How do you play Oolite?

[Astrobe]

Oolite offers many ships and many activities. What do you do in Oolite?

[Redspear]

One behaviour i fine myself adopting consistently is blowing up, I seem to do rather a lot of that.

Seriously though, when I was testing the hyperdrives oxp I needed to do some courier runs in an Adder and found then to be a lot of fun. Even in a cobra it frees up your cargo space for salvage, mining, or opportunistic tradng. It also leads you to systems that you might otherwise not visit where the default textures can dislay much greater variety than on a 'milk-run'.

Throw in a few oxps that introduce system specific elements (e.g. commies, dictatorships, con stores) and maybe one or two to keep it challenging (e.g. deep space pirates, hyperdrives) and perhaps the odd rarity (e.g. star jellies) then you have a nice dynamic between interaction and time limits.

Without sufficient time to dawdle, the game suggests that it has more variation than you have time to fully explore and also more than you are likely to see when exploiting the more profitable trade routes.

Another way is to take a ship with no hyperdrive, get yourself a wormhole scanner (or not) and see where the winds take you. Certainly helps to keep things interesting as you tend to be in a weaker ship and with less potential to make money. Contarct runs can be especially challenging

[byronarn]

Usually, I like to take long passenger contracts. And then I will buy computers at the first industrial system or furs at the first agricultural system I come across on the way to the destination. Then I'll sell that at the next opposite economic-type system I come to, and buy the other goods. And I will repeat this until I get to my destination. I never go off course, taking the shortest time route (which provides more jumps for more systems). Any system I come to that is "mainly" agricultural or industrial, or that is the opposite that I am looking to sell at, I won't even dock at the station. If I have enough fuel to make it to next system, I will do it. If I don't, I will skim the sun for fuel before jumping to the next system.

This is the best way that I have found to make money that does not include combat (I am really bad at combat, so I avoid it like a plague).

[WebsitesbyMark]

As mentioned in other posts, have only just started the game after a break..

But this time once I have enough working capital, will be looking to explore, pirate hunting, mining and then for the crack smuggle.

Finding a lot of the x's in Oolite really addictive and am thinking of upgrading my PC to make Oolite look super sexy.

The only mod I think is a bit of a rip off is the hyper radio. Was going to get one, but not keen on having to keep getting a new 'licence' so just streaming actual radio in the background...

[ffutures]

Usually, I like to take long passenger contracts. And then I will buy computers at the first industrial system or furs at the first agricultural system I come across on the way to the destination. Then I'll sell that at the next opposite economic-type system I come to, and buy the other goods. And I will repeat this until I get to my destination. I never go off course, taking the shortest time route (which provides more jumps for more systems). Any system I come to that is "mainly" agricultural or industrial, or that is the opposite that I am looking to sell at, I won't even dock at the station. If I have enough fuel to make it to next system, I will do it. If I don't, I will skim the sun for fuel before jumping to the next system.

This is the best way that I have found to make money that does not include combat (I am really bad at combat, so I avoid it like a plague).

Pretty much my style of play - long-distance contracts of all sorts are the best, there's usually some time allowance in there that means e.g. emergency maintenance won't be a huge problem. I generally take the shortest time route and only accept contracts along it, but I'm usually willing to take small diversions if they'll only add a few hours. I don't fight anyone who hasn't attacked me first, and try to avoid the huge melees by e.g. using my cloaking device during a jump. And my current pilot has 16 million credits in the bank and 4000+ kills so hopefully I'm doing things right.

Having said that, I think that my next pilot will be a pirate sooner or later, I feel like a bit of mayhem...

[gsagostinho]

I really enjoy making profits (makes up for real life, I suppose), so trading and bounty hunting are on the top of my list. But when trading, I tend not to milk a route for too long time as I also enjoy exploring new systems (Povray textures add so much in this regard). And I really enjoy having distant suns and distant extra-planets with stations so that any in-system trading does take some time and becomes fun (add to that TorusToSun OXP and Deep Space Pirates OXP for extra fun).

[gsagostinho]

And I can't forget to mention this: lately I have been having loads of fun with GalCop Missions, one of the best OXP out there. Cannot stress that enough.

[Norby]

I really enjoy having distant suns and distant extra-planets

If you want to visit some very-very distant planets, in realistic stellar distances(!) then install FarPlanets. You must buy the included unique drives to reach these stations in reasonable time. It is not in the manager, you must unzip it manually.

If you also install FarPlanetsFamous then you will get a far planet in every famous systems, using Povray textures from the old Povray v1.0 which are replaced in v1.1 so you surely not see them on main planets now.

[gsagostinho]

If you want to visit some very-very distant planets, in realistic stellar distances(!) then install FarPlanets. You must buy the included unique drives to reach these stations in reasonable time. It is not in the manager, you must unzip it manually.

That sounds great, Norby, thanks for the tip! But if you don't mind me asking, why is this OXP not on the manager, do you have some reason for not including it? Well, I will download the zip file and give it a try soon. Currently I am using spara's Additional Planets OXP but I modified the distances a bit (moons and planets are 2.5 x further than spara's default, which look much better IMO).

If you also install FarPlanetsFamous then you will get a far planet in every famous systems, using Povray textures from the old Povray v1.0 which are replaced in v1.1 so you surely not see them on main planets now.

Pangrove wrote in the Famous Planets OXP that "[t]he textures themselves are not in this oxp anymore. The textures are in the Povray Planets OXP." So do you mean that FarPlanetsFamous uses different textures than those included in the current Povray?

[Norby]

You can use FarPlanets together with Additional Planets, you will get both planets. An interesting task is to reach the farthest planet Sedna in Lave. It is 20 times(!) farther than Pluto, so you must refuel your drives several times. By the way the FTL drive travel 15 million times faster than Torus.

It is not in the manager due to I planned it to a larger project with many unique textures, adding at least one far planet into every systems (2048). Once I gathered and generated more hundred ones but neither the number of images is not enough for this nor the js code is not finished. Then I lost my interest on this tedious work. I can send the not ready v0.5 code if anybody want to continue.

Currently only Lave contain many planets from our solar system (Jupiter is pretty nice imho), and 1-1 planets are added into the famous systems.

The famous textures was first in Pagroove's OXP, then moved into Povray v1.0, then replaced by others in v1.1 so left out completely. This is why I asked whether I could use these in FarPlanets and I got a positive answer. So nowadays you can see them on far planets only. The words in the wiki what you quoted looks outdated.

[cbr]

at the moment i have several savegames in different systems, using different oxp/oxz's i revisit
the same systems to enjoy different encounters and mechanics...

To visit new to me systems i usually use an ironassed boa with a front laser

[Prester John]

Salvaging ships and saving slaves are fun. You get MONEY for ships and congratulations from relatives.
I like this job a lot.
Also, doing Missions for GalCop and RRS is a BONUS. AND crushing pirates.

[BlackWolf]

My Ace Cruiser/The Bootlegger is for trading, my Cobra III/The Brigand is for hunting, and I'm working up cash for a mining ship right now. Then it's on to earning enough for an Imperial Star Destroyer. Muwah.ha.ha.haaaaa. Lmao....

[Prester John]

My Ace Cruiser/The Bootlegger is for trading, my Cobra III/The Brigand is for hunting, and I'm working up cash for a mining ship right now. Then it's on to earning enough for an Imperial Star Destroyer. Muwah.ha.ha.haaaaa. Lmao....

I have cheated and got this Destroyer.... tried.... sold back...

[BlackWolf]

I have cheated and got this Destroyer.... tried.... sold back...

Oh don't ruin it for me. I have such grand plans. Lmao