Oolite Bulletins

Hello All,

I bumped into ooLite and I quite like the feel of it, however I can't find any comunication menu for requesting clearances.
Also when I approach the rotating spacestation is there a way to have my spacecraft maintaining the roll?
At the moment I have to fiddle with the keyboard and repetively press the roll shortcut and it makes the approach quite hard

Thanks
Luca

Hi, luckyluca! First of all welcome to the boards and of course to this great game!

Generally you may want to have a look at the Oolite section of the elite-wiki, for a start the Instruction Manual and the FAQ-page may be of interest for you, but there is a ton of other useful information as well, from lists of available ships, to the political background, and fiction.

As far as your questions are concerned: There is no communication menu in Oolite, although this is a long-standing wish. So you can dock with any station at any time. Just think that your ship's computer do all the required communication automatically. If you invest in Docking Computers, docking gets easier, and you will receive the necessary clearances as soon as you activate it close to a station (default key: C). (Although, if you are a Fugitive, the station will refuse to let you dock using your docking computer. You will still be able to dock manually, though.)

To your second question or observation: Indeed, docking manually has to be learned. There is no way to maintain a specific roll-rate at any time. So what you are doing (continuously pressing the roll-key, in order to match the station's roll as good as possible) is exactly what we all do. There is just one thing you have to do: learn it. Or buy Docking Computers (see above). At least the existence of the Navigation Buoy makes it easier to line up exactly in front of the docking bay, than it used to be in previous incarnations of Elite.

So, have fun exploring the game (and the Ooniverse).

And, if you have any further questions, feel free to ask here (but, please, kindly consult the available documentation as well).

It's old advice, but worth repeating.

• Fly to the navigation bouy by the space station,
  stop,
  turn and line up accurately with the entrance,
  speed up (with a bit of practice) faster is easier, there is more chance of going out of alignment at slow speeds,
  match you rotation to the station's.

a few dabs on the up/down arrows and your in!

Except that something might fly out of the station while you are on approach, I think. But that is rare, unlike Frontier where hanging around the docking bay was suicide...

Best wishes,
Oscar

Thank you for the warm welcome and for the docs, they'll keep me busy

I'm honestly quite surprised about the lack of comms, well never mind.
I'll try your suggestion, the beacon seems like a life saver.

Thanks for now, also the new shader screenshots look amazing, looking forward to it.

Luca

One of the biggest challenges early in this game is learning how to dock. It just takes practice. Lots of practice. In fact, you can hit F1 to lauch from the space station, go to the docking buoy, turn right around and try to dock again. No fuel is used since you do not enter "witchspace".

Or buy a docking computer. Then hit shift-D to instantly dock, or hit lowercase "c" to watch the computer dock for you.

One more tip about docking, do not aim at the centre of the 4 lights. On most (all?) ships you are sitting higher that the centreline so you have to compensate for parallax.

I'm thick! It took me a long time to twig this?

Press "V" to help you line up your ship.