Oolite Bulletins

On numerous flights, I have encountered ships that radio a S.O.S, asking for help. I want to try and help them, but I am not sure about a couple of things. All of the ships involved, are colored "yellow" (friendly) and if i jump into the battle and destroy some of them, will I become an "Offender"? Is there any compensation attached to helping them or is it done just the for self satifaction of knowing you came to someone's rescue?
Thanks

Hi Greenco

Yellow doesn't mean friendly - it just means that particular ship hasn't targetted you. You will become an offender only if you attack a police ship or a station, or if you attack a "clean" ship within view of the police. One word of warning - I don't know if this is strictly true, but it seems to me that the original SOS broadcaster sometimes also turns into an attacker. I may be wrong.

There is a reward - the kills go towards your Elite status rating (complete with bounties).

Mike

greenco wrote:

On numerous flights, I have encountered ships that radio a S.O.S, asking for help. I want to try and help them, but I am not sure about a couple of things. All of the ships involved, are colored "yellow" (friendly) and if i jump into the battle and destroy some of them, will I become an "Offender"? Is there any compensation attached to helping them or is it done just the for self satifaction of knowing you came to someone's rescue?
Thanks

To identify the ship requesting help, press the "~" key on a U.S. keyboard. Your keyboard may vary, or you could assign the key through the keyboard mapping menu. The ship that most recently sent you a message (S.O.S. for example) will have colored parentheses appear briefly around it on your scanner.

Ships which receive your help in a timely fashion usually offer their thanks, gratitudes and blessings. If it was your ship being attacked, you'd appreciate some assistance too, eh? If you're too slow, the ship in distress could be destroyed.

If you destroy a ship with an "Offender" or "Fugitive" status it is likely you'll be paid a bounty. The amount of the bounty varies.

Scooping an Escape Capsule and bringing it safely aboard a main station is likely to provide you with a financial reward (for the rescue of a clean pilot or the capture of an offender or fugitive).

If there are friendly system police ships also attacking the same offender/fugitive and your ship makes the kill, you may be receive a "Thanks for your assistance" type of message. (Edited to add: Occasionally, Fugitive status ships send distress calls when being attacked by Police ships.)

Thargoids send messages just prior to their destruction. These may be entertaining, cryptic or simply poor translations of the original language. Depending upon which version of Oolite you have, these messages may be received even when the destroyed Thargoid is beyond the range of your scanner.

Good luck Commander.

Thanks for the info!
MKG, I suspected that might be the case because sometimes after the distress call, all of the ships kept flying together and they did not seem to make any attempts to escape.

CptnEcho, I will try and save someone's day and see what happens.

If you fit a Scanner Targeting Enhancement you'll be able to quickly identify the legal status of ships in your vicinity, and be able to tell the guilty from the (at least technically) innocent...

greenco wrote:

On numerous flights, I have encountered ships that radio a S.O.S, asking for help. I want to try and help them, but I am not sure about a couple of things. All of the ships involved, are colored "yellow" (friendly) and if i jump into the battle and destroy some of them, will I become an "Offender"? Is there any compensation attached to helping them or is it done just the for self satifaction of knowing you came to someone's rescue?
Thanks

Are you using the test release 1.72.2? Since that version, I've found an enormous number of "clean" ships behaving like pirates. Escort ships flying off to attack other clean ships and things like that. One time I had three clean ships in a row hunt each other (A running, B shooting A, C shooting B).

Any interaction with such clean attackers can lead to a (low!) legal status if a police ship sees you firing first at them, thus be careful!

Furthermore, those requesting help sometimes behave themselves as pirates. Helping those might result in a "thanks" and the next ship targeted being yours...

Screet

Wasn't this part of one of the pirate OXPs? The chance of a call for help turning into an ambush?
I'll take them out next time I play and see if there's any difference.

Screet, I installed 1.72.2 and all seemed OK, until I got into a fight and then the whole world started spinning (horizontally) and I could not stop it. I had to remove it and go back to version 1.65, so I could continue the game. I am running Oolite with a Linux (Ubuntu 8.04) operating system.

Disembodied, I normally use the Target Scanner, but most times when I am close enough to lock on to a ship, it (the ship) has already turned red and started to attack me. During one fight, the scanner told me the ship that I was locked onto was a "Offender", so I destroyed it. When I docked I was shown as an Offender, but a few flights later I was Clean again.

Thanks for everyone's help on this!

greenco wrote:

Screet, I installed 1.72.2 and all seemed OK, until I got into a fight and then the whole world started spinning (horizontally) and I could not stop it. I had to remove it and go back to version 1.65, so I could continue the game. I am running Oolite with a Linux (Ubuntu 8.04) operating system.

Huh...two ideas:
1) Your ship has crashed into another ship or object. Some player ships are very small, for example the Merlin (great ship, though!). Ramming a tiny ship would send those spinning if they don't get destroyed. After some time (depending upon the energy dealt) things adjust, though.
2) That new version comes with jaw control. What you write could indicate that it has not been configured properly (for the joystick).

greenco wrote:

Disembodied, I normally use the Target Scanner, but most times when I am close enough to lock on to a ship, it (the ship) has already turned red and started to attack me. During one fight, the scanner told me the ship that I was locked onto was a "Offender", so I destroyed it. When I docked I was shown as an Offender, but a few flights later I was Clean again.

Accidental offender status often comes from fighting with clean ships. Some pirates have not been caught yet, thus they are clean. I've got the impression, though, that something's wrong with my version or addons here, as I had a severe increase in clean ships with pirate behaviour. If fighting clean ships, nothing happens when no police is around....but if police shows up, the first one to hit a clean ship gets the status. Previously, the Hatchling BoyRacers were a good source of that kind of status. Another way is the accidental shooting of non-offenders, either by misaligned lasers (sometimes the pirate heads towards another ship, thus continuing to shoot after it exploded can cause the one to be hit you wanted to save!) or - more likely - by turret usage. Some player ships come with turrets, which have limited range and fire against the targeted offensive ship. As turrets miss often, it's much more easy to get a status that way.

Getting rid of that legal status is typically easy: each jump reduces it, but most often you are clean before you dock already by shooting down some more pirates You can have a look in the playerfile to check the actual value, if you are concerned that it did rise too high. Save using an alternative name, verify that status and then decide wether to reload or proceed...

Later in the game, with anarchies installed, you will have other options to fix such a problem.

Screet

Thanks Screet, I will put ver 1.72.2 back on the computer and give it another try. I am OK with the "Status" changes and don't pay them much attention now. My joystick was correctly Identified, by the game, and it seemed to work fine until I got in the dogfight. I will give it another test this evening.

greenco wrote:

Thanks Screet, I will put ver 1.72.2 back on the computer and give it another try. I am OK with the "Status" changes and don't pay them much attention now. My joystick was correctly Identified, by the game, and it seemed to work fine until I got in the dogfight. I will give it another test this evening.

Tip: keep the two main axes as they are and if your stick has rudder function, link that one to yaw. This way, it's a pretty seamless transition to the new steering functionality and it goes in accordance with (aerial) flight simulators.

Screet

Screet, I had to put version 1.65 back on my computer. I was attacked by a single vessel and I know I never got close enough to hit him or anything else and still the world started spinning. The only way to stop it is to exit the game.

With version 1.72.2 installed, I get a terminal window (I am running a Linux OS) full of error messages abut "GNUstep" locations. I don't know if this is related or not, but I will stick with the older version until I figure it all out.

Thanks

Try disableing the yaw axis of the joystick via the Oolite menu for keyboard and joystick control assignments.

My joystick caused problems when the yaw feature was enabled. Deleting the joystick yaw assignment solved the problem. I am able to use the yaw feature via the keyboard without problems.