Oolite Bulletins

Hi there, I'm new here. What a great place this is and what a great game is Oolite. For years I wished I could get Elite back then I discovered Oolite - what a find and what great work the developers have done.

Anyway back to my problem. I'm running 1.73.4 on XP and have installed fuel stations amongst others. Problem is the orientation of the fuel stations most times the orientation is wrong. Not possible to line up because there is no turn movement - bow thrusters needed for that in space - rendering the fuel station useless, or am I missing something?

The fuel satellite works well but rarely appears. Is it possible to either fix the orientation or to only have fuel satellites?

ZirconB wrote:

Anyway back to my problem. I'm running 1.73.4 on XP and have installed fuel stations amongst others. Problem is the orientation of the fuel stations most times the orientation is wrong. Not possible to line up because there is no turn movement - bow thrusters needed for that in space - rendering the fuel station useless, or am I missing something?

I don't understand what you are looking for: Oolite does have pitch, roll and yaw for the playership. The stations are not meant to align themselves for the ship to fly in.

However, maybe you have some other issue: Some ships with subentities, especially turrets, do explode when they enter the station. That's some internal collision detection problem and the only reason why there are fuel satellites

I've even flown through the fuel stations approaching from the side, flying through the "bars" with a boa class cruiser!

Screet

I'm running a BoaClass cruiser and no it cannot turn. Pitch = Up/Down, Roll = Rotate around an axis, hyence no turn. If an approach is made head on and the alignment is off, say to the side not in the centre there is no way to correct this with the current controls. I'm using the arrow keys, up/down, left roll left/ right roll right. Is there another key for turn that I have missed?

Update: I couldn't find the keyboard reference sheet but I have now. I'll have to use a joystick, especially for combat AND YES I have found the . and , key for yaw.

To think I have been all over the universe on various missions and I did not know about the yaw keys i.e. left/right.

ZirconB wrote:

I'm running a BoaClass cruiser and no it cannot turn. Pitch = Up/Down, Roll = Rotate around an axis, hyence no turn. If an approach is made head on and the alignment is off, say to the side not in the centre there is no way to correct this with the current controls. I'm using the arrow keys, up/down, left roll left/ right roll right. Is there another key for turn that I have missed?

Yes, try "," and "." or whatever the keys right of "M" are labeled on your keyboard. For more fun, get a cheap joystick which has rudder control and then have a look at the joystick configuration menu

Screet

Tried it. Still doesn't get orientation right if station at an angle. Perhaps it would be better if I could turn off fuel station & just get fuel satelite if that were possible.

Maybe I'm not understanding the problem, but pitch and roll should be enough to dock anywhere, surely? If you need to turn right, rotate 90° clockwise and pitch up (or roll 90° anticlockwise and pitch down). I don't use yaw, and I've never had any trouble docking. Then again, I'm not quite as wide in the beam as a BCC ...

Concerning I have managed to refuel in a fuel station with a frigate (!) without as much as scrape damage, methinks the problem is with steering, not the fuel station's orientation ...

May I introduce a wild guess?

ZirconB, I think your problem could be that the viewpoint of your Boa Class Cruiser is not in the centre of the ship, but quite a lot above it. So, in order to align with anything (especially things like docking bays, or fuel stations you want to fly into), you don't have to aim at the centre of the structure, but at a certain point above the centre. Then you enter without scratching your hull (best case) or blowing up (worst case).

You can perhaps get a feeling for the relation between your ship's central axis and your viewpoint through using your external views (press "V" to circle through a variety of viewpoints, "1" - "4" bring you back to your usual "internal" views).

As I said, just a wild guess.

Thargoid wrote:

That can be done. If you open the oxp folder, go to the scripts folder and find fuelStation_stationSetup.js. Make a backup copy of this file, and then in a text editor (not notepad or M$ word - try wordpad or notepad++), open up the original version. Up at the top you'll see this.startUp = function(), and below that settings for this.extraA and this.extraB.

All you need to do is change this.extraA = true; to this.extraA = false;. Then you will only ever get fuel satellites, not fuel stations. Alternatively if you have OXPConfig OXP installed, you can make the changes using that rather than editting the file (you may want to look at installing that instead if you're not comfortable with file-editting).

Thanks, yes I tried that and I found no fuel satellites (or stations) from one end of the galaxy to the other.

it's a pity I am unable to describe my docking problem adequately enough for anyone to understand what I mean. I will try again: the key is orientation. If the station is say at an angle of 30 degrees (from the docking ports) there is no way with the control keys I have got to line the ports up for clear and clean entry

What do you mean by "docking ports"? You are simply supposed to fly into the big structure, which is best done from either of its two ends. As the fuel station doesn't roll, turn, or perform any manoeuvre, but stays perfectly still all the time, there shouldn't be any problem here.

I've gone some way beyond confused here.

Fuel Station, fly towards either of the open ends and into the middle where the yellow bit is, stop, fuel up, leave.

Almost certainly the easiest thing to dock with in Oolite.

Voilà: the nice'n'easy guide to Fuel Stations:

locate, fly to, line up, fly in, stop

Commander McLane wrote:

What do you mean by "docking ports"? You are simply supposed to fly into the big structure, which is best done from either of its two ends. As the fuel station doesn't roll, turn, or perform any manoeuvre, but stays perfectly still all the time, there shouldn't be any problem here.

That only works if the ports/entrance is lined up exactly with the ship at 90 decrees to the entrance. Just tried it, almost right but not good enough, game over. No way to align correctly.

Perhaps I'm not using Oolite as everyone seems to be convinced it's easy. I will take a screen shot to see if I can get evidence.

Now your pics are showing. problem is getting alignment from pic 3 to pic 4.

While aligning, please take into account what I said above about the difference between your viewpoint and your ship's centre. It's like driving a car. Your driver seat is excentric, either on the left side or on the right side of your car. If you try to drive through a small gate in a way that your seat is exactly in the middle between the gate posts, you will crash your front fender. You have to get your whole car through the gate, not only your seat. I hope you get the analogy.

And if you haven't aligned correctly, why don't you turn and fly back far away? Then try to align from the distance and enter the structure dead centre.