The Empire is back! (Is this OXP or Core?)

[Cmdr. Aiden Henessy]

I had recently jumped into a system to go to the local space bar, and upon exiting I found that the bar had magically moved itself right on top of the witchpoint. Interesting. But, then, I noticed that the bar was under heavy assault by probably ten or fifteen ships. The defenders were launching, but getting blown up the moment they left. The built-in lasers were firing, but not really working, as I saw no explosions from the attackers.

Even more odd, though, was when I locked on to one of the attackers to render assistance. It was an Imperial Courier. How interesting, that it would be in a pirate band. But, then I got hit by a really powerful beam from behind, and I dove down. I locked on to the attacker, and realized that it was ANOTHER Courier. Then, glinting in the distance, I saw yet a third. As I started ducking and weaving through the melee, I realized that all of the ships were Imperials, though not all of them were Couriers. I saw a second kind that registered as an Imperial Transport, and then I spotted at least one other ship that looked different from the other two, but didn't get a lock on it. At that point I was close to dying, so I hit the injectors and high-tailed it out of there.

When I was at the station, I got side-tracked and accepted an urgent parcel delivery, so I didn't have time to float on back and check it out further, and unfortunately I forgot the name of the system. But anyways, I just thought it was interesting because I don't really recall installing an "Imperial OXP." Maybe they were a hidden feature of one of the other ones I have? Or, maybe, is this a core function that just doesn't happen a lot?

I know a minimum amount of the lore and story of the Elite series, but from what I gather there was like an Empire, a Republic, and Galcop. But from my travels on Oolite, all I've seen to date was GalCop. I figured that somewhere in the story line, the other two factions got wiped out, or simply weren't transferred to Oolite due to coding and what not. But of course, they could be like the Thargoids and just come and go when they please. But, nobody ever talks about the Empire, so I figured that they were well and truly dead.

Also I find it odd that they were all attacking the space bar. A few had offender and fugitive statuses, but I saw a lot of clean ships too. Maybe the AI is such that if one ship in the band is attacked, they all would retaliate? It'd make sense then, cause since the bar was right on top of the witchpoint, the group could have flown in, gotten attacked by the bar, and then a full-scale battle would have begun.

[Smivs]

No Empires or Republics in Oolite - they are from another game...
Everything you describe is OXP, but I don't know which one/s (although the Space Bars are from Random Hits I believe).

[CaptSolo]

This is not a core feature. You must have [wiki]Random Hits OXP[/wiki] installed. I used to have that AddOn but in all the time playing with it the Space Bar never did magically relocate. The Space Bar will come under attack by criminal organizations or groups of pirates stealing the pods of refined ore heading for the planet. Yes, attackers do come in all sorts of ships as defined by the OXP and the clean guys out there are the stations defenders. The Empire you speak of comes not from original Elite but from its sequels, Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier First Encounters. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Cody]

It's an ill wind that blows against the Empire!

[Duggan]

It's an ill wind that blows against the Empire!

I knew I should have laid off those curried eggs.