Oolite Bulletins

I'm new to Oolite, but I have played a little bit of Pioneer. Are there any "must have" OXPs for new players in order to get a definitive experience?

There are differing opinions on this but many oxps can alter things in ways that you don't expect, or potentially in ways that you don't even notice.

The patient way is to play the default oolite for a while and then slowly introduce oxps one by one as you begin to discover what you think you'd like to add to your game.

Another is to chose from the more 'cosmetic' oxps, the ones like shipsets or planet textures that mistly change the look of the game (a few of these make some other changes however).

And then of course there"s the slap-dash, whatever takes your fancy method. This can be a lot of fun but when you discover something is not to your liking it can be time consuming to track it down. It is also possible that you can miss sone default setting that would actually be to your liking.

If you're new to oolite and similar games then I'd suggest the patient way, that is only IMHO of course.

Good luck!

What Redspear said - and as a so-called traditionalist, I'd recommend the patient way. However, Random Ship Names is a must-have!

The absolute must-have is "BGS" (significant graphics and sound improvements).

"Starting Choices" let you start with a better-equipped ship -- Some newcomers said Oolite can be difficult at first.

"Neo-docklights" - if you have trouble with docking, it's a great help.

'Famous planets', 'Extra planets' and 'Stations for extra planets' are quite popular I believe.

All are available from the package manager.

Hi, and welcome.
As has been said, it may be best to avoid Expansions at first. The game as it comes is 'complete' in the sense that it is a mature, well-thought-through package which will offer a great experience. As most expansions change things it can be hard to know what is game and what is expansion and this can be a problem when issues arise. Get to know the core game first, then carefully select expansions that you feel may enhance your experience further.
Some expansions can be used without affecting the core game, such as Random Ship Names mentioned by Cody, and some of the purely eye-candy OXPs (Better/replacement ships and textures and enhanced planet textures) are also 'safe' for a newcomer, but I would advise against using any that add things to the game until you are familiar with it.
You will get a whole raft of opinions here on the board, from those like me who use only a handful of (mostly) eye-candy OXPs to those who load-up with dozens of them. Take your time and use a bit of common sense, and in time you will have a great game that really suits you.

I guess if every member of this board were to provide their list of "must have" OXPs, not two of those lists would be the same. One of the beauties of Oolite is that it lets you define your own game exactly as you prefer it. The best way to get to that place would be to follow the above mentioned slow method.

Folks here are extremely cautious on recommending OXPs. And as it is with all moddable games, you should see the core game first. Anyway, to get you started, here's some fairly safe starters that basically only add eye candy (and computer strain) to enhance the Oolite experience.

From the manager:
* RandomShipnames (adds variation to the game by giving unique randomly generated names to NPC ships)
* Additional Planets + texture packs (adds secondary planets and moons)
* Griff's shadered ships. (grab the Griff's Normalmapped Ships package and it will pull the other packages.)
* Station Ads (adds in-game ads to the stations)
* BGS (background graphics, sounds, effects. you'll want this)
* Communications Pack A (makes NPCs more chatty)
* Zygo Cinematic Sky & Nebulas (the name pretty much sums this one)

From wiki, not available in the manager:
* Povray Planets (high resolution textures to the planets)
* Deep Horizon Nav Buoy (nice navigation buoy that matches Griff's ships)

I suggest adding them one by one, observing the effect and then deciding if the OXP is to your liking.

What the others said. Eye candy like povray planets and so on should be save to use without altering the taste of the vanilla game.

However, you said you came here from pioneer, one oxp that does alter the original game behaviour a lot but which might be something for you is phkb's ship configuration, which adds some kind of equipment levels a bit like in Pioneer/Frontier.

fly save commander

Welcome elaxter!

Visual upgrades:
[wiki]Asteroid Storm[/wiki] and [wiki]Icesteroids[/wiki] for better flying rocks,
[wiki]HD Backgrounds[/wiki] for nice arrival reports,
[wiki]MarketObserver[/wiki] for funny advertisements on market screen,
[wiki]System Features Rings[/wiki] and  Sunspots speaks for itself,
[wiki]Trails[/wiki] if you have good hardware.

Useful features:
[wiki]Combat Simulator[/wiki] practice your skills,
[wiki]Commanders Log[/wiki] record your advance,
[wiki]CommsLogMFD[/wiki] store and can scroll back the messages you received,
[wiki]Display reputation[/wiki] in cargo, parcel and passenger business,
[wiki]Gallery[/wiki] review details of encountered ships and create ship exhibitions,
[wiki]HUDSelector[/wiki] improve HUD (especially with [wiki]CombatMFD[/wiki]) and save your MFDs,
[wiki]ILS[/wiki] prevent traffic jam at stations and much faster than Docking Computers,
[wiki]LogEvents[/wiki] bring to light the source of bugs or a sudden bounty on you,
[wiki]Target Autolock[/wiki] locate who attack you.

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll stick to just eyecandy OXPs. However i really like the look of Planetfall. Is that a good one?

elaxter wrote:

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll stick to just eyecandy OXPs. However i really like the look of Planetfall. Is that a good one?

Over 200 comments usually mean a not so bad one.
Just install Planetfall Markets also if your Oolite is v1.82 or newer.