Oolite Bulletins

If you look at the Custom Sounds thread in Expansion Packs, there is a link to download it on one of the last posts (not resubmitted to Oosat2 yet!)

LittleBear wrote:

Fitting fuel scoops will boost your profits, as you will usually make more money by picking up the pirates' cargo than on the bounty.

no, you don't understand what I mean. If I'm flying on Asp Special (from x-ships.oxp), I have no any cargo, but the ship is realy good and I don't want to change it. So! how I can get any profit without the possibility of trading? and this is the cause of my question: may be the bounty for the destroyed pirate some bigest?

P.S.
How Sci-Worker saids on forum Elite-games
It would be nice to have some kind of OXP that allows you to see not just the status but also the rank of enemy ship you're fighting with. This rank should influence the intelligence of the enemy pilot, as well as the type of his ship (including equipment). Thus, the bounty value should depend on the ship coolness, enemy status and rank, development level of current system. The latter is logical in the sence that in those systems where police protection is minimal the bounty should be higher. The balance in the game could be as follows. In high-level systems you will meet (not very often) hot-shots with significant cop-smashing experience - components RANK and STATUS should work. In low-level systems you might meet a lot of much less fight-experienced pirates - the component SYSTEM will work. Of course, one may go further and work out the more flexible bounty system (e.g. the dependence on current attacking enemies number or on rank and status of player himself, etc.). But I suppose even what I described here is not so easy to implement. Still I hope some day somebody will get it done...

You could head for Galaxy 7 and become an assassin!

Failing that the ability to carry cargo (either for trading or piracy) is faily essential to earn money. You could trade the Asp in for an Imperial Courier. Expensive but the same type of performace in terms of shields and speed, but has a Cargo Bay.

Yes! It's a realy the decision on a matter! But now I'm in the 5-th galaxy and before I will find the asassin guild, will be a long time.

and I like an Asp! May be it from the old times when I'v played ELITE on my first ZX-Spectrum... that times Asp whas my dream, and now, when it's my, I don't want to change it!

and I presisting on my pinion! the bounty for pirate-killing must be biggest!

Since I got the SuperCobra OXP, I keep coming across Fugitive SC's which, when I engage them, hurl a torrent of abuse at me ('See you in Hell!', 'You'll pay for that, you Gomorean piss ant!', etc.) before ejecting when he starts venting plasma. Killing the ship gets me 100-150cr and scooping and handing in the pilot nets about 60-150cr. Not bad really, and he doesn't fire ECM-proof missiles....

Captain Hesperus
"I'M the piss ant? At least I know to kick your Iron Ass, dork wad!"

LittleBear wrote:

You could head for Galaxy 7 and become an assassin!

Failing that the ability to carry cargo (either for trading or piracy) is faily essential to earn money. You could trade the Asp in for an Imperial Courier. Expensive but the same type of performace in terms of shields and speed, but has a Cargo Bay.

Wasn't that in Galaxy 8? Well it's a bit hard to get there in a ship with a small cargo.

I just wrote something on the subject of whether the game really is openened af full of different choices when it favours some ship types so heavily and makes others near unplayable here.

Perhaps some sorts of trade missions with gold, gems and platinum should pay really well but only be available to commanders of a certains ranking and or legal status to make the smaller ships a real option.

Regarding bounty-hunting...
I think that there should be the option of purchasing a 'Bounty-hunter's Licence' which allows you access to the Bounty-hunter's contracts board (maybe F9 in stations) and gives details of pirate bands or individuals and rumours of where they've been known to operate. Bounty-hunters can then travel to those systems, hunt down and pick off their targets and claim not just the GalCop bounty, but a per capita bonus from the person who put up the bounty on the board. Of course, the use of WMD's could negate said bonus (who'd pay a bounty-hunter who uses such indescriminate measures to get their kills) and this could encourage the use of smaller ships.

Captain Hesperus
"Bounty-hunters! As if my troubles weren't bad enough!"

Captain Hesperus wrote:

Regarding bounty-hunting...
I think that there should be the option of purchasing a 'Bounty-hunter's Licence' which allows you access to the Bounty-hunter's contracts board (maybe F9 in stations) and gives details of pirate bands or individuals and rumours of where they've been known to operate. Bounty-hunters can then travel to those systems, hunt down and pick off their targets and claim not just the GalCop bounty, but a per capita bonus from the person who put up the bounty on the board. Of course, the use of WMD's could negate said bonus (who'd pay a bounty-hunter who uses such indescriminate measures to get their kills) and this could encourage the use of smaller ships.

Captain Hesperus
"Bounty-hunters! As if my troubles weren't bad enough!"

Good idea. Such a license would of course only be purchasable by good guys (at least not fugitives) and immediately be revoked should one run astray (with the option of repurchasing upon reentering the narrow trade lane of the righteous - as one CGC preached called it).

Dr.-SPACE-Nil wrote:

Good idea. Such a license would of course only be purchasable by good guys (at least not fugitives) and immediately be revoked should one run astray (with the option of repurchasing upon reentering the narrow trade lane of the righteous - as one CGC preached called it).

Ahh, the CGC preachers. I could listen to their inane rambling for hours. 'Believe not the Brabenite heretics!'. Great scripting, man!

Captain Hesperus
"I'm not really what you'd call 'religious', it's just that I'm too unlucky not to risk irritating anyone omnipotent."

I also want to ask: in Oolite only 8 galaxys? As saids mr. Barben in original Elite was 281.747.976.710.676 galaxys...

Captain Hesperus wrote:

Dr.-SPACE-Nil wrote:

Good idea. Such a license would of course only be purchasable by good guys (at least not fugitives) and immediately be revoked should one run astray (with the option of repurchasing upon reentering the narrow trade lane of the righteous - as one CGC preached called it).

Ahh, the CGC preachers. I could listen to their inane rambling for hours. 'Believe not the Brabenite heretics!'. Great scripting, man!

Captain Hesperus
"I'm not really what you'd call 'religious', it's just that I'm too unlucky not to risk irritating anyone omnipotent."

Thanks. I stole most of it from Murgh's Boyracers and Rickshaws.

The Guild is in G7 not 8! and yeah there are only 8 Galaxys.

On bounty hunting, a lot of pirates have escape pods, so giving him a chance to eject when he's venting plasma and capturing his pod with double your money! The board for bounty hunters is basically what Assassins adds (plus some other stuff). But don't call them, they'll call you. Jobs offered though depend on your reputation as a killer and your Elite rating. Contacts of 5,000 10,000 and even 100,000 Credits can be won. So Assassination is a valid finacial alternative to trading or piracy and there is no need to have a ship with cargo space. In fact many of the Big Uber Ships are usutable for making hits in for various reasons.

You need to be a badass Commander to qualify for some of the big money contracts, so you have to be prepared to start small to earn your reputation. Hey the Triads aren't gonna contact some squeacky clean GalCop lacky when the need a witness rubbed out! Or maybe finding favour with the Mafia is more your style, or the Opporseed peoples of Dictatorships sometimes need someone for a removal job if you are a more principled killer. The word in the space lanes is that a lot of different powers are now battling for control of Galaxy 7 and GalCop has already lost its status as top dog in some systems. There's money to be made by a commander prepared to serve many masters!

You do need a sort of bounty hunters licences as you need to gain the favour of the Guild and keep it. Same sort of thing as your requesting, but I made it available on the other side of the law! For the sequal however....

LittleBear wrote:

The Guild is in G7 not 8!

OK. One galaxy less to traverse then. But still a long way to go...

At this rate of confrontations I'll probably be Elite before being offered the first contract (even though I only turned deadly recently).

The Assasisnations expansions series is a truly great idea and I hope to see them spread throughout the galaxies. If it is possible to supplement with randomly generated marks that continue to be offered to players, once they have completed the missions with storylines, then that would give commanders a way to play in ships with little or no cargospace (I don't know if it already has random missions since I try not to get it spoiled too much by reading threads about it) .

As I see it, the problem with randomly scripted missions is that it's tough to get a random planet. Oh, you could just generate a random number. But then, is it near or far? How many jumps? What's the max and min time to get there?

Additionally, we need better AIs. The more dangerous (and therefore profitable) pirates should be iron-assed themselves, AND use their rear lasers. (I've never been shot after I got someone to flee.) They should be pretty accurate, too: none of this laser light-show stuff.

It wouldn't be tough to kit out some ships in different bounty price ranges. But then, why is this blue lobstoid offering me only 100cr. to go across the galaxy and take revenge on some loser in a Sidewinder? If he needs to run that far, he ought to be running from something bigger. And if he doesn't need to run, he should be able to get cheap help closer to home.

Finally, storing randomly generated variables seems to be a problem. For instance, when you return to a system, most of the same hits should still be there. But for that, we'd need to keep track of the hits in each system, and that means a LOT of variables. Scripts don't allow you to generate variable names dynamically, and there's no way to store an array type, so that kind of persistence is very difficult.

Random missions might be possible, but that would require changing the EXE code. It isn't somthing that can be done with an OXP. I don't think that random assassinations would be possible though. The ship would need to be unique (otherwise Oolite woudn't know you'd killed the right adder!). This is why Assassins Config file is nearly a Meg! Had to put it in G7 as other mission writers had put missions in G1-5 and because of the amount of scripting it had to be set in a "blank" Galaxy. Just buy two Hyper-drives and get over there Doc! I kinda figured people who'd already played the other missions allready available would be in G5, so it is only a short hop!

I was never a fan though of the Random missions in FFE "nuke XXX on planet YYY on stardate ZZZ". No consequences to your actions, no plot and once you've done one you've really done them all. There are now an awful lot of missions available:- Lovecats, Deposessed, Taris Corporation, Ionics etc which are much better than anything randomly generated!

I'll do a quick "Hard Pirates" OXP if people like. Nothing much but all the Classic Elite Ships, fully blinged out with weapons, all the extra equipment and a much bigger bounty than normal, randomly appearing as pirates. I wrote a custom AI that makes ships more agressive than normal for Assassins, so I could asign that to them. Its a quick hack as it doesn't need me to do any scripting, graphics or AIs. Try and get it done one afternoon this week, if I have a day out of Court.