Oolite Bulletins

I have most if not all the ship Oxp's in the add ons folder however I never see a chopped cobra or a super cobra for sale, is there a reason for this? Further to this I find the tech level 11 and sometimes 12 worlds dont have any ships to sell at all, that cant be right, can it?

Cos

However many OXP ships you have in, Oolite still picks a certain number to be offered for sale. The ships offered depend on tech level and some other factors. Eg a high tech world might offer 15 ships for sale. If you had no OXPs in at this world there would be 15 cobras, adds, boa's etc for sale. If you had 100 OXP ships in then the ships would be picked from a list of 100 plus the normal ships, but only 15 would be offered for sale, so you'd only have a 1/100 X 15 chance of the SuperCobra (say) appearing. The more OXPs you have in, the more ships are on the list, so there is less chance of seeing a particular ship (if you see what I mean), as the big list of OXPs that Oolite can pick from gives more variety. Ship Designers can also specify in the OXP's shipyard data a variable that makes their ship more or less likley to be picked. Some are very rare.

That said, the SuperCobra is faily common. Hang out at some High Tech Yards and you should see one eventually. Time is also a factor. Once the ship yard for a particluar world is done, then is will slowly change over time. Your best bet to find a ship you really want is really just to travel around a lot going to lots of different planets.

There is also an occaional shipyard bug, which somtimes causes no ships to be offered for sale for a bit. But this tends to fix itself after a few jumps.

Thanks Little Bear, that makes sense, but what about some of the high tech worlds not having any ships at all?

Cos

You could have hit the Occasional Bug in Oolite that for a bit causes no ships to be offered. It clears itself up after a few jumps however. Each Designer also specifies a minium tech level at which his ship can be sold. So if you are hanging out at low tech you would never see an Imperial Courier (for example) offered for sale. I haven't looked at Giles's shipdata for the Chopped Cobra, but it maybe that he made the ship rare and / or gave it a high minium tech level. The Morrigan (for example) is increadly rare!

You might also just have been unlucky on the "dice". A high tech world is more likley to have more ships for sale, but it is still possible for it to have none.

I see, I'll keep going and see if it does clear up. I've just managed to find a chopped cobra so I'm a bit happier now anyway. I take it you were'nt serious about an imperial courier, were you??

Cos

Oh yes! It is the ship I fly. You can download it from Oosat 1 (not all ships are on Oosat 2!). If you havent checked Oosat 1 yet, you'll find that you can add about 20 more ships! If a version of the same ship appears on both Oosat 2 and Oosat 1, use the version on Oosat 2 as this is the most recent version.

Oosat 1 can be found here:-

http://capnhack.com/hosting/oolite/Oolite/OoSat.html

LittleBear wrote:

Oh yes! It is the ship I fly.

I sure hope you're not gearing your assassin missions to pilots in that bird... A lot of people will be trying it out with tamer craft and that will hurt .

Best wishes,
Oscar

The first three assassins missions are pretty easy, just to get you into the swing of things! But missions 4 - 16 get progressivly harder. That said you need 1,000 kills to trigger mission 4, so I have assumed you will be flying these missions in a decent ship. If you blow all the credits you earn at the Worldsend Bar rather than sensibley investing them in improving your craft however, you will be in for a nasty surprise when you start going up against Heavy Cruisers, Pirate Flagships etc!


Completing the missions also requires a bit of lateral thinking. A squarden of police asps will blow away any player in any ship. Need to find a way to hit the mark before his escort arrives. You are not ment to duel all the ships in the area. As an asassin you are meant to hit the mark and get out of dodge!

LittleBear wrote:

Completing the missions also requires a bit of lateral thinking. A squarden of police asps will blow away any player in any ship. Need to find a way to hit the mark before his escort arrives. You are not ment to duel all the ships in the area. As an asassin you are meant to hit the mark and get out of dodge!

Ah,, that's why i changed the Supercobra to Fer-de-Lance NG (no missiles, weak shields but really fast). But now (even though i damaged the cloaking device i again duel all enemy ships in the area

Oh didn't I mention, many ships in this OXP have the Anti-Mask Cloak Scanner. They spot cowardly cloaked commanders and still blow them out of space! Speed & cunning are therefore needed to complete the missions!

The difficulty is set on the assumtion that you speed in, find your mark, kill him and get out. Every ECM hardened missile you fire at an escort,
police ship, military ship, fellow pirate etc is just cutting into your fee! "Its nothing personal, just a matter of buisness!"

I'm playtesting in a standard Cobra MkIII (but well equiped)! In an uber ship, it might be possile to duel the ships in the area. I usually get blow away in fully equiped Imperial Courier when I try to do the missions that way (quite often even if I've resorted to Q-mining!). But as with everything in Oolite the player can attempt the missions any way he likes!