Oolite Bulletins

Hi all

Up until recently I have never seen a derelict. Now I've had two offenders bail (in swift succession) AND I've spotted one in my scanner.

I have been reducing them to debris and scooping any cargo or metal panels. Is dredging really worth the risk (salvage drone cost vs. pirate destruction of your prize), or do I continue with my garbage-disposal space hoovering?

Hullblazer wrote:

I have been reducing them to debris and scooping any cargo or metal panels.

In the core game probably this is the best what you can do. But:
-If you use the drones of [wiki]Deep Space Dredger[/wiki] then you can get some money.
-Using a [wiki]Towbar[/wiki] you have more possibilities, for example Ship Miner can disassemble ships.
-If you like [wiki]EscortDeck[/wiki] then some derelicts are in usable condition.

The deep spare dredger does seem risky, given pirate activity. I like the look of (and will download) towbar as I don't feel this unbalances "reality".

Thank you!

It's definitely worth it in comparison to scooping the cargo. A cobra 3 yields 2000-4000cr, a python 3000-5000, both appear frequently as pirates. Most of the time they are accompanied by a larger number of fighter ships though, so that money is hard earned. You also have to make an annoying long boring trip escorting your wreck to the dredger, and you may be forced to abandon your wreck while doing that. For a small ship with hardly any cargo space that can't make money from trading furs <->computers it's a way to make money more quickly and compensates for the ridiculous bounty from scooping escape pods which is basically never worth dropping cargo to have a free TC. Bounty hunting in an Adder without shield upgrades is challenging! (You don't want to buy shields as you're gonna sell the ship.)

I like the towbar function but not the unsightly bar hanging off my Cobbie's bum: I cannot code, never really got much past basic and C.

It'd be nice if there were a tractor or magnetic beam that could be activated when required. I could see the beam drawing half an energy bank when in use at moderate speeds in a straight line but more at high speeds and heavy manoeuvering: to a point you could leave yourself "dead in the water" or even at "press space commander".

Norby replied in another thread to someone whose towbar was in the way of the camera view about making the towbar invisible.

the $TowbarShow=false; setting in towbar.js can make an invisible towbar (like tractor beam) and free your aft view.

That's a nice touch, thank you!

Moreover this.$TowbarFixed=false; can change it to retractable so show only when there is a towed ship. Seems to a frequent request so this will be the default setting in the next version.

Even better! However, can anyone suggest a program in which I can open and doctor the towbar oxp?

All you need is a text editor. Avoid Notepad though if you are on Windows as it breaks stuff by adding extra characters. Notepad + is OK.
Also remember to hold down the Shift key when restarting the game to flush the cache.

Thank you - I'll seek out Notepad+ as when I opened the file in notepad yesterday (didn't save it) all I saw were non-alphanumeric characters.

The oxz file is a renamed zip file. To avoid unzip and zip again after edit I suggest Total Commander (or Krusader in Linux) which can step into the oxz file like into folders using enter on the file, then go into the Scripts subfolder and press F4 on towbar.js, change, save and start Oolite.

Stunning - thank you!

You will need to configure total commander to use notepad++ to edit using F4.

It might be worth my saying that my InterstellarTweaks expansion pack (available via the in-game expansion pack manager) occasionally spawns derelicts in interstellar space.

One thing one can do with those - and with other derelicts - is to extract fuel from them (if they have any) using the Fuel Collector OXP.

Note that:
- my Interstellar Tweaks OXP increases the range of ships that one can extract fuel from;
- actually, stellar as against interstellar derelicts tend to have more fuel.[/list]