Oolite Bulletins

I continue playing random hits and in between missions, I sucessfully work on building a small fortune in order to get me a new ship. Which brings two questions to my mind:

What kind of ships are there, suitable for hunting mission? I did not scan through all oxps.
I'm so far happy with my Cobra MKIII. I know the Pitviper, which is my primary choice, so far. What others are there?

Second: If I install a new OXP with that ship, how do I define the probability that a ship randomly generated is this OXP ship? Last time I took the pitviper, in the end every pirate group had one, instead of being a very expensive, very rare ship it was everywhere. Once got 3 pitvipers attacking me In the end I deleted that OXP, since I could not yet afford that ship anyway. What number in the shipdata do I have to adjust?

(same ist true for galactic navy, I ran across a pirate owned navy frigate. I destroyed that one easily, but still don't think this is a good idea. How can a crew o nacy spacemen abort a still functioning ship to leave it to someone to lie his hands on?

ralph_hh wrote:

If I install a new OXP with that ship, how do I define the probability that a ship randomly generated is this OXP ship? Last time I took the pitviper, in the end every pirate group had one, instead of being a very expensive, very rare ship it was everywhere. Once got 3 pitvipers attacking me In the end I deleted that OXP, since I could not yet afford that ship anyway. What number in the shipdata do I have to adjust?

You need to fix the roles from the shipdata. See here: [wiki]Oolite Ship Roles[/wiki].

ralph_hh wrote:

What kind of ships are there, suitable for hunting mission?

The best core playable hunter is the Asp imho, without cargo space but with more energy and speed for better combat performance. There are two similar playable ships in [wiki]EscortPack[/wiki]: the escort variants of Arachnid and S8, both are better in combat than its predecessors but can hold parcels and valuables only. Recharge and pitch rate are two more important factors for combat in shipdata.plist, so I listed these in the wiki page also.

It sounds like you are trading as well as being lethal so presumably some holdspace is required. TBH of the core set, the Cobby III is pretty un-beatable as a multi-role ship.
A variant which might suit you is the S9 which features in Staer9's Chopped Cobra OXP*. It is faster and more manuevreable than the standard cobby, but only has 15TC cargo space.
A very expensive option might be my Contractor Mk II, fast with sharp and impressive handling, and quite tough as well. The downside is the meagre 2TC cargo space.

*This is one of those OXPs which spams the spacelanes a bit - you might want to adjust the role weights of the normal chopped cobras a bit. Also, it has not been updated for v1.80 yet, but should still work.

The Wolf MKII might suit you - a sweet ship to fly!

Smivs wrote:

*This is one of those OXPs which spams the spacelanes a bit - you might want to adjust the role weights of the normal chopped cobras a bit. Also, it has not been updated for v1.80 yet, but should still work.

The same technique can be used to thin out the numbers of those overly abundant pitvipers..

The ol  Eel Rapier is kinda old school, but pretty nice for killin' & huntin'. Course, it's nothin' like the über ships of to-day, but back when I was a kid we all flew wearing comical barrels held up with suspenders AND WE LIKED IT!

Smivs wrote:

A very expensive option might be my Contractor Mk II, fast with sharp and impressive handling, and quite tough as well.

Incidentally, also the joint-toughest (with the pirate king flavour of the Fer-de-Lance 3G) of the NPCs that I've tested so far.