Oolite Bulletins

Welcome, new commanders. Stay a while. Stay forever <cue evil laughter>.

maik wrote:

Welcome, new commanders. Stay a while. Stay forever <cue evil laughter>.

Oolite - an impossible mission (in space, to dock, to stop playing)

G'day OldThrashbarg, and welcome aboard!

Mornin! I'm MSA-S23, now an 'Above Average' in my second Oolite save. I love it! I love this community as well. And thanks, whoever made the D.T.T. Wraith. I love her for bounty hunting!

MSA-S23 wrote:

Mornin! I'm MSA-S23, now an 'Above Average' in my second Oolite save. I love it! I love this community as well. And thanks, whoever made the D.T.T. Wraith. I love her for bounty hunting!

Welcome to the game, the forum, the obsession! (Perhaps that should be Oobsession?)

The D.T.T. ships are Paradox's work, I believe, and some of them are quite entertaining-- I'm partic-u-larly fond of the Kraken myself, if you're into that Jules Verne aesthetic. Above average on only your second try? You're a better shot with a laser than ever I was, sir, takes me ages to get any sort of Elite rating.

Then again, I'm a lover, not a fighter!

*eyebrow waggle*

Hi MSA-S23, and welcome.
No eyebrows to waggle, so you'll have to make do with a jaunty wave from me.

Thanks, fellow commanders.

Has anyone toured the galaxy yet? If so, what are the richest planets?

I just arrived at Zaonce in my D.T.T. after touring. Man, the GalHyperdrive is great for getting a clean record!

MSA-S23 wrote:

Mornin! I'm MSA-S23, now an 'Above Average' in my second Oolite save. I love it! I love this community as well. And thanks, whoever made the D.T.T. Wraith. I love her for bounty hunting!

G'day MSA-S23, and welcome aboard!

As the janitor only available company representative for  D.T.T. Ship Builders Inc, I'd like to thank you for your remarks about the D.T.T. Wraith. Our Chairman and lead designer, Paradox, has been MIA for some time now, but hopefully some day he'll return to take up the company reins again.

Diziet Sma wrote:

As the janitor only available company representative for  D.T.T. Ship Builders Inc,

Man! That's unfortunate.

P.S. I flew with the War Lance for a while, then moved to the Wraith when I saw her on the list at Quandixe. I also like both the Atlas and the Galaxy Liner.

Cheers, MSA-S23

MSA-S23 wrote:

Man! That's unfortunate.

Since I posted above, I've been back in touch with Paradox. It seems he had no computer for several months, but is now back online. He's busy with other projects, but does still pop in here for a look around every few weeks.

I just noticed this thread and that I didn't use it before (I started with the thread "First experiences / difficulties").

I first played Elite on the C64, it must have been in 1985 when I was 17. You can calculate from this that I'm slightly older today...

I never was a big gamer. I got my C64 when I was 17 and I was probably used to doing other things. In the 1970s and 80s children were still allowed out of house without supervision!

Apart from learning BASIC and Assembler, I did play a lot with the C64, at least more than my parents would have preferred, but most of this time I spent with relatively few different games. Apart from Elite, two of my favourite games were Boulder Dash (which I modified significantly) and Paradroid, and I also spent much time with the Sublogic flight simulator. After I got my first PC in 1989 and started to study computer science, the gaming became less, but I still did it mostly on the C64 (I never owned an Amiga or any other 16-bit home computer at this time). Apart from the Windows standard games (Solitaire, Minesweeper) I didn't play PC games very much, the exceptions were Z (over LAN with my co workers), Warcraft II, Starcraft, Hellbender, and, of course, Tetris. Most of this was at least 10 or 15 years ago.

I still own some working C64s, I'm member of a German vintage computer club, and the last time I've played Elite is perhaps two years ago. So I haven't forgotten how it works! I still have the floppy disk on which I stored my save files, so when I play today I don't have to start as "harmless". I wonder if it still will be fun to play, now that I know Oolite.

Although it's only about two month ago, I sadly can't remember how exactly I came across Oolite. But after I saw some screenshots and the cockpit that looked almost exactly the C64 version, I couldn't resist tying it. I felt "at home" immediately! One of the things that intrigued me as a software developer is the possibility of changing and adding things to the game. I already started tinkering with some OXPs, and perhaps one day I'll build my own ship. I just have to find a way to create models using SketchUp, a 3D program which I'm used to.

After reading some threads in this forum, I'm not sure if anybody of the more experienced members is still flying the Cobra Mk III, but I do. After upgrading it with military equipment, my beginners troubles with the fighting balance are gone. Only fighting Thargoids, which I did for fun on the C64, still seems a bit risky...

Fritz wrote:

I'm not sure if anybody of the more experienced members is still flying the Cobra Mk III, but I do.

I still fly one (a Griff late-model Cobra Mk III), always have - even in ED, I fly one!

Yup, Cobra MkIII it is!

I only have issues with the fright capacity which seems ridiculously small compared to the size of the Cobra Mk III (the thing is as long and twice as wide as an intercontinental airliner!). Most Elite ships seem to big for their looks, and I assume that somebody mixed up feet and meters at some point in the Elite history. Of course 35t is a reasonable value for balanced gameplay, so this is no criticism.

I like to have some goods for trading with me when I go hunting for pirates - my favorite is carrying computers to unsafe low tech systems - but I also like to clean up the mess I leave, so I need space for scooping escape capsules, containers and metal fragments. It is time consuming and a little bit frustrating when I have to drop cheap cargo to pick up something possibly more valuable. And it is very frustrating when my cargo hold is full and I destroy a fully loaded pirate Python, because there is no means to mark a field of debris and come back later. Even if something like this exists as an OXP, it would be of little use, because there are thieves around that try to steal my debris...

I also would like to try the passenger contracts without having to specialise on them or repeatedly having to buy and sell passenger cabins, but this would reduce the valuable cargo space even more.

Of course I could buy a larger ships, a Python or even an Anaconda. But a slow, heavy freighter is not what I want to have. I don't like the design of the Boa or the Anaconda, they are too "bottom heavy" and look kind of pregnant, so the only option would be the Python which I think looks really cool and dangerous. But it would have to be faster. I could live with reduced turning rates, this would probably make aiming easier, but I want to stick to the top speed of the Cobra Mk III: It is a good value for the player ship, slower than some ships but faster than some others. A lower top speed would make scooping up Debris almost impossible (even the Cobra is too slow sometimes!) and it would make the flying parts under "mass lock" boring (passing other ships, approaching a station or fuel scooping at a star).

So my dream ship would be something like a compromise between the Cobra Mk III and the Python. Until I'm able to make my own model I'll probably try to write an OXP to create something like a "Super Python": I would sacrifice some of the cargo space to install stronger engines, and the result would have about 75t of cargo space and the top speed of a Cobra Mk III.