Oolite Bulletins

Before I get flamed or otherwise shouted at I did a search and could not find anything definitive to help me...So a couple of questions for you.

As a background, I remember playing Elite on a Sinclair Spectrum in the mid 80s so I am quite familiar with the play features of Oolite although there are some additional features which either I don't remember (I'll claim my age as an excuse) or I never encountered. Nevertheless, I did play Elite to destruction and became very good at it. However, one of the most frustrating parts of the 'old' Elite was docking. Until one obtained the docking computer to automate the sequence, the constant matching of roll to the entrance became very tedious. Like all games of the day, there were cheats to help the newb progress (or, if you like, help the newb bipass essential aspects in order to attain playability) until one gained enough credits to buy what I considered essential to my sanity.
I have downloaded and printed a copy of "The Oolite Reference Sheet" so again I am familiar with the controls. Here are my questions.

1. What is the difference between Docking Computer (full sequence), Docking Computer (no sequence) and Docking Computer (Active Target) ?

2. Is there anywhere a written down foolproof way of docking without constant destruction ? And yes I have gone slow, very slow, very very slow, and still I destroy my ship 9 times out of 10.

3. Finally, can someone point me in the direction of a tutorial on shipbuilding etc? This is one aspect of Oolite which I find infinitely exciting and a welcome addition to the game and one I would very much like to explore.

I thank you all in anticipation.... and I thank the developers for giving me a chance to replay my mispent years..Hoping for an early reply so as to give my working cubicle a new life (whilst my boss is not looking)

Regards

Hemlock

hi Hemlock. no worries. you won't get flamed or shouted at here

as far as Q1 the 'no sequence' just offers the result of the Dock sequence but puts you asleep so you don't have to sit through it. not so sure about the 'active target' other than it would seem to apply to dockable carriers and such, that need to be target-locked before you can ask the DockComp to engage..

Hemlock wrote:

2. Is there anywhere a written down foolproof way of docking without constant destruction ? And yes I have gone slow, very slow, very very slow, and still I destroy my ship 9 times out of 10.

this may read strangely to you too once you get a 100% docking record. you can even go fast, very fast and successfully dock. the key is that during entry the wide part of your ship is level with the wide part of docking bay..

unless of course, somehow you are in a ship that is an extremely tight fit. you're not flying a Boa

for exploring shipbuilding, why not start here at the Wiki's howto OXP, and do tell how useful you think it is.

Hemlock wrote:

1. What is the difference between Docking Computer (full sequence), Docking Computer (no sequence) and Docking Computer (Active Target) ?

"Full sequence" plays the Blue Danube as you sit back and watch the computer play with your ship for a minute. You've probably seen this before in Elite.

"No sequence" is instantaneous docking. A bit of a cheat, but sometimes you actually want to dock before christmas.

"Active target" is the full sequence, except it docks with whatever your identification system is locked on to. Currently that means the station, or a rock hermit (big asteroid). In the OXPs there are carrier ships and other fun stuff.

Ooh, I wonder if "active target" means one can use the docking computer to scoop cargo pods. [checks] Nope. Pity.

Docking was really hard when I started playing. Mind you, I'd never played Elite, so Oolite was my first try. I got good at it too. Heck, I actually injected fuel when docking and I didn't blow up. Then I got docking computers, and since then I've gotten rusty. BUT!...If you want to see me dock with fuel injectors, you will need to give me some free movie making software, other than Snapz Pro X, and a few hours to get back into shape.

As for models, I can't put them into .oxp format, mainly because I havn't bothered to find out yet. If you want some excellent modelling software for ships, you should try out Blender In my opinion, it's much better than Wings3D and Meshwork. It's free, it's OS X/Windows/Solaris/Whatever, and it's free.

Best is to practice, exit station, and try to re-dock, w/o caring much you blow up or not.

After awhile, you'll find out that actually going faster makes things easier: less time to hit stuff!

This has been mentioned in another thread recently, however, my preferred way of manual docking is to:-

Fly out to the navigation beacon and then head back towards the Station lining up the docking bay as centrally as possible.

Choose a slowish speed once you are fairly close, keep the docking bay symetrical around the target then rotate the craft in sync with the station.

Once you are reasonably close and lined up correctly hit W or injectors to sling you through the bay!

My favoured docking method is to arrive with the witch space injectors going, screech to a halt just as I'm approaching an imaginary line between the docking slit and the navigation beacon, pulling up to face the station, match rotation and hit the witch space injectors again. I'd use the hyperspeed if it wasn't for being mass locked by the station

winston wrote:

My favoured docking method is to arrive with the witch space injectors going, screech to a halt just as I'm approaching an imaginary line between the docking slit and the navigation beacon, pulling up to face the station, match rotation and hit the witch space injectors again. I'd use the hyperspeed if it wasn't for being mass locked by the station

I'd like to see that manouvre!

In my old days, I used to be pretty good at seeing the imaginary line from the station to the planet and stopped usually pretty much in the correct spot to head towards the station... In Oolite, the beacon takes the biggest challenge away, but I doubt I could do the whole thing at full speed, let alone with the injectors!

As a tip to crashers, you really have to speed up at the last moment, not to let the hangar bay rotate around you as you creep slowly in.

Anther method is as soon as you get in range of the station, press 'Shift-D', then '1', then slow your engine down to a stop, spin around and you'll find you're perfectly lined up. Works every time! How cool is that?

The difficulty I found at low FPS was matching the station rotation rate. What works for me
90% of the time is to use Winston's method, coming to a full stop in front of the station
when the docking slot height fills 3/4 of the screen or more. Now don't bother to match
rotation rate but wait until the docking slot is 30 to 45 degrees short of horizontal then
hit W and slide right in.