Oolite Bulletins

I am sure that many of you have played Egosoft's X3, and I would like your opinions.
Some points I can think of, regarding these games:

Strong points of X3 (in relation to Oolite):
-The ability to actually own many ships and stations.
-economy seems more "dynamic"
-ability to take ship equipment and carry it in your cargo hold, and perhaps use it at some other point or in another ship (when you are docked in a station).
-Greater weapon variety, small ships medium ships and large ships have access to different types of weapons and shields, thus making for a greater variety in ship outfits.
-Price fluctuation for goods

Weak points for X3 (in relation to Oolite):
-A sense of a universe that seems way too crowded, there are too many stations and the player has to search in order to find them.
-Jumpgates (I personally don't like them, as I prefer Oolite's witchspace system, which has a potential of "surprises")
-Game seems too "safe" I have played and managed to trade without any weapons whatsoever on the ship.
-Goods are restricted to stuff that stations, not worlds, need.

What do you think?

I've never played X3, but I have played X2. It didn't scratch the itch for me in the way that Oolite does. Personally, I think a couple of the items you list as strong points for X3 – notably the ability to own many ships and stations, and the "dynamic" economy – count against it, as far as I'm concerned. Combined with the claustrophobic systems with stations all crowded in on top of each other and a planet matte-painted across one wall of the box, it makes the player seem too important, too central to the action. It's too small; too eager to twitch every time the player does something; too willing to let the player have influence. Space, as Douglas Adams once remarked, is big. Oolite, even with the crazy scaling of suns and planets and ships and stations, feels big; X2 didn't, to me.

Disembodied wrote:

I've never played X3, but I have played X2. It didn't scratch the itch for me in the way that Oolite does. Personally, I think a couple of the items you list as strong points for X3 – notably the ability to own many ships and stations, and the "dynamic" economy – count against it, as far as I'm concerned. Combined with the claustrophobic systems with stations all crowded in on top of each other and a planet matte-painted across one wall of the box, it makes the player seem too important, too central to the action. It's too small; too eager to twitch every time the player does something; too willing to let the player have influence. Space, as Douglas Adams once remarked, is big. Oolite, even with the crazy scaling of suns and planets and ships and stations, feels big; X2 didn't, to me.

Interesting points. I agree that the term claustrophobic is well suited to describe the atmosphere with all these stations in X3, particularly if you combine that with the heavily laden background stars and/or fog in some systems. However, I still think that the ability to own ships and property is a plus, as the player is free not to own more than one ships and stick to equipping one ship as in the case of Oolite.
I had often attributed "feeling better" with Oolite than with X3 to the fact that I grew up playing Elite, yet it seems that Oolite's sense of freedom and vastness of space, really comes into play in the game. After all, there's really nothing better than travelling to a station and opening a cold beer while leaving the ship heading toward the yet unseen Navigational Beacon at full speed, waiting to see what you're going to meet up ahead.

Keep in mind that a couple of those 'strong points' of X3 are coming soon to the Ooniverse.

There are OXP's in development that will allow you to own stations, and the ability for players to test-drive ships before purchase, (and quite possibly to own more than one ship) is being included -and tested- in Trunk as we speak..

The best thing about Oolite, is precisely that, the fact that it is ever-improving. One can't thank enough the people who take the time and effort to create and develop it, be it with new ships objects, missions, gameplay or any other features.

Not having had, until recently, a decent computer, I haven't been able to play any of the MMO type games such as X3 or EVE Online.

In the absence of multiplayer Oolite, what is the closest to Oolite, X3 or EVE?

Well, X3 is a single-player game (unless something has changed).
I played X1 right through, avoided X2 and bought X3 when it appeared, but it didn't really 'grab' me. I've never tried Eve, or any other MMOG.

JazHaz wrote:

Not having had, until recently, a decent computer, I haven't been able to play any of the MMO type games such as X3 or EVE Online.

In the absence of multiplayer Oolite, what is the closest to Oolite, X3 or EVE?

I would say X3. Eve has a great economy (I 've heard that they actually hired an economist to work out details when they launched it), however, combat has nothingto do with reflexes and player skills.
There are character skills in combat, some related to the various weapons Autocannons and Artillery are the Minmatar (one of the races) ship weapons, Lasers are the Amarr ship weapons (another race), missiles for the Caldari and drones as well as blasters for Gallente ships. Now, each ship has three basic resources energy, powergrid, and cpu (which can be increased by means of character skills and modules) and each module takes up some of the powergrid and CPU to mount. Energy is needed for the function of modules, such as aromr repairers, lasers, etc. Therefore, with powergrid and cpu, a small ship cannot use big guns or big shield/armor augmentations. Ships also give certain bonuses, be it in weapons shield, armor, etc (eg 5% damage output for each level in a certain skill a character has for this ship, or 5% or so tanking level for armor for each level of skill for that ship). Now the character who flies the ships has certain skills, which increase the effectiveness of the ship. Eg, if you have say, the skill Battlecruiser to level 5, and you're flying an Amarr Prophecy ship (one of the amarrian Battlecruisers), you get a total of 25% bonus to tanking to all damage types (there are four damage types, kinetic, thermal, electromagnetic, and explosive.
When you fight someone, you just lock on them, set a certain orbit distance (if you like, you could just allow the enemy to set the distance from which you will engage, though this is not advisable) and activate your modules (eg guns) and/or launch drones on the enemy. When you take damage, you can activate an armor repair if you are armor tanking, or shield modules if you are shield tanking (there are shields, armor and hull). How much damage you are going to do depends on your skills, the type of weapons and ammunition you are using, and what types of damage your opponent is tanking. You can tank all types of damage "evenly" but that will mean that you will not be tanking as much as if you are tanking one or two types of damage. Pvp players tend to tank evenly, whereas in missions you only tank the type of damage that is going to be dished out by the NPC pirates.
So, most of the combat is skills and modules, IMHO, rather than player battlefield "tactics". Battles are won or lost before they are fought.
There are also ships that specialise in electronic warfare, eg draining an enemy from energy, so he can't repair and is defeated by other, damage dealing ships, "unlocking"locked targets (jamming) (therefore the player who has been jammed cannot shoot at all for the duration of the jamming, and can only hope that his drones will eliminate the enemy), remote repairing armor or shield for friendlies, etc.

Eve is a fantastic looking game and is a lovely setting. Sadly, like all MMOs it involves dealing with other people, not all of whom I would necessarily gt on with in real life.

Sorry if that's picky, but I suppose as I get older now I don't really fancy having to "hang out" with pre-teens being "emo".



Maybe an MMO with an age retriction would be good. Minimum age of, say, 35?

Was just looking through the games on Steam, when I found a free space game that's multi-player.

Moon Breakers is a free to play, multi-player 3D space combat game set in an alternate WWII-inspired future. As either a Government or Pirate pilot, take to the stars in single-seat starfighters and engage in epic dogfights for Helium-3 around the galaxy.

Its only 338mb too, so a quick download. There's downloadable content too, with extra ships, admittedly at a premium.

Downloading now!

Edit: here's a link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/208030/