Hello Oolite world - and a question

[OjnoTheRed]

Hi, I downloaded Oolite a few months ago and got hooked. Been trapsing around Galaxy 1 (only) at the moment adding loads of upgrades to my Cobra Mk III, although I'm looking at other ships now for those cargo contracts. Great game. Love beating those passenger deadlines, trading as best I can along the way and dealing with pirates.

I'm playing v1.65 and I noticed that the "new features" on the Oolite home page says that "external views" of your ship are possible. Forgive me if this is a really dumb question, but how do you get an external view of your ship?

[JensAyton]

Press V. It only works with ships that have external views explicitly set up, though.

[Commander McLane]

Welcome to the board and to this great game, OjnoTheRed!

If you download Externalviews.oxp from Oosat 2 and put it in your addons-folder, then the built-in ships will have nicer external views (and two additional ones, one from the top an one from "down under").

[OjnoTheRed]

Thanks for both replies. As it turns out, I'm downloading all the OXPs bit by bit and I'd already put in the external views oxp. I've got a Cobra Mk III still, and pressing V works a treat. Now back to getting that passenger to Isveve from Riedquat!

[nijineko]

i crunched the numbers, and cargo hauling is more profitable than passenger hauling most times. i resist the temptation to try other potentially more profitable or illegeal endeavors.

[Captain Hesperus]

i resist the temptation to try other potentially more profitable or illegeal endeavors.

Give in to temptation, it's the feline way.....

Want to buy a cute and fluffy pet Trumble?

Captain Hesperus

[Commander McLane]

i crunched the numbers, and cargo hauling is more profitable than passenger hauling most times.

Only most of the times? I still think that passenger contracts are absolutely rubbish! You're loosing money in every single run. No passenger pays well enough to compensate the loss of five tons of cargospace filled and emptied a couple of times during the delivery.

It's obvious. You don't need any advanced number-crunching for that. Five tons of cargospace bring you a profit of about 150 cr for each jump if you do the milk-runs. What does a passenger pay? And how many jumps do you need to get him to his destination? Divide the first by the latter. The profit is ridiculous compared to 150 cr per jump!

Cargo runs are different. They are also not so profitable in the first place. But once you have built up a reputation by delivering successfully in time, you will be offered some very profitable contracts!

[TGHC]

I've never gone down that strategy very far, but do you not also build a reputation for passenger contracts the same way as cargo, thereby making it more profitable?

[Uncle Reno]

As far as I can remember, the passenger contracts don't seem to increase in value in the same way that cargo contracts do, or at least to the same extent.

[OjnoTheRed]

I'm not so sure that passenger contracts aren't competitive. I haven't thoroughly crunched the numbers, but they appear to pay substantially more if you beat the deadline by a decent margin. I might start a log and see if I can put some numbers on this.

To be honest, I just enjoy the extra interaction and the way it effectively forces you to trace trade routes within a restricted time frame and a reasonably restricted route, choosing the next destination carefully to balance getting your passenger there with profiting along the way.