Oolite Bulletins

Hi all,

Just seen a strange phenomenon with the coriolis station after takeoff. Now sometimes the station disappears, leaving just the docking bay. I've got used to that. But what happened just now was completely different - The station was spinning at 2/3 - 3/4 of my cobbie III's max roll, and the docking bay was sort of jutting out at a weird angle, and alternating between seeing one half and the other. The whole mess was rotating on the axis of the docking bay opening in the main station model, but the docking bay part was vaguely pointing at the nav buoy. I took a few screenshots before trying to dock out of curiosity, which obviously failed.

I decided to approach the opening on the main station model, even though the docking bay alone has worked as a means to enter the station when the main model hasn't been there. I decided to do this because the docking bay would require me to travel sideways in a circle very quickly, while tilting in, having a cone shaped flight path. I tried slowly approaching the opening for the docking bay, roughly 90 degrees round the 'station' from the nav buoy, and just before I exploded magnificently, I think I saw a viper shoot out of the docking bay with injectors and pursuit lights.

Overall quite a... different experience, thought I'd share and see if anyone has the slightest clue as to why this happened!

That sounds similar to this report... are you using Oolite 1.77?

Yep, just updated recently. All I've seen before is when the 'shell' disappears, which happened in 1.76.1. From this happening, I have assumed that the code for a coriolis station involves the docking part, and the big part that hurts. If so, then they were misaligned somehow this time.

What OS are you running?

(Shell disappearance should be fixed in the next release, though if it happened to you in 1.76.1 as well that may have been a different bug)

I'm on mac, and I have both versions installed seperately if that makes a difference.

Separate installs should be fine. For some reason the spinning bug only seems to happen on Macs, and not on all of them.

Hmmm... maybe I've been slipped some megaweed in the mess hall.... That'd explain it!

Till now there are several captains who witnessed this misalignment. And all on a mac, so it seems platform dependent and rare.

Maybe merge this thread with the other one?

Okay, just had another instalment to this mystery...

I decided to add a bit of difficulty to my game, so I took out a loan with the black monks, and bought one of their 7900 credit Q-bombs, launched, and dropped the bomb. Quite fun to watch, the station explodes several times, and I think a few station defence launched and immediately exploded too but after the show, the station still survived, then switched to another axis with the top antennae looking to be broken. I tentatively approached, fired off a couple of hardheads, and eventually got in range, when the plasma cannons promptly attacked. I quickly retreated, sent the rest of my missiles off (including a dredger salvage droid for good measure. There could be a decent scrap value on a monastery after all ), and thought nothing more of it.

When I arrived at the main station, the same error as before, but the dock was slightly neater into the station. I didn't want to crash again, so I decided to do a planetfall landing instead. As I approached the planet, I waited for the okay, then proceeded to alternately hit the injectors and slow down, to maintain the temperature. As the altitude approaches zero, I get a second "distress mode" message, hear a strange popping sound, and I am suddenly facing the other way, having an orbital boost! I tried a couple more times, slowly approaching the planet, to the same effect. I then looked to see if I had enough fuel for my next jump, since I had refuelled at the black monk monastery, but I didn't. So I sun skimmed, and went on my way.

...Then got ambushed by 4 thargoids, with no missiles left, at the witchpoint beacon, with a new addition of "skilled NPC" OXP, and only the fumes of fuel left after a 6.8ly jump. "press space commander"

On a related note, my 1.77 version on Windows 7 64-bit has begun bugging out a bit when docking with stations.
When I enter half-way through the docking bay, the outside of the station disappears, making it really difficult to figure out its rotation in flight.

I haven't noticed this until a couple of weeks ago so I don't know what causes it. I first noticed it after having installed the YAH OXP on the Con Store stations but do not know if it actually is OXP related.

JeX wrote:

When I enter half-way through the docking bay, the outside of the station disappears, making it really difficult to figure out its rotation in flight.

It's not OXP-related (except that some stations might have it happen more than others). It'll be fixed in the next release.

JeX wrote:

On a related note, my 1.77 version on Windows 7 64-bit has begun bugging out a bit when docking with stations.
When I enter half-way through the docking bay, the outside of the station disappears, making it really difficult to figure out its rotation in flight.

I haven't noticed this until a couple of weeks ago so I don't know what causes it. I first noticed it after having installed the YAH OXP on the Con Store stations but do not know if it actually is OXP related.

This is a known bug with v1.77 and has been already fixed in trunk.

See this thread, which is already linked to above: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13480

(And it would indeed be a good idea to merge the threads.)