Oolite Bulletins

I like the Qmine the way it is, as kill counts (in my opinion) have to be earned. Dropping a Qmine and stepping back to collect the score is just as bad as cheating. It takes no skill, no danger on the players part. It is a WMD and I would also prefer not to get kills for the Ebomb as well. The reward is standing at a distance laughing your iron ass off as you wipe out an entire Thargoid invasion fleet with one press of the 'm' key!

But like I said... that's just me

Fatleaf wrote:

I like the Qmine the way it is, as kill counts (in my opinion) have to be earned. Dropping a Qmine and stepping back to collect the score is just as bad as cheating. It takes no skill, no danger on the players part. It is a WMD and I would also prefer not to get kills for the Ebomb as well. The reward is standing at a distance laughing your iron ass off as you wipe out an entire Thargoid invasion fleet with one press of the 'm' key!

But like I said... that's just me

You make a good argument Comm FatLeaf, but there is some skill in delivering an affective a q-mine, especially since NPC's can use the ECM systems to disable it, or even flee at the first sign of it.

Edit: I forgot to mention - at least in Random Hits, some NPC's have and use their own Q-mines, so it isn't quite like the energy bomb in that respect. I guess my reckoning is - there are toys to use at my disposal, some of them more effective than others, so I might as well use them when necessary.

I currently have 63,152 kill score. My current ship is the Fer-de-Lance 3G, what has become my personal favorite and the one I have used the longest so far. Most of my kills have been pirates but they do include police, navy, a few traders, enemy feudal state ships, Thargoids.

Pleb wrote:

There are a lot of things that you shouldn't really be awarded kills for, such as destroying deactivated Thargons after destroying the Thargoid ship they launched from.

Now that I disagree with. They are not so much deactivated as uncontrolled. If, while you are cheerfully in amongst them scooping or shooting them, another Thargoid vessel comes into range, they will become controlled again and you'll have a fight for your life on your hands.

Those things are like unexploded mines. You ought to be rewarded for removing them from the space lanes.

If I remember correctly, it took 2 years or so to reach Elite on my old Spectrum. Never happy with that fact, I decided to do it as fast as possible with Oolite, so after trading for a while in a variety of craft, I switched to Smivs' Viper Interceptor and went on a killing spree. As confirmed by my old Save files, noob-to-Elite took 7 weeks to the day.

I realised my mistake too late: with my main goal achieved, I felt rather aimless. I tried several 'mission' OXPs, but nothing seemed to grab me, so I started over with a new commander. This time I won't be rushing.

SandJ wrote:

Pleb wrote:

There are a lot of things that you shouldn't really be awarded kills for, such as destroying deactivated Thargons after destroying the Thargoid ship they launched from.

Now that I disagree with. They are not so much deactivated as uncontrolled. If, while you are cheerfully in amongst them scooping or shooting them, another Thargoid vessel comes into range, they will become controlled again and you'll have a fight for your life on your hands.

Unfortunately this bit isn't actually implemented. Interesting idea, though...

cim wrote:

SandJ wrote:

Pleb wrote:

There are a lot of things that you shouldn't really be awarded kills for, such as destroying deactivated Thargons after destroying the Thargoid ship they launched from.

Now that I disagree with. They are not so much deactivated as uncontrolled. If, while you are cheerfully in amongst them scooping or shooting them, another Thargoid vessel comes into range, they will become controlled again and you'll have a fight for your life on your hands.

Unfortunately this bit isn't actually implemented. Interesting idea, though...

As cim has stated that doesn't appear to be in the game. Don't get me wrong, I have abused this slightly and gotten a few cheeky kills from taking them out, but it doesn't feel right. You might as well start rewarding players for destorying buoys and asteroids...

cim wrote:

SandJ wrote:

Pleb wrote:

There are a lot of things that you shouldn't really be awarded kills for, such as destroying deactivated Thargons after destroying the Thargoid ship they launched from.

Now that I disagree with. They are not so much deactivated as uncontrolled. If, while you are cheerfully in amongst them scooping or shooting them, another Thargoid vessel comes into range, they will become controlled again and you'll have a fight for your life on your hands.

Unfortunately this bit isn't actually implemented. Interesting idea, though...

Isn't it? Really? You sure? Because I had witnessed said behaviour before reading about it on here.

I've never really noticed this before, I have had fights with Thargoids many times and once a Thargoid ship is destroyed the Thargons shortly become deactivated and are floating targets ready to be either scooped or destroyed. I also couldn't find anything in the source to suggest this was in fact a feature either. But as cim said it would be an intersting concept, and would make for more challenging Thargons rather than target practice.

SandJ wrote:

cim wrote:

SandJ wrote:

Now that I disagree with. They are not so much deactivated as uncontrolled. If, while you are cheerfully in amongst them scooping or shooting them, another Thargoid vessel comes into range, they will become controlled again and you'll have a fight for your life on your hands.

Unfortunately this bit isn't actually implemented. Interesting idea, though...

Isn't it? Really? You sure? Because I had witnessed said behaviour before reading about it on here.

Well, there are two stages. When a thargon loses its connection to its controlling warship, it goes into a scanning mode. At that point it will halt, and start tumbling. If there is another warship nearby, it will re-establish the connection and start looking for a new target (still tumbling until it finds one). Once it finds one, it will attack. So tumbling thargons may recover and start attacking again. You'll see this quite often in fights involving multiple warships.

If it doesn't find one (and it doesn't scan for very long), it will power down - and its scanner blip will turn from red/green to white. This is not reversible in the core game, though an OXP could reverse it (or at least appear to reverse it).

cim wrote:

When a thargon loses its connection to its controlling warship, it goes into a scanning mode. At that point it will halt, and start tumbling. If there is another warship nearby, it will re-establish the connection and start looking for a new target (still tumbling until it finds one). Once it finds one, it will attack. So tumbling thargons may recover and start attacking again. You'll see this quite often in fights involving multiple warships.

Huh, I'd honestly never noticed this. Although it may just be that I have always made quick work of Thargoid ships, and that they tend to be scattered so maybe the Thargons couldn't find another warship in range. I will have to keep an eye out for this though. I stand corrected...

It was problems with Thargoids and Thargons that caused me probably the worst headaches in my Switeck's Shipping.
Thargoids don't stay as a solid group, Thargons don't follow them...so even the largest Thargoid swarm tends to disperse rapidly.

Switeck wrote:

It was problems with Thargoids and Thargons that caused me probably the worst headaches in my Switeck's Shipping.
Thargoids don't stay as a solid group, Thargons don't follow them...so even the largest Thargoid swarm tends to disperse rapidly.

If you spawn 100 (yes, 100!) Thargoid ships then they will stay as a group for a bit longer as there are so many of them. Good fun, as you can then spawn 100 navy ships and watch the carnage unfold!

Hello all,
A good place to do a first post!
During my ZX Spectrum days Commander Plugh (see colossal adventure for details) never made it to Elite - I got as far as 'Deadly' and did the Thargoid invasion mission, but my interest in the game waned and I lost the tape with the game save on it
Though a fan of retro games ( I wrote a remake of Paul Hargreves' Tantalus back in '04) I only stumbled upon oolite recently whilst searching for a decent game to play on my linux system.
Anyhoo, Plugh has been resurrected, and I'm currently up to er... Harmless! (4)
Plenty of fancy shooting ahead of me!

Hi, Extremecheese, welcome to the forum! Friendliest boards this side of Riedquat, or your money back. Good luck with Commander Plugh! There's plenty more missions, and plenty more to shoot ...