Docking

[Screet]

went to the buoy, lined up perfectly, approached slowly, did final corrections, matched roll - and then something coming out of the station hit me right on the nose. Press Space, Commander.

Now that's really bad luck! If you are not too close to the docking bay, launching ships will do evasives when a player is in their path.

I had some almost-crashes while launching...because there was a massive ship launching right in front of me, but that can be attributed to ships which are unable to dock (too big) launching from a station.

I can only remember one similar encounter to yours - and I'm with 10K kills, playing since december last year. That was when a launching police ship rammed me. I only lost a little bit of my shields (probably was the time when I did fly the boa class cruiser, but I'm not sure on that). It's perfectly OK to kill any "clean" trader with such a move - but for the police I became fugitive. Hit shift-esc and did that trip again...and yes, in such a case, I am annoyed, too

Screet

[ZygoUgo]

Hows about starting as a new pilot triggers a little talk from Mr Gimlet, who informs you it would be very wise to use the docking practice facilities available at Lave for free.
When you launch you can see a glowing green oblong (maybe it flickers like a screen) that simulates a docking bay set at 90 degrees from the bouy.
This is a hologram, there is absolutely no penalty for missing, so there's no constantly exploding and having to restart.
You can go back and forth as much as you want before you feel ready to try it with big nasty smashy walls.

[Disembodied]

I'm not criticising the ethos of Oolite being an Elite-faithful clone, but this was a problem with Elite in the first place.

Strange though it may seem to criticise one of the most popular and commercially successful games of all time, I think you're spot on. We put up with it back then because it was a different age, and Elite was just ... spectacular. I would sit and wait patiently to load the damn thing in from tape for six or seven minutes. Until I blew through the copy protection I would footer about with that sodding little plastic LensLok device, sometimes having to reload the game several times over because it was the LOUSIEST piece of copy protection ever invented – but I did it because Elite was amazing. Hell, there are probably people out there with Commodore 64 disk drives who are *still* waiting for the game to load.

It's a different world now. I start tutting and sighing if a piece of software takes more than 20 seconds to start up, and there are a host of other games out there which, superficially at least, have a more immediate appeal. Dying when you've just got started is so twentieth century. Anything that gives Oolite the little time it needs to sink into people's brains has to be a good thing.

[_ds_]

I would sit and wait patiently to load the damn thing in from tape for six or seven minutes. Until I blew through the copy protection I would footer about with that sodding little plastic LensLok device [...] Hell, there are probably people out there with Commodore 64 disk drives who are *still* waiting for the game to load

I see your C*mm*d*r* bread bin and raise you one… slice of bread.

Loading from DFS-format floppy was nice and quick 8-bit wars! Wahey! British rules! 'Merkian fools!

[KZ9999]

Hows about starting as a new pilot triggers a little talk from Mr Gimlet, who informs you it would be very wise to use the docking practice facilities available at Lave for free.
When you launch you can see a glowing green oblong (maybe it flickers like a screen) that simulates a docking bay set at 90 degrees from the bouy.
This is a hologram, there is absolutely no penalty for missing, so there's no constantly exploding and having to restart.
You can go back and forth as much as you want before you feel ready to try it with big nasty smashy walls.

That idea is a good one and not without precedent. In the Nintendo Elite, you actually had to do a practice dog fight with an Mamba and two Sidewinders (without missiles) as part of your graduation process before you were allowed to leave the Lave station.

We could add an option when starting a new commander, that the novice pilot can practice:
* Launch and dock with a simulated station.
* Fly around a course between beacons.
* Fight a series of ships of slightly weaker ships.

It could even be available under the Game Option screen so anyone can refresh their skills at any time. (Or have an adrenalin fix shooting up a simulated viper.)

This sort of thing is found in every other Space Trading/Fighting Sim out there and it would certainly reduce the learning curve a hell of a lot for the newcomers.

[another_commander]

Anyway, off I went to Zaonce with a cargo (having sold off all my pylon-mounted stuff), took the 90 degree course to avoid trouble, got to the station, went to the buoy, lined up perfectly, approached slowly, did final corrections, matched roll - and then something coming out of the station hit me right on the nose. Press Space, Commander.

See, this is one of the very reasons docking clearance was introduced. If you had it active and done everything by the rules, you would have had your two minute window for your approach all for yourself. But yeah, you have been unlucky, this kind of accident doesn't really happen that often.

[tomsk]

I would sit and wait patiently to load the damn thing in from tape for six or seven minutes. Until I blew through the copy protection I would footer about with that sodding little plastic LensLok device [...] Hell, there are probably people out there with Commodore 64 disk drives who are *still* waiting for the game to load

I see your C*mm*d*r* bread bin and raise you one… slice of bread.

Loading from DFS-format floppy was nice and quick 8-bit wars! Wahey! British rules! 'Merkian fools!

I burnt my copy onto a ROM (BBC micro) so I could access it with a command "*elite"

[Thargoid]

I'm sure it'll never see the light of day (c'mon, Thargoid, beat me to it ), but it'll make me feel better. Finding milk-runs and trading up is a long enough and hard enough process all by itself.

I've already had my look at assisting with docking (Traffic Control OXP), so if you want to go somewhere else with it then it's all yours. I don't (and have no wish to) have a monopoly on bringing peoples good ideas to life .

Although as I mentioned before, some less lethal (I hope) practice for docking is going to be in a currently WIP OXP which I hope to hammer on with this week.

[Thargoid]

That idea is a good one and not without precedent. In the Nintendo Elite, you actually had to do a practice dog fight with an Mamba and two Sidewinders (without missiles) as part of your graduation process before you were allowed to leave the Lave station.

We could add an option when starting a new commander, that the novice pilot can practice:
* Launch and dock with a simulated station.
* Fly around a course between beacons.
* Fight a series of ships of slightly weaker ships.

It could even be available under the Game Option screen so anyone can refresh their skills at any time. (Or have an adrenalin fix shooting up a simulated viper.)

This sort of thing is found in every other Space Trading/Fighting Sim out there and it would certainly reduce the learning curve a hell of a lot for the newcomers.

Have you been peaking at aforementioned WIP? As it seems to be an area of interest, I'll let people have a sneak preview then of it, the WIP of Lave Academy OXP.

With a few notes and comments:

• THIS IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS.
• Currently the docking test isn't completed (you can select it but it doesn't do anything), but the other two are fairly much finished and working other than some cosmetic tweaking.
• The Lave Academy itself is wearing a fairly temporary skin, hopefully until Griff has a little time to work his magic.
• The scripting has been run by a few beta-testers, but may still have some weird or unforeseen glitches in it.
• As all trading (especially in Trumbles) is banned at the academy with the exception of fuel, the courses and tests are accessed by the F8 screen instead.

Anyway just consider this as a taster and example, but not (yet) something for everyday gameplay. The academy can be found in the Lave system (unsurprisingly), either by following "A" on your ASC or by looking around when you leave the main station. It should be visible somewhere if you look around at right-angles to the station/buoy axis. And the academy even has Jameson-friendly docking

Oh and yes, this is the OXP that Ring Racer and Fuel Station span off from...[/color]

[Mara Jade]

I just found out about Oolite and downloaded it just the other day. The first thing I did was accidentally launch myself when I was still trying to figure out the controls. I'm happy to say that I was able to re-dock again without too much trouble once I'd figured out how to fly. I was quite pleased: 25 years on - I've still got it!

[DaddyHoggy]

Welcome to the friendliest boards this side of Riedquat, Mara Jade.

(PS Are you the same Mara Jade who is partnered with a certain Mr. L. Skywalker? )

[Captain Hesperus]

Welcome aboard, Mara Jade! Take off your EVA suit and grab a flagon of Lethal Water.

And would you like a nice fluffy pet? (See sig, below) Just Cr30....

Captain Hesperus

[Alex]

Hi and welcome to the ooniverse Mara Jade
Very glad to hear you weren't wimpering about accidental launch and very impressed you got back in easily enough. Took me over an hour to learn way, way, way back when.
Thought a couple of easy tips might help.
1. As in HHG "Don't Panic"
2. Use the bouy provided when docking
3. Don't try to dock tooo slow, makes it harder.
4. Leave trying to rotate with the station to the last minute, makes getting aligned easier.
5. try not to shoot anything till you have an ECM. most ships carry missiles and they tend to leave huge dent's in your ship, also really hard to shoot them in flight.
6. Check the forum when getting stuck, really is heaps of stuff to help in here.

Happy flying.