Oolite Bulletins

Dear all

Having been inspired by the phrase, 'Proud owner of the most iron-arsed Mk1 Cobbie in G1' (in Jake's post at https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f= ... 5&start=15), I bought a Sidewinder and tried to iron-ass it. The results were surprisingly good - but I wanted more. Hence - and inspired also by the SuperCobra - I created the 'Super-Sidewinder'. It is not an uber-ship, but, while retaining the Sidewinder's small - and so hard to hit - profile, and its manoeuvrability (actually, I've enhanced that a bit), I've added energy (a bit), speed (a moderate amount), a better (quite a lot better) energy refresh rate, and made the ship more upgradeable than the original. Also, I reckon it looks quite scary.

I've posted a test version of the Super-Sidewinder here: https://www.box.com/shared/moreq536ht. It is setup to create some Super-Sidewinder pirates within scanner range when you launch from a station. I've included a save file of one of the ships too. Note that the saved player ship (and, for the most part, the pirates - both the pirates spawned by this test OXP and the pirates that, courtesy of this OXP, one will see occasionally in the normal game) do not have the full iron-ass equipment fitted. Note that if you have the 'NPC shields' OXP installed then pirates will be tougher.

Comments welcome!

PS: I am about to make available via the wiki (http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_List) - and via the link just given above - new versions of most of my other OXPs, namely, Fer-de-Lance 3G, Interstellar Tweaks, and Extra Thargoids. The changes are mainly bugfixes and optimisations, with the exception of Interstellar Tweaks which has been revamped to be more interesting.

Right: I've put this OXP on the wiki (http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/OXP_List; (fairly) direct download: http://www.box.com/shared/moreq536ht).

I've decreased the speed of the ship a bit, changed its appearance a bit, made various other adjustments, and added a military model that my Interstellar Tweaks OXP (once I've released a version above 2.20) will make use of - and which might be encountered even without that OXP installed.

UK_Eliter - I look forward to having a look at this over the weekend.

Thanks, Shipbuilder. If you any thoughts about it (price, stats, colour. .), then I'd be interested (although I don't want this OXP to do more than pretty much just provide a ship; I spend enough time on Oolite as it is!). Anyway, hope you like it.

New version (1.31) available from same address as before. New and (very slightly - see the included readme) improved!

UK_Eliter wrote:

I've put this OXP on the wiki...

I cannot find it on the sortable list or the ships category.

edit: Pardon me, I see it now.

CaptSolo wrote:

UK_Eliter wrote:

I've put this OXP on the wiki...

I cannot find it on the sortable list or the ships category.

edit: Pardon me, I see it now.

CaptSolo, there was indeed a problem with where the OXP was showing up on the OXP list. I think I've fixed it. Thanks for alerting me, and for your interest in the OXP.

Dear all

A new version of this expansion pack is available for download:

• - in-game
  - via http://www.oolite.org/
  - directly from http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/File:S ... winder.oxz

This version is compatible with Oolite 1.8 and not compatible with earlier versions of Oolite. There are no (other) substantial changes.

The previous version of the expansion pack - a version that is compatible with Oolite <1.8 - is available via the old OXP list and my usual box.net address.

New version is out. It makes the Super-Sidewinders considerably rarer (in systems) than they were before.

Did I just miss it or is there really no wiki page for this ship ?

montana05 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:36 pm

Did I just miss it or is there really no wiki page for this ship ?

I can certainly put one up. But if it is on the Expansions Manager, might it make more sense to wait for Hiran to perform his supreme feat of wiki-page mass production (before descending on it with a perfervid tweaking frenzy suffusing my very being)?.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:30 pm

montana05 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:36 pm

Did I just miss it or is there really no wiki page for this ship ?

I can certainly put one up. But if it is on the Expansions Manager, might it make more sense to wait for Hiran to perform his supreme feat of wiki-page mass production (before descending on it with a perfervid tweaking frenzy suffusing my very being)?.

Now there I promised something.

Even if that supertool is not yet ready (have to do some other things first), it will just pull the content from somewhere inside the OXP to outside locations. So whether the tool exists or not - we need to have a definition for OXP developers where to put their documentation.

In lack of other definitions here are some thoughts:
- put ASCII text in /readme.txt in the OXZ
- put HTML text in /readme.html in the OXZ
- put Markdown text in /readme.md in the OXZ

It should probably be forbidden to use multiple of the files. And this suggestion only creates one page per OXP. What I had in mind earlier was one page per equipment (e.g. Sidewinder), or one page per ship (e.g. Imperial Star Destroyer) etc. So I think on top of the abovementioned per OXP documentation we need to specify even more.

So the big question that should probably be answered by the target group (that whole system shall make an expansion developer's life easier) and thus is at the right location:
What is the preferred mechanism?

montana05 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:36 pm

Did I just miss it or is there really no wiki page for this ship ?

Interesting. Went through Hiran's gleanings and put up what I could. Most of the fields (cost? size? price?) are empty and I have no idea what an energy recharge rate of 4.15 means! No photo's - so I found one of Mandoman's shipyard instead!

Perhaps at some stage you could show me where to find the data in the .oxp files - and if the numbers need interpretation of any sort!

Over to you, Sir! If I unearth anything else, I'll bung it in!

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 6:18 pm

Over to you, Sir! If I unearth anything else, I'll bung it in!

Thank you Cholmondely, I added the missing details plus some more info from this page and the readme.txt.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Mon May 03, 2021 6:18 pm

Perhaps at some stage you could show me where to find the data in the .oxp files - and if the numbers need interpretation of any sort!

All details could be found in the shipdata.plist and the shipyard.plist, most names are self-explaining, but some interpretation will be necessary. The energy banks for example are max_energy / 64, 1 bank is 64 units. If you like after Spara finished his course we could look at it step by step.

Dear Cholmondely

Author of the OXP here. (I'm still alive, but not on the board much. Oh, does that mean I've reached veteran status? Clutching at the Great Green Ones coattails?)

The price is in the config/shipyard file and is 145000.

Size I'm less sure about (and I don't have much time to check right now). I forget whether I changed the size from the standard SideWinder. Possibly you can, er, divine the size from the Models\superSidewinder.dat file.

Energy recharge rate: 4.15 counts, I think, as 'good' - see here.