Oolite Bulletins

I like this. Good for investing in gold, platinum and gem-stones. Also good for finding asteroids to mine, especially together with the Ore Processor. Make money fast, and especially fun with Pirate Coves installed.

I noticed an issue with Rock Hermits but I'm not sure if the effect is caused by the OXP or by Oolite itself.

Let's say I jump into a new system, and the Locator tells me there is a Hermit. If I dock at the main station and save, then reload the game, the Hermit may disappear. The converse is also true, i.e. no Hermit before save, Hermit appears after reloading the game.

I hesitate to call this a bug, but my explanation for this does require a little *handwaving*. Something along the lines of the Hermit not keeping his Buoy on all the time. Since I rely on the Space Compass for my navigation, this explanation works for me.

Deep Space Pirates OXP can also randomly add Rock Hermits, so if you have that also it's possible to find 10+ "R" targets on the advanced space compass.

Switeck wrote:

Deep Space Pirates OXP can also randomly add Rock Hermits, so if you have that also it's possible to find 10+ "R" targets on the advanced space compass.

It does? I had that installed, but removed it along with Pirate Coves, Total Patrol, and a few other OXPs. I like having my Ooniverse bustling, but they slowed me (and sometimes my old laptop) down too much.

Anyway, I noticed that behaviour both before installing and after removing Pirate Coves and Deep Space Pirates.

I have no idea how Total Patrol could slow you down. Did you have a problem with it?

Commander McLane wrote:

I have no idea how Total Patrol could slow you down. Did you have a problem with it?

Too many ships in the space lanes mass locked me. So I could only travel at the relatively slow 0.35 lm most of the time, even when I was heading to the sun to scoop fuel. If I left the space lanes, the Deep Space Pirates were waiting, so I often lost half an hour or more fighting them. Mind you, I'm not complaining. As I wrote earlier, I liked the atmosphere they added and fighting the pirates was fun (at least, when I was playing my more combat-oriented commander in the iron-assed Cobra). But I don't have an unlimited amount of time to play Oolite, so some thing has to give. In this case, I had to remove some fun OXPs so that I could finish up my trading/missions more quickly.

lohwengk wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

I have no idea how Total Patrol could slow you down. Did you have a problem with it?

Too many ships in the space lanes mass locked me.

That's not related to Total Patrol. On the contrary, Total Patrol takes the police ships in a system and spreads them over a far bigger portion of the space lanes. Some of the ship OXPs may be adding more ships, though.

On the issue of Rock Hermit Locator OXP, the cost of the equipment (15,000 credits) is really an extravagance for what you get. For the cost of 2 1/2 military lasers, you get a locator for Rock Hermits, which tend to be almost entirely along the space lane between witchpoint beacon and planet, which you'll likely see on your way to the main station because they're so large -- or along the line between the planet and sun. For the second group (towards the sun), the locator at least tells you if it's "worth your trouble" to go wandering that way. But by the time I get enough money to buy such an item on my ship, what's worth my time+trouble has changed drastically. Even in the Cobra 3, I'm managing about 1k profit per jump on my back-and-forth milk run route.
Assuming a Rock Hermit has 10 asteroids around it that I can get to before its own miner does, and assuming I make 100 credits off each asteroid...that is also 1k profit but takes considerably longer than back-and-forth trading. With Ore Processor, a single asteroid's value probably goes up to 300-500 credits, but require me to make slightly more round trips between Rock Hermit asteroid field and main station to cash them in. I find before I'm done the main station may refuse to buy any more low-value minerals.

It can be quite a hassle if a Rock Hermit turns out to be a Pirate Cove (easily fatal if I'm careless), but Rock Hermit Locator OXP won't tell me that.

I noticed an issue with Rock Hermits but I'm not sure if the effect is caused by the OXP or by Oolite itself.

Let's say I jump into a new system, and the Locator tells me there is a Hermit. If I dock at the main station and save, then reload the game, the Hermit may disappear. The converse is also true, i.e. no Hermit before save, Hermit appears after reloading the game.

I hesitate to call this a bug, but my explanation for this does require a little *handwaving*. Something along the lines of the Hermit not keeping his Buoy on all the time. Since I rely on the Space Compass for my navigation, this explanation works for me.

I think this is Oolite re-setting itself rather than rock hermit behaviour. A few things are saved, such as commodity prices and quantities at the main station but rock hermits are re-generated.
Cheerio!

I'm seeing double beacons in front of Rock Hermits again...I'm unsure if it's my fault or a bug in this OXP or bug in Oolite in general.
This is just an initial heads up -- I'll have to do some more checks to see if there's other OXPs possibly to blame.

Switeck wrote:

On the issue of Rock Hermit Locator OXP, the cost of the equipment (15,000 credits) is really an extravagance for what you get. For the cost of 2 1/2 military lasers, you get a locator for Rock Hermits, which tend to be almost entirely along the space lane between witchpoint beacon and planet, which you'll likely see on your way to the main station because they're so large -- or along the line between the planet and sun. For the second group (towards the sun), the locator at least tells you if it's "worth your trouble" to go wandering that way. But by the time I get enough money to buy such an item on my ship, what's worth my time+trouble has changed drastically. Even in the Cobra 3, I'm managing about 1k profit per jump on my back-and-forth milk run route.
Assuming a Rock Hermit has 10 asteroids around it that I can get to before its own miner does, and assuming I make 100 credits off each asteroid...that is also 1k profit but takes considerably longer than back-and-forth trading. With Ore Processor, a single asteroid's value probably goes up to 300-500 credits, but require me to make slightly more round trips between Rock Hermit asteroid field and main station to cash them in. I find before I'm done the main station may refuse to buy any more low-value minerals.

It can be quite a hassle if a Rock Hermit turns out to be a Pirate Cove (easily fatal if I'm careless), but Rock Hermit Locator OXP won't tell me that.

15,000 credits are easily made with the ore processor and or sell/buy at the rock hermit
the miner cant hold much and its usually slow, and not all asteroids are within the scanning range of the Rock Hermit..
you presume you know all locations of rock hermits, i can tell you, you do not ..

The origins of the RTL is pre java scripting(me being the original author), however: how would you justify that it could tell you what is a pirate cove and what is not.. I think this is more a problem(if any) with pirate coves than RTL.. Pirate Coves should not identify as Rock Hermits to the code, but they do. RTL looks for role "rockhermit", the way pirate coves are setup they also carry the role of rockhermit, it was a cheap easy way of getting the code to spawn them instead of rock hermits.

To be honest, i think its more fun with the potential risk... its very Elitish , like a fish with a illuminating lure at the deep see: only in this case its a Pirate Station Broadcasting a tachyon signal..

Cheers Frame...

15,000 credits is also how much your ship's value is raised, so maintenance repairs are more too. It can take a long time to repay the 15k initial cost from mining alone without Ore Processor. Assuming (without RH-adding OXPs) each system has about 1 Rock Hermit and ~1k profit per RH visited means... By the time you've visited 15 systems (for 15k total), you're probably needing to do another maintenance repair...so you'll need about 2 more systems just to break even. A Cobra 3 will need lots of trips because a couple asteroids fills it up, so time-wise I'd put this as not worth doing. It's also not fun being a miner in higher danger system.

With the Ore Processor, I end up dumping the minerals because the main station and often even the Rock Hermit fill up. They can be used to distract the miner from mining by dumping them en mass near the rock hermit. I doubt I make 5k per Rock Hermit on average.

I actually don't mind Pirate Coves showing up using RHL. Pirates may not bother to remove the Rock Hermit Beacons simply because it brings more victims to them.

Outside of OXPs that spawn extra Rock Hermits in funny places (like Deep Space Pirates OXP), Rock Hermits only between the planet <-> witchpoint or planet <-> sun. LongRangeScanner OXP reveals way too much about what's in a system -- so I use it heavily in testing.

On actual bugs with Rock Hermit Locator...I don't know what's causing the double beacons. I'm trying to duplicate the double-beacon problem and it only seems to occur rarely. I'm using Oolite v1.75.3 beta on Windows XP PRO SP3...and lots of OXPs. RepairBots OXP seems to reactivate/add RH Beacons, but only if RH Locator is damaged and/or repaired.

When you get close enough to target the Rock Hermit and you have the bounty scanner installed, Pirate Coves have a 100 Cr bounty on them... Rock Hermits do not.

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

When you get close enough to target the Rock Hermit and you have the bounty scanner installed, Pirate Coves have a 100 Cr bounty on them... Rock Hermits do not.

That was a mistake in Pirate Coves OXP, to assume that the player wouldn't see the high bounty unless they destroyed the asteroid. It would be better to remove the bounty, I think. An even more obvious way to tell is that the Pirate Coves use a reference to the core game's rock-hermit model, so if you're used to seeing Griff's or Re2dux rock hermits and then you see one using the simpler model you know it's a pirate cove.

Unless you've hacked your copy of Pirate Coves to also use the Griff Model.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

Unless you've hacked your copy of Pirate Coves to also use the Griff Model.

What gave me away? Illegal Goods Tweak OXP and Free Trade Zone OXP can be improved thus, too.