Oolite Bulletins

Frame wrote:

Now people claim I should have gotten a cloaking device for that achievement. I cannot not recall that however... since there was no congratulations upon docking... and I bet I never checked.

If it was the cougar, there was no cloaking device reward on the C64. My friends never met it and even claimed that I must be insane claiming to have fought that strange ship...so I only reloaded that old commander and flew the same path again and again until I met that ship a second time, called a friend to me to be witness and shot it down. It had horrible powerful lasers...but there was nothing to be gained than being a survivor of a very rare and threatening experience.

Screet

I also encountered a ship like that, with two nearly round pylons at the sides, at the C64. Tried to replicate this twenty or so times afterwards, but couldn't - this was a unique event. No one else I knew who played Elite ever encountered it, and I got no Cloaking Device. First time I heard about this again was on the boards here when someone posted wireframe reconstruction pictures of presumably this ship which I recognised.

Where does the name Cougar come from, actually? I had and have no idea what it was supposed to be ...



L

I guess B&B ran out of snake names and switched to cats instead - the Cougar or Mountain Lion is native to North America - perhaps they envisioned a successor to Elite set in the future where the new ships would have a more feline tilt?

I never encountered the Cougar in Elite on the C64 despite getting to Elite - I have a friend who swore he encountered a mysterious ship that wasn't on the ship chart and wasn't the constrictor. I didn't believe him of course and I put it down to another Gen. Ship myth...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I guess B&B ran out of snake names and switched to cats instead - the Cougar or Mountain Lion is native to North America - perhaps they envisioned a successor to Elite set in the future where the new ships would have a more feline tilt?

The felines and insects came in the last B&B versions of Elite: Acorn Tube (Elite 1.5) and the NES versions. To whit things like the Gnat, Bug and Cat/Cougar. With the Frontiers versions we have one like the Lion and Mantis, and bird types like the Eagle and Osprey.

One of my Coolest Flight moment was when I was having a drag out fight with a FerDeLance and my Coby 3.

Boy we were evenly matched. We had been trading blows for 15 minuets. Both of our shields had been drained several times and we both chewed though our missile. I barely get my last energy bank charged then he pepper me with shots and I'd have to run.

Finally I said stuff it and decided to pull a kamikaze run. A spiralling charge sent him off running and gave me breathing time to get some energy to my shields. At this point he back on my tail only 100m away. Feeling suicidal I slam on the brakes, he rams in to my ass. The hit strips my shield, drops me to my last quarter energy bank and makes him so much space dust.

I get the credit for the kill and a couple of tons of luxuries for my efforts, but nothing beat the feeling of earning that hard fought kill.

I got a ripple of guilty pleasure from a totally non-hard fought kill - or seven, to be precise.

Sometimes when I witch into an Anarchy system, I just head straight for the planet and see who I bump into. Especially if I have an empty cargo hold...

well, this time I bit off way more than I could chew, and ran into seven real die-hards; fer-de-lances, cobbie rapiers, adders on speed, the lot. Only thing missing was a renegade navy frigate....

By the point that my hull had reached 'extra well-done', I figured that ethical qualms were basically a luxury, and that a Quirium mine was - for the first time - the Right Choice. So I dropped the mine, hit the injectors, and switched to F2...

O... M... G...

Blue sphere! And another, and another, and another. And another, and another... all the while the Bounty notifications pinging up the viewscreen like a Vegas one-arm bandit jackpot... I even slowed down briefly to take a closer look. Briefly.

Eventually the sphere receded, and an eerie calm descended, the scanner which was previously heralding my own imminent doom was now totally empty.

intense or what.

All that death and destruction looks quite pretty, in a chilling kind of way, doesn't it?

Next time, try to get a screenshot...

I had a rather...strange encounter.

I was just lined up with the Nav beacon and started to head towards the station. There was a guy in front of me but he was going to get in before me. Then i realized he was actually coming towards me! I made a sharp upturn but scraped my hull on him.
I looked back to see if I'd killed him but instead he turned around, suddenly an offender and started blasting at the station. Still firing his laser he drove straight into it.
I still wish I'd killed him in the first place

Following a pitched space battle, there was lots of cargo floating around and a fair few non-hostile vessels. Actually having to compete with other non-hostiles to see who could loot the cargo fastest was highly enjoyable, even more so was watching a Cobra Mk I sneak in front of a Cobra MkIII and scoop up the escape capsule the other was going for.

i happened briefly to be in possession of a Dell projector last night, so I hooked it up to the pc and fired up Oolite.

In a dark room with an image that's 8ft x 6ft, even just launching and seeing the planet appear in front of you is totally awesome and a little bit physically disorientating. Checking the aft view and seeing the Griff trade outpost is very cool. Coming in to dock at a Coriolis, I was thinking 'take care, this structure is huge!'.

even Mrs Lfnfan was impressed.

Next stop: hooking up to a cinema projector... ... or IMAX

Darn.. now I have projector envy..

lfnfan wrote:

hooking up to a cinema projector

there is a joint in Walsall that recycles cinema eqpt., unique (almost) in the world (unless you know another one, of course!); your dream could be a reality..