Oolite Bulletins

SandJ wrote:

This is when you use the rear laser.

I have a big problem with rear lasers in that forward/back on the joystick are now the wrong way round. I'm old (granddad-old) and my brain just can't make the adjustment, sorry.

When I played Elite on my Spectrum, I used to turn my joystick round, I remember (front to back) so the rear laser worked just like the front. I could do that because I had 'roll' on the left/right joystick axis, and that's also reversed in the rear view. Now, playing Oolite, I have 'yaw' on the left/right axis, and that isn't reversed -- stick-left gives yaw-left whether looking forwards or backwards.

What I really need is a joystick button that reverses the pitch. If only I'd stuck with programming, all those decades ago, maybe I could write an OXP that would do the job!

Smivs wrote:

Joystick in my right hand, keyboard to the left for my left hand.

That's how I fly. I much prefer 'yaw' to 'roll' on joystick left/right, however, as there's nothing more frustrating to me than having my target just fractionally left or right of the gunsight. I find myself spinning constantly as I try to bring them to the middle. With an agile opponent, it rapidly turns into an exercise in futility.
I'm very happy with Oolite's joystick implementation, I have to say. It all works beautifully with the Logitech Attack 3 -- smooth and very precise. My only problem is the one I raised in my previous post, namely shooting backwards.

Like so much of Oolite, using the rear laser takes practice. It soon becomes second nature, but you will have to stick to it. I reckon I'm actually better with the rear laser than the front these days

This so-called 'pirate' doesn't use the aft laser, nor the side lasers... nor the yaw!

El Viejo wrote:

This so-called 'pirate' doesn't use the aft laser, nor the side lasers... nor the yaw!

I too find that most of my 'business' is conducted with the fore laser, and I rarely use yaw as the twisty function of my J-stick stopped twisting about 6 years ago...

I'd like to interject though I wasn't comparing anybody here to pirates, I was speaking more in terms of 'going about their daily tasks, whatever they may be'. If anybody took undue offense to my referencing people on this forum, well, you shouldn't; if I'm trying to offend anybody you wont have to look for words between the lines.

CapnSkweek wrote:

I'd like to interject though I wasn't comparing anybody here to pirates

Me neither -- just kidding. I'd hoped the would make that plain.

Just to be clear, no offence was taken. You'd know all about it if I'd taken offence, believe me!

Albee wrote:

You're right, of course, and I want to have a go. The problem is, these ship dealers are real rip-off merchants ... (unless someone knows a good place to go, that is??)

Prices for ships on offer with equipment installed have the price for the installed equipment raised, sometimes significantly so, if the equipment's TL > shipyard's (planet's) TL.

A Cobra 3 with military shields at TL 15 shipyard would cost ~200k, at a TL 9 shipyard it would cost - I don't know, twice as much ? (if that is possible at all, maybe equipment in ships can only be found few(er) TL down)

So, generally it's not a bad idea to check the shipyards in high TL worlds. Then you can equip them immediately to your liking / whatever your savings allow you.

SandJ wrote:

This is when you use the rear laser. The nice things about being chased are:
- they are trying to keep themselves in your rear sights;

I appreciate a lot that them chasing me scums no longer are so dumb to stay perfectly in my rear lasers fire, but do little evasions when hit.
I think this development has not been hailed enough.
so
Hurrah!

SandJ wrote:

Pah! Going by the poll, most are not. Those kills came from bounty-hunting, self-defence or saving the multi-species from the alien menace.

Wasn't there something with (q- or e-) bombing the orbital graveyard, and such ?

El Viejo wrote:

You'd know all about it if I'd taken offence, believe me!

You'd be all threatening to tell Cartman about it ?

SandJ wrote:

This is a funny forum.

a) Rather than starting a new thread, they would rather you resurrect an existing relevant one. Most fora would rather have a relevant thread be closed when it is old, and a new one started - I have never understood why. Now I see this forum's approach "Always post in the relevant thread" I think the way the rest of the world does it is stoopid.

Makes sense to me, too. And having seen pilots chastised elsewhere for starting a new thread when there are perfectly serviceable secondhand ones lying around, I'm choosing to use this one to ask a question. (The fact that it bumps my own thread in the process is purely coincidental. )

Thinking about my some-time-in-the-future change of occupation from contract hauler to bounty hunter, I've been looking at possible vessels. Bearing in mind Commander McLane's comments in this thread, I'm wanting a cargo hold, possibly in the 15-20 TC range.

The Scimitar looks excellent, though not cheap. I've given it a test flight and it's definitely on the shortlist. The oldships Cat (http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Cat_(Oolite)) looked promising too, so I downloaded PAG_oldships_V2.5.oxp and took it for a spin, only to find the actual spec is different to that 'advertised' -- there's no large cargo bay, there are 4 missile slots rather than 1, and the cost is ten times higher (though the price does seem reasonable to me: 24k cannot be right, can it, when an Adder costs 65k).

Though I can tweak shipdata.plist and shipyard.plist to correct these 'errors', it does assume that the info on the Ships page is correct. My question is, with whom should I raise issues like this? Who looks after the Oolite wiki Ships section -- or should I be raising it in the oldships OXP thread in the Expansion Pack forum?

Please note, I'd be happy to undertake some editorial work on the info pages myself, rather than just bleating about problems and expecting others to rush forward and fix them, though I would certainly need a tutorial on how to do that, having no experience whatsoever of forum work. I fully understand if wiser heads than mine wish to keep a noobie well away from the controls, however. To someone who can obliterate a parked Cobra by inadvertently slamming into his rear end, crashing a website must surely be child's play.

Albee wrote:

Bearing in mind Commander McLane's comments in this thread

Hmmm. I was trying to be clever there, using the slick way of linking to another thread I've seen others use. Problem is, I don't actually know how to do it, so I copied someone else's [url=... string and edited it to point to the thread in question. Or so I thought. Not working properly, is it? Apologies.

Albee wrote:

Though I can tweak shipdata.plist and shipyard.plist to correct these 'errors', it does assume that the info on the Ships page is correct. My question is, with whom should I raise issues like this?

Check with the OXP author if you're unsure, but generally in the event of a discrepancy in ship specs it's the Wiki that is wrong - especially if it's an obvious typo like a missing zero on the price (The missile spec I'm less sure about, since the figure of 1 is mentioned in two separate places on the Cat page). Certain non-player ships have been intentionally given "unknown" in some of their specifications to preserve the mystery, of course. For ships like the Cat which have a history pre-dating Oolite, you might be able to find an authoritative source from the Elite version(s) they were from.

Basic Wiki editing is pretty straightforward - ask Maik for an account if you want one - if you're comfortable with minor tweaks like that to shipdata.plist you'll be fine making similarly minor tweaks to correct ship specs and the like. Also, it's a Wiki, so it has decent version control. If you do somehow manage to really mess things up, it's always possible to revert the page to the last good version and try again/ask for help/etc.

I think it is not so much a missing typo, but a confusion from Neolite Companion oxp having (having had) these ships, too. (d/l link as of now is broken)
As the main Neolite shippack until recently came with a shipyard list meant to go with the RS-approach (all ships repriced, standard capability ones to "very cheap"), this may well have been the same for the Neolite Companions, and then reflected into the wiki articles.

Maybe this is also responsible for discrepancies in the ships' descriptions.
I'll look this up / change this to reflect the shipdata.plist later today, if not someone else is already busy doing so.

And yes, reporting stuff like this on the forums so someone with a wiki account has a look into it usually work-s/ed fine.

Albee wrote:

Hmmm. I was trying to be clever there, using the slick way of linking to another thread I've seen others use. Problem is, I don't actually know how to do it, so I copied someone else's [url=... string and edited it to point to the thread in question. Or so I thought. Not working properly, is it? Apologies.

Easiest way to link to a thread: all thread titles are linkified. Thus you can right-click on the thread title and select 'copy link'. Then you paste it behind the 'url='. This not only works when you're viewing the thread itself, but also from the thread lists on the forum pages.

You can also link to a single post inside the thread by right-clicking on the small piece-of-paper icon left of the post date in the top right corner of each post.

snork wrote:

You'd be all threatening to tell Cartman about it ?

<glances longingly at the katana hanging on the wall>

cim wrote:

Basic Wiki editing is pretty straightforward - ask Maik for an account if you want one

Thanks -- I'll PM him.

snork wrote:

And yes, reporting stuff like this on the forums so someone with a wiki account has a look into it usually work-s/ed fine.

If you account holders are willing to do this, that's great. I would like to help out, though in whatever way I can. Contributing to info pages seems a fairly safe way to get involved.

Commander McLane wrote:

Easiest way to link to a thread: all thread titles are linkified. Thus you can right-click on the thread title and select 'copy link'. Then you paste it behind the 'url='. This not only works when you're viewing the thread itself, but also from the thread lists on the forum pages.

You can also link to a single post inside the thread by right-clicking on the small piece-of-paper icon left of the post date in the top right corner of each post.

Thanks, Commander. No excuse now for getting it wrong.