I'm new to Oolite

[Cholmondely]

No. your bias is good and clear - and you have clearly thought through how you want to play the game. Very informative. And a very useful analysis of the Expansions.

Thank you for taking the time and effort to type it all up!



Personally, I'm too new (two months) and am still trying to learn basic combat skills. I've not played these sort of games before and so have not yet built up the combat skills to embark on missions or anything else of that sort - I'm just buying more and more goodies for the ship and have yet to tiptoe beyond the western edge of Galaxy 1. The combat learning curve is taking a long time and I'm toying with the idea of going back to the Original Elite where I might find the NPCs easier to shoot down (I found DosBox - although the DOS commands are hardly intuitive! Nor am I convinced that the keyboard commands will readily map onto the Apple Macintosh's keyboard. Ho-hum!). I'm uneasy murdering unarmed Kraits in the tutorial package. I know it's just a game, but I do not want to be that sort of person (I wonder if I would feel differently if the game did not feel so realistic?).

I very much enjoy the 'eye-candy' - the intricate detailing of the space-stations, the complexity of the Coluber and Vimana HUDs, the skies, etc. (the only flies in the ointment are the unconvincing planet rings - which I do find help me with navigation). I suppose ED might offer superior vistas for my imagination, but I much prefer using my Mac (even if I'm not a programming whizz like you are), and the learning process to fly their cobra seems much steeper. A 140-page instruction manual - goodness grief!

[Cholmondely]

I find fighting pirates very easy. After an initial difficulty, I soon learned the basic principles of combat. I have 1100 kills.

Thank you! Important to know. I hope you are enjoying the Oolite experience. I certainly am.

Do have lots of experience on other such games - or have you only ever really played Oolite?

And now that you no longer need to just make milk runs, what are you doing in the game?
Missions? Bounty-hunting? Piracy? Asteroid mining? Contract deliveries?

Which have you chosen - and what appeals to you about your choice?

Your sincerely,

Cholmondeley

I've copied this from your response in the First Amphiboly of the Architectonic of Oolite. I'm really sorry - Stranger and I rather stole your thread from you in your absence.
I also notice in your PM to me that you've racked up 1100 kills! Congratulations!.

[erickcosta]

I'm still on board a Cobra III and I don't intend to change that. I love the ship.

I never played Elite (1984). Only Oolite.

Only have one OXP installed: Randon Hits. Eventually I participate in one or more missions.

My balance is 75,000 credits.

Basically, I impose certain rules. I don't buy more than 9 goods of each type.

I also play in IronMade mode

I achieved a maximum reputation in delivering cargo only with my Cobra III.

Currently, I do taxi services, but only when the destination is less than 150 l.y.

Whenever my balance reaches 80,000 I look for a Tech 13 system, buy a HiperDrive and jump to the next chart.

[erickcosta]

Personally, I think playing in WireFrame mode makes fighting a lot easier.

[Cholmondely]

Thank you for the combat tip!

I will confess to being somewhat desperate.

Cholmondeley

[tsoj]

Thank you for the combat tip!

I will confess to being somewhat desperate.

I have another one. With the default keyboard settings, I am absolutely helpless against anything that has a basic laser gun. However, if I use custom key settings I can kill almost any pirates I encounter with a Cobra Mark II with Military Lasers and ECM system.
The main point is to reset the control of axis to q,e for rolling, a,d for yawing, s,w for pitch. Especially the use of yawing makes aiming much easier. Accelerating is done by the up arrow, decelerating with the down arrow, the laser with the right arrow, ECM with the left arrow. This way I can use all the important functions that I need during combat without having to move my hands around.
There is also a button (left ctrl) that makes the axis controls finer. It is not really documented, I don't even know how I learned that.
I don't have much use for strong shields, except for really good enemies. I found it is really easy to dodge hostile fire by just flying wavy snake lines, up and down and up and down until their energy systems are drained, then I can stop moving around for a moment.

I can send you the config file if you want, but It probably needs some customization if you don't use Oolite on Linux with a german keyboard.

Maybe the game is not meant to be played with yaw-control, it would be probably more unrealistic because humans can endure G-Forces better up and down, than left and right (except that you maybe are not a human but a Large Yellow Slimy Lizzard ...?). But it just makes more fun for me playing the game like this

[Cholmondely]

Thank you!

Very interesting idea: putting all the navigation keys together like that.

I too have found that yaw works better for me than roll - much more instinctive. If I'd had Cody's years of battling across the galaxies in Elite I might well share his predilictions in this matter: but I haven't, and therefore I don't. The combat seems too hard for me ever to succeed in that way, unless I spend years working on the various training packages - which would take all the fun out of actually playing the game.

What I'd really like to do would be get my hands on a copy of Aegidian's original Oolite 1.0 and try mucking about with that (I've a couple of aged Apple Macintosh computers to hand which should run it).

Thank you very much for the kind offer of your config file. But lacking your facility with German - and your keyboard - I'm forced to agree that the gift would prove futile.

Thanking you again,

His Nibs.

[Cholmondely]

So, with my preference for yaw, I probably am a rather large yellow slimy lizard! I just haven't looked properly in the mirror yet. I'll have to ask Araminta. Benedict is far too demure to ever tell me the unvarnished truth.

[dybal]

I prefer yaw too, but I only started trying to fight after I got a joystick, before that I always ran.

[stranger]

Pilots in real reality usually using roll and yaw inputs simultaneously to execute coordinated turn, compensate lateral wind on landing approach or to aim gun. Yaw input per se is ineffective and limited to several degrees offset. We have no aerodynamic forces in Oolite so efficiency of all input channels is declared as pitch/roll/yaw turn rates. Technically it is possible to declare unique values for roll and yaw channels, but usually yaw rate is omitted in shipdata and equals to roll rate by default.
NPC ships never uses yaw channel to maneuver, so using yaw input for fine aiming gives advantage to human player in combat. It is very useful if you have joystick with Z-axis. I'm using yaw for fine aiming too, but I prefer to limit yaw turn rate to 1/4 of roll turn rate. It seems more realistic for me.

[tsoj]

Pilots in real reality usually using roll and yaw inputs simultaneously to execute coordinated turn, compensate lateral wind on landing approach or to aim gun. Yaw input per se is ineffective and limited to several degrees offset. We have no aerodynamic forces in Oolite so efficiency of all input channels is declared as pitch/roll/yaw turn rates. Technically it is possible to declare unique values for roll and yaw channels, but usually yaw rate is omitted in shipdata and equals to roll rate by default.
NPC ships never uses yaw channel to maneuver, so using yaw input for fine aiming gives advantage to human player in combat. It is very useful if you have joystick with Z-axis. I'm using yaw for fine aiming too, but I prefer to limit yaw turn rate to 1/4 of roll turn rate. It seems more realistic for me.

I don't know how fast the ships in Oolite actually go compared to our metric system, but I would guess that a measure of 300 "Speed Units" is comparable to 300 m/s. in our world this would mean a very high G force when doing directional changes. If I am not mistaken these maneuvers could be compared to a fighter jet at Mach 1. I believe that fighter jet pilots don't use yaw for maneuvers like these (except maybe for minuscule corrections), because of the extreme G-forces that can only be somewhat be handled by humans in the direction they would normally experience gravity (down)). However, a (small) plane at maybe 30 m/s can easily use full yaw without hurting the pilot (except making him/her throw up )
Maybe this could be a nice addition, allowing yaw at low speeds and limiting yaw up to almost no yaw at high speeds (While I am thinking about it, this should also apply for pitching down, as negative G-Forces are also pretty bad for humans). Maybe I'll try to write an expansion when I get into playing again. This could be a challenge for pilots who already can fight off basically any threat with ease (I notice that this thread is maybe not the right place making ideas on how to make fighting harder ... )
I don't know exactly how the NPC-AIs are written, but I think the issue with missing yaw control is something specific to humans. So I don't feel too bad about them not having access to yaw. Could they have access to yaw control in an expansion or is this a hard limit by the core game?

[stranger]

Metric system in Oolite is a complex question. Technically ship and station models uses meter as internal unit and 300 speed units indeed means 300 m/s. AFAIK in old Elite ship dimensions were in feet, not in meters. So Cobra MK III with wingspan 130 m (a bit too oversized for green Jameson's first ship with 20 tons of cargo space!) was 130 feet wide - quite comparable with real two-seat B-2 Spirit. You can execute complete loop for 6 s in full thrust - so you will have angular velocity approx 1 rad/s. It means 35.7 g force on full 350 m/s velocity. But if you can perform such loop having 350 feet/s velocity (106 m/s), you will only have 10.7 g. It is still beyond current 9 g limit for dogfights, but more tolerable.
Moreover, we have also 1:100 planet scale in Oolite (planet radius 6378 km like old good Earth actually means only 63780 game meters!) and 1:1000 sun scale (sun with 500,000 km radius declared in planetinfo.plist actually will be only 500 km in game internal units!).
Adjusting of ship dynamics to more realistic values is interesting game-changing idea, but you need to adjust dynamically flight model for all NPC ships too. It is too complex task for my coding skills, so I abandon it.
I think simulating of lateral maneuver (yaw axis) for NPC ships is technically possible using OXP - it is possible to control ship orientation using JavaScript. But it is too complex task for me too.

[Milo]

Huh. So a Cobra Mk III in Elite was 39.624 meters only?

Elite Dangerous seems to think so, since according to its measurements the Cobra III fits in a landing pad with a maximum dimension of 44 m.

[stranger]

Milo, is it possible to play Elite Dangerous offline?
Never try it. I just don't like online games. I know single player options is possible in ED but if I need internet connection to play it is not for me.

[Milo]

I couldn’t say. I don’t have the game.