Oolite Bulletins

I've only just found Oolite. Enjoyed playing Elite 25 years ago or so, but that was on my ZX Spectrum, so things have improved a bit!
Been playing a week or so, I have 150+ kills, clean status, 15,000Cr and about everything you can fit onto a Cobra MkIII.
I have read about missions (Biarge & Lerelace) and have been to both, but I don't seem to get any messages about missions.....

Does anyone have any advice????

You would need to have the OXP installed before these would work. Download Spyhunter & Longway from Oosat1 and Black Barron and the HQ from Oosat 2.

At the moment though you only have enough kills to be offered the HQ mission.

I have downloaded Longway (hint I found on another thread) but haven't a clue what to do with the zipped files - do I extract them somewhere?
Also - sorry to appear crettin'ish - but what is OXP...?

Please note:
I am connected here from my work PC (on which I am 'mostly harmless').
It is the home PC that has my better standing.

Ok:-

Oolite comes with 5 missions built in and about 20 ships. Players have written more ships and more missions for the basic game. These are OXPs (Oolite eXpansion Packs). If you play the game with all the OXPs installed then you have about 30 missions and 200 odd ships available to you. Installing an OXP is pretty easy:-

1) Download the ZIP file (as you've done).
2) Unzip this to your desk-top.

You'll see a folder here, but the folder you need will be inside this one.

(Eg: with Assassins you'll see a folder called AssassinsB7. Inside this is Assassins.oxp (the one you need!) and a readme file. All the OXPs are packaged in this way.)

3) Open the folder that has appeared on your desktop.

Inside this you'll see a folder ending .oxp (on the Mac this folder also has the Oolite logo on it) and a file called readme. Double click the readme file and read it. This gives you some info about what the OXP does. When you've done reading what the OXP does, close the readme file.

4) Highlight the folder ending .oxp. DONT go inside it! Just move it to the Oolite AddOns Directory. This will be under ProgramFiles\Oolite\AddOns on the PC, but maybe somewhere else on the Mac. Anyway, whatever system you are using, you just need to get that .oxp folder into Oolite's AddOns directory to make it work!

5) Delete the files on your desktop and you're ready to play with the new feature or install another OXP!

Once the OXP is in AddOns the new features it adds (new ships, new player-ships, new stations extra planets, missions etc) will be added to the game.

Missions usually need you to have a particular Elite rating before they will start. Some will also need you to be in a particular Galaxy or at a certain System. This is to ensure that the young Jameson in a Cobra with a pulse laser isn't immedatley blown to bits by an army of well-hard OXP ships!

Information about the missions is here:- http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_Missions

You can download them from Oosat1 here:- http://capnhack.com/hosting/oolite/Oolite/OoSat.html and Oosat2 here:- http://oosat.alioth.net/

If a version of an OXP is on both sites, then use the one on Oosat2 as that'll be the most recent one.

garp wrote:

- but what is OXP...?

Oolite eXpansion Pack was my guess.

Thank you for your quick and helpful advice - greatly appreciated!

garp wrote:

Please note:
I am connected here from my work PC (on which I am 'mostly harmless').
It is the home PC that has my better standing.

The 'mostly harmless' rating in the forums is just a matter of how many posts you've made. That goes with you, no matter where you log in, as long as you use the same user.

I shall seriously consider changing my log-on name to CRETIN then!

@LittleBear -
Your explanation of OXP's and Missions was very polite, kind and succinct. Could we look at making this a "Sticky"?
Best, Michael