Oolite Bulletins

Hi all,

Please be gentle, I'm new. Discovered Oolite today while looking at the Kickstarter project David Braben has put up for Elite: Dangerous.

Just had to download it to remind myself of all the many happy hours spent looking at wireframes on the BBC!

What an incredible find Oolite is.

However, I don't recall the original Elite being this frustrating! I'm not talking about the age old problem of docking, but I simply cannot get anywhere without being swarmed by pirates.

I'm starting off as I used to do with the original Elite and stocking up on food at Lave and then jumping to Leesti or Zaonce where I pick with the plan of picking up some machinery to transport to another agricultural world. Within a few moments of jumping to either, I get swarmed by pirates and it's game over with my piddly little laser. I honestly don't remember Elite being this hard! I'd at least be able to get to a couple of systems and have a couple of trades.

I've had a look around the Oolite FAQs and a brief scan of this board, but most of the "beginners guides" seem to be more about how to install/control the game rather than advice. Does anyone know of a "starting out" guide or have any tips for me.

Many thanks.

Hi Sparetomato, and welcome to the friendliest Board this side of Riedquat.
I think you've perhaps been a bit unlucky, but your approach seems sensible so far. One trick you might try is to avoid the spacelanes. As you come out of witchspace, angle up a bit and hit the jumpdrive (torus drive) which is J on the keyboard. After a second or so angle back down towards the planet. This way you'll avoid most other traffic which will be on the planet-witchpoint line.
Also have a chat with Mr Gimlet.
Hope this helps.

Hi Sparetomato, welcome to the boards! Apologies if this question is a bit obvious: do you have any OXPs installed? Because a jump to Zaonce or Leesti should be safe almost every time ...

Disembodied wrote:

Because a jump to Zaonce or Leesti should be safe almost every time ...

My Jameson got slaughtered in Zaonce recently - absolutely wiped by a core group of bandits!

You could try waiting outside Lave station for a convoy to launch, then following it through its wormhole to wherever.
At least you'll be in company when you get hammered - or it might be a milk-run. Welcome aboard, Sparetomato!

El Viejo wrote:

My Jameson got slaughtered in Zaonce recently - absolutely wiped by a core group of bandits!

Hum ... should that be happening, I wonder? I've not played a vanilla Jameson for so long, but what is the likelihood of meeting pirates at all in a Corporate or Democratic system? There are plenty of local patrols, right enough, but should these worlds not be virtually pirate-free, OXPs aside? Otherwise it does make things pretty rough on new pilots armed with just a pulse laser and a smile ... I know there's the option to go off-lane but that means missing out on the sights and the sense of the game.

Disembodied wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

My Jameson got slaughtered in Zaonce recently - absolutely wiped by a core group of bandits!

I've not played a vanilla Jameson for so long...

That's why I started that new commander - to remind myself just how tough it can be (and enjoyable). Overall, I found it okay - try it.
But occasionly, the core game does throw something harsh at you, even at Commander Cody's rarefied level.

El Viejo wrote:

But occasionly, the core game does throw something harsh at you, even at Commander Cody's rarefied level.

I think that might be a design flaw, though, if packs of pirates are hunting in places like Zaonce. Once in a blue moon, sure, maybe you might bump into a lone Krait or Moray in a Corporate State, or a Python or Cobra I or III in a Democracy, but sticking whole pirate packs where new players, who are doing everything right, will bump into them, is too harsh, I think. Even if it's only occasionally. Basically, it's the old "no matter what you do, you're dead" problem. Jameson v. Moray: half-decent chance of survival, with a bit of practice; Jameson v. Python plus escorts: almost no chance at all, even for experienced commanders. If players are being sensible, then by all means give them the odd scare once in a while, but make it survivable. My ₢2, anyway!

Start a virgin Jameson and go look, Big D - you'll enjoy it!

El Viejo wrote:

Start a virgin Jameson and go look, Big D - you'll enjoy it!

I had fun with Commander Clanger, who traded in his Cobra III for a Cobra I with some gear on board, right enough - but I could hold my end up in a fight in that (I notched up 66 kills before my first "Press Space" ). It's a good idea to try it again in a raw Cobra III, though. But if I get mugged by pirate gangs in Corporate worlds, I'll probably find that pretty annoying! I don't want to have to go off-lane: if I'm going to do that, I might as well not care what sort of system I'm going to. Off-lane Riedquat is as quiet as off-lane anywhere else ...

Disembodied wrote:

I don't want to have to go off-lane...

Agreed... my Jameson didn't do that once (nor did I when I first started playing Oolite, for that matter)!

Disembodied wrote:

I think that might be a design flaw, though, if packs of pirates are hunting in places like Zaonce.

I do find that compared to the BBC Elite, the safe systems are less safe and the dangerous systems are less dangerous, by quite a margin. I wouldn't want to go quite so far as the BBC Elite where the most dangerous thing you'd be likely to find in a Corporate or Democracy was a rogue asteroid, of course, while Anarchies were a guaranteed running battle all the way to the planet, but the current spread has always seemed too compact to me.

I have some work I want to do at some point on the system populator to make it more easily scriptable - once that's done it should be much easier to experiment by OXP with changes to the difficulty curve.

G'day, and welcome, Sparetomato!


Just asking because nobody else has thought to, yet..

Did you, perchance, load up on a bunch of OXPs right away? Some of them can influence gameplay considerably, and might account for your unpleasant experience..  Pirate Coves comes to mind, for example..

Hi all, thanks for the warm welcome and responses.

Maybe I was being unlucky, but after 6 times of being unlucky I was getting frustrated! The Oolite universe does seem more populous than the old Elite one, which is great. I also like the uncertainty and danger of entering a new system, but I was being swamped by groups of 3 or in one case 6(!) craft (Mixture of Morays and Cobras).

I took the tip of flying around the space lane, as I had simply being flying straight at the planet once I warped in and I've been able to make 3 successful and incident-free runs this morning.

I've installed Griff's ships OXP and the BGS-A1 OXP but that's all - those shouldn't add extra patrols should they? I read that they were just skins and sounds...

Looking forward to seeing more of this galaxy

Nope.. those are definitely eye-candy only.. sounds as if the situation cim described above, combined with some bad luck, caused your problems.. the good news is, your highlighting of this issue means it should be taken care of in the next release/update of Oolite. And, by the sound of it, perhaps an OXP in the meantime to sort out the difficulty curve.

Diziet Sma wrote:

the good news is, your highlighting of this issue means it should be taken care of in the next release/update of Oolite.

I think you're extrapolating a little too much from my "at some point", there :) At the moment I have "that idea from the Oolite 2 spec for a scriptable system populator would be good to implement" and a vague outline of how it might work. I don't want to start coding on something that large until the new features already in trunk have been more thoroughly tested (so: after 1.78, not for it)

Still possible to OXP even with 1.76.1, just a bit more difficult, if anyone wants to try that.