Oolite Bulletins

There is the already-known option of starting a game: selling the new Cobra Mk III in exchange for a 2nd hand Cobra Mk I and 7,000₢ to spend on upgrades before starting out. But unless you frequent this forum, you won't know about that.

IIRC Frontier offered more than one starting position; Oolite could do the same. For example:

Alternative start (hard):
While working as the Junior Under-Administrator's Second Assistant on [appropriate system], you keep over-hearing discussions and taking messages about some secret device that is being sought that disguises ships / makes them hard to target / makes ships disappear. When you get the job of dealing with the paperwork for a 'cloaking device' that is being transported through your space station, you act without thought. You receive the box, then head for the first ship in the dock nearest the exit. You get in using the master key held by Engineering and set off into the wild black yonder for a life of adventure.

You have a stolen space ship, fitted with fuel scoops, heat shields, zero credits, no fuel, a pulse laser and the cloaking device. And Fugitive status. You are on the run from the start, in an Adder, with no money.

For this one you must already know you away around Oolite to survive; a newbie will have no chance. Run away from the station using the cloak, go fuel-scooping and jump between systems, repeatedly fuel-scooping until your status is clean enough to dock. Then start from the bottom of the pile, trading to earn enough to get a decent ship, then off you go, into a life of ... whatever.

This could be provided as a ready-made saved game.

Alternative start (cheap):
The sell-the-Cobra-MkIII-and-buy-an-Adder-scenario but without the 41,000 credits. How about offering this as an option on starting a new game - a basic Adder with just a handful of Credits?


Any other viable alternative starts?

SandJ wrote:

Any other viable alternative starts?

Sell the pulse laser for $400 and make your first run in a completely unarmed ship, but at least you'll have money to fill the cargo hold.

I understand that http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Switec ... ipping_OXP includes some alternative start-up scenarios as save games.

Savegames

3 starting savegames are added -- basically Medium, HARD, and HARDER settings for Oolite. One is a Cobra mark-1, the Medium difficulty. The other is an Adder, the HARD difficulty! Both only have 100 Credits to spare. The third one is Adder Broke Start, the HARDER difficulty: no money, no witchfuel, no heat shielding (that's normally standard on Adders), no cargo, and no missile.

I definitely like the idea of Oolite coming with 3-4 alternative starting scenarios straight out of the box..

Thumbs up!

SandJ wrote:

There is the already-known option of starting a game: selling the new Cobra Mk III in exchange for a 2nd hand Cobra Mk I and 7,000₢ to spend on upgrades before starting out. But unless you frequent this forum, you won't know about that.

Hm. The guys who presented this option to this forum must have come up with it without this forum, so I'd disagree with the last sentence. After all, all you need to know is the fact that you can buy and sell ships, and that's in the readMe. Once you visit the shipyard screen, the amount of credits left to you after replacing your ship is before you in plain sight for each of the ships on offer. And it doesn't need to be a 2nd hand Mk I. Your Cobby III is worth 106.875,0₢ as Jameson on Lave, and a brand new Cobra Mark I costs exactly 100.000,0₢. No forum needed to do the maths.

Witchcraft!

McLane, you sly dog, you!

SandJ wrote:

Any other viable alternative starts?

I like the idea of starting with a loan. You get more money but you have to pay the bank... or be sold as a slave.

Maybe we could start somewhere else than Lave. Maybe on a random planet.

There have been discussion about this before, I think ...
It is kind of a pity that alternative starts require "hacked" savegames.

An "easier start" - this is already difficult to define - The Cobra 3 start is easy as in it is a good ship that can be equipped with practically everything.
But actually a Cobra3 is not as easy to dock as it is with "smaller" ships, even a Python is easier to dock. So for a very beginner, a start with e.g. a Cobra Mk.1, could be perceived as easier, for the docking alone.
That is also why

SandJ wrote:

I downtraded to a Cobra Mk 1 and set off.
...
But I docked without scraping the paint and sold my very first cargo as a newbie, again. Hurrah!

that could have been more challenging in a Cobra 3, significantly so.

---------------------------

And for those looking for a "harder" start but not as evil (laborious, tedious) as an Adder-broke start (see Switeck's Shipping), maybe even with an un-tweaked Adder, I wonder if they will not mostly soon find that the harder start alone is not hard enough.

E.g. me starting at Zaonce with a Zeke-miner + 100 credits, AND me raising ship pricing for almost everything but the miner by ~100% (e..g Cobra3 baseprice=325k) , after a while I still found myself with a Cobra3 + everything but a NEU, when I was few kills short of triggering the Constrictor mission.
And that without any Easy-Money-oxps, but the ore processor and the RH-locator.

And then there can be the problem that different starts / different starting positions may conflict with the triggers for the Oolite-native-misssions / their triggers.
Not so much as players won't be equipped enough to attempt the missions, but that they maybe by then fly some uber-sth. that makes the mission(s) feel disappointing(-ly easy). An extra easy start may make this more probable, I think. And no idea if the missions do compensate for players having advanced to (or started in) higher galactic sectors.

----------------------------

I am still trying to find a satisfying-to-me way to have level of difficulty advance with galactic sector (by adding/removing oxps per galaxy), combined with a tweaked "hard start" - and that without messing up Oolite-native missions.

For the moment, I plan to have 3 or 4 different difficulty levels only, plus an extra very easy galactic sector to start in, with a very week ship.
That would be "galactic sector 0", for which I plan to abuse galactic sector 8.

Legacy start: You start with an Adder or other cheap spaceship and a few credits. You hear that a relative has died in a system far, far away and there's something for you in his will. If you make it on time you can get a new ship (status unkown), some il/legal cargo, some equipment, who knows. All you know is that you have to get there -fast.