships and a space station as part of a mission,

How did Eric Idle (or whichever Python wrote the script) put it? "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"

[Cody]

I'm now two jumps from the Beritere/Tierus bottle neck...

Ah yes, I know it well! As you say, the other connecting route - via the Timaesin/Tiarice bottleneck - is quite a detour! They're a major part of the Seventh's attraction!

[RockDoctor]

Maybe this would have been the right place to post this "Oooops" https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 06#p266566

Posted: 2019-02-28T01:33:04+00:00
Slight technical error of forgetting to pause the game, going to make and eat supper, brew some coffee, catch up on the insanities of Twitter on the phone, blah blah blah ... and for several hours of real time I've been torus-driving out of the system. I can't even recognise the star - I'm just having to trust the compass.

Well, it's now 2019-02-28T02:02:41+00:00 and another half-hour of RT torus-driving means I can now at least recognise my star. Just. All I have to do now is remember to not fly past the system again.

Not a Darwin Award, but definitely a Darwinian beard trimming. Where am I going to hide my badger now?

[DavidG]

Time to resurrect an old thread, as one can never have enough of these anecdotes!
So I’d picked up a trumble from some nefarious so and so. I'm aware the best trumbles are deep fried ones, so off I head.
Not having dealt with one very recently, im out of practice and need a couple of attempts. Each one takes 15 mins real time, but finally I hear the little blighter’s death rattle. Hooray!
I want to get back to the station ASAP, as I prefer my trumble with chips, and I’d run out. Only last week a fellow pilot and taught me a little trick of keeping the injectors on whilst using torus drive, as it takes less time to slow down when mass locked. Much less time… so much less that you barely have time to react to the python outside the station before I smeared myself all over his shiny paintwork…

[Cholmondely]

I suppose that one could argue that this first half of my old post belongs in this thread

Diplomancy simulates war between systems by seeing if your ship has a nationality from one of them - and then bunging a massive ransom on your head if your system is at war with the system you are currently in. When you leave the system, the bounty is removed. Or if peace is declared, ditto.

As a loyal Digebitian Subject, I visited Inonri whilst it was at war with Digebiti - and Diplomancy accordingly labelled me as fugitive with a 200cr penalty on my head (so I was at risk from the local system forces - but also from GalCop, too).

On leaving Inonri for Digebiti, my hitherto clean legal status was restored. On arriving at Digebiti I found a newsflash that Digebiti and Inonri had made peace (did this happen before leaving Inonri?).

On leaving Digebiti station I was enthusiastically greeted by a GalCop Viper (thanks to Home System OXP), and then 5 seconds later attacked by the very same Viper as a criminal! Stopped game as something obviously wrong, but on restarting and flying to Anxebiza, it happened again. When I checked, my bounty was 200cr again. …And Inonri was back at war with Digebiti when I checked the docked F4 Diplomancy options.

remainder of post is full of gubbins about the last.log etc.

Diplomancy Wars Map (red => war; green=> peace)

[RockDoctor]

Just how deep a scar does a Trumble leave in your frmot-view camera?

Corollary (for the OXP-writers) : all those bright streaks across the wind shield / sensor cover indicate recurring damage. So, someone, somewhere should be offering screen replacements. And someone somewhere (els) needs to keep track of the dust erosion of the front screen?

Anyone playing with a "I can't see through the bugs" mod?