Oolite Bulletins

Well I can't say my player interactions have been bad in game. I got taken down by a right honorable pirate in Altair recently.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthrea ... ost2008393

A pirate belonging to an organized faction called CODE interdicted me (part of the reason they are called CODE is they offer a "safe passage" protection racket - give them X amount of credits via cargo transfer and you get a code to bypass any pirate attacks from them for the month.)

Anyway, I didn't have the code. I was ordered to stand down or be fired upon.

I ran. Or, at least, I thought I was going to run. Turned out this ship was bigger than mine, big enough that it interfered with my hyperdrive's ability to jump (a big enough ship creates a gravity well that will slow a hyperdrive down immensely).

...aaaaand the next thing you know I'm being fired upon. I jink and turn and weave but I'm getting the crap beat out of me. Soon my shields are down and I'm taking hull damage.

Now, outside of combat I know exactly any number of things I could have or should have done, but as you know I play a kind of IronMan mode. Any time I get shot down there's a real chance I'm dead for good and have to start from scratch. So my heart is pounding in my chest. I have tunnel vision, thinking only of escape instead of the several things I could have done instead.

I forgot I had chaff that could have interfered with his targeting sensors
I forgot I could try dropping some of my cargo as a distraction
I forgot that I could have (earlier) tried closing in and weaving around him while my hyperdrive charged instead of running and being an easy long range target
So many things I forgot because I was having genuine terror. It made how people doing stupid things in shows and movies actually make a degree of sense. You get stupid fast when you're afraid.

Next thing you know I'm drifting, dead in space. The pirate had killed my engines. I was helpless. But he wasn't continuing to open fire.

Basically this was his way of saying "care to reconsider your position?"

Calming down I come to my senses and drop cargo. A month ago being left without engines would have been a death sentence, but the latest major update introduced a new feature: "reboot/repair" in which your whole ship goes offline for one minute while you canabilize parts from your other subsystems to get whatever is disabled back up and running again (not by much, just a few percent). Great little feature and I like the fact you have to take parts from other parts of the ship to get it working again.

Anyway, My hull is down to 11% or so and I manage to limp back to the station and lick my wounds.


Later, I come back to the system and see that commander there, hunting other prey. I hail him on text comms, thanking him for not blowing me out of the sky.

"Next time you should really drop your cargo," he tells me.

"Yeah, I should, but you never know when a pirate is going to be a psycho who kills you anyway. Thanks for not being that guy."

"Fly safe, commander."


As scared as I was in the battle, as angry as I was at myself for not managing to get away or stay calm under fire, as POed as I was at him for picking on me, that was a great, great, great moment.

ClymAngus wrote:

Oh! A nice game of watch the piranhas eat each other?

I hope I don't find any - I'd have a very hard decision to make, as I ain't too far from Godel Ring.
How does one go about finding 'rare goods' anyway? I ain't done any trading as yet, you see!

To mossfoot:
"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."

Whatever game floats your boat at the end of the day. I think I'll stick to making things rather that being swiss cheesed. I hate to capitulate and I like to win. A trait I share with a certain James Tiberius Kirk.

They seem to take their jobs very seriously I could rag them if you like?

You have other options sir, to quote Chaucer from first knight:
Chaucer: I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.

Mmmmm minty

To Cody:
I just find this kind of competition a bit like gladiators being made to swallow diamonds. You can be rich, but you've got to get a bit bloody to find your fortune sir!

Cody wrote:

How does one go about finding 'rare goods' anyway? I ain't done any trading as yet, you see!

May be different for this one, but the normal ones just appear in the commodity market, in a different colour, and with very low supply, when you're at the right station. Sometimes the system description on the galaxy chart gives a hint (e.g. Epsilon Indi); sometimes it's just a surprise when you get there (e.g. Ethgreze).

I wouldn't mind getting 'a bit bloody' so much - but the thought of delivering it to some pajero blockading the station is not attractive!

Ah - thanks, cim!

I have been itching to use this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BOeiY90PLQ&t=26m4s

Anyway, the great experiment continues - how long can I last without commodity trading?
My credit balance is now up to 150k or so - which don't amount to a hill of beans! <grins>

My three ranks: Harmless; Penniless; Mostly Aimless - but I ain't been killed yet!

Those of us that play solo are Ineligible to participate as the rules dictate you MUST play open in all phases of the search,acquisition and sale of the nvidia cargo.

Can't help but be cynical here: if all solo players decide to go to open to compete for this gimmick then the powers that be can shut down solo with the reasoning that everyone has shown a desire to play open. I truly hope that does not come to pass but solo is a step child of the game and we all know what happens to stepchildren in other stories.

Cody
you are lucky dude if you ain't been treated to the stygian darkness of the river styx.

I worked up to a cobra... then got plastered by a dropship going through the letterbox... the station finished me off in a heartbeat... had to start over again from scratch... now using a lakon 6 with 564,000 credits and 1 mill worth of improvements in engines, power distributors, cargo racks and a docking computer.

Found out that I got plastered because of incoming queue... the docking computer fixed that right up and haven't had a problem since.

rank: harmless in combat, dealer in trading, mostly aimless in exploration altho I have 40,000 credits to my bank account in discoveries.

Yah-Ta-Hey wrote:

Cody... you are lucky dude if you ain't been treated to the stygian darkness of the river styx.

I've become experienced at running, either by evading the interdictions, or submitting then boosting away while the FSD cools down/recharges, then either re-entering SC or jumping out. An unladen explorer Cobra III (all I've bought for the stock explorer model is a fuel scoop) with all pips to engines can shift pretty damn good... and it can jump a goodish distance too! I do wish that NPC bandits had cargo scanners though! Hmm... perhaps they're simply imitating so-called griefers!

Cody wrote:

I do wish that NPC bandits had cargo scanners though! Hmm... perhaps they're simply imitating so-called griefers!

How is the NPC AI? I've not played the game, nor have I watched much gameplay footage ... one bit I did watch though had the pilot explore some unknown signal which turned out to be a (presumably) NPC ship - one of those daft-looking penguinoid things - doing loop-de-loops in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. Is the NPC traffic comparable to Oolite? Do you get to feel, in the single-player game, that you're inside a universe which will go on just fine without you?

Disembodied wrote:

How is the NPC AI? [snip] Do you get to feel, in the single-player game, that you're inside a universe which will go on just fine without you?

I'll have to think about that some - spoilt by Oolite, am I! Lacking soul, has been my early impression - lacking content too! Don't even mention smuggling! On the combat side, I've only been forced into it twice, and I won both encounters using the basic loaned pulse lasers! Plenty of comets* buzzing around (but little interaction between them), plenty of ships going in and out of stations/outposts. I'm mostly operating in low-sec space, btw - dangerous! Unidentified Signal Sources are basically guaranteed NPC bounty farming locations, I believe - something which I refuse to indulge in!


*That's how other ships in supercruise appear - like miniature comets, and they do buzz!

Cody wrote:

On the combat side, I've only been forced into it twice, and I won both encounters using the basic loaned pulse lasers!

Well, you've got years of Oolite training, but even so ... it doesn't fill me with confidence that they've spent much time or effort in crafting a competent combat AI. Did you kill both assailants? Or just force one or both to retreat? If NPCs at least have the nous to try to run away, that would be something.

One of them did try to run, as it happens - but I chased it down! If I am forced into combat, my RoE allow killing and collection of bounties!
Perhaps cim, or one of the other players, would have a better insight into how the AI is performing - after all, I am only a dumb pilot!

Cody wrote:

Unidentified Signal Sources are basically guaranteed NPC bounty farming locations, I believe

To be fair, not all of them are.. sometimes they'll be an individual who can tip you off to where you'll find someone you've been trying to hunt down, or an agent of a faction opposed to the faction you're ferrying cargo for, to make you a better offer for the goods you're carrying.. things like that.