community OXP start pack

General discussion for players of Oolite.

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CheeseRedux
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Post by CheeseRedux »

This has been sort of a pet issue of mine ever since I discovered Oolite back in September, and then spent the better part of a week reading up on OXPs before even starting to play.

Much of the original discussion can be found in this thread derailment, for those who want a refresher.

I meant to pick the discussion up again from where it was left off, but RealLife[tm] sort of put a damper on that plan.


Some of the more relevant bits, of which a few are shamelessly enough mine:

My very rough first suggestion for The Starter Package:
CheeseRedux wrote:
Extra ships restricted to those that won't increase difficulty. Ie no turrets, multiple forward lasers etc.
Some useful extra equipment. Like Fuel Tank eg.
Eyecandy.
Galaxy 1 Missions.
Ahruman's last words on the subject (That is, until this thread started):
Ahruman wrote:
CheeseRedux wrote:
The Wiki lists a whooping 206 OXPs at the moment. For the veteran, it's a wonderful source of freedom and diversity. For the new guy (and that's me, a month and a half ago) it's a source of confusion and quite likely to overwhelm.

Here's the progression I'd like to see:
1) Discover & download Oolite
2) Discover the OXP concept
3) Download a StarterBundle or five
4) Start cherry picking OXPs
5) Start writing your own stuff

As it is right now, there's a big leap between 2 & 4. Something to bridge that gap could only help recruit more people. Myself, I will never go beyond 4, but it's a crying shame if we lose potential OXP writers at stage 2.

I am fully aware of the reluctance to "tell" people which OXPs to get because they're the "best". But as the number of OXPs continue to grow, the task of picking your first few ones will eventually become insurmountable to anyone but the most determined and dedicated. Can we really expect that from someone who discovered Oolite half an hour ago?
This is a real problem, and a general downside to flexibility. I think a “starter pack” of ships widely considered well-balanced and non-über, and perhaps some early missions, would be a Good Thing. As long as it was kept up-to-date, I’d be willing to push it through “official” channels (but not partake in the editorial decisions).

Making it a single “meta-OXP” would have almost no benefit and cause several problems. It would be much simpler to just provide a zip archive with the original OXPs, a read me with summaries of the project and the selected OXPs, and a folder with the original documentation.

Ideally, this would be managed by a group of non-OXPers, including at least one long-standing forum member and at least one recent newbie. I hope I don’t have to point out that the authors of the OXPs should be asked…

Also note that I wrote in the singular here. Having several starter packs would just bring us back to the same problem.

To me, it seems useful to get to an agreement on the parameters of the Starter Package before venturing into specific OXPs, and some of the posts above have already moved in that direction.

So, what I personally think is a good starting point, looks something like this:
- As much EyeCandy as possible. Like it or not, graphics sell.
- Anything that adds atmosphere and helps immersion.
- All Galaxy1 missions, whether G1 only or G1+GXYZ, as long as they do not alter the difficulty of the game.
- Some low end useful equipment.
- As for ships, nothing that outperforms any of the built in ships, or that is ridiculously underpriced. Note that for pure NPC ships, this does not apply if the ship in question always defaults to peaceful, ie will never fire until fired upon (or maybe not even then).

I also think it would be useful to let the discussion on how to adjust for low end machines rest for now. My suggestion would be to agree on what we think is the best Starter Pack, and then test it on a few older machines. If what we then have is too much for them to handle, then we can start discussing what to either pull out or put on a suggested-removal-if-your-system-is-slow list.
"Actually this is a common misconception... I do *not* in fact have a lot of time on my hands at all! I just have a very very very very bad sense of priorities."
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Cmd. Cheyd
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Post by Cmd. Cheyd »

Take it with a grain of salt.... Give you eye candy (face it - sexy sells), some early-on help, gives an Elite-like feel with TP/DSP, and a few missions to wet the appetite. Not saying this is for low-end machines - Just that it'd make a good set for hooking people.

Lave Academy
Griff's Ships
System Redux 1 (Or 2 upon release)
Famous Planets 1 & 2
Commies / Dictators / Anarchies
Total Patrol
Deep Space Pirates
Asteroid Storm
Long Way Round
Black Baron
UPS
Snoopers
Traffic Control
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ovvldc
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Post by ovvldc »

OK, this moved quickly in the space of a few hours :).

I get a tug of war in two spectra:
suitable for beginner vs. increasing options
low spec machines vs. showing off what OOlite can do

My bias is somewhat to the left for both. If I look through the lists people have put forward, the following seem to crop up:

Asteroid Storm
Big Ships (adds infrastructure to the game for big ships)
Diso
Fuel Tank
Lave Academy
Long Way Round
M-Pack (Rusties)
Ore Processor
Pods
Snoopers
Total Patrol
UPS Courier
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Post by DaddyHoggy »

As far as I can see none of the OXPs on this list add big ships and therefore you don't need the big ship oxp (with its improved big ship AI) until you do - all the standard ships in the core game can dock and thus you don't need the big ship oxp because core game ships aren't (relatively) that big...
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Post by ovvldc »

Yes, but that isn't the point. The point is that beginners can then safely add big ships when they install this OXP. To stop the Aurora from trying out the docking bay..
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Post by DaddyHoggy »

ovvldc wrote:
Yes, but that isn't the point. The point is that beginners can then safely add big ships when they install this OXP. To stop the Aurora from trying out the docking bay..
But the Aurora isn't on your set of initial OXPs... :?
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Corny
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Post by Corny »

DaddyHoggy wrote:
But the Aurora isn't on your set of initial OXPs... :?
Which is quite fortunate imho because of possible perfomance issues.
The Aurora OXP doesn't have the Big Ships OXP included, so that's maybe just a precaution to add it to the starters pack.
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Post by ovvldc »

exactly :).
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Post by lfnfan »

For an OXP starter pack, prioritised high to low:

Griff’s Ships (or Neolite ships depending on your hardware)
System Redux
Gritty Coriolis
Lave Academy
Bounty Scanner
Deep Space Pirates
Long Way Around
Galactic Navy & Behemoth

and also

UPS Courier
Interstellar Help
Snoopers
Commies
Dictators
Local Hero
Wolfwood’s Variants (Neolite)
Total Patrol


is this starter pack idea just a way of putting off the inevitable overhaul of the Wiki OXP page? :wink:
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JazHaz
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Post by JazHaz »

lfnfan wrote:
is this starter pack idea just a way of putting off the inevitable overhaul of the Wiki OXP page? :wink:
No. I will probably start working on it during the next few days. :)
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Post by lfnfan »

bravo. What have you got in mind?
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