Oolite Bulletins

Hello fellow veterans,

while I saw Elite first on an C64, I was only able to play it on an Amiga for the first time. And this experience lingered; it's still my preferred version (knowing full well that it's generally regarded as a bit -- lame -- compared to the other versions).

Currently, I am playing it on my PC with the WinUAE (SARA cheating forbidden of course!) and I am approaching my first mission (according to various sources on the Internet, the Constrictor mission is triggered at around 170.000 points).

Parallel to playing it, however, I am assembling all information regarding the Amiga version that I can find (for example, I already have a database will all planets and their descriptions in them; also their distances between each other), but I have some problems finding answers to some questions. Maybe you know some of them? [I tried to contact Rob Nicholson, one of the original coders of the Amiga version, but the e-mail address I found is outdated and I am not sure if I spotted the correct facebook profile, so Rob, if you read this, please feel free to answer... ]

Questions:

1. What are the ship specifications for each ship (especially hit points: I found by experimenting, that e.g. a Thargoid needs 56 hits with a beam laser or 46 hits with a military laser; I suppose this yields an energy for the Thargoid of X and an impact value of the lasers of Y/Z -- but I'm not sure; I have compiled this data for most ships -- but I can only dream of hitting the Cougar with a beam laser - let alone pulse laser - to measure its energy).
2. Missions: I am confident that there are 5 different missions (I've only ever completed one), but when (exactly!) are they triggered? Which constrains must hold?
3. Triggering a mis-jump: I've read a couple of times that I have to set my climb to maximum when entering hyperspace to trigger a mis-jump. Doesn't work for me, though. Is there a way to trigger a mis-jump to witch-space? [I tried with Pause-Ctrl X -- and this seemed to have worked exactly once.... Must have been coincidence]
4. Talking about witch-space: I assume, the number of Thargoids you have to kill, before you can leave the witch-space depends on your rating. I think the numbers are 2 for harmless (or mostly harmless -- I forgot), and 14 for dangerous (somewhere, I wrote down the number for competent, but I can't find it right now -- 8, if I remember correctly). Correct?
5. More witch-space: Any tactical advice on how to attack Thargoids that come in packs from different angles? They are difficult enough to destroy if they are both behind...
6. I have read somewhere, that in some source code (though not specifically the Amiga version) the greeting "Welcome to galaxy 9" has been found. Is there an "official" galaxy 9 (hex-edit in sara forbidden)?
7. If I use SARA to generate a new galaxy, I know that bytes 0E-13 relate to that (0D only gives the displayed number of the galaxy). Can you provide more elaborate information on these bytes -- and on the cheat mode in general? [I know, which bytes correlate to which cargo and to which equipment; current game time, kill count, rating, etc. but it would be great to have a complete overview for once ]
8. What exactly are the differences between Elite 1.0 and Elite 2.0? (So far I spotted Thargoid bounty == 40 instead of 15 and you can have military lasers on all sides (thankfully!!)).
9. Talking about credits for kills: Where, in the program files can I use a hex-editor to modify the credits for each ship? I would like to have a more "balanced" setting for credits/points, because 15 Cr for a Mamba seem too much.

TIA!
Cmdr. Stardust aka Philipp