...engines running at a fixed speed? In space?? Seriously??? Whoever wrote Elite clearly failed physics, as evidenced by the aft view at cruising speed. And by the direction of travel after turning the ship, or coming to a stop after killing the engines, stopping roll/pitch after releasing those controls.
But it's not physics, it's Oophysics which, as you've noticed, is somewhat different. Why? Well this is a game, not a sim, and has been designed to be fun and entertaining, not to rigidly adhere to some arbitrary rules of nature.
Commander Smivs, the friendliest Gourd this side of Riedquat.
Never played a FPS, either, by the time Linux got its first FPS, my dexterity was already so much lower than when one is in their teens, that I'd be only a casual victim in any multi-player FPS, and I don't enjoy destruction anyway, I play games like various Civilization, SimCity and Football Manager much more. And even then, mostly solo, I much prefer cooperative play to competetive play. and I appear to be an oddball in that. Oh, and I play MMORPGs, if they have an enjoyable social dimension.
Not all that odd! I still have SC2k on my computer even now and I owned every Maxis game up through their acquisition by EA! I never much enjoyed competition games either.
Cody wrote:
<chortles> All I'll say is the 'purism' refers to the game itself, not physics - if you want Newtonian flight, try Pioneer.
Or, JJFFE, GLFrontier, or FFE-D3D. If you want something like Frontier, might as well play Frontier.
But, yes, the point is valid, Mazur, the idea in Oolite was to re-create the physics from the original Elite, which are not particularly Newtonian. The purism is in them sticking to that model, and not updating to something more agreeable to the laws of physics. This is why I treat Oolite like a retro-future-y space opera. It's more fun for me if I don't take the game very seriously.
Reports of my death have been greatly underestimated.
<chortles> All I'll say is the 'purism' refers to the game itself, not physics - if you want Newtonian flight, try Pioneer.
Or, JJFFE, GLFrontier, or FFE-D3D. If you want something like Frontier, might as well play Frontier.
But, yes, the point is valid, Mazur, the idea in Oolite was to re-create the physics from the original Elite, which are not particularly Newtonian. The purism is in them sticking to that model, and not updating to something more agreeable to the laws of physics. This is why I treat Oolite like a retro-future-y space opera. It's more fun for me if I don't take the game very seriously.
Fair point, it just initially irked me, like all the hollywood "physics" in most older Sci-Fi movies, like the jetfighter movements in Star Wars, which make no sense in a micro-gravity void, or prolonged and audible explosions, or, indeed, continuous propulsion without continuous acceleration.
But a game does not have to make all[/i[ that sense, it has only to entertain, which leads me to ask: which of the above (or other) Space games have the least (dog-)fighting difficulty? All I prefer to do is fly around, explore, trade/transport, and make money, getting better/more ships, and build up.
Treating it to option 3 solved my spinning problem. So I'm currently back in piloting school, losing the bombardment bit, much to the enjoyment of all the young colleague pilots-in-training and teachers manning the bleachers to see the old guy (me) struggling to get out of the way of two handfuls of asteroids launched into my path.
Sorry, but I didn't have the chance to get through the training sessions. I'd bet that for a newcomer they might bring some challenge.
Mazur wrote:
Never played a FPS, either, by the time Linux got its first FPS, my dexterity was already so much lower than when one is in their teens, that I'd be only a casual victim in any multi-player FPS, and I don't enjoy destruction anyway, I play games like various Civilization, SimCity and Football Manager much more. And even then, mostly solo, I much prefer cooperative play to competetive play. and I appear to be an oddball in that. Oh, and I play MMORPGs, if they have an enjoyable social dimension.
I don't enjoy destruction either, though, I've been hitting the Linux FPSs for a while, and I kept my dexterity quite up to the task. My lucky story is that 1. I controlled a FPS server and 2. I could run the Linux client for it, which performed way better than the Windows clients (without making use of admin tricks, mind you), this way doing "The Right Thing (TM)" against my opponents. Oh, and having a right/well organized team in multi-player FPS, acts as a bonus.
Mazur wrote:
But I'll give that mouse control a seeing to, perhaps that will make some things easier for an older recruit like myself.
Oh, and I wanted to say one more thing about purism: engines running at a fixed speed? In space?? Seriously??? Whoever wrote Elite clearly failed physics, as evidenced by the aft view at cruising speed. And by the direction of travel after turning the ship, or coming to a stop after killing the engines, stopping roll/pitch after releasing those controls. Doesn't bother me, but purism my arse!
Don't know about purism (as long as you enjoy what you're doing, is pure enough in my books), but the mouse control in Oolite might not ease things as expected. Although I have a joystick and PS3 controller attached to my computer, I'm still keyboarding mostly. Works similar on other machines (laptops) I run it.
But a game does not have to make all[/i[ that sense, it has only to entertain, which leads me to ask: which of the above (or other) Space games have the least (dog-)fighting difficulty? All I prefer to do is fly around, explore, trade/transport, and make money, getting better/more ships, and build up.
Without modifications, probably GLFrontier. You can trade back and forth between Sol and Barnards Star in complete safety for as long as necessary to build up a ship capable of largely ignoring most opponents. When you do get attacked, dogfighting is fully Newtonian, but the NPC AI doesn't take advantage of this, so flying past them while turning on zero thrust is much easier than the dogfights in most games.
With modifications: there are various ways in which Oolite could be modified to take out ships which will make unprovoked attacks on you entirely (though I don't know of any released OXPs which do that) and there are certainly a wide range of OXPs which will allow you to make your ship much tougher (though mostly in exchange for money which you won't have early on).
One advantage of Oolite over the Frontier/FFE variations, though, is that while dogfighting is potentially harder - especially early on - you don't have to do it at all to survive. If you never carry parcels, passengers or illegal goods, and always dump the requested amount of cargo when attacked by pirates, you in theory should be able to almost always avoid dying in the unmodified game without ever firing a shot yourself. (Certain systems may be sufficiently dangerous that you get more cargo demands than your hold capacity, and should be avoided at least at first...)
One advantage of Oolite over the Frontier/FFE variations, though, is that while dogfighting is potentially harder - especially early on - you don't have to do it at all to survive. If you never carry parcels, passengers or illegal goods, and always dump the requested amount of cargo when attacked by pirates, you in theory should be able to almost always avoid dying in the unmodified game without ever firing a shot yourself. (Certain systems may be sufficiently dangerous that you get more cargo demands than your hold capacity, and should be avoided at least at first...)
Surrendering (some) cargo! Now that is important information, and as long as they don't bankrupt me, or leave me stranded with no fuel and not enough money, I think I can survive that. And don't forget to save at every main station I enter. I also read of using the jump drive for some time (written 10-15 s. in the FAQ, 20-30 s. in another place) can bypass the pirates.
Ah well, that's futuristic music, I'll first have to get out of the way of that nasty P.E. teacher throwing asteroids at me. Could be worse, though, could be hemorrhoids.
One tip that is useful for this is to keep some really cheap cargo, like food, always in the hold, so that you can give the pirates that, rather than something more expensive like computers. I believe the term is "pirate kibble"!
Turn on autosave in game options (F2), this will save exactly before launch.
Mazur wrote:
can bypass the pirates.
After some practice when you are boring to know that nobody is out of lanes you should install [wiki]DeepSpacePirates[/wiki]. Currently this is the only way to reduce the usage of the bypass trick.
Alternate way of bribing pirates-- and I'm surprised phkb didn't mention it since it's one of his own oxp's (Modesty, very becoming, sir!)-- is the Broadcast Comm oxp. It's such a useful and well-balanced item that I consider it one of the de facto features that should have been included in the core game but was not. It allows you to talk to other ships in the game, and with pirates, that includes offering them a monetary bribe-- straight credits-- to break off the attack. For ships that can't dump cargo (either because they have none or don't have what Cody calls, 'kibble') it's an alternative way to pay the pirates off.
Reports of my death have been greatly underestimated.
Which make the game considerably easier. This is the reason why I moved from the basic ambience pack to the planned "easy-start" collection.
Ah! My kind of thing, exactly. I just decided to skip the tutorial for a bit, and dive right in, hot-turkey, like. Made a succesful run to Zaonce, got back in one piece to Lave, sitting at the buoy, and traffic control is totally ignoring my requests for clearance. What gives? I read that I need to target them, but how? (I switched to map and viewed possible next destinations for a while on approach.) "Next target" targets nothing.
Made a succesful run to Zaonce, got back in one piece to Lave, sitting at the buoy, and traffic control is totally ignoring my requests for clearance. What gives? I read that I need to target them, but how?
Enable ID system ("r" key is the default) and point the nose of the ship towards the station. Then request clearance. Arming a missile ("t") and pointing ship on the station will work too.
Made a succesful run to Zaonce, got back in one piece to Lave, sitting at the buoy, and traffic control is totally ignoring my requests for clearance. What gives? I read that I need to target them, but how?
Enable ID system ("r" key is the default) and point the nose of the ship towards the station. Then request clearance. Arming a missile ("t") and pointing ship on the station will work too.
Ah, did that accidentally at Zaonce, thought it would remain "on". (Though there I had to turn traffic control off, 20th in queue and kept getting booted out of the queue.) Ah well, all's well that earns well. Another to and fro (or two) like this and I'll have doubled my money.
And by the direction of travel after turning the ship, or coming to a stop after killing the engines, stopping roll/pitch after releasing those controls.
![[EliteWiki]](/images/elitewikismall.png){kind=small}
New Cargoes
I just decided to skip the tutorial for a bit, and dive right in, hot-turkey, like. Made a succesful run to Zaonce, got back in one piece to Lave, sitting at the buoy, and traffic control is totally ignoring my requests for clearance. What gives? I read that I need to target them, but how? (I switched to map and viewed possible next destinations for a while on approach.) "Next target" targets nothing.