The Assassins Guild OXP
Assassins Guild is a semi-mythical association said to operate in Galaxy 7. A killer who can secure membership of The Brotherhood can expect huge rewards, and the most unpleasant consequences for failure. This OXP still uses legacy scripts, but it is presumed to work... the ships at least should be fine.
Contents
Overview & Download Link
In seedy space bars from Riedquat to Atoresra, hardened killers gather to drink fermented vegetable products and tell tales of blood-curdling terror.
At such gatherings, stories are swapped of a sinister organization known as "The Assassins Guild". This semi-mythical association is said to operate in Galaxy 7. A killer who can secure membership of "The Brotherhood" can expect huge rewards, and the most unpleasant consequences for failure.
No self-respecting "laser for hire" should miss an opportunity to impress "The Guildmaster". Be warned, dealing with the powers that exist in this troubled Galaxy may have dangerous consequences! Background information regarding a few of the ships added by the OXP and some intelligence on the powers that inhabit Galaxy 7 can be found on the Powers and Organisations page.
The OXP was scripted by LittleBear, featuring new & guest Ships by Commanders Ramon, Griff, Selezen, Murgh, Wombat, Wyvern & Giles. The Text Adventure location descriptions were written by LittleBear & Captain Hesperus. The Player ship external views were coded by Commander McLane (cribbed from his External Views OXP). This pack adds Missions, Ships, Stations, Planets, Weapons and Equipment.
Version 1.3 of Assassins will run correctly on Oolite 1.69.1 onwards. It will still run on Oolite 1.65. This update fixes the "mission briefing screen clash bug" (using the cunning method devised by Commander Eric Walch) and so is compatible with all other mission OXPs. If you have Thargoid Wars or Military OXP installed, make sure you are using the latest version (downloadable from this Wiki) as the old versions of these OXPs can clash with Assassins (and vice versa). Clicking the links for Thargoid Wars or Military will take you to a wiki page where you can download the latest versions of these OXPs.
Download (Assassins v1.3) - expired Updated to v1.3 on 1st September 2007. (Official Version)
Assassins Guild OXP v1.3.3 Combined "less than" bug fix with "Graviton Missiles" bug fix by Commander McLane as per his post on 3rd May 2011. (Unofficial fixed version 1.3.3 - released by JazHaz on 2nd April 2012)
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Difficulty Rating
"Easy to Iron Ass". The missions offered by the OXP rise in difficulty depending on both your Elite rating and your standing with the Guild.
The first few missions you will be offered are fairly easy, but as you move up the Guild’s rankings the missions get tougher. The final series of missions are very tough.
It is assumed that you are using your blood money to equip your ship as suits a professional killer. You'll need more than an Adder with a pulse laser to take out most of your victims! As the money offered for a hit increases, so does the danger posed to the would be 'Cleaner'. Some of the mission ships featuring in this OXP are very well armed, but you won't encounter these until you have more than 900 kills and hold a Guild Ranking of at least a "Cut-throat". The difficulty curve for the missions is faily steady and you can complete all missions in a well equiped Cobra Mk III.
Main Features
The OXP adds: 21 Missions (including 2 secret missions), over 30 new NPC ships, 3 new player ships, 6 new weapons (1 can be used by the player), a new item of Player equipment, extra stations (some stations can be destroyed, one can be explored on foot whilst docked), new hails, new AIs, an Assassins Guild Ranking, changing Systems data (player and NPC actions change the Universe!) and over 50 Mission Briefing Screens.
Galaxy 7 is rewritten to add numerous features including individual characters, interacting NPC powers, 15 systems are controlled by NPC powers, detailed system descriptions, new stations, new scripted ships appearing at the modified systems, 10 systems gain moons, extra planets and gas giants & a Galaxy 7 News Service helps keep the player up to date with Galactic events. All the missions and features added by the OXP only affect Galaxy 7. The player ships added by the OXP may however appear for sale in any Galaxy.
Issues with modern Oolite
This was my first OXP written about 15 years ago. Back in the day NPCs were really dumb and Military lasers where much less powerful. The cloaking device was a bit of a game breaker as ships would completely ignore you even if you were shooting them if you were cloaked. I wouldn't have stopped the player from cloaking today as the cloak is now much less drastic as NPCs are now smart enough to twig that if something is ripping their shields to bits they are under attack even though they can't quite make out where you are where you are on their scanner - and will take appropriate action The only way really back in the day to make a challenging mission target was to stick military lasers on it and give it tons of energy. If I was writing it today I'd have given the mission ships a little bit more energy than the standard ship of the same type and just made them "smarter than the average bear" to make the challenge.
I did play it through with a standard (but Iron Assed) Cobra Mk III before I released it and completed it (albeit with a fair few hefty repair bills). However, running on modern Oolite where the NPCS are automatically a lot smarter (and have absurdly high - by today's standards - energy levels) it would be massively harder than I intended it to be. I think today the mission's ships would rip even an iron-assed cobra to bits pretty quickly and the difficulty level was originally set at hard but do-able in a standard cobra. Difficulty did assume a full iron ass but I felt that was balanced as the intended effect was to be getting blown out of the sky if you were unwise enough to try be a professional assasin with nothing but a pea-shooter. This was also why it is set in G7. If you can afford the hyperdrives to get there, then I'm assuming you have reach the point in your game where you have enough cash for reasonable combat equipment.
Equipment to protect the player though has come on a lot as well. Though it will be much more difficult than intended. You might still be able to complete it but it might be very frustrating. And you're gonna need a bigger boat.
Issues with older versions of this OXP
Due to the size of the project (and the number of Ooliters working on different bits of it), Assassins was in Beta for some time. This version should be bug-free. A full readme is included, which you should read before playing. Saved games work on all versions of Assassins. Version 1.0 completely rewrote the “Civil War” missions (and added 5 new missions in the process). Versions 1.1 and 1.2 had a few bug fixes (set out in the readme). Version 1.3 has a code patch added to stop mission conflicts and also has some changes to ensure the OXP works properly on Oolite 1.69.1. Simply install this version of Assassins in your AddOns folder (overwriting the old version). If you are playing on Oolite 1.69.1 onwards, the first time you load up Oolite after installing you must hold down the SHIFT key (keep it held down until you see the rotating Cobra Mk III on the start screen). This ensures that the cache is updated.
If you started playing a Beta version of Assassins (below V 1.0), have you seen a news broadcast mentioning “Heretic Shipyards”? If you have not, then there is no need to do anything other than install this version. If you have, then you will need to edit your save file to reset the OXP to this point. The readme gives instructions on how to do this. You only have to change two numbers!
Installing and Playing
- OXZ is downloadable through the in-game Expansions Manager
- To play the OXP, unzip the download file. This will create a folder "AssassinsV1_3". Open this folder and you will see a folder named "Assassins.oxp" and a readme. Move the Assassins.oxp folder to Oolite's AddOns folder. Do read the player's section of the readme before you play!
Playing
The first event will happen when you are docked at any main station in Galaxy 7 and have more than 200 kills. No Assassins mission or event can trigger without the player having a particular kill count. This is done to make the OXP playable by any Commander. If you are a noob with a weedy ship, you won't be asked (yet) to take on an army of nasties. You'll just be asked to take some of the easy hits until you have an Iron Ass. If you are an old-hand then the more difficult missions will come up quickly, although you still need to do the easy hits first in order to build up your status with the Guild.
The kill count requirement for Assassins missions is spaced roughly every 200 - 300 kills from 200 onwards. If you installed with 3,000+ kills, you would meet the kill count for all events. Once kill count is met, a new event will happen once a certain amount of time has passed (measured in the number of hyperspace jumps made since the last event), provided you completed the previous mission. Missions are only offered whilst you remain in Galaxy 7.
When the name "Agent Wombat" means something to you, you will have seen everything the OXP does. Once the OXP is installed in AddOns, the new ships, stations, planets and powers are added to Galaxy 7. Hang out in Galaxy 7, going about your ordinary Oolite business, and things will start happening to you...
Known Ships
 Daemon Class Cruiser |
 Mongoose Light Fighter |
 Nemesis |
 Scorpion Class Frigate |
 'Balrog' Class Dreadnaught |
Side effects from other OXPs
The orbits.oxp seems to remove or modify the position of a planet from the system of your first mission, making your target very hard to find. See this post for background info (spoiler alert).
New Assassins Guild Missions
After you finished the original set of missions, Victim 11 adds an additional target.
Key presses
Holding down ¬ on some keyboards (~ on others) might identify your target amongst a group. Holding down this key causes Oolite to mark on the scanner the last ship to hail you (lines come up around its lollipop). If the target has spoken to you over the comms channel, this can be used to identify him/her/it.
Musings
This venerable OXP adds life and meaning to Galaxy 7 - even if you never undertake any of the missions.
Sadly, it is in desperate need of a retexture. Especially the added stations which look now crummy.
Also, the various System descriptions do not show until one has several hundred kills, which seems a bit pointless as they explain the added stations.
License
- Authors: LittleBear; New & Guest Ships by Ramon, Griff, Selezen, Murgh, Cmdr. Wombat, Wyvern & Aegidian;
- Text Adventure Location descriptions by LittleBear & Captain Hesperus
- License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
- Version: 1.3.3
- Requires: Oolite v.1.79 or better
Links
- Primary Author: LittleBear
- BB post (2020) Dybal reposted the AG on the Expansions Manager with a newer license
- Stuck In Assassins (2011) Problems at Geteve
- Assassins PlanetInfo problem (2016) - fixed in current version
- BB Thread (2007-24)
- Original development thread (2006-7)
