Oolite Bulletins

Short answer: it's a bit of a curate's egg!

Depends on how you define "fun"
if flying directly into a sun when coming out of a jump is fun..... then it is no fun for me.
if flying into a station at full tilt is fun... forget it.
if getting blown to pieces because you ar a little slow in getting through the entrance, loitering in the space station trying to find your assigned dock, flying into a wall because some dumb dumb who is bigger than you decides they want to run you down is fun... then... maybe.
If being fined for doing something that you have no idea that you did something wrong... that is not fun
to have a bounty placed on your head because you forgot to pay a fine... not fun at all.

going places that you have never seen or been to. possible being the first to view a distant star upclose.... yes that is fun.

To watch an anaconda that just about ran you down get torn apart by a pack of pirates.... that can get the adrenaline going.

landing on top of someone by mistake... loads of fun if you can get away soon enough.

over all.... I am getting my money out of it..... thinking about occulus rift... but will hold off until oolite can do it also.
That would be gnarly to the max.

Yah-Ta-Hey wrote:

interdiction is some dweeb's attempt to pull you out of supercruise into normal space so they can play the villian part.

It should also be noted that some of those villainous dweebs are officially sanctioned, law enforcement thugs, err.. I mean officer-type villainous dweebs, throwing their weight around under the guise of random spot-checks, just as they are wont to do in RL.

And, just as in real life, even if you're doing nothing wrong, should they just happen to damage your ship in the process (interdictions can do that), there's no recourse at all.. "too bad, so sad.."

Yah-Ta-Hey wrote:

..... thinking about occulus rift... but will hold off until oolite can do it also.
That would be gnarly to the max.

I'm afraid you may have to wait for quite a while. Adding Oculus Rift support to Oolite would require an extensive re-write of the rendering engine, which (to me at least) looks like it's going to be a considerably scary task.

Initial thoughts from less than a week's play:
- if you liked FE2/FFE, you'll probably also like this one
- the flight model is much better than in FE2/FFE, though - and supercruise is much better than time acceleration
- it all looks very shiny, of course, though for anything smaller than a station most of the detail I think is wasted. I do miss having an external view to actually be able to admire my ship! But little details like your ship's shadow passing across the hull of the station you launched from are all spot on.
- leaving unexplored (but officially inhabited) systems around in the middle of densely populated clusters feels a bit odd but provides a nice early game incentive to keep moving so you can sell the data
- scanner is a bit small, and a bit short-ranged even after upgrading it
- combat is good, at least in the Sidewinder, especially after some upgrades to make it usable. Saving up for a Cobra III, of course...
- it does sense of scale very well. The systems and planets feel big even despite the high speeds you move across them. I haven't yet dropped out of hyperspace by the wrong star of a ternary system, though...
- the realistic system scale does have the downside that it's difficult to stumble across emergent situations, and your scanning in supercruise isn't really good enough. You can't really watch the NPC ahead of you get interdicted out of supercruise (I'm not even sure if NPCs will interdict each other while you watch) and decide to dive in to help out. You get the Unknown Signal Sources, but there doesn't seem to be a way to scout them out before diving in headfirst. Resource extraction sites seem the best for "intervene, or not" choices so far, but you're not going to accidentally go near one of them either, so you've kind of already made that choice before showing up.
- the 3D galaxy map is pretty good but still not really good enough. There doesn't seem to be a way to do "if I was at X, could I jump to Y" questions - all the distances and route planning are relative to your current system. I don't know how that's best solved, though, without making the interface even more complex.
- at the moment, bounty hunting seems the quickest way to make money, with basic trading being the slowest. It appears that as in FE2/FFE the quickest overall way to make money is still to fill up a freighter, but that may be difficult to avoid.
- multiplayer at the moment ... is mainly showing up for me in "lack of pause button when the cat jumps up mid-interdiction". Maybe in 1.2 that'll change - I quite like the idea of being able to escort freighters, which isn't practical yet. So far whether attacking me, pirates, or just going about their business I haven't really noticed any difference between the players and the NPCs... (maybe it would help if I figured out the comms controls...)

Cody wrote:

We still cannot name our ships, which is rather irksome - such a basic thing to implement. I need to name my ship!

Basic in terms of programming, but hugely problematic socially. I imagine the main obstacle is preventing people giving their ships names that some other people might find offensive. Every single one would have to be vetted and approved, in multiple languages. They could draw up or even randomly generate a pre-approved list, of course, but that might just start fights over who got the cool names ...

You got four guys all fighting over who's gonna be Mr Black, but they don't know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way. I pick. You're Mr Pink.

Disembodied wrote:

Cody wrote:

We still cannot name our ships, which is rather irksome - such a basic thing to implement. I need to name my ship!

Basic in terms of programming, but hugely problematic socially. I imagine the main obstacle is preventing people giving their ships names that some other people might find offensive. Every single one would have to be vetted and approved, in multiple languages. They could draw up or even randomly generate a pre-approved list, of course, but that might just start fights over who got the cool names ...

You got four guys all fighting over who's gonna be Mr Black, but they don't know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way. I pick. You're Mr Pink.

Um yes "all aboard the U.S.S. (insert your racist, sexist, offensive title here) "
I had a couple in mind but why risk the ban when your imaginations are more than up to the job.

Aye, true enough about ship names, I suppose - yet many dubious commander names have already evaded FD's screening, and others are downright silly!

Yah-Ta-Hey wrote:

... if flying directly into a sun when coming out of a jump is fun...

Yeah, that can be hair-raising - if not hair-burning! That's where I've taken most damage - some stars are deadly up that close!

Speaking of which, hows the community? I was convinced that open online play would bring out the absolute worst on the internet like most online games do. I made a post to that effect and a few folks jumped down my throat. ( Lookin at you Cody. ) How is it? Was I wrong?

How is the community? How the hell should I know - I'm a lone-wolf, solo-playing, old curmudgeon! Seriously though, on such a busy forum with so many users, it's got the full spectrum - all the fun of the interwebs! Some pajeros users even have the honour of being on my ignore list! <sniggers>

I spend a smattering of time on the frontier forums. Mainly defending the honour of oolite, dicking with the trolls, you know the usual. Generally they are just people who love elite and want to play it. There are a few problems, some say getting anywhere is too hard others say getting anywhere is too easy. I think there is a major issue with the demographic. Young players like it easy, old players remember the HORROR of manic miner. I've seen a lot of reviews with "bright young things" going Meh! You can't get any good stuff after an hour of game play... I've seen old eliters going "yeah, I'm elite in about three different disciplines now, getting bored I'm off to explore the galaxy".

Then you have children announcing they are the best combateers in the universe, which is short hand for a needy personality. It's pvp man! And all the fun it generates.

That said Mossfoot, Cody and Zieman are most definitely "keeping the oolite end up on the frontier forums" Mossfoot especially has pioneered communications within the dangerous universe in an attempt to make things a little more interesting.

We have a foot hold in the bear fight sir. OOlite continues to stands proud!

Sure it will. ED had so much potential. Sadly it has fizzed out into a remake of FFE.
A very large, dull and uninteresting universe and the whole cargo mass lock debacle.

ClymAngus wrote:

I spend a smattering of time on the frontier forums. Mainly defending the honour of oolite, dicking with the trolls, you know the usual.

Eh? I wasn't aware anyone there had impugned Oolite's honour.. most mentions I've seen of it there are quite favourable.

One thing I can't make my mind up about is the hyperspace jump sequence - it's pretty enough, but something about it bothers me.

Diziet Sma wrote:

ClymAngus wrote:

I spend a smattering of time on the frontier forums. Mainly defending the honour of oolite, dicking with the trolls, you know the usual.

Eh? I wasn't aware anyone there had impugned Oolite's honour.. most mentions I've seen of it there are quite favourable.

Occasionally petulant older teenagers and young 20 somethings require a slap to bring them back to their senses. Usually fart knockers who are pretending to be pirates or vigilantes who are letting the "method acting" go to their heads. It's pvp, everybody wants to be somebody.