Oolite Bulletins

Wildeblood wrote:

2. Technical - at the time shipScoopedOther fires is Oolite's messing about with cargo pods completely finished, or would there always be one empty pod left behind? The results Albee reports in the Vortex thread make me suspicious.

A valid point - but one easily solved by triggering it using a timer'd delay of say 0.25s or 0.5s.

If Albee's testing does show your concern to be correct, then that's how I will resolve it.

Wildeblood wrote:

Beer Cooler OXP is very useful as an example of how to write equipment.plist entries.

Psst. The Beer Cooler is actually a slightly useful piece of equipment in serious combat situations. Clue: the more other pieces of equipment you have, the less helpful the Beer Cooler is.

SandJ wrote:

Wildeblood wrote:

Beer Cooler OXP is very useful as an example of how to write equipment.plist entries.

Psst. The Beer Cooler is actually a slightly useful piece of equipment in serious combat situations. Clue: the more other pieces of equipment you have, the less helpful the Beer Cooler is.

That post, and an exchange of messages that followed it, caused me to re-create an old experiment to test the theory that adding useless items to your equipment list can help protect the useful items. The WEBS System is now available for anyone else who adheres to this idea.

Meanwhile, only one (1) person has downloaded my new Priority Launch utility, which rotates the station 180 degrees. You've forced my hand, I'm going to have to start posting screen-shots showing how cool this is.

Sensible sun is a great OXP, star's nearness is something that was starting bother me, too. I've been enjoying sensibly placed suns for a few days now - thanks Wildeblood .

Check For Likely Witchspace Jump Failure OXP ver. 1.1
Download link is in the first post of this thread.

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Witchspace jump aborted (too close to Coriolis Station)."

We have all had this happen to us when we were too close to something while trying to jump to another system. Is it possible to detect a coming failure to witchspace? Of course it is. If you would like an immediate warning when you start a witchspace jump countdown, place the Check For Likely Witchspace Jump Failure OXP into your "AddOns" folder.

Version 1.1, September 3rd, 2012:
Added a line feed to the displayed message, which sort of ran off the sc...
Flipped the version number - any excuse will do.

Wildeblood wrote:

Check For Likely Witchspace Jump Failure OXP ver. 1.1
Download link is in the first post of this thread.

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Witchspace jump aborted (too close to Coriolis Station)."

We have all had this happen to us when we were too close to something while trying to jump to another system. Is it possible to detect a coming failure to witchspace? Of course it is. If you would like an immediate warning when you start a witchspace jump countdown, place the Check For Likely Witchspace Jump Failure OXP into your "AddOns" folder.

Version 1.1, September 3rd, 2012:
Added a line feed to the displayed message, which sort of ran off the sc...
Flipped the version number - any excuse will do.

This is great, especially when it's late in the night and concentration is ebbing away. Nothing makes me more angry in Oolite than mass-locks when I'm in a hurry and aborted Witchspace jumps.

From The Internet wrote:

This is great, especially when it's late in the night and concentration is ebbing away. Nothing makes me more angry in Oolite than mass-locks when I'm in a hurry and aborted Witchspace jumps.

Exactly how I feel about it

Hiya,

I'll jump over twenty systems in a row, in order to get from one end of the galaxy to the other, on contract runs. Normally I would spend about 3 to 5 minutes sun skimming, because it is faster than going to refuel at the main station.

With Sensible Sun, I can now spend up to 6 minutes just traveling to the sun alone (sometimes more), so it has increased my average 'time in system' considerably. But I will be keeping it any ways, because I agree that it was placed quite close to the planets before.

It adds a new element of strategy now - if the sun is on the other side of the planet, when I enter the system, I will bite the time it takes to refuel at the station, instead of risking taking more time to try and bypass everything and go the sun.

One thing I noticed though, not often, but often enough, I will encounter police, a Moray boat, or even a Cobra Mk. III near the (now) sensible sun. Figuring it was now so far away, that there would be even less traffic around it.

Any ways. Thank you for Sensible Sun.


On another note, I am trying to figure out why I would want the Priority Launch oxp (?).

To me, it just takes less than a minute, to turn the ship around from the planet, if I should want to head for space instead. But like, I nearly always am going to hyper jump when I leave a station, so pointing at the planet or deep space makes little difference.
Can you enlighten me on which situations where this would be advantageous?

DeathKnyte wrote:

One thing I noticed though, not often, but often enough, I will encounter police, a Moray boat, or even a Cobra Mk. III near the (now) sensible sun. Figuring it was now so far away, that there would be even less traffic around it.

Why? You've said it yourself:

DeathKnyte wrote:

With Sensible Sun, I can now spend up to 6 minutes just traveling to the sun alone (sometimes more), so it has increased my average 'time in system' considerably. But I will be keeping it any ways, because I agree that it was placed quite close to the planets before.

If you go sunskimming even over the greater distance, it stands to reason that there will be other pilots doing the same. Therefore you would continue to meet them. And therefore GalCop would continue to protect the way to and from the sun.

DeathKnyte wrote:

One thing I noticed though, not often, but often enough, I will encounter police, a Moray boat, or even a Cobra Mk. III near the (now) sensible sun. Figuring it was now so far away, that there would be even less traffic around it.

IIRC, traffic is only placed on the planet to sun route, not the the witchpoint to sun route, so by placing the sun farther away the angle between the two routes is on average decreased and therefore the chance you'll notice traffic on the other route is increased.

DeathKnyte wrote:

On another note, I am trying to figure out why I would want the Priority Launch oxp (?).

If you've spent an afternoon trying to get a cool screen-grab of ships leaving a station and decided it would look better with the planet in the background rather than black space? Other than that I can't really think of any reason.

Wildeblood wrote:

DeathKnyte wrote:

One thing I noticed though, not often, but often enough, I will encounter police, a Moray boat, or even a Cobra Mk. III near the (now) sensible sun. Figuring it was now so far away, that there would be even less traffic around it.

IIRC, traffic is only placed on the planet to sun route, not the the witchpoint to sun route, so by placing the sun farther away the angle between the two routes is on average decreased and therefore the chance you'll notice traffic on the other route is increased.

I think the populator also populates the WP-S route. At the very least each incoming trader has a chance to head for the sun instead of the planet.

. . . . .
Use this following code if "will likely succeed" seems a bit verbosely obtuse.

Commander McLane wrote:

Wildeblood wrote:

DeathKnyte wrote:

One thing I noticed though, not often, but often enough, I will encounter police, a Moray boat, or even a Cobra Mk. III near the (now) sensible sun. Figuring it was now so far away, that there would be even less traffic around it.

IIRC, traffic is only placed on the planet to sun route, not the the witchpoint to sun route, so by placing the sun farther away the angle between the two routes is on average decreased and therefore the chance you'll notice traffic on the other route is increased.

I think the populator also populates the WP-S route. At the very least each incoming trader has a chance to head for the sun instead of the planet.

I have since discovered from Eric Walch (who said it somewhere), that the populated routes are between planet and witchpoint beacon - and between planet and sun. Outside of these two, only oxps add ships / traffic / other stuff. Forget where I saw that now (of course), but pretty certain it was that, and that it was him that wrote it.

(Man, this forum is huge, it's impossible trying to pinpoint some things...)

Wildeblood wrote:

DeathKnyte wrote:

On another note, I am trying to figure out why I would want the Priority Launch oxp (?).

If you've spent an afternoon trying to get a cool screen-grab of ships leaving a station and decided it would look better with the planet in the background rather than black space? Other than that I can't really think of any reason.

Ah - okie dokie, Wildeblood.

SandJ wrote:


Wildeblood wrote:

Beer Cooler OXP is very useful as an example of how to write equipment.plist entries.
Psst. The Beer Cooler is actually a slightly useful piece of equipment in serious combat situations. Clue: the more other pieces of equipment you have, the less helpful the Beer Cooler is.
That post, and an exchange of messages that followed it, caused me to re-create an old experiment to test the theory that adding useless items to your equipment list can help protect the useful items.

I also tend to carry a limited number of low cost cargo items i.e. 1T food, 1T textiles etc to reduce the chance of more expensive cargo i.e. computers being damaged.

Having said that maybe the best way for the game to select cargo for destruction once the hull is taking damage would be a random item which takes in to account the number of items you carry.

e.g. If you carry 99T of computers and only 1T of food if cargo is destroyed you have a 99% chance that it will be computers.

Shipbuilder wrote:

Having said that maybe the best way for the game to select cargo for destruction once the hull is taking damage would be a random item which takes in to account the number of items you carry.

This is what happens - your cargo is loaded into physical cargo pods on launch (for compatibility with anything you scoop later), and then a random one of those pods is (sometimes) destroyed when you take hits to your hull.