Oolite Bulletins

Hi DeathKnyte,
I think you misunderstood the wiki on sunskimming a bit. Your technique is pretty spot-on, except as soon as the scoops kick in, you should aim at the horizon rather than keep plummeting into the star.

As for the Iron Ass page, it's not one I've ever looked at TBH, but I agree with you that an Iron Ass is a tooled-up core ship or something close enough. Remember the wiki is a wiki and anybody with an account can add pages or alter them, so you will find bias and inaccuracies from time to time.

Smivs wrote:

As for the Iron Ass page, it's not one I've ever looked at TBH, but I agree with you that an Iron Ass is a tooled-up core ship or something close enough. Remember the wiki is a wiki and anybody with an account can add pages or alter them, so you will find bias and inaccuracies from time to time.

Amen to that. Personally I think that page is a bad wiki page, edited by someone who had some good will but no good idea what a wiki page is about, and what kind of stuff it should therefore contain (sorry, Commander Learner, for being blunt here).

I mean, just look at it: there are two sections, "Overview" and "Cheating". Really? Is that what we expect from the wiki? A short overview and a quick-and-dirty guide to cheating, in that in-your-face style? That the editor (note that the misleading statement about ship types wasn't there when the page was first written, but only added later by the same editor who also was of the opinion that the main topic of the whole page should not be "iron ass", but rather "how to cheat yourself into an iron ass") seems to be a little confused about what "iron ass" actually means (not a certain ship type, but a certain style of outfitting a ship, maximizing its combat ability), is just the icing on the cake.

Well, I went to have a look at that page and was suitably horrified! So much so I decided to give it a major edit.
The page now looks like this which I hope you all agree is an improvement.

I was going to do the same, but you beat me to it.

Very good.

TBH, I'm not entirely satisfied yet. The basic information is there, yes. I don't agree with the notion that only core ships can be iron asses, though. In my book "iron ass" is spacer slang for any fully kitted out civil ship, no matter where the ship comes from. But that's only a minor point.

The main problem, I think, is that "iron ass" is an in-game expression, it's a piece of spacer slang whose main purpose is to add immersion. In my opinion it should entirely be understood as such. It has nothing to do with the concept of überness, which is not an in-game expression, but a meta-concept. (Commander Fortesque of Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy would appreciate your iron ass ship, but wouldn't understand "überness".) Therefore the two don't mix well on the same wiki page. Currently it looks half like a resource, and half like a statement in an ongoing debate. The former is wiki-worthy, the latter not.

OK, I never said it was perfect, so let's consider this page a work-in-progress.
Firstly I did not say that only a 'core' ship can be an Iron-ass. Many OXP ships can also be iron-asses, but I felt it was also important to make the distinction between Iron-asses and uber-ships, partly to try to avoid the confusion which is rife and is encapsulated here.
For my edit, I firstly went back to the original draft of the page, which itself was not perfect. It had also been flagged as a stub requiring expansion, so I thought it was reasonable to expand it in two ways. Firstly I tried to make it clear exactly what an Iron-ass is, namely a regular ship which has been fully equiped in terms of defensive and offensive armaments. I gave the example of a Cobra III which seemed logical as that is the starting ship.
As a consequence of the confusion regarding the distinction between Iron-asses and uber-ships, it just seemed sensible to also try to clarify that distinction within the article.
I accept that uber-ships can be Iron-assed, and therefore accept that the article as it stands could be improved further.
I will revisit the page when I get a minute and try to improve it, and would urge others to do the same.

Edited to add:- I got a minute Is this better?

Much better.

El Viejo wrote:

DeathKnyte wrote:

Iron Ass ships are usually Imperial Couriers, Super Cobras or other added ships.

You're right... that doesn't sound right at all.

Hmm... A true "Iron Ass" would be a Cobbie Mk III named the "Rt. Hon. Baroness Thatcher"

Tricky wrote:

Hmm... A true "Iron Ass" would be a Cobbie Mk III named the "Rt. Hon. Baroness Thatcher"

<Smivs wipes the coffee spray off his monitor>

Tricky wrote:

A true "Iron Ass" would be a Cobbie Mk III named the "Rt. Hon. Baroness Thatcher"

How about one named Curtis LeMay? Old 'Iron Pants' himself!