Oolite Bulletins

hi can anyone tell me if there is a cheat to get a docking compuer

i know it's sad but i'm 50 ain't got the time lol

Well this is cheating Tut Tut! But if you open your save file with notepad and search for <key>has_docking_computer</key>, you'll see after this that it says </false>. Change that to true, so it now reads "<key>has_docking_computer</key> <true/>" and you'll have a puter when you close and save.

EDIT: You'll also need to change the phase "<key>EQ_DOCK_COMP</key>
<flalse/>" to true as well.

Or if you want to do it honestly, you could install the Black Monks OXP (link on my signature). You'll then find the Monks in tech 11+ systems. Dock at their base and the helpful chaps will loan you 20,000 Credits allowing you to kit out your ship. Don't forget to pay the loan back though, as they will hunt you down like a dog if you default!

wow that was quick will give it a go thank you

And welcome to the forum!

Captain Hesperus

tx going to give it a whirl

I can't stop you from ...argh...<gasp>... cheating, but you're going to miss out a lot of fun. Won't you reconsider if i tell you about the thrill of line-skipping ahead of an Anaconda with fuel injectors on while the Vipers try to blast your ship to bits?
If you ever get to be considered a criminal, not only your hacked 'puter won't work, you'll also be missng important skills!

Actually, once I learned that there are things like Navigation Buoys, docking was quite simple. Just fly as close to the buoy as possible, turn around and you are lined up with the docking station. All you need is to match the rotation now. It can be done easily if you fly slowly.

A quick blast with your injectors when you are close enough will zip you in even quicker

If you trade in your tradeship for a smallish Adder or so, you can make the docking 'slit' at almost 90degree angle while at injectionspeed!

That's an interesting point for ship designers, is there any restriction as to the depth of the docking slit, I guess you could make a long thin pencil like ship with "linear" cargo space, and provided you are lined up straight, you can go in at speed without touching the sides!!!!

I have thought of 'train-like' ships towing cargo as in the movie 'spacetruckers' (love those pigs!)
The problem here is that you'd need hingeing joints to make the ship move realistically.
Unless you like the sight of a SO-2001-esque ship cartwheeling it's long bulk around in a way that makes you cringe with the thought "metal fatigue".

(One solution might be the 'convoy_AI' with a few 'no-combat' and a 'check for train-integrity' modifications. Though this might lead to strange behaviour at dockingtime.)

Out of interest, were navigation buoys implemented in any of the other versions of Elite, or were they specially created for Oolite? Only it's such a simple idea (get as close as possible and voila, you're all lined up for final approach) yet so brilliantly effective that I wondered where it came from.

I believe that navigation buoys were in the Spectrum version.

In my day, we didn't have them on the BBC version, and we used to look down our collective nose at the Speccy users who couldn't dock without them.

(Yes, I'm from a strange alien race that has a collective nose. Don't visit our world when there's a flu bug going round.)

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

If you trade in your tradeship for a smallish Adder or so, you can make the docking 'slit' at almost 90degree angle while at injectionspeed!

oright open docking bays, and in comes an Adder at injector speed, would make a rather mess ehh on the inside of the station.

Weird though, im almost 100% sure that you could not dock at full throttle
in Classic Elite on the commodore 64...

Should apply to oolite too.. but oh well...Docking at full throttle is allways fun, however i favour CTRL+D on PC

In my day, we didn't have them on the BBC version, and we used to look down our collective nose at the Speccy users who couldn't dock without them.

Ah yes, I remember well. Docking on the BBC version meant lining up on a black rectangle on a black background. It also meant lots of scraping the sides, seeing your shields disappear and hoping you'd make it in before your cobra exploded. Docking 'puters were an absolute must, and even they didn't always line you up properly.