Oolite Bulletins

I enjoy manual docking, even though I have a fitted 'puter.
Actually I think I only used it three times: once to dock with a Dredger and the rest because I was sleepy (or rather, nearly dropping out cold) and wanted to get to a certain system before going to bed...

@ Frame:
you are right. on all counts.

Buoys were not in C=64 or any of the Frontier sequels.

I almost never use the 'autodock' in my experience it leads to a 50% mortality rate.
(I use it to dock while I'm in the combuis making coffee or while I'm in my cabin working on stuff at the CPU console.)
quickdock can be handy with Behemoths etc.

I love manual docking with a joystick. match the spin and then put the throttle forward!

Frame wrote:

Weird though, im almost 100% sure that you could not dock at full throttle in Classic Elite on the commodore 64...

I seem to remember the same. I was astonished when I found out that you can dock at full throttle in Oolite.

And actually with a little bit practise it is sooo easy to dock manually without a buoy. As the docking bay is very visible with all the flashers lining up with it is no problem at all. And as most of the ships are relatively small compared to the bay there is no need to line up exactly. Sort of lining up will do most of the time.

@Commander McLane

aye the 2d docking bay on the C=64 made it a bit more challenging...
however i once docked backwards facing the planet since you couldnt stand complete still on the C=64 version...

any fictional spectators would have siad... show off ^^

....?!

how is that possible?

It was impossible to have negative speed in C=64.
That means NO backwards movement.

no clue... my bet is that my forward motion was translated to negative motion when i turned the craft at throttle set to zero...

however, that is purely speculation...

i do recall though that i scraped the sides quite alot before docking...
i tried it again but failed each time after that...

maybe you had just a piece of craft 'sticking out' that you managed to scrape inside.

Being a PC user many moons ago I had to be content just reading this BBS untill the first PC installer version was released (thanks again Nic) and IIRC it was damned hard to dock manually untill you got the hang of it, it certainly seemed harder then TNK and my original Amstrad version. At some stage with a later release I'm sure Giles did something to make manual docking a lot easier, and certainly now I can dock my supercobra at full speed and sometimes with injectors too.

Wiggy wrote:

I believe that navigation buoys were in the Spectrum version.

In my day, we didn't have them on the BBC version, and we used to look down our collective nose at the Speccy users who couldn't dock without them.

(Yes, I'm from a strange alien race that has a collective nose. Don't visit our world when there's a flu bug going round.)

sorry to revive but, the speccy version did _not_ have buoys.
The nav buoys of Oolite are great, but i must admit, i used to enjoy the fact that i could dock without the need for a DC. The art of docking was to flyby the station, directly towards the planet, then stop, turn round and just throttle up.

one version of the game had retro rockets, i bet you could line up the slot in the rear view mirror and fire them off to dock backwards. Galcop would probbly revoke your licence for stupidity tho!

They were certainly in Xelite, but were not a lot of good really once you got miltary lasers etc.

In Oolite the enemy can be much more potent and the ability to be able to do the equivalent of a Harrier viffing would be brilliant in combat.

I also love the concept of Newtonian physics and six degrees of freedom... But that's not Oolite!

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

I also love the concept of Newtonian physics and six degrees of freedom... But that's not Oolite!

You and your six degrees of freedom!

People will think you are obsessed

Captain Hesperus