Oolite Bulletins

Welcome aboard, Commander!

Cheers Cody, this forum is a serious rabbit hole - I'm reading a few threads for tactics, I wish we'd had this kind of help in 1985.

In case you haven't found your way there, the  Oolite Wiki has oodles of information.

It has been a while since I was last active around here, so I will re-introduce myself. What most interests me about Oolite is its expansions and the community around them. I have 315 OXPs installed, and that's after repeatedly going weeding out ones I don't want. I guess my view on expansions is "the more the merrier, as long as it works well and looks okay." There is so much high-quality content now, and so many of you actively playing and tinkering. Although the game is single-player, it feels like a shared experience because of this board and the continuing development of the game and OXPs from the community. Thanks developers, content creators and fellow players for keeping the Ooniverse growing!

What is new with me? I am still a novice when it comes to combat (Average - 52). I haven't left Galaxy 1 yet, but my keyboard flying is much better, and I now can manually dock when I want (which is rarely, since ILS makes it so easy) and I usually either win battles (Laser Cannons don't overheat too fast, and SniperLock and Telescope greatly enhance my aim) or escape them (Surjectors and Military Fuel Injectors to run away without running out of fuel, ShipVersion, Military Shield Booster [actually, I don't remember where I got this, maybe it came with the ship?], IronHide, Extra Energy Unit and Energy Rebalancer to survive long enough).

I'm flying a ShipVersion 3.9 Miner Cobra Mark III kept in perfect condition and keeping an eye on the shipyards for a better model. I'm carrying almost 2 million credits mostly gained from "duels" in feudal systems where they bet me 10:1 on a 10,000 credit stake, repeatedly. (FeudalStates OXP is in need of some rebalancing.) Market Observer OXP tells me that I've gained 73,733.6 credits through trading so far, which is probably a more accurate approximation of what my credit balance should be at this point. I haven't been very focused on trading for income, preferring to explore and try to complete missions, particularly the ones from phkb's GalCopMissions.

I've also acquired one of Norby's Towbars and I am ranked as a level 3 Poor Salvager with 9 ships towed to dock and a fair number mined and exploded. (I've "almost" brought in a handful more, but I had docking mishaps and I tend to shift-escape when that happens, even though I have Ship Repurchase insurance.) I've done a few UPS courier jobs, but I'm still a rookie, and I just completed my first successful solo Escort Contract recently. It was pure luck, because I had a misjump and was separated from the client, but no attacks happened before I got back to the witchpoint nor on the way to the station.

I'm currently on a mission from Oresri, a TL7 rich agricultural communist system, to "repossess" 14 tons of computers from Reinen, a TL8 average agricultural confederacy. I am looking for legally-troubled traders to relieve of their cargo... and so far, I haven't found any such traders. I expect my Manifest and Warrant Scanners will help with that. My own legal status is Clean, except for a minor import mixup in Xeesle long enough ago that the fine has dropped to 50 credits, but of course I have to go there or to the sector HQ to pay it off.

I'm also on a mission to reduce errors in my Latest.log, which has consumed a larger percentage of my focus recently, and has prompted my recent burst of activity on this board. I'm pleased to report that it is looking much cleaner already, though in the process I've definitely begun looking into the abyss of scripting and property lists, and tinkering, and I fear for my SAN. This has also inspired me to provide feedback and suggest several enhancements, which I hope will be well-received.

Since it is impractical for me to tackle the entire effort alone (both for lack of time and skill), I've also requested credentials for the Oolite Wiki, which Maik kindly provided, and I am haphazardly improving some of the pages there with an aim of sharing best practices and lessons learned. I have sent a request also to cim for permission to update orphaned content in the OXZ manager (licenses permitting), for example I want to upload an update for Iron Raven to incorporate a simple fix that has been posted in its forum thread for a long time now. I am also interested to bring other neglected content up to date, and I hope in doing so to relieve some burdens from more capable community members who are working to build a better Ooniverse for all of us to enjoy.

Sincerely,
Milo

Welcome back Milo

Thanks for the reminder about Galcop missions, I keep meaning to give that a try...

Milo wrote: ↑Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:04 am

(FeudalStates OXP is in need of some rebalancing.)

Good to have you back Milo,
I followed your recent posts with interest, I guess it's just a matter of time before you will join the dark side.
I totally agree with you on FeudalStates OXP, while the duels there earned me millions some rebalancing, actually a complete overhaul would be in order. Last time I had a look the sheer size and number of houses stopped me from even trying.

Milo wrote: ↑Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:04 am

I've definitely begun looking into the abyss of scripting and property lists, and tinkering, and I fear for my SAN.

That's OK. We have cookies. Cookies fix everything.

I found this game on Friday and it has totally consumed my weekend. Between the tutorial, the wiki, and this board, I've managed to get a handle on things. I've got my Cobra Mrk III kitted out now, and have managed to get my rating to average. So far I've played without OXPs. I want to get a good amount of game experience with just the vanilla game, but I definitely plan on trying a bunch out.

Welcome, commander!

Keeping it to the core game only seems to be a common approach... it seems strange to me, since I the times I played the core game without any OXPs (while testing to see if a problem was from the core game or from OXPs) I found it boring compared to my everything-you-can-install game - the OXPs make the game _much_ more interesting!

You progressed fast, the game is very hard until you can earn enough to kit your ship up.

Welcome aboard, Commander!

djxejms wrote: ↑Mon Jun 22, 2020 4:51 pm

So far I've played without OXPs. I want to get a good amount of game experience with just the vanilla game, but I definitely plan on trying a bunch out.

That's a good way to start - then begin adding eye-candy/ambience stuff. I always recommend  Random Ship Names.

I want to know what the base game is like so I can tell what the OXP is adding. But I'm already eyeing a bunch I want to try.

The combat was challenging to get used to and I'd say I still have a bunch of progress to make there. At first I was totally flummoxed, but I read the combat tips page on the wiki and that really helped. I actually really like that the combat is challenging and makes you think about whether you should fight or run. I'll often start a fight, get a kill, then try and disengage. Or I'll inject away from a group of hostiles and then turn and take out the few ships that were able to keep up.

I'm really really enjoying this game, and love that it'll run on almost anything.

Hi everybody.

..Well, to be completely honest I didn't play Elite as a kid. First of all, we didn't have those "western" home-computers here in USSR in the 80s And even if we did I'd be too young (born in 83) to grasp the Elite anyway

Little later, in the late 80s - early 90s ZX Spectrum was successfully cloned here and couple of my friend at school even had it but not me unfortunately What I had was a famiclone called "Dendy" wich became extremely popular here in the early-mid 90s. But there was no Elite on it also since it only came out on NES in EU-region and we mostly had JP-region games pirated from Famicom's cartridges here.

Some little more years later in 96..or was it 97.. anyway I finally got my first PC, and so did most of my school friends. Some of them, if I remember correctly those were the ones with Spectrum-clones early on, at some point talked about Elite Plus and how great and good-looking it was compared to the original Elite.. So I tried it out.. Well, the thing is - even if there were some manuals in it's .txt files, I couldn't read English as well back then and there was no official video-game market with translated ones whatsoever at the time. So for several times I tried to fly, shoot some nearby ships, got killed, shrugged, deleted the game from the hard-drive and continued to play Doom or Duke3D.. or whatever alse I was into at the time

Years went by, I became an adult.. well age-wise at least , got into retro-video-gaming and somewhere around 2015 saw a mention of Elite somewhere once again (I think it was tied to the release of Elite Dangerous at the time) and thought "If it was so popular back then, there must be some port or re-release of it on modern platforms" and that's how I found out about Oolite Oh.. and also Elite Dangerous came out on a PS4 (wich I had at the time) some years later.

...Well, to say that I was somewhat shocked or awed or rendered speechless would be a lie, I wasn't After all I don't have the nostalgia-factor, remember? BUT! What I realised was just how great of a game it must've been in the mid-80s when it first came out! Just to think about - a whole open-world sandbox in space on an 8-bit computer - that's what made my mind blow back then.

So.. maybe I'm not as big of a fan of an Elite universe as many of you guys are, but I'd say It's nice to make couple of cargo-trading runs between star-systems from time to time

PS Oh, one more thing I forgot to ask - when I recently dowloaded the game - I mentioned that the last version of it is from 2018! 2 years from now.. did the development of a game stop?

Welcome to our new players, hope you enjoy the game.

evilblade wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 1:40 pm

PS Oh, one more thing I forgot to ask - when I recently dowloaded the game - I mentioned that the last version of it is from 2018! 2 years from now.. did the development of a game stop?

No, it has just slowed down, the development team is not that big and RL does tend to interfere quite often. It still goes on though, if you look at the screenshots thread there are new and improved graphics and there are also bug fixes, more script access to properties, etc. Take a look at our github page (https://github.com/OoliteProject) and feel free to try out the latest development builds, which are currently more stable than the "official" stable build. The latest test dev release is here: https://github.com/OoliteProject/nightl ... 9.0.200623

Are you aware of Roolite - and welcome aboard!

another_commander wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:10 pm

Welcome to our new players, hope you enjoy the game.

I do enjoy it, and thanks for welcoming.

another_commander wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:10 pm

No, it has just slowed down, the development team is not that big and RL does tend to interfere quite often. It still goes on though

Oh, OK, that's good to hear. Thank you again