Galactic Navy OXP

From Elite Wiki

Navystar.png Navystar.png Navystar.png

A Navy Transport.
A Navy Medical Ship.
A Navy SecCom Station.
Galactic Navy Facelift SecCom Station
A Navy Frigate.
A Navy Minesweeper.
A Navy Landing Craft.

Overview

"The first time I saw a Carrier Battle Group in Delta formation I was moved to tears. Plus I love the Reserve." Dave McRoss (2010)


The Galactic Navy OXP introduces a more visible Galactic Navy presence to the Ooniverse. Each galaxy now contains 14 individual Sector Commands with base systems and stations. There are several new navy ships and navy patrols including Navy Carrier Groups, frigate patrols, and convoys. Once docked at SecCom stations players have a variety of options to choose from including Navy Reserve missions.

Original idea and earlier versions were created by matt634. Version 5 was released by Nemoricus, with Behemoth battle group code from Commodore Eric Walch and other assistance from Thargoid. Special thanks to Screet for playtesting.

Features

Specifically this OXP adds 6 new NPC ships:

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Navy Frigate
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Navy Lander
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Navy Medical Ship
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Navy Minesweeper
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Navy Shuttle
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Navy Transport



This OXP also adds 14 individual Sector Command Military Stations to each galaxy in orbit around their home planets. At SecCom stations a player may check incoming news, buy victory bonds to support the Navy, or sign up for reserve duty. All pilots with at least a competent rating are eligible for reserve missions. Players may track their status on the interactive Reserve Leaderboard.

This OXP adds Carrier Group Patrols, Navy Frigate Patrols, Emergency Medical Transports, and Navy Transport Convoys to the space lanes as well as increasing the action of interstellar space battles.
Finally, this OXP adds a one time Special Ops mission to Galaxy Six. Players must be docked at a SecCom station and have flown at least 10 reserve sorties. A save file is included for mission testers. There is a walkthrough where you can look for hints if you get stuck.

Requires

This OXP requires the Behemoth OXP to function properly.

Updates

Installation of the Galactic Navy Facelift is recommended, as it includes shaders updates for the graphics.
All Update Notes can be found in the Readme included with OXP
See the BB Thread for updates and latest news


GN Download Links

The original version is massive - navy ships all over the jolly place. Switeck's version is rather more modest. There are also one or two other variants if one hunts around.

Original versions

  • To download an older version of Oolite which will run Galactic Navy: Oolite (try 1.771).

Switeck's version

  • File:Galactic Navy 5.4.3 Switeck's MOD.oxp.zip: Switeck's version (with working markets) - a much weaker GN, with a mere handful of SecComs in each galaxy, fewer patrols and things change as time goes on. Switeck's version fits much better with the Oolite Lore about the Golden Age of GalCop being over.
Warning: The original GN is a great help for starting players. The milk run between safe-ish Tionisla and somewhat more dangerous Isinor is made safer by a massive GN presence at Isinor. Switeck's mod dispenses with this!
For more information on his changes see here

See Also

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Library's PAD
  • Behemoth
  • Galactic Navy Additions
  • Library's PAD includes a page for Galactic Navy matters, and GN is integrated into Library.OXP
  • HIMSN for a different naval alternative (can be combined with GN if you are feeling militaristic!).
  • GN has its own Naval Reserve Units, which you can volunteer for. 249th Naval Reserve Wing OXP is separate, if you find GN too pervasive a presence!

AppleMac Issues

Some alternate versions of this OXP are broken for the AppleMac. To fix one of these, try the following:

1) Open the oxp (you need to change its name from Galactic_Navy 5.4.3.oxp into Galactic_Navy 5.4.3.txt - which will turn the oxp into a folder).
2) Open the Config folder and then open the shipdata.plist with TextEdit.
3) Search for

    <key>bounty</key>
    <integer> 
(which appears 42 times, followed by a number and then </integer>).
21 of these "integers" are not integers - the bounty for each ship is given as say 5000.0 or 100.0 - and thus need editing

4) Delete the tailing ".0" - ie edit "5000.0</integer>" into "5000</integer>" for the 21 non-integers
5) Then save the file, pack the oxp back up again (remembering to change the name back into Galactic_Navy 5.4.3.oxp)
6) Bung it back into your AddOns folder (if you had taken it out), restart your game ... and presto!

You will now see the Navy stations, frigates, etc. You can dock, buy Victory bonds, see the latest war updates, sell into the market...

See How to tweak OXZ's if you need more detail

Galactic Navy Extend

  • Galactic Navy Extend portal to 3 OXPs by Montana05 updating the Galactic Navy (2018-20). This is a pure test version and in need of a complete rewrite. Installing it is not recommended.

Matt 634 on his vision for GN

Thanks for all the consideration Commander McLane - I think we share a lot of the same visions of Oolite!

I too have always rationalized the war against the Thargoids as "only happening in Interstellar Space" and not in systems. That was until I installed the excellent Thargoid Wars OXP which saw the conflict move closer to home. I was very interested to see you mention a type of planetary "warzone" because this is actually another frankenoxp running on my system. On a very rare occasion, 1% of jumps, a system will be turned into a warzone with dozens of pre-placed Navy Ships and Thargoids that respawn when they die so the action never stops! I could implement this in some kind of permanent way to create some "warzones" but I thought it would be too drastic a change for most Commanders :)

About your concerns regarding the placement of SecComs: I agree the majority of what the Navy does happens in Interstellar Space and that was the primary reason I created this OXP, to make the Navy a little more visible. Without the OXP a commander may never get a glimpse of the Navy unless he misjumps. Having close military ties in my real life (what's left of it) this didn't make sense to me. Civilians will see much more of its Military outside of combat, especially if one lives in a city with a military base (as I do).

As far as SecComs on Behemoths or Anaconda's, my understanding was the wiki meant Sector Commanders, the actual person, not a ship or station. So, in my view anyway, this OXP fits perfectly, as the Sector Commanders (the good ones anyway) are out leading from the front in their flagships. I suppose some of the less daring ones could be back at their SecCom Stations hiding behind their desks while their officers do all the work :wink:

The SecCom stations are a home base for the Navy in that sector, and I think it makes sense for them to be in orbit around the planet just like it makes sense for military bases here in the USA to be located in San Francisco, Boston, or Colorado Springs. I could place them in Interstellar Space, but them I'm back to the same problem of never seeing the Navy unless I misjump.

As far as the Navy and its role as a part of GalCop, I was careful in my OXP to rarely if ever use the term GalCop to describe anything Navy. It's my belief, and probably entirely my own, that due to its largely independent nature already, the Galactic Navy eventually, sometime in the future, breaks away from GalCop and becomes its own entity. Perhaps this was one cause of GalCop's eventual downfall. Who knows, its all just future story line in my head that doesn't actual effect the game right now. Right now GalCop is the force in the Galaxy and controls everything we do to the best of their abilities.

(Matt 634 (2007))

Note that at this early stage in the development of Oolite, the Oolite community mostly followed the syncretist approach to Lore, placing Oolite between Classic Elite and Frontier historically, which meant that GalCop was doomed and the incipient Federation & Empire needed to be accounted for.

Fiction

After finally making it to Competent, I decided to enlist in the Navy. I was given an assignement to repel a Thargoid invasion of Reinen (on the other side of Chart 1...sigh). Anyway, after jumping about fifty times (due to dying in transit once and having to start over), I made it to the system and formed up with the reserve squadron - two Asps and two Cobras (a Mark I and a Mark III), along with two Sidewinders I hired as wingmen at the last station. I had upgraded to a Cobra Mark II-X by this point, with a mil laser forward and a beam laser aft.

Upon forming up with the reserve squadron, I started seeing lots of stuff in the distance, just outside sensor range - red clouds of dispersing plasma from Thargoid battleship plasma cannons and the main batteries of Naval frigates, the telltale green beams of Tharg lasers, the red lines of civilian weapons, the purplish fingers of police fightercraft, and of course lots of explosions. We were just about to reach the main furball when five flashing contacts show up on sensors - active Thargons, with no control ship in sight (it was there, just lurking outside of sensor range). Inexplicably, they all targeted me. My only two missiles dispatched two of them, my forward laser a third, and the fourth fell to my aft gun just as someone (fairly sure it was a Python who we passed earlier) destroyed the control craft and the last went silent.

Resuming course, I noticed something ominous - there were no more flashes and not a trace of laser fire. We started passing debris - a lot of it, mostly cargo pods, with one or two dead Thargons and several metal fragments mixed in. I scooped an escape pod, containing a human colonial whose name I don't recall. Aside from the aforementioned Python, which was puttering along all lonely and escort-less, my squad were the only contacts within range. This went on for several boring and vaguely creepy minutes - we were in the middle of the spacelane in a usually-crowded system, and we were the only people there, puttering slowly along because we were flying in formation and masslocking each other.

Finally something interesting happened - well over a dozen contacts at my eight o'clock and extremely low - Thargoids, every one of them, including a cruiser and three battleships (and a lot of Thargons). I tilted down and to the left and hit my injectors, blowing right past them as my squadmates maneuvered to engage. I shut off my engines and switched to aft laser, hammering one of the battleships as it opened up on my comrades. When it noticed me, I turned around and switched back to fore guns, pounding it until the laser overheated and I turned and ran. I had read about Captain Hesperus' trick involving food canisters and injectors, so I had started carrying an emergency 2-ton supply of food with me everywhere for exactly this eventuality. I slowed to a stop, let the ship catch up (taking a lot of damage as a result), and then hit injectors, ejected both canisters in rapid succession to damage him, and finished him off with a prolonged Beam Laser blast.

Turned around and headed back to take out the last Battleship (my squadmates and escorts had taken out one, losing an Asp and the Mark I in the process). We destroyed it, with effort and determination and no finesse whatsoever, and turned to finish off the last few Thargs - a Cruiser and an Invader, plus their fighter complement. The Invader goes down fast. The Cruiser was more of a challenge, especially since my comrades started missing all the time, it was targeting me exclusively, and cumulative battle damage had left me near destruction. I kept firing anyway, as it whittled away at my shields and energy banks. Right before my energy banks reached zero, I ejected. As the pod flew away I saw the cruiser explode (although I wasn't credited with the kill as I didn't fire the final shot). Annoyingly, the ship I ejected from survived, which means some human colonial in an escape pod got a free Cobra Mark II-X.

When I launched again the system was notably devoid of Thargoids and relatively safe. I headed back to the nearest Sector Command and got my next mission. Master Bates (2009)
Runghold's SecComFinder OXP marks the 16 Sector Commands in each galaxy with blue diamonds on the F6 screen

Links

This OXP was written by Matt634 in legacy script in 2007. He posted this OXP (and links to it) in each of his posts on the BB. It was updated to Javascript in 2009 by Nemoricus, who had permission from Matt634 to do this. Matt634 was then swallowed up by witchspace and no proper license has ever been received to allow updating of this OXP. To do so would involved rewriting this OXP from scratch. Nemoricus was on the Orbiter Forum back in Summer 2020. Version 0-4 are Matt's originals, versions 5.0 - 5.3.4 are Nemoricus's.

Gameplay and Balance Indicator

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The real effect (unless you enlist and go for the missions) is on arrival at the Sector Command planets, which now have a major navy presence. Take Isinor, for example. Without this oxp, there is a good chance of getting scragged by pirates on arrival at the witchpoint. With this oxp, there is a better chance of seeing pirates being scragged by the Galactic Navy instead! The navy base also has a top notch shipyard doing excellent maintenance work and with a full range of equipment. Rather expensive, though!