Oolite Bulletins

I'm glad we got it sorted... now, get out there and give those distant ships a taste of their own medicine!!

An "evasive manouvre" Ive not seen mentioned yet, possibly because its more usefull when you have a well equipped ship is to simply boost in low have your cross hairs a few inchs below the lowest of the group of pirates (below their lasers arch of fire) and their lasers will shoot over the top of you then when you get close enough for definite hits pull your nose up and shoot at their lower front half. At the end of the windows of firing opportunity pull up and your on their tail (if they are still their at all).

Its a good way to take out the "bigger" ships like pythons out of a group of pirates.

I largelly play using roll, because I play this as a substitute for the original elite.

My main "evasive" tactics are take out the "big" ship on the way into the furball as above, then chase something small and nippy using injectors to spoil the opponents aim if the shields are dropping too fast. I generally find sticking on the tail of something small and manouvreable works well for evasion.

Asps are nearly always chickens, so if you're under pressure they should be a priority target, shoot them up enough and they turn tail and run, nearly always with injectors on - thats one less bogey (of course later on you will be wanting to nuke them rather than just reduce the odds)

another thing to bear in mind is that AI seems to adjust its speed according to YOUR speed so if you stop then quite often they stop, usefull for distance stuff but also for controlling ships around you, you can slam on the brakes then use the injectors to move around in bursts etc to affect the enemies ability to hit you.

Other important things, dont spray shots around randomly take the extra few hundredths of a second to guarantee the hit, when you have beams or military lasers dont keep your finger on the trigger, pulse your shots - even when you have a clearn shot you can get out more DPS over time by pulsing than just holding down the fire button. The first second or so of laser fire does far less heating than the 2nd and 3rd seconds (roughly speaking) It is far more effective than over heating them and waiting for cool down before over heating again.

Ive tried the distance thing and yes it works and very well, (as did rear lasering in the original elite) Ive just always done dog fighting, Its always been my flying style in every game Ive played. Missiles, Energy Bombs etc have to me always represented wasted money (Yeah Im that kind of skin flint).

Diziet Sma wrote:

On the other hand, it's entirely possible that the drivers for your card are not installed yet, as, being closed-source, many Linux fans don't like non-open-source code in their machines, so they are not installed by default. (See other comments made above by _ds_ about "taintware".) No disrespect intended to _ds_ but to be honest, that is something only open-source purists really worry about.. most ordinary users simply want to be able to use their computers to their full capacity.

I use custom-compiled kernels. I sometimes patch them and report bugs; I don't think that I could reasonably do so with a tainted kernel – at least the bug reporting, and I might be less confident about oopses which I've caused – and the taintware is known to restrict choice wrt kernel build configuration…

[…]
However, the main thing you are looking for in this list is a package called "nvidia-settings" with some numbers after it. This is a tool for configuring your nVidia card. Install it. Log out and back in again, and now it will be listed in your menu. (In Kubuntu it's under 'Applications>System>NVIDIA X Server Settings', but where Gnome puts it in Ubuntu I couldn't say...

I'd not like to say either, but since there's a definite and worryingly non-Debian preference for freedesktop.org menu layout, I'd say that the last two parts will match.

_ds_ wrote:

I use custom-compiled kernels. I sometimes patch them and report bugs; I don't think that I could reasonably do so with a tainted kernel – at least the bug reporting, and I might be less confident about oopses which I've caused – and the taintware is known to restrict choice wrt kernel build configuration…

Point well taken.. in those circumstances I'd be doing the same thing..

For a recent convert from the Dark Side, such as punkbohemian however, it tends to be less about (what is, from their perspective, the politics of) open-source vs closed-source than it is about having a computer that works the way they expect it to. Asking them to give up a possibly expensive graphics card for such reasons is only likely to send them back into the arms of Micro$oft. There's plenty of time to get them used to the philosophy of open-source down the track, with their next computer purchase, perhaps...

_ds_ wrote:

there's a definite and worryingly non-Debian preference for freedesktop.org menu layout

But, since Ubuntu (and its derivatives) isn't Debian, why worry about it? You wouldn't be bothered by what Fedora decides to do, and surely just because Ubuntu is based on Debian, it doesn't mean they ought to do things the "Debian Way"tm. Now if Debian did things in a non-Debian way, that would be worrying!

Diziet Sma wrote:

For a recent convert from the Dark Side, such as punkbohemian however, it tends to be less about (what is, from their perspective, the politics of) open-source vs closed-source than it is about having a computer that works the way they expect it to. Asking them to give up a possibly expensive graphics card for such reasons is only likely to send them back into the arms of Micro$oft.

The strange thing then would be, that concerning M$ operating systems, ATI is the black sheep. Especially when it comes to OpenGL.

Screet

For a recent convert from the Dark Side, such as punkbohemian however, it tends to be less about (what is, from their perspective, the politics of) open-source vs closed-source than it is about having a computer that works the way they expect it to. Asking them to give up a possibly expensive graphics card for such reasons is only likely to send them back into the arms of Micro$oft.

lol...I don't think I'll be going back. But, I'm still pretty inexperienced regarding the open- vs. closed source technology thing. As far as I can tell everything functions as good, or better, than when I was running Vista. I only had it for a couple weeks before I decided to try out Ubuntu. I've been with it for almost a year now, and just recently removed Vista entirely (I was dual-booting).

punkbohemian wrote:

For a recent convert from the Dark Side, such as punkbohemian however, it tends to be less about (what is, from their perspective, the politics of) open-source vs closed-source than it is about having a computer that works the way they expect it to. Asking them to give up a possibly expensive graphics card for such reasons is only likely to send them back into the arms of Micro$oft.

lol...I don't think I'll be going back. But, I'm still pretty inexperienced regarding the open- vs. closed source technology thing. As far as I can tell everything functions as good, or better, than when I was running Vista. I only had it for a couple weeks before I decided to try out Ubuntu. I've been with it for almost a year now, and just recently removed Vista entirely (I was dual-booting).

To be honest, I didn't have the feeling that you'd go back.. my comment wasn't so much directed at you as people in general... I've seen a lot of people try Linux but go back for one reason or another.. most of which could probably be summed up by saying they didn't want to invest the time and effort needed to learn new things. Even just in the short time you've been on this board you've demonstrated the two main things needed to successfully transition to Linux, the willingness to experiment, and to learn.

As for the philosophy behind open-source, if it interests you, in time you'll learn more about it. If it doesn't interest you, well, that's fine too.. just enjoy the fine thing that Linux has become...

I've been using Ubuntu for a couple of years now - started with Dapper and then moved to Feisty and now I've got Gutsy - I'm not moving to Intrepid (9.04?) until I'm in a position to build a new machine (or at least put a new HD in this current machine and effectively start from scratch).

I'm still dual booting but only because none of my three webcams (two "proper" webcams and one digital camera in webcam mode) work under Ubuntu, nor does my scanner, if I need to use any of these (i.e. Skype with video enbabled) then I drop back to XP.

Diziet Sma wrote:

_ds_ wrote:

there's a definite and worryingly non-Debian preference for freedesktop.org menu layout

But, since Ubuntu (and its derivatives) isn't Debian, why worry about it? You wouldn't be bothered by what Fedora decides to do, and surely just because Ubuntu is based on Debian, it doesn't mean they ought to do things the "Debian Way"™.

It doesn't mean that they'll not do so either. (BTW, Compose T M.)

Now if Debian did things in a non-Debian way, that would be worrying!

True…

I think that if the option for Debian-layout menus is present and working in current testing/unstable, Ubuntu will pick that up and retain it even if it isn't the default layout. (What's bad, though, is where the option disappears completely. Xfce 4.6, for example.)