Oolite Bulletins

I disagree with most of above;

Ever heard of the K.I.S.S. principle?

Oolite already has a great rating system.

Mission ratings should be left to the creator of the mission oxp.
eg.
Random hits;
Fantastic rating system, it doesn't interfere with other oxp's. and gives a sense of achievment as you go through the ranks. Also each customer calls you something different from fellow 'law' abiding bounty hunters.

Well Seein as I'm "The Great One"

Don't argue!

Also, Local Hero;
Twice round the G's and only one medal and 2 or 3 rank jumps, don't really remember how I came to Captain?? means there can be heaps to go..

Then there is Assassin.. Well didn't get to far in that before realizing my ship was way under equiped for such a challange. Very much looking to try again now I know how to re-set the oxp to 'start'. And have a bitty better ship.
Ahh, Oolite, it's the best.

Regards
***Elite*** Commander
Late 85 BBC Micro Thanks to BAA Heathrow London.

Alex wrote:

Also, Local Hero;
Twice round the G's and only one medal and 2 or 3 rank jumps, don't really remember how I came to Captain?? means there can be heaps to go..

How many awards do you expect for a few missions .-)

Svengali says;

"How many awards do you expect for a few missions"

Isn't a few 3?

About 20ish missions and only in first 5 G's. Oxp only plays in first 5 and I wasn't exactly going looking for them, though never turned one down.

And here I thought I was doing quite well??

Alex wrote:

Isn't a few 3?

No .-)

wolfigor wrote:

You can imagine an OXP adding an agency that award you ranks for each ship you kill in a communist system or an other one that award you ranks for helping to liberate oppressed people by killing ships in dictatorial systems.

Hmmm. You see, that's exactly the point. I cannot imagine that, because it would break the backstory of Elite/Oolite.

Why would killing ships in dictatorial systems help to liberate the oppressed people? Could you expand on that? Are you talking about random clean traders in the system? How would that help anyone, and which sane agency would give you an award for that? Or are you talking about police ships in dictatorship systems? Again, how would that help anyone on the planet? For a start: In Elite/Oolite the police has nothing to do with the system it's patrolling in. All police and military ships (unless clearly marked otherwise (like for instance the communist ships in communist systems, which are added only through Commies.oxp)) belong to GalCop, not to individual systems, and their sole purpose is to secure the space lanes from pirates (and Thargoids). That's why GalCop (who, by the way, have issued your pilot's license to you in the beginning of the game) marks you as a fugitive if you attack a police ship and doesn't give you a medal, much like your RealLife™ government would do as well. So, you first have to explain what kind of agency would think that killing the interplanetary police ships would help a group of people on a certain planet (obviously not an agency related to GalCop itself).

The closest actually existing thing to your scenario is in Ionics.oxp. But it works exactly like the other guys mentioned: It is added by an OXP that puts additional factions (like The Link, and some freedom fighters) into a sector of the Ooniverse, and gives these factions additional ships, which don't exist in vanilla Oolite. And then it creates a storyline in which killing these additional ships would be award-worthy. This makes sense, even considering the background of the whole game. Giving out random awards for killing random vanilla ships doesn't.

Disembodied wrote:

Commander McLane created the Display Reputation OXP which shows your in-game reputation scores, which are used to determine the value of cargo and passenger contracts offered on the F8-F8 screen. It should* be possible to turn these numerical scores into ranks (or to add ranks to the scores)

It should not only be possible, but it's exactly what Display Reputation OXP does.

Disembodied wrote:

, e.g.:

0: Nobody
1: Chancer
2: Cowboy
3: Fly-by-night
4: Steady
5: Reliable
6: Trustworthy
7: Honourable

or something similar.

I could have been using one-word descriptions. But I deliberately went for longer and more colourful descriptions like:

0: Nobody has ever heard of you delivering a cargo contract.
1: You are in the feeble beginnings of the cargo contract business.
...
5: On the cargo contract market you have a good, but not yet top standing.
...

While you're going through the ranks, you can easily figure out what each sentence stands for.

Commander McLane wrote:

It should not only be possible, but it's exactly what Display Reputation OXP does.

There you go: great minds obviously think alike! Some of them get there a little quicker than others, true, but there's no need to dwell on that ...

I would prefer if things were not so precise. I dont think anyone in the real world has a clear view of their reputation other than good, bad or excellent. I think it should be relatively difficult to tell what your reputation is, and have general hints rather than a way to determine the exact number.

Cmdr James wrote:

I would prefer if things were not so precise. I dont think anyone in the real world has a clear view of their reputation other than good, bad or excellent. I think it should be relatively difficult to tell what your reputation is, and have general hints rather than a way to determine the exact number.

That could be customised using Commander McLane's system. We could use, say, four bands to cover the eight ranks, and don't give an exact numerical figure along with them.

Thats exactly what I was thinking. However, I dont want to tell people how to do things. I myself would rather not have this info, so I dont use that OXP.

I don't use it either. I have just made it available, because people requested it.

And by the way, that's exactly the reason why I went for (non)-descript sentences instead of a number or a clear ranking. The strings are not precise, and deliberately so. If you read something like "You have started to build up a reputation", it doesn't really tell you where you are on the scale. You can't translate it back into a number.