Oolite Bulletins

According to the core game, the only things that count as a player score are;

Laser Hits,
EBombs or Mines,
Missiles,
Or ramming to the target.

I may miss some

Any thing else is not count as a kill by the player. But can be simulated.

Many of the ideas here may seem a bit absurd or simply humour. But if one restricts ideas to only those which seem sensible at the moment, it can stifle creativity. Better to be silly sometimes than to be less creative than one can be, and who can tell what "serious" ideas may come from exploring some outrageous possibilities?

Thargoid, Commander McLane, and many other OXP writers don't get near the attention that their projects deserve. I don't have a good suggestion at this time to remedy that, and I think it's largely due to there being such a glorious abundance of great OXPs that many players just find it hard to keep track of what is available. Perhaps at least some of them could maybe have YAH adverts or a mention in the snoopers rumour mill? Admittedly, that would only help if the player has those installed, but it could make for some neat ads and snoopers bulletins.

Amen, good point!

Frankly, something I WOULD like to do sometime is organize a "shopping catalog" of sorts of all the equipment, and eventually the ships. Hmm, I could do that in maybe one afternoon, given enough data. I think I shall. I mean, hey, I have Microsoft Publisher. I can even borrow some of the YAH ads for it for non-purchasables.

Ganelon wrote:

Perhaps at least some of them could maybe have YAH adverts or a mention in the snoopers rumour mill?

+1 this. And on a related note, I'm suprised that YAH doesn't broadcast like the Black Monks banks when the player ship is in range.

There's a golden advertising / spamming opportunity going begging.

Bugbear wrote:

There's a golden advertising / spamming opportunity going begging.

If you could launch missiles / fire lasers at the source of your spam email, wouldn't you?

For some years, whenever anyone asks "What would you do if yo won the lottery?" I explain my fantasy:

• to invest £1m in recruiting some ex-squaddies, some techies (although I could do that bit myself) and some experienced 419-baiters to track down half a dozen of these scammers and take them out. Yes, I really do mean hire mercenaries to murder some thieving toe-rags.

(I'm not even posting off-topic!)

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, SandJ. LOL

If it was actual spamming, like the Black monks do or like one gets in Communist systems (if you have the OXP installed, anyway), it would get old fast if overdone. Maybe if it was actually only when you were passing by a YAH billboard, it might not be too bad.

A bit off topic, since it wouldn't be a weapon, but something I've thought would be cool would be if there were some "communication channels" to check when one hit a new system. One would be emergency signals (always on) and maybe station communications and ship to ship.. But also maybe one could switch to check local news while tooling down the spacelane when things are quiet.

Actual music and voice would be nice, of course, maybe via BGS. The work of putting that together for so many systems would be beyond monumental though (and the download would be rather huge). So maybe some mostly random txt bits blended together with the sort of info one gets via the Welcome Mat OXP could make some reasonable system "news" that might be peppered with some adverts and maybe propaganda appropriate to the sort of system. But to have it be something you definitely switch to when you want it, rather than onscreen all the time.

Ganelon wrote:

A bit off topic, since it wouldn't be a weapon, but something I've thought would be cool would be if there were some "communication channels" to check when one hit a new system. One would be emergency signals (always on) and maybe station communications and ship to ship.. But also maybe one could switch to check local news while tooling down the spacelane when things are quiet.

Actual music and voice would be nice, of course, maybe via BGS. The work of putting that together for so many systems would be beyond monumental though (and the download would be rather huge).

Easy peasy! Stop using the IRC channel and use Skype instead!

When I was younger and even more annoying, when I wanted to aggravate my office colleagues I would type out loud.

"Tab, Tab, pee, ee, ar, eff, oh, ar, emm, space, oh, pee, ee, en, hyphen, eff, eye, ell, eye, backspace, ee, ess, full stop, carriage return, implied linefeed. Tab, tab, oh, en, space, ee, ar, ar, ee, arr," etc.

Now if we all had a common Skype session when playing:

"Commander SandJ in Python Jolly Rogering lining up for final approach"

plus 20 other such updates going on all at the same time.

How much 'radio chatter' did you want?



Actually, there's the makings of an idea here: a server to connect to that provides radio chatter by Skype, tailored according to messages sent to it by whatever (suitably compatible) game is being played. Hmm...

Ganelon wrote:

If it was actual spamming, like the Black monks do or like one gets in Communist systems (if you have the OXP installed, anyway), it would get old fast if overdone. Maybe if it was actually only when you were passing by a YAH billboard, it might not be too bad.

I'd beg to differ there. I don't know how many YAH billboards are currently available but I can't say I'm seeing much in way of repetition with the ads.

Now think of the hundreds of OXPs that are available - ships, HUDs, weapons, dockables. If a YAH station was broadcasting a short one line blurb every N seconds while a ship was in range, selecting at random from the hundreds of OXPs available, how much repetition would you really get?

Hell, that sort of content would be simple to compose and upload, even better if it could be included by the OXP writers in their OXP config files.

If you've installed all of the available YAH sets - (A->G) there are 350 Ads available in-game, I sent the ads for set H to Ark (who was the original re-compiler for this OXP) sometime ago - that would take us to 400 and there's almost enough now for a full set I.

Firstly, forgive me if I'm proposing something really undesirable...(and the fact that the point of this thread was to NOT propose another OXP, well, what can I say? Derailing threads is the done thing around here )

If using YAH to broadcast OXPs to players in-game - some sensitivity would be needed to preserve immersion. It would be hardly feasible to be putting a URL to the Elite Wiki OXP list up on screen. I'd find that totally jarring.

And there would be some OXPs that it would be impossible to advertise in game, such as YAH itself!

But, for the sake of an example (and I've just grabbed a random ship OXP), YAH could broadcast something like:

Aquarian Shipbuilders proudly presents the Manta Ray fighter. Get yours so your enemies can get theirs!

wouldn't be too out of place would it?

Another potential immersion-breaker here is the individual Ooniverses we all inhabit.
For instance my Ooniverse is quite pure and contains very few OXPs. The ones I use add eye-candy and a few hand-picked 'sensible' OXPs of equipment and ships that actually 'fit' into my Ooniverse, such as my GalDrivePod or Solo's excellent Copperhead.
I deliberately don't include ships or equipment that are to my mind silly, too Uber or just don't make sense in the 'core' Ooniverse.
And therefore I wouldn't want to be assaulted by Ads for things that simply don't exist in my personal Ooniverse.

There are already some adverts for YAH that advertise OXP ships and equipment: I've done ones for the Ore Processor, GRS Buoy Repair, the Cargo Shepherd, Executive Spaceways, Hoopy Casinos, Galactic Navy ... and there are lots of others, too. It doesn't really bother me to see an advert for an OXP that I don't have: most of the adverts are for things that don't exist at all in the game anyway, and are often pretty silly as well.

There's no editorial control over YAH: if someone wants to make an ad, make an ad. They're 256 x 128 .png files, that's the only specification.

Smivs wrote:

And therefore I wouldn't want to be assaulted by Ads for things that simply don't exist in my personal Ooniverse.

And that's a fair point (I'm always arguing both sides of a discussion..) I've said before that the YAH constores are such a work of art. I would not want to be responsible for making them less desirable.

Like everything else regarding OXPs - in game broadcast ads would need to be opt-in.

This is a humble attempt to get this thread back to its subject.

My ideal weapon would be something similar to the R4M-Orkan salvo-fired anti-aircraft rocket found in (for example) German Me-262s during WW2. The rocket was designed to be fired in a saturation salvo into a bomber formation from beyond the bomber's defense guns' range. The quite powerful warhead of a single rocket was usually enough to guarantee a kill with a single hit even against the heavy bombers used by the Allied in their daytime level bombings. The rocket itself was unguided but flew reasonably fast and as it was fired in salvoes, it proved to be an effective threat to large bomber formations.

How I'd like to see this in Oolite is another question. IIRC, there are some OXPs where missile pylons are filled with a larger number of smaller missiles. What I'm looking for, however, is something a bit different. The weapon should have a very long range and a powerful strike on impact. It should travel much faster than the current missiles and be completely unguided. It should saturate a target area with highly lethal weapon fire, so that is a huge waste of money when used against a single or unwise target, but something that brings fear to all the tight escort formations with a purpose out there. The Orkan was an expensive but effective weapon (in competent... or maybe even Deadly hands ), the Oolite version should be no different.

This weapon could be utilised by any pilot no matter what their Legal Rating is. Law-abiding folk can use it against marauding pirate fleets, bounty hunters can reduce the escort formation of their mark to scrap and pirates could leave a cargo vessel stranded without escort. Even the Navy could be interested in something that can make that cloud of Thargoids just... disappear

Azured wrote:

This is a humble attempt to get this thread back to its subject.

My ideal weapon would be something similar to the R4M-Orkan salvo-fired anti-aircraft rocket found in (for example) German Me-262s during WW2. The rocket was designed to be fired in a saturation salvo into a bomber formation from beyond the bomber's defense guns' range. The quite powerful warhead of a single rocket was usually enough to guarantee a kill with a single hit even against the heavy bombers used by the Allied in their daytime level bombings. The rocket itself was unguided but flew reasonably fast and as it was fired in salvoes, it proved to be an effective threat to large bomber formations.

How I'd like to see this in Oolite is another question. IIRC, there are some OXPs where missile pylons are filled with a larger number of smaller missiles. What I'm looking for, however, is something a bit different. The weapon should have a very long range and a powerful strike on impact. It should travel much faster than the current missiles and be completely unguided. It should saturate a target area with highly lethal weapon fire, so that is a huge waste of money when used against a single or unwise target, but something that brings fear to all the tight escort formations with a purpose out there. The Orkan was an expensive but effective weapon (in competent... or maybe even Deadly hands ), the Oolite version should be no different.

This weapon could be utilised by any pilot no matter what their Legal Rating is. Law-abiding folk can use it against marauding pirate fleets, bounty hunters can reduce the escort formation of their mark to scrap and pirates could leave a cargo vessel stranded without escort. Even the Navy could be interested in something that can make that cloud of Thargoids just... disappear

Will be ready in 10 Minutes