Can't get to the SW corner of Galaxy Seven!

[Donarf Deckam]

Wow, stumbled upon Oolite the other day and boy does it take me back - all you developers and oxp writers have really worked some magic here; when I was playing it long into the night as a teen I would literally dream of it looking like this, and now it's a reality! Amazing, really amazing! Been laughing out loud at some of the ships/goings on! Noticed something the other day though; trying to get to Esarxeve to make my first Bounty Hunter kill, but can't witchjump to it - it's in a section of stars that are all more than 7 light years from any of the nearby stars! Frustration! Anyone else noticed this? I've tried everywhere to find a star close enough to get me into the group but can't seem to do it. One thought occurs - do I have to buy a different ship that has bigger fuel tanks? I can carry on bounty hunting by Galactic Jumping, but I was planning to go to Geteve (also in 7) afterwards and kick some (freaky)Thargoid invasion butt, and I'd prefer not to have to go via the entire ooniverse to get there! - any suggestions? I had a look at the map for Galaxy 7 and there seems to be a gap there too, so maybe I'm not nuts; any help much appreciated. Cheers!

[another_commander]

Hi, welcome to the game and the forum. Glad to read you are enjoying it.

The unreachable systems of the SW corner in G7 have always been there, even in the original Elites. You simply cannot get there by simple hyperspace jump. There are also no ships capable of jumping further than 7.0 LY, as this is a deliberate hard-coded limitation in the engine.

What you may not know, judging from reading your post, is that there are also more unreachable spots in other galaxies, too. There is also a single unreachable planet in the very end of the SW corner in G8. It has also been like that in the original games.

Only galactic hyperspace jump will get you there, but you must work the game files a bit. When gal-hypering, Oolite will put you in the next galaxy at the coordinates where you left from, unless these coordinates have no hyperspace exit nearby. It uses a special algorithm to determine that and will move your arrival spot to the nearest point that is not isolated if no systems within 7LY are found close by. You can change this behaviour and instruct the game to not attempt to reposition you when entering a new galaxy, regardless of the point of arrival being isolated or not. To do that, open the file planetinfo.plist, found inside [Wherever you installed Oolite]/oolite.app/Resources/Config (make a copy of the file first) and change this

Code: Select all

// Uncomment the desired behaviour for galactic hyperspace exit. Fixed coordinates will put the arrival
	// of an intergalactic jump on map coordinates specified by the key galactic_hyperspace_fixed_coords.
	"galactic_hyperspace_behaviour" = 	"GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_STANDARD";
						//"GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_ALL_SYSTEMS_REACHABLE";
						//"GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_FIXED_COORDINATES";
						
	// When using the GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_FIXED_COORDINATES, the key below is used to specify the
	// actual fixed coordinates for the intergalactic jump.
	"galactic_hyperspace_fixed_coords" = 	"96 96";

to this:

Code: Select all

// Uncomment the desired behaviour for galactic hyperspace exit. Fixed coordinates will put the arrival
	// of an intergalactic jump on map coordinates specified by the key galactic_hyperspace_fixed_coords.
	"galactic_hyperspace_behaviour" = 	//"GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_STANDARD";
						"GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_ALL_SYSTEMS_REACHABLE";
						//"GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_FIXED_COORDINATES";
						
	// When using the GALACTIC_HYPERSPACE_BEHAVIOUR_FIXED_COORDINATES, the key below is used to specify the
	// actual fixed coordinates for the intergalactic jump.
	"galactic_hyperspace_fixed_coords" = 	"96 96";

When done, restart the game while holding down the Shift key until the rotating Cobra appears. Now, if you gal-hyper from the SW corner of G6, you will arrive in the isolated zone of G7. I will leave it up to you to figure out how to get out of there.

As a last detail, you can immediately see where you can and where you cannot go if you spend a couple thousand credits and buy the little gadget called Advanced Navigational Array. You activate it with Shift + 6 while in the Galactic Chart screen.

[Donarf Deckam]

Thanks very much for the informative reply - I've bought that Advanced Navigational Array; very useful indeed, now all I need to do is find a way of cooling my lasers or getting hold of some other ship with more firepower! I saw the Liberator along with some friends attacking the Millennium Falcon, so I rushed to help (they look great, by the way - nicely done to whoever puts in the hours building them) and one of the ships turned some triple - triple! - orange lasers on me; next thing I know I've got a corpses' eye view of some cargopods! Damn this is a lot harder (and better) than before! By the way, thanks for the code insert - I'll give it a go. Thanks again my friend.

By the way, whoever wrote that ghost Cobra MkIII in - nice; I know now to flee from the wraths to come!

[ClymAngus]

rattlecutter? Or monk?

[Donarf Deckam]

Ah yes, it was a Rattle Cutter; I've now sucessfully worked out an attack strategy and revenge has been mine - several times!

I've noticed a glitch meanwhile; after perusing the boards the other day I realise that I share a problem that a few other users have encountered: my nebulae are appearing as groups of overlapping semi translucent squares/oblongs. I have a whole load of oxps installed, including the mighty zzzzRealistic Shipyards(I've already checked to see if I had any doubled oxps, so I don't think it's a clash there). I'll have a sit down when I have the time and remove them one by one until they come back, then stick any results I get up here.

By the way, another_commander, I believe you were asking in another thread about ATI settings; tried a few different settings of the anti-aliasing and anisotropic levels etc, but couldn't see any difference/changes in gameplay: however I was concentrating on getting the nebulae back. I'm running on Windows XP with an Intel Core Duo 3.33 GHz, 3Gig of RAM, if that's any help. I'll keep fiddling and let you know if I have any results.

[JensAyton]

I've noticed a glitch meanwhile; after perusing the boards the other day I realise that I share a problem that a few other users have encountered: my nebulae are appearing as groups of overlapping semi translucent squares/oblongs.

Have you tried replacing the nebula textures as per this thread?

[Donarf Deckam]

Thanks for the reply Ahruman, I've had a look at those four files; they seem to exactly match the files already in the Textures folder, in size at least. Hmmm, I'll try replacing them and get back to you - just wanted to say a quick thanks. I'm currently in G1 at Tianve, and gutted that I can't see the pulsar that's meant to be there from the famous planets oxp - looks pretty impressive with just coloured squares, would love to se the full glory! I'll just have to keep keep fiddling until it works, but I'm new to all this coding lark, must attempt to understand in more detail how this game is structured - dang it's addictive! I think I'll have a little browse around the forum and see what info I can glean.....I'll post any success I have. Keep blasting!

[Thargoid]

Famous Planets doesn't add the pulsar in. That's done by Drew's OXP (unsurprisingly called Tianve.oxp ).

[Yodeebe]

Only galactic hyperspace jump will get you there, but you must work the game files a bit.

You can change this behaviour and instruct the game to not attempt to reposition you when entering a new galaxy, regardless of the point of arrival being isolated or not.

Is this the ONLY way to get to the relevent place for the thargoid war?
seems a bit daft to have an impossible mission, without hacking, no?

[Commander McLane]

Only galactic hyperspace jump will get you there, but you must work the game files a bit.

You can change this behaviour and instruct the game to not attempt to reposition you when entering a new galaxy, regardless of the point of arrival being isolated or not.

Is this the ONLY way to get to the relevent place for the thargoid war?
seems a bit daft to have an impossible mission, without hacking, no?

By no means, no. The targoid war takes places all over every eight galaxies. There is no special 'place' for it. They will just get you.

And the question of how to reach the SW-corner of Galaxy 7 is by itself in no way related to thargoids. What gave you the impression?

[Yodeebe]

Ahh. goddit.
I got a mission from G7 'main' to go & help the thargoid war effort in G7 'SW'.
The patch worked fine BTW.
SUUUUPEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRP!!!

Would I have been able to get there though, without the patch? is there another mission that makes it possible?
If not then is that a bug? impossible mission?

[Yodeebe]

And the question of how to reach the SW-corner of Galaxy 7 is by itself in no way related to thargoids. What gave you the impression?

so there must be another way.

thanks cmmr.

Might have togo back in time & try & redo it with out the patch

[LittleBear]

Ah yes sorry. Random Hits generates missions at random locations and I'd forgotten that G7 has a big cluster of systems that you can't actually get to. In theory you could do the Random Hits mission by making a complete circuit of the galaxies and jumping from the right place in G6, but once you left G7 Random Hits would treat that as a mission scrubb, so you can't actually complete this one. You won't lose anything by scrubbing the R_H mission, so I'd suggest you stay in G7 and complete assassins and then make a G jump to G8 to reset random hits so that you'll be able to take another Randomly Generated mission. If you wanted you could edit your save file to manually set the random_hits_status variable to NPCKILL. That would scrub the Random Hits mission in G7 without giving you any reward (direct or indirect) for a mission you didn't complete. Not really cheating as the random generator has thrown up an unintended impossible mission. Is on my things to do list to fix this for 1.4 of Random Hits.

The Thargoid Invasion mission is being generated by Assassins so scrubbing the Random Hits mission won't effect your progress in the Assassins series of missions. Although the Thargoid War takes place all over the Galaxy, the Invasion of a certain system in G7 by Thargoids is a hand scripted Assassins mission. Oh and your role in this incident may not be what your expecting. Playing Assassins and Random Hits at the same time shoudn't cause a bug, but by attempting to serve two masters with incompatable aims could put you in some hot water! Its certainly possible to do both, but there could be consequences if one finds out that you are working for the other.

[Eric Walch]

Ah yes sorry. Random Hits generates missions at random locations and I'd forgotten that G7 has a big cluster of systems that you can't actually get to. .... Not really cheating as the random generator has thrown up an unintended impossible mission. Is on my things to do list to fix this for 1.4 of Random Hits.

I solved this problem with ups-courier by using a timer. Currently ups contains one mission were the destination is really chosen randomly so it can end up in an unreachable system. For this mission I set a starting date and when the mission is not finished within a certain time limit (30 days) the player gets the message that someone else killed the target. This resets the current mission and will allow the generation of a new mission.

[Donarf Deckam]

Thanks Thargoid, my bad! Having played around with my ATI settings I now get a spectacular layering of multicoloured translucent shapes all over the sky at Tianve (only had a few scattered ones before), but still no nebulae - curses! Anyone have any pointers for me? My fiddling will continue until resolution, but my frustration increaseth - must kill with beautiful backgrounds for full satisfaction!