Long gone Commander checking in,...

[The Edible Poet]

An ADDER! It's well hard! .........


hehe, no sereously I'm still in my Cobra 3. Been flying one of those so long flying anything else is gonna feel a little strange.

Now I'm settling in to my new profession as a .... ahem...."Cleaner", I'll be looking to trade off some cargo capacty for performance in the sheild department and ideally a bit of extra handling to. Gonna shop around a bit and see what I can find.

[wstephenson]

Until last weekend the last time I touched any kind of Elite was probably shortly before freshers' week in 1994. Now I've discovered Oolite I feel like something that I'd lost has been returned to me - probably a blister on the left side of my right thumb (I play using <space> to accelerate).

It's good to be back among the space lanes but one question springs to mind - what are the traders flying outbound towards the witchspace beacon actually trying to achieve? They could just as well hyperspace from out the front door of the station. Answers on a postcard please.

PS: openSUSE 10.2 and 10.3 oolite RPMs are in the Build Service, in home:wstephenson for now.

[Hoopy]

that's a good point...

I re-read the dark wheel last night and there's a few things in there that the game (Elite or Oolite) either doesn't have (eg a crowded area around the station where you are instructed when/where to dock) or has when they don't seem necessary (eg witchspace beacons when you can safely hyperspace from anywhere)

[Disembodied]

The ships flying out to the wp beacon could be bounty hunters, looking for new (criminal) arrivals in the system. Come to think of it I don't think I've ever seen a big merchant ship, like an Anaconda or a Boa, flying outwards -- it always seems to be smaller ships.

[Hoopy]

i have seen ships hyperspace out from there. But they may just have been ships using the wormholes opened by ships coming the other way. hmm...

<clears throat>
<loud voice>
it's ships trying to get a free ride by using wormholes opened by arriving ships.

[Eric Walch]

The ships flying out to the wp beacon could be bounty hunters, looking for new (criminal) arrivals in the system. Come to think of it I don't think I've ever seen a big merchant ship, like an Anaconda or a Boa, flying outwards -- it always seems to be smaller ships.

It makes no sense for a trader to go anywhere else than the station after entering a system. Therefor they only head in the direction of a station. And most are lazy and only go towards the homing beacon of the main station. Only some that are out of fuel will go to a sun to refuel and than jump. (They probably spend the last dime on the cargo so they hadn't any money left to buy the fuel at the station.)

Only bounty hunters (and police) go both ways through the system. Escorts that fail to assign to a mother also become bounty hunters. And because of a bug in Oolite 1.69 and 1.70 there are more of those escorts that turn into bounty hunters than in earlier versions. When seeing a group hunters it is even likely that they were mend as escorts for a big trader that now is on its own. Normal added bounty hunters are solitary operating and don't want to share their earned bounties.

But install "Dictators.oxp" and you will se traffic of big traders between two system stations. Or UPS were one mission installs a solar station. This station remains there after completion of the mission and also generates trader traffic directed from the main station. But also in there cases it is towards a station.

[Commander McLane]

And don't forget Lave.oxp, which brings a few features mentioned in the Dark Wheel to the actual Lave system.

[Cholmondely]

I fly a Wolf Mark II SE called the Radio Maru. It's fast, it's mean, and with a 20-ton cargo hold I can drop in empty on an Anarchy and fill her up with recovered stolen goods on my way in to the station. And, frankly, it's a chick magnet.

There are ships out there which are considerably more über, but with the OXP mix I play with (ones which are derived from, or are in my opinion at least compatible with, the original Elite), I think the Wolf II is the sweetest of them all. And the Special Edition has got that little extra icing of perfection.

It's not cheap, and I've worked my way through a few others to get there: the old Potage Électrique, my original Cobra III; a relatively brief but nonetheless exciting stint in an Iguana, the Likely Story; and a spell in a Python Class Cruiser called the Prodigal Daughter ('cos no-one was ever as pleased to see her as I thought they should be...).

The Cobra III's a good ship, of course, but you'll know that. The Iggie is fast, and pretty agile, and a good combat vessel all round, but kinda cramped and, I dunno, the colour scheme just wasn't me. And the PCC is chunky and powerful and a guy can make a lot of money hauling big cargos, but it's a big fat target too and the damn ramscoop can make docking a bitch until you get the hang of it (sideways, sideways!).

Just came across this one.

And, frankly, it's a chick magnet.

What sort of chicks get attracted to wolves? ... One presumes that the magnet is solely the Wolf unless they like perching on your helmet!

[Cody]

On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?

[Cholmondely]

On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?

Ahem! Does Disembodied actually have a throat?

[Disembodied]

Ahem! Does Disembodied actually have a throat?

These are the sorts of questions that a gentleman would neither ask, nor answer. However for the importunately curious I will say that, over the years, I have developed a number of attachments, both functional and romantic.

[Cody]

<chortles>