Oolite Bulletins

It's been a bit since I've visited here, and I'm glad to be back. Anyway, I need some advice.

I started a new game. Things were going alright, until I had a run-in with the ghost ship in which trumbles magically appeared in my hold. By the time I had dealt with the infestation, they had ruined most of my goods. Anyway, I am now floating around Aronar with literally no money, no fuel, no scoops, and a beam laser. My current plan is to blast asteroids until I have enough money for fuel, and then either trade in my Mk III for an souped-up Adder or try my hand at bounty hunting. Or Both. My only real asset is experience, so that may or may not be feasible.

Any thoughts?

You could do that yes, or better yet sell your Cobra MkIII for something else, perhaps a Cobra MkI. If the shipyard has no options, then I suggest hitchhiking through random wormholes at the station and see where you end up.

The Cobra MkI is a tad too expensive for a barebones MkIII trade in or I would have done it. Unfortunately Aronar is a bit quiet and not a lot of people I can hitch a ride with. I do like that idea though. I think will be patient and wait for someone's wormhole and keep going until I find an Adder.

Are there no other stations in the system you could dock with? Any Kiota stations?

Hitch-hiking is good - and when you do get some cash, seek out rock hermits.

Having done the broke-adder start more times than I meant to I'd personally recommend keeping the cobra, the Adder's 2 T cargo capacity makes saving up for a larger ship take ages, and you lose quite a lot each time you trade ships. I used to shoot asteroids for a credit each at the start, but after a couple of 'Press space commander' attempts you can quickly get the hang of shooting down missiles without an ECM (especially if you already have a beam laser), and a 30 CR bounty or two will give you enough to start trading again in the Cobra. Ninja-ing other ships' wormholes is also good advice at the start, but yeah it can mean sitting near the station for a while

The player-Adder really shoud have a five TC cargo capacity, I reckon.

The start-choices OXP does in fact give the Adder a 3 TC cargo extension to enable passenger contracts, but I removed the shipdata override after I read someone describe it as a cheat

I would definitely not regard that as a cheat - I think even the NPC Adder has a five TC capacity.

Heh yeah I'm probably going a bit over the top but I felt the need to make it a difficult start to justify the ridiculously over-powered ship I have my eye on for later

Regarding the initial post, I also noticed that any morals I had went out the window when broke and in a system with Narcotics on offer for less than 20 CR per tonne. Just don't forget about the accompanying bounty

Robin wrote:

I also noticed that any morals I had went out the window when broke and in a system with Narcotics on offer for less than 20 CR per tonne.

When hauling narcs, seek out rock hermits - they occasionly pay top-dollar!

There's nothing like loading up on Narcotics at a RandomHits Space Bar for 0.6Cr/tonne and selling them on at just over 106Cr/tonne.

Supply and demand makes me feel all warm inside.

Your original plan can work, too, especially when combined with the hitching-a-ride method. Blasting an asteroid gives you 1Cr bounty, and for boulders you still get 0.5Cr. So, when clearing all asteroids out of a couple of systems, you should be back at your initial 100Cr cash in a reasonable time. Pro-tip: asteroid fields can be found at various locations in a system. You should fly from the withpoint towards the planet first, and then from the planet to the sun. Then return to the planet and wait in front of the station. There should be a trader launching and jumping out not before long. Another pro-tip: if there are too many ships waiting to dock (there will only be new launches when no ships are waiting outside anymore), you can speed up the process by docking and relaunching yourself. When you relaunch, most (if not all) of the waiting ships will be gone. Also, you should use this to save your game.

Once you have acquired about 100Cr (and even before that), you can begin the usual trading routine again.

And your next purchase should be fuel scoops. They help enormously with acquiring sellable commodities without having to buy them for money in the first place.

This way you can avoid downgrading from your Cobra III, and I'd strongly advise against downgrading. All cheaper ships (at least in the original set) are considerably worse than the Cobby. So you're generally better of when keeping it.

Update time! I got the Adder. I couldn't make any money from asteroids because I kept getting fined for fuel leaks (from an OXP). I'm a bit frustrated with this tin can. I want to keep going with it, however, as one of the cool things about Oolite is the realism. And in real life shit happens, as the saying goes. I would like to 'cheat' and give the Adder a 5 ton hold so I can do some passenger carrying (my favorite way to get credits). I don't feel like this is cheating since I think NPC Adders have this. What file do I need to edit to do this? I am on mac.

Hans Olo wrote:

I would like to 'cheat' and give the Adder a 5 ton hold so I can do some passenger carrying (my favorite way to get credits). I don't feel like this is cheating since I think NPC Adders have this. What file do I need to edit to do this? I am on mac.

Depends on whether you use a shipset or not.

If you do use a shipset, you'll need to edit the main shipdata.plist in the shipset's Config folder.

Note that you'll have to open the .oxp folder somehow (on the mac I think they are locked somehow - Windows here so I'm not sure).

Do a Search in the shipdata.plist for "adder-player" and then find the line "max_cargo" = 2; and change it to 5.

Not sure here, but you might need to re-buy the adder or edit similar lines in your save game. When you reload Oolite you will need to hold Shift down to reload the cache.