Oolite Bulletins

Well, hiya. I felt something of an introduction was in order, as I'm new here. I've been playing Oolite since I discovered it after having switched to Linux (Ubuntu for those interested). Very cool game, and one that I must confess, I'd never heard of. I've always been more into racing games, so finding Oolite and reading about Elite has been quite a surprise; there are games out there besides racing games that aren't just first person shoot-em-ups. Yeah, there's a little laserplay, but the only other games I'd tinkered with was Delta Force Blackhawk Down, a shooter game, and Ghost Recon, another shooter. I'd pretty much resigned to either doing race games, flight sims, or nothing.

Let's see here. I'm primarily a milkrun specialist, though I do have a ship that can hold her own reasonably. I don't look for a fight, but within reason, I don't usually run from 'em. I'm running 1.75.3, with, I confess, a modified save file. Yeah, I went in and lent myself some money, however, since getting a vessel with more cargo space, I've been turning a consistent profit on the trade routes. I run a Python, Mil lasers all around, and basically every neat gadget that I can find. Wormhole scanner, galactic drive, witchie injectors, the works. Python alone, I'd still be turning a profit (Recently sold 115tons of Computers I bought off three planets for less than 62 to a furbearing planet for 102. Profit!)

I keep an energy bomb on board, which I understand takes some of the fun out of it, but I use it as a last-ditch tool before I'm hitting the escape pod. It might be unfair, but so is fifteen pirates to one of me. Make sure there are no friendlies about, and let 'em have it. I could be packing a respectable rating, but due to my preference to avoid a fight, I'm sitting at Poor. Really, I don't use the energy bomb until I'm low on shields, and am about to become a "press space". (Been there a couple times too!)

Talkative critter being an unsuccessful writer in real life, I'll be uploading a few of my freshly penned Oolite stories in the near future. I write a lot to stay sharp, and since I've started Oolite I find it to be a great little Ooniverse to write about.

Pleasure to be here among fellow Oolite pilots, I notice that today, the wiki seems to be down. Is that just me, or is it kaput for the day?

CapnSkweek wrote:

I find it to be a great little Ooniverse to write about.

Yep, it is that! Welcome aboard, CapnSkweek!

Welcome to the board, friendliest one this side of Riedquat. Great to have a new writer on board, don't let us wait for too long with your stories!

The wiki is in the midst of an upgrade, waiting for the server owner to restart the web server software. Backup is at https://wiki.maikschulz.de

CapnSkweek wrote:

there are games out there besides racing games that aren't just first person shoot-em-ups.

CapnSkweek wrote:

I'm running 1.75.3,

I suggest you upgrade to the less buggy v1.76

CapnSkweek wrote:

I keep an energy bomb on board, which I understand takes some of the fun out of it

Pah! Piffle. It's a game, dammit, not a simulation.

CapnSkweek wrote:

Pleasure to be here among fellow Oolite pilots

Welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat!™

Edit: Ninja'd!

CapnSkweek wrote:

I notice that today, the wiki seems to be down. Is that just me, or is it kaput for the day?

I think it is being worked on.

Edit: Ninja'd!

Welcome to the board, friendliest one this side of Riedquat(tm).

Like your new sig Sandj

I'm not a tech genius, but I'd seen word about the wiki being updated, I wasn't aware that it had to go offline to do that. As of now, I'm not much for bookmarks, but I have two pages on the wiki bookmarked, that makes it one of my more frequently visited sites.

With the bugs, thus far, I get the occasional color flicker across the screen, but it's not bothering me too much. I'm on a very limited bandwidth access, and as I mentioned, I'm no tech genius. I'd rather have a slightly buggy but working 1.75 than a 'why the freighter won't this piece of ship work?'

I concede SandJ, I was a little leery about confessing that I used the Energy bomb, just on the basis of how some folks reacted to the way I played Blackhawk Down. Meh, you gimme an M-16 and several rounds, then I'm going to keep it close at hand, I'll not go to a pistol just because that's more realistic. I'm sure there are guys who've played Oolite who never had an energy bomb on board, likewise, I'm betting there's gotta be at least one player who kept the pulse lasers and relied on the e-bomb.

I'm currently working on my first fiction post. Thanks for the warm welcome. Some places, I swear, a new guy there is every bit as welcome as a headache. Glad this plays lives up to its billing!

Oolite was in feature freeze between 1.75 and 1.76.
As a matter of fact, 1.75.3 was the beta version of 1.76, and quite a few bugs still present in 1.75.3 got squished in 1.76 though, of course, there's always going to be left over bugs...

Look into my eyes, not around my eyes, get 1.76!

Welcome aboard, CapnSkweek!

CapnSkweek wrote:

likewise, I'm betting there's gotta be at least one player who kept the pulse lasers and relied on the e-bomb.

That would be an interesting playing style, to be sure.. mind you, they'd be in a bit of trouble the second time they got jumped by a wolf-pack during the same run..

CapnSkweek wrote:

I'm currently working on my first fiction post. Thanks for the warm welcome. Some places, I swear, a new guy there is every bit as welcome as a headache. Glad this plays lives up to its billing!

I look forward to reading your work.. (also, check out Tales from the spacelanes for some interesting short accounts of in-game adventures.. you might be inspired to contribute)

Diziet Sma wrote:

That would be an interesting playing style, to be sure.. mind you, they'd be in a bit of trouble the second time they got jumped by a wolf-pack during the same run..

Well, there's that, which I had not fully considered! The nearest to that I've come was when I dropped out of the hole after jumping planet to planet, and immediately developed a fuel leak. A third of the way home I used my bomb. I put the ship into a perpendicular path to the corridor and crept off to the side, then hoofed it back to the planet. Funny, I came online to see what I might have done about fuel leak the next time it happened, and found a Wiki that explained that only a moron would be dumb enough to go in a straight line from the hole to the planet. Mr. Gimlet is a lot smarter than I was... And a few minutes later I found this place. (Actually, I found this place when I tried to figure out why I couldn't register on the Wiki.) That was about 10 or so days ago.

To date, when I use an E bomb, I try to make tracks ASAP. I've noticed that an E-bomb detonation tends to draw attention almost as well as free booze in a university.

Thanks for the link, I might just do that! I really don't have the time to properly flesh out a full length story, and I really don't have enough seat time to speak knowledgeably about being a pilot, yet. I could easily work up a little shorty that's my own experiences with a splash of exaggeration. Since this morning when I posted I've been trying to flesh out a character, older guy, retired pilot, similar voice to Mr. Gimlet, only a little rougher around the edges. It's not been the easiest thing, so I'm grateful for the alternative.

Welcome ! After you've played a bit with your 'hacked' save game do a fresh restart in a stock Cobra Mk3. Because in the end you enjoy it more if you take the 'long' way. From the early start, through achievements such as reaching Tianve (other side of Galaxy 1) and see the Pulsar etc.

I can recommend my OXP Famous Planets (oops shameless plug) and BGS as well as Random hits etc etc.

hej, welcome.

For extra kicks I suggest replacing the e-bomb with a q-bomb - because you have to get away from it before it booms, and it looks so cool.

(biggest problem with it is to have it selected from the various missiles you may carry, when you need it )

Instead of starting a new thread, I'mma just jump into this one

I picked up oolite a few days ago, not having played Elite in 20 years or so (and never really been much good at it at the time, but thinking it was possibly the greatest game ever anyway).

So happy I did. This is amazing! I am running 1.76 on Arch Linux on my little ThinkPad X220... glorious.

So I've been mostly milkrunning (after figuring out the stay-out-of-the-corridor thing), have a reasonably tricked-out Cobra MK3 now (one solitary kill, wrong place wrong time) and am wondering where to point it.

(Handy tip for fellow beginners I didn't see anywhere: if you're jump-driving your way towards the planet using your initial compass, keep your eyes peeled for the speck that is station and adjust your course accordingly as early as possible - you can save yourself five or more tedious minutes of being mass-locked by the planet and creeping towards station under normal drive just by being careful about your direction.)

I've added some conservative-seeming flavour OXPs:

DeepspaceHud
DeepspaceShip
Explorers'_Club
FP Liners
Famous_Planets
GrittyCoriolis
Lave
System_Redux
TOGY
YOUR_AD_HERE
tugs

...what absolute must-haves have I missed? I have a few in reserve (Commies and suchlike, Random Hits, UPS courier, Planetfall, jellies) that change gameplay but I'm still learning the ins and outs of vanilla to start with.

Woohoo! Yay oolite!

Hi Talisker, welcome to the boards! The Skye's the limit, as they say ...

A couple of other flavour OXPs come to mind: Random Ship Names adds a lot of personality, and the Background Set makes things much prettier (you'll need Cabal Commom Library for the BGS as well).

What he said!

CapnSkweek wrote:

I'm not a tech genius, but I'd seen word about the wiki being updated, I wasn't aware that it had to go offline to do that.

Normal updates, such as updating a page, can be done on the fly. Maik was talking about big updates such as setting up copies to his backup wiki, which entails taking the wiki down.

CapnSkweek wrote:

With the bugs, thus far, I get the occasional color flicker across the screen, but it's not bothering me too much. I'm on a very limited bandwidth access, and as I mentioned, I'm no tech genius. I'd rather have a slightly buggy but working 1.75 than a 'why the freighter won't this piece of ship work?'

Your mention of bandwidth, the game doesn't require you to be online. It's single player only, there's no multiplayer, and probably never will be. Unless you are referring to bandwidth used when downloading the 23 megs of Oolite 1.76?

Even so, you should definitely download 1.76 as soon as you can.