Oolite Bulletins

Can I begin by saying that I love all the hard work everyone puts into this game. It gives me endless hours of enjoyment. All comments should be taken as having the intention to make everything even better, not to criticize!

Some comments on various OXPs I have been trying out.

Deep Horizons - System Redux

This is great, and seems to work really well. But gas giants appear too often as the main planet in the system, which is odd. Also, this seems to conflict with the PlanetFall Taxi OXP - I often get asked for transport to the surface of a gas giant!

A question though - are the extra planets and moons generated the same for everyone? Essentially, if I have a 6th moon of Qube, can I assume everyone does, and write an OXP that says "go to the 6th moon of Qube"?

Deep Horizons - Gas Mining

Love this, but a few simple tweaks would make it great. Firstly, there is a typo in one of the messages that comes up - the word "condensed" is misspelled "condenesed". Secondly, and more importantly, there is a problem of feedback when the mining doesn't work. Looking at the script, it seems that there is a sizable chance that gas mining just does not work. When this happens, literally nothing happens. The first few times I tried gas mining, I thought I was doing something wrong, or had installed the OXP wrongly. I flew around for ages, before giving up. I would suggest a simple message like "Sensors detect insufficient gasses in this atmosphere for mining" or something, just to let people know what is going on.

IronHide Armour

Congratulations on creating the biggest credit-sink in Oolite! I'm forever having to have this repaired. Excellent stuff!

Dredgers

I love the ability to salvage ships (although I rarely manage to get it to survive to reach the dredger). Is it possible to get either your autopiloted salvaged ship or the dredger that appears to collect it to appear on the Advanced Space Compass? I'm always losing track of it while fighting off pirates.
Also, there appears to be some conflict with the FuelCollector OXP. I've had a situation where I launched a salvage missile at a wreck, only to have it and the fuel collector wrestle for control of the ship. Maybe this is intentional, but it ended with the wreck exploding, which was annoying.

Galactic Navy

Great OXP - Does buying war bonds actually do anything? And is there any requirement to a reserve mission other than just turning up?

Also a few questions:

Which is the OXP that lets you get bounties/insurance payouts for rescuing escape capsules?

Which OXP has the Supercobra?

I can't answer all your questions but I'll try and help with the answers I think I know.

Buying war bonds will eventually lead to the Gal Navy giving you a discount on equipment, you have to spend big to save big mind you.

On missions you'll have to kill a couple of targets for the Navy to recognise your participation, this message should appear on screen at the time.

Payments for scooping criminals or insured pilots are part of the core game, although you'll find not all pilots are insured.

Finally, the Supercobra is part of the um, Supercobra oxp...

@Ragged-
Re: DH- Gas Giant Skimming - I'm glad you like it! You're one of the first to actually provide feedback on it. I'll get the typo fixed ASAP. As for the other issues, I wanted the player left in the dark somewhat as mining should be a hit-and-miss thing. That said, I am planning on upgrades for this OXP already, so I'll see if I can't come up with something that'll satisfy both of us.

As for DH-SR2: This has been renamed to DH-Systems. The frequency of the gas giants is a known issue. Right now, they appear in 3 out of every 7 systems at a minimum (x > 42.85%) due to the limited number of textures I have finished. When I complete them all, they'll represent a MAXIMUM of 3 out of every 40 systems (x < 7.5%). None the less, I have heard the feedback from several rather vocal individuals about the gas giants. I am in the midst of overhauling the script for this OXP, and have "a Plan" to resolve this in a way that should satisfy most everyone.

Ragged wrote:

Dredgers

I love the ability to salvage ships (although I rarely manage to get it to survive to reach the dredger). Is it possible to get either your autopiloted salvaged ship or the dredger that appears to collect it to appear on the Advanced Space Compass? I'm always losing track of it while fighting off pirates.
Also, there appears to be some conflict with the FuelCollector OXP. I've had a situation where I launched a salvage missile at a wreck, only to have it and the fuel collector wrestle for control of the ship. Maybe this is intentional, but it ended with the wreck exploding, which was annoying.

Hello Ragged,
Not having a beacon on the dredgers is intentional. The player should developed some skill to do the job. There are 3 sizes of dredgers in game. The two biggest are already visible with the naked eye at the start of the mission. The smallest is more difficult, but it is visible at first combat point.
You just have to systematical search the sky when you have lost your orientation during combat.: Set speed to zero and turn to a big object in the sky (planet or sun). Now make a 360 degree turn and examine the sky for the dredger. When you find it in this loop, rotate your ship sideway and do another scan. With this approach you should be able to find it fairly quickly.

On fuel collector: I never had it installed, but it sounds as a bug to me in fuel collector. Nothing of the missiles in dredgers is capable of exploding the target.

I had a look at the readme for the fuel collector and the explosions do seem to be intentional. According to the handwavium supplied some pilots rig their ships to detonate if the systems are hacked.

If you intend to try salvaging whilst using a fuel collector you'll therefore need to stay 300m+ back from the target to avoid this.

Ragged wrote:

Galactic Navy

Great OXP - Does buying war bonds actually do anything?

Yes it does. But you should buy a rather large number to notice the effects.

Welcome onboard .-)

Ragged wrote:

Which is the OXP that lets you get bounties/insurance payouts for rescuing escape capsules?

It's Oolite itself. And some OXPs are using this functionality (e.g. Erics UPS-Courier) to do own stuff.

Ragged wrote:

Which OXP has the Supercobra?

As Loxley said and it is also used in LittleBears RandomHits (not as player-ship).

Have fun...