Oolite Bulletins

Hello there commanders,

I'm pretty new with elite and oolite - played only fe2 and ffe before. I like the oolite very much so far cause all of the extra content.

Anyway, I installed whole bunch of oxp's I found on wiki and some are pretty good some not so much. But there's one thing I got major problem with - stations rotating.

Is there a way to stop them? (black monk monastery and pi42 come to mind, but i think there are couple more)

Hello skodarap, welcome aboard.

skodarap wrote:

Is there a way to stop them? (black monk monastery and pi42 come to mind, but i think there are couple more)

Do you have them small-white-box like pi42 stores ? When I had those, there were always a few rotating like mad.

Or the HUGE Griff ones ? Like the one depicted in the wiki article
Those should not rotate too bad, and their docking bay is huge anyway.

I had it explained to me what was wrong so I did not have the Griff pi42 stores, but I forget.
Maybe I just needed updating to the newest version.
Not the main OXP, but the sets A-F, as those contain also the stores. I think.

Black Monks - I don't know those.

Huge ones...I don't know how bad those tiny ones are, but these are pretty bad for me

Managed to enter it (somehow) 3 out of maybe 20 attempts - didn't even attempt to land on Black monk monastery cause that one seems to be spinning even faster.

Anyway, is there anything in the script that defines that?

Page 2 & 3 of this thread have a few bits of information on rotation speed. If you're comfortable with editing plists, that should be enough to get you started with some experiments.

If you've got the big YAH stations like these:



then you shouldn't have the original ones (rectangular boxes with a big docking port and a billboard on the top) as the new one should over write the old (or cause icky conflicts and aberrations) - and for the record the old Pi-42 and Tescoo Oxpress stores never rotated - ever - Doc designed them that way. (EDIT: No picture of old stores as NTLhell (now Vermin Mediocre has killed off my old homepage and all the files it contained )

The big Trade Station/Constores have a very reasonable rotation speed - unless something has been corrupted on your system or another OXP is causing an issue I don't why you might have fast spinning stations that are so difficult to dock with.

Thanks all of you... I guess I'll have to play a bit with script and see what will happen.

I mean, it's not terrible, it's just hard to roll at right speed with keyboard. It's not a problem though with stations that have short hangars, but "black monk monastery" has a pretty long one.

skodarap wrote:

Thanks all of you... I guess I'll have to play a bit with script and see what will happen.

I mean, it's not terrible, it's just hard to roll at right speed with keyboard. It's not a problem though with stations that have short hangars, but "black monk monastery" has a pretty long one.

Have you trief entering at high speed? The faster you are the shorter is the time you have to align your ship with the slot. I never slow down for landing and when I feel like it I even use injectors. With them you only need to wait for the right moment and don't need to roll at all.

I usually crash when I enter too fast, but generally yeah, that's what I do, get as close as possible and than wait for a right moment - it doesn't always work though

I find tapping the keys works well to maintain the right amount of roll.

You can practice with the Lave Academy, just enter it with speed close to zero and practice maintaining the roll. Or for that matter any station, approach from a long distance off at slow speed and just practice matching the roll. Soon it'll be second nature.

Alternatively have you tried flying with the mouse - personally I don't like it but many people do. You should be able to match rolls perfectly that way.

Hi, skodarap, and first of all welcome to the boards and of course to this great game!

I take it you're talking not especially about additional stations, but about the basic system main stations.

They are rotating by default and are not meant to stand still (imagine what would happen to the people inside without the benefits of gravity ). Matching your own rotation speed to them is part of the tools of trade for any pilot. Docking is just something everybody has to learn in this game.

But don't be discouraged. With a little training it's actually not that hard. As somebody else mentioned before, flying with a higher speed helps as well.

I've never tried with a mouse, but joystick also is a bit easier than tapping keys to match rotation rate. Tapping the keys isn't that hard really either though. The rotating stations are just one of those things that seem like a real pain in the butt at first, but you'll probably get good at in your first few days.

Docking computer is an option too. But to be honest, if I could sell mine back off, I would. LOL They are very slow and clumsy compared to a player with a bit of practice, and you kind of lose some of the immersion factor.

Going in too slow is, as has already been mentioned, more likely to cause trouble than going in a bit fast. But that's if you pull up close and wait for the right moment. What's fun later, when you have some practice under your belt and flying comes easier, is to come screaming in at full throttle and injectors from a bit of a distance so you are adjusting your roll on the fly while you can imagine station personnel yelling at you over the comm-link "You're coming in too hot!!"



There's a certain feeling of accomplishment to doing that and not even scratching the paint.

Ganelon wrote:

I've never tried with a mouse,...

I tried, but gave up. I never was able to align myself for docking with a mouse. Main problem is that the mouse has no auto-centre of the controls if you stop moving the mouse. You have to constantly watch the position of pith/roll positions in your hud to get the mouse back in neutral position.
Do I miss a trick, or is it just a matter of long praxis and learn to fly from scratch?

Eric Walch wrote:

Ganelon wrote:

I've never tried with a mouse,...

I tried, but gave up. I never was able to align myself for docking with a mouse. Main problem is that the mouse has no auto-centre of the controls if you stop moving the mouse. You have to constantly watch the position of pith/roll positions in your hud to get the mouse back in neutral position.
Do I miss a trick, or is it just a matter of long praxis and learn to fly from scratch?

Not sure what's the situation with Mac, but on Windows and Linux, right clicking the mouse will instantly center both roll and pitch (and yaw) indicators.

Main stations are not the problem anymore since I dumped my cobra mk 3 for adder on the first trip to zaonce, so I had some spare Cr left to get the docking computer among other useful things. So it's just those OXP spinning stations that are a bother

Anyway, I found the part where the roll is defined, but still haven't changed it for all OXP's.

One question though - if I understood correctly oxp config files have priority over oolite ones - so I got to change shipdata.plist in oxp folder to slow down the main stations or is it enough to just change it in oolite.app\resources\config? (I got deepspace ships oxp installed and it's got it's own shipdata.plist)

And as far as gravity goes - It does make sense, but there's no need for it to be equal to earths gravity (if lower it would reduce dumb injuries, like dropping heavy objects on the foot or tripping and falling on the head - every thing would be much slower and preventable even for those with poor reflexes)

Ganelon wrote:

Docking computer is an option too. But to be honest, if I could sell mine back off, I would.

Sell_equipment.oxp is your friend.