Oolite Bulletins

The Holy Joes are alright, it's the lobsters that cause trouble!

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Knowledge is a deadly friend, if no-one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools

I must say this game is much easier to play with a flightstick than an Xbox controller. I was depending way to much on yaw control, and this stick won't let me do that. So I've had to relearn how to fly, but I'm liking it. Plus, I can dock faster than the computer; important for keeping on schedule.

So, I've got the Violet Star cruising along the bottom part of G4 to get a parcel to Geonerbe, and I'm ready to make the bottleneck jump from Bien to Teceteis (fully expecting a pack of assassins waiting for me on the other end. Well, there happens to be a nice Mark III headed there as well, so I hitch a ride (uninvited); It will be very nice having a whole tank for the injectors when we come out on the other side (I'm still learning the stick and I never was very good at combat to begin with!). Well, we get there. Nothing.

I realize I have a full tank, I don't need to dock at the station for anything, so I could easily jump right now to Tiorra, but I thought I'd fly to the station with my newest friend in case he needed some help along the way. Again, nothing. So I sit outside the station (waiting to hitch another ride), there are 3 or 4 other ships hanging out, and none of them are moving (even my friend has parked it behind me). What are they waiting for? Another ship broadcasts asking someone to hurry up (me?) but still no one moves.

Well, after a few more minutes of nothing, I decide to head away from the station and make the next jump. I ended up making my deliver 11 days early (Yeah me!). Now I'm being offered 10,500 C to take Prototype Technology to Beidtive. That might be too hard to pass up!

I do have two questions about NPCs. Do they "know" when I'm running along side of them as an escort? And why on earth would all those ships at the station be doing nothing?

Back to space lanes....

NPCs know that you are there, but they don't really care. They will just continue on their AI routine and do whatever it is they are doing with or without you. You can influence their behaviour if you play it right though. If you are attacked, for example, they will just carry on travelling to the station, but if you move close enough to them, then they may get hit by a laser that was aimed at you. At that point there is a good chance that some defense AI will kick in and they will start fighting the enemy on your side (but they are really just trying to save themselves). This is especially effective in the case of convoys, if you stand very close to the mother.

As for the ships gathering at the station, it is probably a relatively rare bug. I have noticed that sometimes, when something is standing in the path that an NPC would need to take to reach the next docking waypoint, it stops them from moving. When that happens, the entire queue is effectively stopped. Usually it is me standing in the way, so just moving away from the docking port a bit may clear the path and resume traffic. Or it could be that the queue was standing by for the arrival of a convoy with priority, not sure. The nature of the bug makes it quite difficult to reproduce, even with the debug console. That plus its rarity makes it a tricky one to tackle, but if it happens again, please try to move away from the docking port, see if anything changes by accelerating time (assumng you are running Test Release) or try to gently bump one or two of the nearest to the docking port ships so that they move and see if this makes the queue move.

Interesting... on occasion, I'm lined-up close in to the station, waiting for ships to launch, but nothing happens 'til I come about and start to move away.

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Knowledge is a deadly friend, if no-one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools

I finally have an average commander on my ironman challenge.... and I almost lost him.

I had just jumped into a tech eleven communist system, after a hard ITHA run to a nearby anarchy system. I had 800 new credits to my account, which is a princely sum for my little under-equipped Moray. I come out of the wormhole and do a quick run-down of my scanners. I'm surrounded by a patrol of about six Commie police, and exactly one Viper Cruiser and a Duma. Nothing to be concerned about for me, though, I've got a clean record. I head off in the opposite direction, hoping to break masslock, when my scanner pings. I glance down. I... thought I had a clean record? Then I realize that it's not the cops that are coming after me, indeed as I watch they roar off at intercept speeds off my scanner. Besides the cops and the bouy, though, there's literally nothing on my scanner range. I travel along my way, thinking that there might be some Thargoid out of sight. I didn't feel threatened, because the police force was sizable.

That was before the laser hit.

In about two seconds my rear shield was gone, along with half of my four energy banks. As I stared dumbly at the list of broken equipment, my survival instincts took a moment to take hold. I reacted a bit late to the next salvo, ducking and weaving, somehow managing to avoid the shot that could have undoubtedly finished me off. I checked my scanner again. The cops were on the fringe, but a quick glance with the cameras confirmed they weren't firing at me. I was extremely perplexed. Nothing else on scanner range... then it occurred to me that there was a ship sniping me. As I'm trying to remember what OXP I could have, my comm box lights up with taunts. The Green Gecko.

Dangerous though my position was, I took a moment to admire the Gecko's fighting skill. Another patrol of five Viper II interceptors came in, but even with the added strength I counted two explosions and another three ships fleeing on injectors... and even then he still managed to take several potshots at me, two of which gained serious burns. I jumped out before my luck (or the cops) ran out and he finished me off. Back at the station, just about all of those 800 credits I gained on the escort mission got spent on repairs.

I thought it odd that the Gecko would attack an average pilot. I know it says in the OXP folder that they're out to test Elites or other high-rankers, but evidently they don't have a code to forbid them from attacking the lower ranks, either.

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I'm Ravished by the Sheer Implausibility of that Last Statement

It should be a crime for Anacondas to fly without escort. That much temptation is just too much to resist.

That never made it into the OXP - can't remember why. Perhaps it wasn't doable then.
Mind you, I wouldn't install the GG unless I was in an iron-assed ship.

At least you survived - if the GG hadn't been preoccupied, it probably would've followed you.

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Knowledge is a deadly friend, if no-one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools

So I took on my first courier contract, 6 or 7 jumps. I traded my Cobra Mk III for a Mk II, got me some Lasers, and off I went.

Third jump in, I mass-lock into a small group of raiders, interested in my cargo. A Fer-de-Lance, Cobra Mk III and a Mk I. I took out the Fer-de-Lance and the Mk III. But my little ship is close to blowing up too. The Mk I escapes with his damage.

Ok so Torus-drive toward main station... Mass-lock. Three more. They shot me once..... Press Space, Commander.

My kill count back to 0... but I see it as training. It was my first battle ever in Oolite, plus on a joystick. Still learning, confident I'll get there.

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UI Overhaul Experiment | DeeperSpace HUD | pleiadian's Oolite GitHub

In the beginning I traded my Cobra Mk III for a Mk II-X. Not being very experienced in combat, I still attempted a passenger and some parcel runs. On one passenger mission, I somehow encountered a glitch (I posted about that), but this glitch also somehow left the damages on my ship intact. I spent nearly everything I had to repair it, but not everything could be done (aft shields for example).

New courier mission of a parcel. For some reason a bubble of five reds show up, but I still manage to take them out. It came at the cost of having pretty much everything important damaged, with no penny to my name But I'll earn some money, then either trade the Mk II or get another ship suited for my needs. This is gonna be fun

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UI Overhaul Experiment | DeeperSpace HUD | pleiadian's Oolite GitHub

This is not really a tale, but I wanted to tell you anyway.
 Random Ship Names must have been in an especially creative mood,
because I just came across a Boa named:

"Merrick's Unnecessary Covenant of the Critter"


I guess there must have been some language barrier when this commander registered this ship.
It should probably have read something like "Merrick's Beast of Betrayal".

Boas do seem to have weird and extravagant names - I can only think it is because they are basically so boring the Commander tries to give it a bit of flair with the name.

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Commander Smivs, the friendliest Gourd this side of Riedquat.

I pulled into interstellar space (in a zero-distance double) to check some stuff, toyed with some Thargoids awhile, then hyperspaced out - only to be dragged straight back into interstellar space by another bunch of them. That's the first time for me, I think. If I hadn't had plenty of fuel, it could've been infuriating.



As for those shipnames: Sander's Obsidian Jungle of the Libertine remains my favourite.

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Knowledge is a deadly friend, if no-one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools

Pulled straight back in? Didn't know they could do that. Reminds me a bit of the Interdictor Class Star Destroyer in Tie Fighter that used a gravity well to capture escaping ships.

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For P.A. Groove's music check
https://soundcloud.com/p-a-groove
Famous Planets v 2.7. (for Povray)

http://aegidian.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13709

I think that might have been made possible due to sideways jumping/multiple misjumps, but I could be wrong.

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Knowledge is a deadly friend, if no-one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools

I was going to intervene in this tussle, but it became too confusing, so I left them to it:

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Knowledge is a deadly friend, if no-one sets the rules
The fate of all mankind, I see, is in the hands of fools

Maybe that's what they were fighting about?

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Oofiction: Calliope: a Captain Hesperus adventure | Stranglehold: a Captain Hesperus adventure | Local Midnight in the Vacuum Bar | A Farewell to Arms, Legs, etc.: the Blaze O'Glory Story