Oolite Bulletins

There's been a good few times that I've been heading towards a planet and seen what appears to be explosions coming from the planet.. do craft have a tendency to plow into the surface!? or am I seeing battles ahead? however there's no indication or any conflict.. are the explosions just visible from a lot further distance?
Also I've seen explosions come from the direction of the stations nav bouy..are the traders drinking all their wines before they get to sell them?
After following behind a few ships while docking... this wouldn't surprise me!

Probabley all of those things. The scanner range at 25km is quite short and explosions can be seen long before the ship (before it became an explosion) comes into scanner range. Really big things (like stations and large asteroids) can be seen from hundreds of Kms away. The game simulates a whole system, so stuff is going on and ships getting on with their own things even if the player is not present. So battles take place in the system and ships sometimes crash into the station even if the player is hundreds of clicks away.

LittleBear wrote:

Probabley all of those things. The scanner range at 25km is quite short and explosions can be seen long before the ship (before it became an explosion) comes into scanner range.

Speaking of scanner range.. are there any upgrades at increase it? perhaps a navy scanner? that would kick ass.

Hmm..perhaps I should make another post on the suggestions board.

Possibly those explosions are witchspace jumps?

Mostly those explosions are ships being blown away during battles, if you head towards them you can often scoop the leftovers, or join and gain some kills.

Okay, I'm certain that they're ships/missiles exploding..

I just saw a ship fly straight into the nav bouy outside a station..*BOOM* crazy people.

Once you have enough credits, and your ship is fully blinged, trading becomes secondary, I do very little trading these days, (except in platinum) and earn well enough from scooping flotsum