Oolite Bulletins

The time that I have to sit in front of my monitor and enter the Ooniverse is fairly limited, due to wife and Kids. But somehow I made it to 2600 kills now and I accumulated a small fortune. The longer I spend time away from the Cockpit of my Cobby, the less seductive it seems. Maybe it is time to think about ways to get some new challenges?

I like to trade, I like to do Random Hits missions, briefly I entered the Galactic Navy. With enough money now, I may be concentrating on the fighter career only. But... Doing a RH mission as well as doing a Navy mission means endless planetary jumps until finally, there is a short moment of excitement. Increasing the chance of a special evente in the RH OXP makes the visit of an Anarchy system more interesting, but after a while, I might say that I begin to find the way though the more peacefull systems simply boring. (Even the Anarchy Systems could have a substantially more populated space).
Deep Space pirates is an OXP yet to try.

Any suggestions?
Does the parcel / passenger transport business result in more trouble once you have a certain ranking?

ralph_hh wrote:

Any suggestions?
Does the parcel / passenger transport business result in more trouble once you have a certain ranking?

Well, you can always fire at the station and then feel the excitement of eight Vipers with military lasers messaging you that you have been selected for termination, but that may be kind of extreme.

Joking aside, have you thought about going fugitive? If you don't like the idea, then try the parcel deliveries. Things get very interesting very fast there. Also, you may want to try trading exclusively in illegal goods.

Another idea might be to get a story-driven mission OXP. I have not tried too many myself, but some seem to be very interesting and they give a sense of objective to reach.

Become a pirate. And keep a clean record! i.e. Don't be seen or leave survivors
Only doc/land when you cargo hold is full with stuff 100c + value each.
Only ever buy equipment, fuel is not equipment.
Use unwanted cargo as projectiles, not as easy as it sounds but fun.
Of course sun skiming for fuel has it's own hazards.
You need to heavily populate your galaxies with extra ship oxps.
All this and random hits is my usual fun play.

Since you like to trade, and like a challenge, perhaps give New Cargoes a try.. that will give you challenging trading.. it's a win/win!

another_commander wrote:

... try the parcel deliveries. Things get very interesting very fast there.

Indeed they do!

Yep, my Python ("The Full Monty") and I can vouch for that. ^

Certain types of parcel contracts can be a little troublesome, but once you have the rep, they can be quite lucrative!

Passenger Transport does not yield anything beyond money?

OK, I'll try the parcel service then. And have a lookout for some more OXPs.

You need to heavily populate your galaxies with extra ship oxps.

Any suggestions beside "deep space pirates"?

ralph_hh wrote:

Passenger Transport does not yield anything beyond money?

OK, I'll try the parcel service then. And have a lookout for some more OXPs.

You need to heavily populate your galaxies with extra ship oxps.

Any suggestions beside "deep space pirates"?

RRS has some quite interesting missions (mid-range chart hopping as fast as possible to fight for a blackbox, or undock from the station for a scramble mission (protect incoming freighter in vicinity of the station from already attacking pirates), or protect a rescue ship on its way to a derelict.

OoHaul missions tend to be stressful (very stupid pilot in a very nimble craft needs protection from system main planet to witchpoint; no injectors).

Escort Contracts has sometimes traders with "ident block" (whatever that equipment is really called) - it prevents you from selecting it, and it does prevent having an M beacon on the compass. Have fun finding a ship in space after it went off on injectors fleeing from pirates...

You need to heavily populate your galaxies with extra ship oxps.

Any suggestions beside "deep space pirates"?[/quote]

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Category:Ships_OXPs

Question is how many can your computer handle?
And I'm sure if you ask someone that knows they will tell you how to alter your game code to increase population when jumping to new system.
I've never had to do that. Have heaps of time and mostly manage to fill my hold before docking.
Also a good idea to add dockables. you'll find them here;

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php

I'd be wary of just adding more and more ship OXPs. A lot of the older ones predate the improved NPC AI: to make them more challenging, they were often souped up to the gills, rock hard, and armed with everything under the suns. Combined with the new improved AI, they might tend to make combat very frustrating (albeit often brief).

If you've not done so already, I'd suggest downloading Cim's [wiki]Skilled NPCs OXP[/wiki]: it can give you some very satisfying dogfights against basic in-game opposition.

ralph_hh wrote:

Passenger Transport does not yield anything beyond money?

Passenger has similar "extra danger" mechanisms to Parcel (and if you do both, they can both apply...)

I currently have eight or ten high-priced postal deliveries and six high-cost passenger contracts - I recently came out of hyperspace to find five groups of enemy ships waiting for me, a total of about 20 ships. Plus a Thargoid battle group that came into view as I was running away from the other enemies, but that's because I'm running Thargoid Wars and run into them quite often. Running away is a VERY useful survival tactic, which is why I'm using a Planet Express ship, which is small, lightly armoured, has miserable gun accuracy (the gun mount is way off centre), but makes up for it by being VERY fast.

I also rather like adding touristy sorts of things that can be fun to look for-- racing rings, sightseeing OXP's like Explorer's Club, the sorts of things that let you go looking for places you might not otherwise go. For parcel runs, the UPS oxp adds more variety to the usual vanilla runs and also includes some special missions with a storyline if you want. Rescue Stations, as someone else mentioned, are definitely a great addition, a nice variety of random missions with a sense of doing something useful in the Ooniverse (no spoilers, though). It helps me to think of who my 'character' is in the game and what she would do. I've dropped cargo to rescue escape pods and slaves, because I'm a goody-two-shoes like that. (For those who like to rescue slaves the Illegal Goods Tweak is a great OXP to have.)

Here's a challenge for y'all: Explorers' Club with no backtracking - visit each system exactly once.