Oolite Bulletins

Evening all. Just started playing Oolite after a friend of mine told me about it. I had no idea the game even existed! Played Elite (to death) back when I was a kid - so many memories!

Anyhow I get to do it all over again it seems. One thing, getting around seemed to take a lot longer than I remembered. Maybe 20 odd minutes from exiting hyperspace, or should I say witchspace, to reaching the station. Read another intro topic on here and saw the mention of the jump drive. I have now located the 'J' key and all's well in the world

Well, Elite was 25-odd years ago. That's my excuse anyway.

Welcome to the friendliest board this side of Riedquat, LOCI. I hope that you enjoy your stay with us.

Also, if you feel a need for speed, get Witchfuel Injectors. They'll make transit times a lot shorter, until you run out of fuel, anyway.

Thanks for the welcome. One quick question while I remember; I never bothered with beam/military lasers in Elite as I found that, so long as you were careful placing your shots, a mining laser did the job far more effectively. Is that still the case in Oolite?



Oops. Lost some more paint on that station entrance just then...

Speaking as one who has never used a Mining Laser before, I'll say that Military Lasers are very effective at introducing your enemies to hard vacuum. And they're a lot easier to aim as they don't have the long cycle time of a Mining Laser.

But if they have a high enough power, they could still do a good job.

A mining laser does 100 damage per second, a military laser 115 dps, a beam laser 60 dps and a pulse laser 45 dps.

On the other hand, a half-second reload time is a bit of a bother when you miss, and the military laser has more than twice the range (30 km vs 12.5 km).

I'm with you LOCI... it's good to be back in the saddle, even after quarter century too!
I have used the mining laser as an early option rear laser. For the front laser... doesn't cut it for me, beam then military. But it's a useful #2, plus using it for mining asteroids fill up that empty cargo space when you're short on cash. And gets you used to the feel of the controls against a target that doesn't shoot back!

Welcome aboard, Commander!

Cheers,

Drew.

Ahruman wrote:

A mining laser does 100 damage per second,
...
On the other hand, a half-second reload time is a bit of a bother when you miss,

Sadly, I'm pretty sure mining lasers fire slower than that.

Ah yes… for players, it’s 2.5 seconds, making DPS 20.

Hi LOCI,
I started playing Oolite the day before yesterday after 1/4 century as well!! I've kept a timer - 21 hours so far...

Talking of weapons. Even the military laser overheats quickly. It is ridiculously difficult to take on multiple aggressors (who don't seem to have overheating problems themselves). Is there an upgrade to a better weapon?

SuperDave156 wrote:

Is there an upgrade to a better weapon?

Nope (it's an extremely effective weapon).

However, there may be an upgrade to your aiming skills. It comes with practice.

Each shot that misses your target is a wasted shot. So try to make every shot a hit. The laser gets hotter from each shot you fire, regardless whether you hit or miss. Therefore the best way to limit overheating is to eliminate the "miss" shots.

And if you're dealing with a group of enemies, you should invest in more lasers. At least you should have a rear laser as well. When your front laser is overheated, simply turn around and fire with your rear laser. If you have enough money, you can also install port and starboard lasers, and alternate between all four (relatively easy with yaw-control). Note that each laser has an independent cooling cycle. So while your front laser may already have run hot, the other lasers are still ice cold. And while you fire from the other three directions, the front laser will have cooled down again.

Yes I see... but sometimes you just want to blast away and have some fun and I think that weapon overheat will be the one thing that will turn me off the game (again as I'm sure that was my frustration on the beeb).
It may seem odd but Elite is the only computer game I have ever invested time in - apart from Space Invaders in 1979 - as I have never really been into gaming.

Poor weapons seems to be the big problem that the future will have. They will fly across vast distances, defeat gravity and (in Terminator and Avatar 3D for example) develop huge battle ships that can hover over the ground but THEY CLEARLY WON'T BE ABLE TO BUILD WEAPONS THAT HIT ANYTHING AND DON'T OVERHEAT!!!

SD's rant for the day. Thank you for listening...

If there were better weapons in Oolite, the Thargoids would have them. You wouldn’t like that at all. :-)

Ahruman wrote:

If there were better weapons in Oolite, the Thargoids would have them. You wouldn’t like that at all.

<enigmatic>What makes you think they don't have them? Perhaps they just haven't used them yet.</enigmatic>

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

Ahruman wrote:

If there were better weapons in Oolite, the Thargoids would have them. You wouldn’t like that at all.

<enigmatic>What makes you think they don't have them? Perhaps they just haven't used them yet.</enigmatic>

Cheers,

Drew.

Indeed...