New Jameson here, some initial feedback

[stranger]

Really intersting discussion, gentlemen

Oolite is a Darwinian world like real reality. Nobody cares if you have only pulse laser and almost useless missiles starting game. It is your problem if you haven't adequate survival skills. We have no difficulty slider in Oolite from Kindergarden to Insane, but we have ton of options to configure game challenges individually using OXPs, altering game mechanics. Seems confusing for new Jameson “recommend me must-have starter OXPs please”, but having some game experience you have option to assemble your unique game world and possibly to redefine vanilla game rules.
Yes, there are players who prefers to have the best starter ship and to complete upgrade it as soon as possible and dive into battles and long travels. So we have option to select starter ship seeking more challenge or just start on well balanced ship like in old good Elite. Nice.
Agree with Redspear: Cobra Mk III is well balanced universal ship. The best ship in default set. I always has feeling it is too good as starter ship. You definitely need to deserve it.
Start Choices is must-have personally for me, but my favorite starter ship is not Adder, it is Cobra Mk I. Comparing dimensions of Adder (28 x 15 x 51) and 1 ton cargo pod (9.6 length, approx 5.8 diameter) I feel 5 tons declared in Start Choices for Adder hard to place in ship internal volume (unfortunately, my graphical presentation of issue with Adder posted in Russian forum was lost). You can place up to 6 pods into Adder internal volume, but how about room for hyperspace capable ship engine? Of course, I understand, 5 tons for Adder in Start Choices was declared to provide option to install passenger berth. But honestly, Adder is too small and too slow for such business (maybe Adder Sport modification with 300+ speed will be option for parcel delivery?).
The same issue in more extreme form is with Transporter: having dimensions 30 x 11 x 43 you have no internal volume to place 12 cargo pods declared in ship specifications. Cobra Mk I is honest ship: you really have internal space for declared 10 tons of cargo.
I have Skilled NPCs, Deep Space Pirates and Random Hits Shipset in my must-have list too. Not recommended for new Jameson until you’ll be familiar with basics of survival in game. Sometimes you’ll get advice like “start without such OXPs, upgrade your ship and install it later”. IMHO it is wrong approach. Having iron-assed ship too early and too easy it is hard to develop skills of tactical awareness, such as visual observation, evaluation, making decision to fight, run or cover, close to dogfight or hit from distance. So my advice – a bit practice with game without these OXPs, install it and start again. It is really cool experience to just survive in early game.
There are also Custom Shields and Breakable Equipment – nice mods redefining vanilla game mechanics and making game more challenging. And can I recommend Missiles Modification? This mod makes vanilla missiles partially resistant to ECM (but not so resistant as hard-headed missiles), so you’ll have really useful missiles as defense weapon on early game.
Moreover, I prefer to play with my tailor-maid modifications of game economy and ship specs. Fuel injector costs 2500 Cr in my Ooniverse instead vanilla 600 Cr for example, so starting with Cobra Mk I I need to survive 7...10 game days in dangerous flights between Leesti and Diso or between Tionisla and Isinor to collect enough money to get this critical upgrade. Not for casual gamer, of course.
I have also more strict rules to obtain some battle equipment. Vanilla Military laser is too overpowered and too easy to obtain for green Lave Pilot Academy graduate? Well, let’s give chance for poor bastards. I must have record of 8+ kills to upgrade to Beam Laser and 64+ kills to upgrade to Military Laser, so I have plenty of time for gun practice, selecting adequate opponents and avoiding too dangerous – usual learning curve for fighter ace pilots in real reality.

[Redspear]

One thing I like about the Cobra Mk I start is that you still start in a Cobra, it's just not THE Cobra.

The other candidate for the core set super-ship is the Boa Mk II/Boa Cruiser. Tough, huge cargo capacity and faster than some fighters, once you've got a bit of capital behind you it can quickly become a money-making machine.

On the subject of speed again, another interesting addition by aegidian (via oxo) was the Python Eunectes Turbo. Significantly boosting the Python's speed to (no surprise) 0.35LM, exactly that which he chose to grant to the Cobra Mk III as the default player ship.

... I think we might be straying into thread-split territory.

[Grindalf]

@starting with the Adder
I've restarted with the Adder and to be honest I'm not finding it difficult at all. I just corkscrew to avoid pirate fire, make sure I buy things at a good price and sell at a good price. The big problem is its a long haul to be able to afford a new ship and without cargo expansion being available to the Adder I have no alternatives other than the long grind ahead of me. A possible cargo expansion of 5TC for the Adder would at the very least make the grind a little shorter. But it makes the thought of eventually upgrading to the CobraMKIII a good one

[Redspear]

Once you've got a bit of extra kit installed, the Adder makes a good courier. Some missions don't require any cargo space and once you build up a reputation the rewards can be quite good.

They can also be a lot more fun than the standard milk run × 1,000.

[TS13]

Early feedback cont'd. This one is for OXPs again.

I am slowly going through the available OXPs, reading their wiki pages and picking. I strongly suggest to the OXP creators to be as newbie-friendly as possible. In particular:

a) Some OXPs do not explain themselves clearly on their wiki pages. I am not sure what some OXPs do. I know there is usually a link to the OXP forum for further discussion, but that's not ideal when I am interested in several OXPs out of a huge list at the same time. In addition, many OXPs set the background for the OXP by flavor text and cool stories. That's cute and I like it, but you first let me know what changes the OXP does to earn my interest, otherwise I am not going to read that. Lastly, I see that some creators do not get into the trouble of utilizing the "how game balance is affected" graphic. That's a very useful graphic, please use it.

I am not bashing anyone's hard work, I am just making suggestions for presentation improvement and newbie friendliness. Needless to say, several OXPs are well presented.

b) (This one may be partially my fault, but) For Ambience, the first OXP I installed was BGS. I was looking for an ambience mega-pack to get things going, and this is the one I found. However, it is not clear what other OXPs are included in BGS. For example, I see another OXP for sound, I install it, and I don't notice any changes. Is it already included in BGS? Is it incompatible with BGS? I have no idea.

So three things on this:
- I have to go read BGS forum to figure out what is going on. But this information should have been included on the wiki page, imo.
- For creators of other ambience OXPs: maybe it is a good idea to mention compatibility with Ambience mega-packs (like BGS) on the wiki page. Some do, others don't.
- I admit that maybe it was a bad idea to start with a mega pack, and should have taken it slower.

[Nicksta]

HellOo Commander (first and last time I use that pun on this forum).

I am new to the forum, but I have been playing Oolite for the past four months. I also played older versions of it briefly over the years, but I wasn't aware of the OXPs back then. This community has made a huge difference to the game's appeal beyond the classic Elite fanbase. Discovering interesting OXPs is half the fun for me, but it was also frustrating at the beginning.

I think that language barriers are part of the reason why some wiki pages are unclear. There are OXP authors around the world and English is not always their first language.

I think the "how game balance is affected" graphic is not always used because it didn't always exist on the wiki. Many of the older OXPs are no longer maintained, thus their wiki pages are no longer updated.

I don't blame you for choosing BGS as the first Ambience OXP. It's popular for a reason. I'm not sure if you meant to say meta-pack instead of mega-pack to describe it, but BGS is just one OXP. I know there are alternative soundsets, but I haven't tried them yet. I think that having more than one OXP that changes the same sound effects is bound to cause issues out of the box. The sounds that you end up hearing will probably depend on which OXP is loaded last when you start the game, which is hardly predictable.

There are plenty of opinions on where to start with OXPs and I have one too. I think any one who is new to the game should start with Library (not the Cabal Common Library, just Library). Some of the features are barely used at the moment, but the OXP configuration feature is worth the installation alone, especially when you have more than a dozen OXPs installed (I have about 95 at the moment). It also serves as a replacement of older OXPs that are still available for download, like OXPConfig and Hyperradio. The wiki page goes into much more detail.

Another good place to start when you have played the game for a little while is not really an OXP: it's a browser-based app called Keyconfig. You can find it with a wiki search and use it to create a custom keyboard configuration.

[Cody]

HellOo Commander (first and last time I use that pun on this forum).

<chortles> Right on, Commander!

[TS13]

@Nicksta, very helpful reply, cheers!

Ah, I had forgotten that BGS is fully configurable. This solves most of my problems! I do have the library, BGS mentioned that it was required. But I had forgotten about it. Alright, I am happy with BGS again.

I called BGS a mega pack, because it makes a lot of changes. In addition, a few smaller ambience OXPs mention on their wiki pages that they have been included in BGS. This info should be mentioned on BGS's page too, imo.

No doubt about it, the OXP creators are awesome people. I both enjoy and appreciate their contributions. Here, I am trying to give them the angle of a newbie, in case they have forgotten what it's like to be a newbie being experienced with the game like they are. They can choose to ignore my opinions, I am just trying to help.

Yes, I agree that Library seems to be a no brainer for a starting OXP (unless it has worthy competition that I do not know about -very helpful OXP at any rate).

[spara]

@starting with the Adder
I've restarted with the Adder and to be honest I'm not finding it difficult at all. I just corkscrew to avoid pirate fire, make sure I buy things at a good price and sell at a good price. The big problem is its a long haul to be able to afford a new ship and without cargo expansion being available to the Adder I have no alternatives other than the long grind ahead of me. A possible cargo expansion of 5TC for the Adder would at the very least make the grind a little shorter. But it makes the thought of eventually upgrading to the CobraMKIII a good one

Adder is an underestimated ship . The hardness comes from the grind, IMO. You can't really do cargo contracts, mining is very limited as well as scavenging. +3 cargo helps a little, but not that much. With +3 cargo you can do some passenger shipping, but you won't be doing any scooping any more, since the berth occupies your hold. That basically leaves you with gem trading and parcel contracts. I have not played the game for a while, but at least with the previous versions, the parcel contracts did not scale very high. Please correct me, if this has changed. Also to my recollection, gem business is a bit on the lucky side, as opposed to doing regular milk runs on a Cobra.

[Nicksta]

@TS13

Happy to help and I appreciate your feedback. The newbie perspective is very important when the game tends to guide them into the deep end of the pool.

[Cody]

Adder is an underestimated ship

Indeed it is!

... the parcel contracts did not scale very high. Please correct me, if this has changed.

I don't think anything has changed, but with patience and hard graft, parcel contracts do become quite lucrative. Even early on, a few parcels can earn much needed cash.
For example, a virgin Jameson at Lave will find a 436Cr parcel contract waiting on the board. That's not bad for starters - if said Jameson dares to attempt the run.

[Nicksta]

For example, a virgin Jameson at Lave will find a 436Cr parcel contract waiting on the board. That's not bad for starters - if said Jameson dares to attempt the run.

Yes. I discovered the reason for the generous fee the hard way.

[Cody]

<sniggers>

[Redspear]

There is of course a way around this, but it requires yet more guddling about with the original game: the creation of a (nearly or completely) safe "core systems" set of planets, where the police are plentiful and pirates rare to nonexistent. The profitability of trade within any such core systems, of course, should be lower, but it would be a place for Jamesons to pooter about in their Adder, learn the basic game mechanics, and shoot a few asteroids, before scraping enough credits together for a few bits of decent kit (or maybe even e.g. a Moray or a Cobra I) and setting off for riskier, and more rewarding, trade routes among the Outer Worlds.

If I were to try such an approach...

1. Remove influence of Riedquat et. al. on neighboring systems (within the 'paddling pool' area)

Riedquat could remain an anarchy but for whichever reason you might choose, it's pirates not stray to nearby Diso. Could be an honour thing - real pirates aren't afraid of competition. Otherwise it makes sense for only the toughest pirate groups to try their luck in the safer systems, making them not that safe at all... I prefer to think that the police have already 'won that war' and so only desperate, lone pirates who can't get near the front of the queue in an Anarchy might try their luck.

2. No need to adjust prices

Trading profit = price difference x quantity. In a default adder, quantity is usually 2, therefore profits are already capped significantly - even in a Cobra Mk I it is only half that of the Mk III. Throw in repair costs and the like and you're still a long way from rolling on money. When you have some better equipment, parcel missions become more viable and you are ready to leave the pool.

[Disembodied]

I think, if it was thought desirable to set up a "paddling pool", it would be best to go the whole hog and redraw the map. Put a little cluster of half-a-dozen systems, all within a jump or two of each other, with only one longish jump route out to the rest of the galaxy. Make the 6 systems a mix of Democracies and Corporate States, with maybe the one on the route to the outside a Confederacy, linking to (say) a Communist or Dictatorship. Keep the Anarchies at a distance. Make the 6 starter systems a mix of average-to-rich Mostly Industrials and Mostly Agriculturals, to keep the profits down. Provide a couple of friendly missions - ferrying parcels at close range, say, and helping to clear unwanted debris from the spacelanes.

Ship and equipment prices would have to be altered to let pilots kit out the Adder into something at least nominally survivable within a relatively short space of time (maybe by making equipment prices at least partly dependent on ship price - so e.g. a Beam laser for an Adder is much cheaper than a Beam laser for a Cobra III). Players should also be able to upgrade to e.g. a Moray or a Cobra I reasonably quickly, too.