Oolite Bulletins

Previously I wasn't so much a bounty hunter as a soldier of fortune, neutralising fugitives as I found them. But Random Hits has changed all of that! I'm now a contract killer, and I'm loving it!

The only problem I find is that when I arrive at one of the seedy bars in the space-lanes of the anarchy systems, I'm presented with a list of possible 'liquidations' and details of which system they're in. But once I exit the 'bulletin board' of available contracts to see where the systems are on the galactic map, I can't get back to the bulletin board.

Is there a way of returning to the board, or do I have to accept a contract without knowing how far away the system is?

It comes up every time you dock, so ATM once you've exited the board you'd have to launch, flip your ship over and redock to bring the BB back up. I could set it to come back up if you spent more than 10 seconds on a particular screen (eg the status screen). But this might get annoying!

I know Eric allows you to look at the Long Range Chart as an option in UPS missions, so I'll have a look at his code and see what I can pinch!

LittleBear wrote:

It comes up every time you dock, so ATM once you've exited the board you'd have to launch, flip your ship over and redock to bring the BB back up.

Thanks for the reply, LittleBear. I considered exiting and then hitting shift-D to re-enter, but it occurred to me that my second visit might generate a completely different set of available contracts. And then I'd be back to square one...

LittleBear wrote:

I could set it to come back up if you spent more than 10 seconds on a particular screen (eg the status screen). But this might get annoying!

Yeah, other commanders might curse me if I asked you to do that....

LittleBear wrote:

I know Eric allows you to look at the Long Range Chart as an option in UPS missions, so I'll have a look at his code and see what I can pinch!

Thanks for having a look. The only other option I came up with was running Oolite on my MacBook to access a map of Galaxy 5, alongside the game running on my Mac Mini. But that's a bit convoluted!

The dice only get re-rolled on a hyperspace jump, so the missions should remain the same if you launch and dock. You get about 3-4 different missions of each skill level (page 1,2 and 3 are really different difficulties), so if you wanted a hit on page 1 (say) you may have to flip through the board a few times before that particular hit comes back on page 1.

JohnnyBoy wrote:

The only other option I came up with was running Oolite on my MacBook to access a map of Galaxy 5, alongside the game running on my Mac Mini. But that's a bit convoluted!

Or, you could do what I do, print out this (or at least the galaxy you are on),
AtoZ-Oolite-Planet-Guide.xls

and cross reference it to one of my grid-referenced galaxy charts
(only up to galaxy 3 so far),

Galaxy 1

Download Galaxy 1 Chart

Galaxy 2

Download Galaxy 2 Chart

Galaxy 3

Download Galaxy 3 Chart

In fact I don't really need the chart printout.
I just make a note of the co-ordinates of my current system, then alt-tab to the a-z guide to compare it it the system of the contract.

Gives you a fair idea of distance and direction
(as long as you are fairly spatially aware).

LittleBear wrote:

The dice only get re-rolled on a hyperspace jump, so the missions should remain the same if you launch and dock.

Ah, that's what I needed to know - thank you LittleBear!

@Commander Mysenses - Thanks for the links to the charts and Excel files. Once I get back to G1, I'm sure I'll make use of them.

Well I tried launching and re-docking, but the missions changed. It's not so bad, the targets seem to be found in about a dozen systems.

One enjoyable pastime that I have discovered, starts when I come across a bunch of pirates near a seedy bar.
Instead of slowing down and taking them on single-handedly, I press on towards the bar and they inevitably follow, decimating my aft shield as they go.
Once I make it to the bar, I turn so that my forward shield can take some of the punishment and watch my scanner as a stream of yellow dots leaves the seedy bar.

Once the cavalry arrives, they promptly open up a family-sized tin of 'whoop-ass', and the pirates start to regret firing on old Commander JohnnyBoy. Well, the ones that survive do...

They will come back up again eventually, but you may have to go round the board (returning to page 1 from page 3) 5 or 6 times. Oolite uses a seed number to create 'dice rolls' so if roles 1, 2 and 3 produce the numbers 23, 45, 85 then so do rolls 1001 1002 and 1003.

For example each victim has a three word description "a horrid horned solicitor" for example. Each word is picked from a table with about 150 entries on it, so with 'real' dice the chances of getting the same 3 word description again would be 1 : 3,375,000. But because its a seed generated pesdo-random sequence you'll get the same sequence (and therefore mission description) repeated when the sequence repeats. Each message uses about 100 dice rolls, but different seed number produce a different number of rolls before the sequence repeats. There are trillions of combinations in total, but you'll only get about 30 different possible Ads from one seed number. Sometimes you'll get as few as 5 or 6 different missions from one seed number. Random Hits is very err Random though as I haven't hand coded anything almost every word is a seperate dice roll. By the law of average, on average a target system will be about 20 ly from your present location, but of course you can get lucky and its next door or unlucky and its on the other side of the Galaxy. Part of the reason the rewards are quite high is to reflect that you may well have to do a fair bit of traveling.

JohnnyBoy wrote:

Thanks for the links to the charts and Excel files. Once I get back to G1, I'm sure I'll make use of them.

Where are you now? I will send you a chart of your galaxy.

Commander Mysenses wrote:

Where are you now? I will send you a chart of your galaxy.

Galaxy 5

JohnnyBoy wrote:

Commander Mysenses wrote:

Where are you now? I will send you a chart of your galaxy.

Galaxy 5

There ya go,

Download Galaxy 5 Chart

*cough* http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite ... t/Galaxy_5

Thanks fellas!

Ahruman wrote:

*cough* http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite ... t/Galaxy_5

Yer... all well and good but planets in numerical order... what good is that??
At least I arranged 'em here into A -Z order, for ease of searching.

And pretty though your charts are... no grid lines?
Grid refs are not as useful without 'em.
(do you want me to finish of the grid-reffed ones and upload them to the wiki?)