Oolite Bulletins

So I've just started out, and have no upgrades for my ship. Literally just doing my first job. I need to deliver something to Begabi, but every single time I jump there (tried 30+ times) I just get massacred by 20+ pirates with top tech, I die in a matter of seconds, hardly get a chance to turn and identify one of them. If, by luck, I only get attacked by about 2-5, I can try engaging one, but as soon as I get close to killing them, they some how just hyperspeed away (unless it's injectors, I've never tried them but surely they're not as fast as hyperspeed?).

Am I doing it wrong, is the game broken, is Begabi just crawling with pirates, or is it something else?

Welcome Commander.

It's been said :

Disembodied wrote:

Most games have some sort of paddling-pool-and-water-wings beginning to ease you in: Oolite takes the rather more Darwinian approach of heaving you straight into the ocean, often with a brick or two in your pockets for luck.

And what's happened here is you have found a very deep part of the ocean, where someone's let loose some sharks just to make it more fun.
A word of advice, think about what is being asked before taking a parcel contact - they are not all equal - Oh no, not at all The Begabi contact pays well for a reason, it's not really there for the innocent.
You are better off letting it lapse and do some trading first to get some equipment. I think the other two contacts that you are offered at start are possible to do - note I don't necessarily mean easy! If you really want to try being a courier - A rewarding but dangerous profession no doubt.

Good luck out there.

Welcome CommandoAir!

Basically you still will learn a lot about the game, either in the hard way (trial and error) or asking here. Some tips:
- Check the government of systems and avoid "bad" ones (Dictatorship, Multigovernment, Feudal and Anarchy) until your ship is not a big war machine.
- Avoid good systems also with Anarchy & co. neighbours, pirates like to do raids in these.
- Until you have no Injectors you must be very cautious. Taking a contract is not fit into, assasins hunt for ships with any wanted cargo.
- There are no easy enemies in this game for new pilots. You are facing with competent and better opponents all the time.
- You can practice in [wiki]Combat Simulator[/wiki], test how many enemies are too much for you, in this case you should run on Injectors.
- Read more about Playing the game, especially the Tactics section.

What they said... and welcome aboard!

One bit of advice - if you find yourself swarmed, sometimes the best response is not to run, but to encourage them to come in nice and close, so that they are trying to shoot at you without hitting their friends. Then you usually find you're only dealing with one or two opponents at a time. Of course you're still probably dead in this particular case, but you might be able to take one or two with you.

I think we can safely move this to general discussion.

A small follow up on pirate behaviour I recently encountered. I have to say, I wasn't into combat since v1.82 trying to concentrate on trading, but recalling the pre-v1.8 combat memories it's much different.

It seems many pirates (3 to 4 per pack) I recently met came up on full injectors as soon they decided me to be a possible prey .(this tactics is plausible, because it makes snipering them or fleeing in general harder)

Regularly If I manage to fight one of the ships off, it injects away/flees beyond scanner ranger, only to reappear an instant later again like a jack in the box and engages me again as if nothing has happened before. (it's a bit odd but immersion-wise I justify it that the pilot got a bad conscience being a coward and returned to support his buddies. A pirate honour codex)

And those bastards are damn accurate, less than 1.80 but nonetheless they are good marksman. Have to fly really wild maneuvers to get them to miss at all.

What I really like was the reinforcement that's now appearing sometimes if you fight one pack for a longer time, and another pack of pirate ships appears later and happily joins the fun.

Just some oberservations,

Amah

Ps. Oh, and in case a Mamba pilot is listening, those missile launches on death sucks... I swear from now on if I see a Mamba be it fugitive or clean I'll preemptive scratch your Hull.