Oolite Bulletins

Hello! I'm cyanisaac! I do gaming and stuff, I have a blog, and I found this thing called Oolite!

I have absolutely no previous experience with Elite but it looks awesome. I'm not only getting into Oolite a bit but I'm also going to purchase Elite: Dangerous. So yeah...

Hi! It's fun to be a PC gamer!

Hi cyanisaac, and welcome to this great game.

G'day cyanisaac, and welcome aboard!

Hej, cyanisaac! May there always be enough space beneath your ship's hull on your trips through the ooniverse.

hello cyanisaac

The universe welcomes careful drivers.

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=6053

"Fly with care but fly with confidence!"

Lanatir here, Elite Veteran on C64, ZX Spectrum and Amiga 500.

Thought i give it a try. Did everything like i used to know it from Elite. Controls very similar and all.

Packed my ship with foodstuff, jumped to Leesti.

Arrived, turned on jumpdrive, 3 seconds later pulled out of it by a bunch of 6 to 8 beefed up Cobras and better. Took about 1 second til i was toast, couldnt even press the W button to accelerate away from them.

Not the best 'new player experience' i ever had.

Is that how it usually goes? Because then i will probably go back to the original.

Hi Lanatir, and welcome.

Lanatir wrote:

Not the best 'new player experience' i ever had.

Sorry to hear your tale of woe. It is recognised that the game is a bit unbalanced at the moment, and steps are being taken to sort this out for the next release. Several changes were brought in for v1.80 to improve the game, and by and large these have worked well, but one unfortunate consequence is that life for a 'newbie' can seem quite harsh.
A change of tactics might help. Basically just avoid trouble until you have equiped your ship a bit - make fuel injectors a priority There is plenty of advice around the forum to help newcomers while this is being sorted, so have a good look around.
It's worth seeing this period through, as this is a great game - all the appeal of Elite, but so much more and so much better overall.

as Smivs already pointed out life is hard out there at the moment... I recently started a new commander and had to adopt a newbie strategy (avoid trouble by all means) rather than what I was used to in a fully kitted cobra (keep them coming).

* learn how to dock manually
* do some milk runs between e.g. Tionisla (democ, rich indust) and Isinor (confed, poor agri, a bit "east"/towards the center of Galaxy 1 off of Lave)
* buy fuel injectors asap and have enough fuel (so no 6.8ly jumps) to flee from misfortune
* after hyperjump to avoid being masslocked all the time on your way to the station: turn 90 degrees, accelerate for some 15secs, turn again towards the planet, press j to cruise.
* to get some fighting practice, engage into a fight with pirates only when police vipers are near.

Good Luck, Commander and welcome aboard

G'day Lanatir, and welcome aboard!

Further to the advice given above, you will need to bear in mind that in the current incarnation of Oolite, the system political type makes much more of a difference, danger-wise, than previously. Also, systems close to a more 'dangerous' system can sometimes experience raiders dropping in for a little piracy before returning home..

Thus, until your ship is a bit more iron-assed, it pays to avoid the less politically stable systems, and stick, as much as possible, to Corporate States, Democracies and Confederacies. Even Lave is generally not a safe place to return to in the early stages.

As has been mentioned, considerable discussion has recently taken place on what needs doing to bring balance back to gameplay, particularly for new(er) players.

In the meantime, whilst we wait for 1.82 to be released, if you wish, you can try out this recently released expansion pack which tries to re-balance combat for 1.80.
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16947

This is kind of re-introduction. I've been around sometimes around 1.6x-early 1-7x versions, played and messed around...but time, as well as my aging laptop, unable to cope with OXP flood, eventually made me play less and less...

As time went on, I bought a new laptop, and a few days ago I pulled my old joystick from the closet, thinking...what to do with it. The answer is obvious.

First few days and having a blast (and being blasted, too). It was about time Oolite got enhanced effects-seeing Griff's ships fire lasers from 8-bit era was quite jarring. Joystick setup was also quite fast and painless, only a bit of messing with axis profiles and stick works fine for everything from sniping to crazy stunts like docking with ConStore on full injector speed (is it me or do ConStores rotate faster than regular Coriolis?).

Few things are bugging me a bit though...I've lost control (again) and my OXP/OXZ list has over 150 items now...and I'm not sure if, and which ones, are causing some weird things. From time to time, I run into non-targettable ship. It's there, I can shoot it, but my ident system just doesn't respond. They're all kinds, from vanilla to OXP.

AI ships seem a bit on the tough side. They survive a lot more than mine...even though it's far from Iron Donkey so far. When I bought beam laser and thought that I can finally blast some pirates, results were...disappointing. I had to use small railgun (yeah, OXPs....) to supplement my damage. Even military laser usually can't kill another Cobby III with bloody pulse laser on one full burst before it overheats. It makes the game challenging sometime, but early pirate squads are just too much. There's a reason why my Cobby's registration now reads "Brown Streak".

A strange ships shows up for sale quite often: Python Commander. I suspect it's from an OXP, but dunno which one...it looks like ordinary Python, seems to have the same stats....but base price is only 10 CR.

A new, sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating thing from OXP is currently keeping me busy. Salvaging. Here, I'd appreciate some tips. Is it better to just grab the salvaged ship and beeline to nearest station using torus, or should I take it slow? There's usually a trail of litter behind me when salvaging, and sometimes the ship doesn't survive to station. Also...is there a way to catch the derelicts whose pilots ejected when flying on injectors? Usually the wreck just comes to halt, but with injectors, it seems to go on forever...I chased one for some 100 km before giving up.

Anyway...I'll be around, commenting on this or that. See you in the witchspace...

Sarin wrote:

Is it better to just grab the salvaged ship and beeline to nearest station using torus, or should I take it slow? There's usually a trail of litter behind me when salvaging, and sometimes the ship doesn't survive to station. Also...is there a way to catch the derelicts whose pilots ejected when flying on injectors? Usually the wreck just comes to halt, but with injectors, it seems to go on forever...I chased one for some 100 km before giving up.

I suggest getting to the station as fast as possible. Using the Torus drive you will generally loose less than without. As for ships that are injecting, they do eventually stop, it just takes a while. If you can stay less than 0.1km from it while matching it's speed closely enough it will lock on, too.

Not sure about the non-targetable ships, though I run into them from time to time too.

NPCs are a little strong right now... That'll be fixed in the next version. In the mean time, hang in there, and try not to have to replace your space bar...

G'day Sarin, and welcome back!

Sarin wrote:

(is it me or do ConStores rotate faster than regular Coriolis?)

Yes, they do.. because the rotational speed of Main Stations was slowed down in v1.80, to help create a better sense of their massive size.

Sarin wrote:

A strange ships shows up for sale quite often: Python Commander. I suspect it's from an OXP, but dunno which one...it looks like ordinary Python, seems to have the same stats....but base price is only 10 CR.

See this thread for the culprit, and the fix.

Welcome back, Sarin!

Sarin wrote:

I run into non-targettable ship. It's there, I can shoot it, but my ident system just doesn't respond.

There is a non-buyable military jammer in the game which prevent target locking but very rare (none except if an oxp ship start with this on board), more often (about 10%) with ShipVersion OXP.

Sarin wrote:

Even military laser usually can't kill another Cobby III with bloody pulse laser on one full burst before it overheats.

Which is good imho. In the next Oolite (what you can try in the trunk version) lasers will overheat significantly slower, which will be even better in my eyes.

Sarin wrote:

A strange ships shows up for sale quite often: Python Commander. I suspect it's from an OXP, but dunno which one...it looks like ordinary Python, seems to have the same stats....but base price is only 10 CR.

Thank you for the report, I fixed the price and made less often, please update your Resistance Commander OXZ within the game.

Sarin wrote:

A new, sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating thing from OXP is currently keeping me busy.

Well, not so easy to make something challenging without going near to the fustrating border. I am a developer so many things seems to be easy for me which maybe too hard for a new player so feedbacks is a must to hit the right difficulty.

Sarin wrote:

Is it better to just grab the salvaged ship and beeline to nearest station using torus, or should I take it slow?

There is a hint in Towbar wiki page which explicitly say that you should use Torus as much as you can when you tow a ship.

Sarin wrote:

There's usually a trail of litter behind me when salvaging, and sometimes the ship doesn't survive to station.

This is normal, something which balance the very good payment of this job.

Sarin wrote:

Usually the wreck just comes to halt, but with injectors, it seems to go on forever...

Please do what SirArian said, but I can imagine a core fix: when the pilot ejects, the speed of the ship should fall immediately from injector speeds to the max. normal speed due to the lack of fuel support: the pilot is not hold down the "i" key anymore.

Sarin wrote:

Even military laser usually can't kill another Cobby III with bloody pulse laser on one full burst before it overheats.

In the core game a NPC Cobra III should take about half of the heat capacity of a military laser to kill, assuming you hit every time. There are plenty of OXPs which will make them quite a bit tougher than that, though.

Welcome to the boards.

Lanatir wrote:

Packed my ship with foodstuff, jumped to Leesti.

Arrived, turned on jumpdrive, 3 seconds later pulled out of it by a bunch of 6 to 8 beefed up Cobras and better. Took about 1 second til i was toast, couldnt even press the W button to accelerate away from them.

Not the best 'new player experience' i ever had.

Is that how it usually goes? Because then i will probably go back to the original.

I was having the same trouble at first. Usually, if you drop a few barrels of your least valuable commodity the pirates will leave you alone. I always carry about 6 or seven barrels of food on each mission for this purpose.