User:Cholmondely

Ship's Library Manual
click to enlarge

Vimana HUD adds flashing alerts

Hints allows you to overhear hints in the station bar

GNN gives you news flashes when you dock

BGS: I prefer this older hyperjump effect

System Features Rings adds rings to planets

Riredi OXP gives the Riredi system some colour!

Killer Wolf's Hathor station

Telescope shows up Masslock borders

Equipment 'Sell Item' Color: turns sell entries red on the F3 screen

Log Events adds more information to your Latest.log to help track down problems

Oolite v1.88 Base Shipset N & S/G Maps upgrades the basic Oolite ship textures

Commies adds the CZGF station near some suns

Dictators adds the Imperial Freighter carrying goods between the Imperial Astrofactory and the main station

Feudal States adds missions and duels at the Royal Hunting Lodges

Paddling Pool neuters the nastier systems west of Lave (the anarchies in Riedquat & Uszaa...)

Cholmondeley (Pronunciation: IPAc-en ˈ tʃ ʌ m l i or CHUM-lee). See Ghoti is pronounced Fish

With a deep abiding loathing of grammatical infelicities and typographical misdeeds, Cholmondeley is slowly assaulting the pages of this Wikipedia in an attempt to bring serenity and syntactical splendour to its contents.

If you can replace any of my ghastly screenshots with a better: please, please do so!

I should mention that both Montana05 and Cody have been very helpful in all this. As have Stranger, Redspear, User2375 & Hiran. I think that I would have to argue that Hiran has really helped me make major improvements to the functionality of this wiki - both with his databases and his enthusiasm. If I've forgotten your name, I grovel!

The following lists incorporate various musings!

List of recommended OXZs/OXPs (2021)

These are the ones I like! I'm not personally into lots of different ships. Not all are on the in-game Expansions Manager.

Vital

There is a lot of information in Oolite. These vital OXPs help give you access to the information you need to play/enjoy the game

• Addons for Beginners (Vital Statistics) will download the following

• Ship's Library (with ships manual)
• XenonUI (handy guide to the buttons on your astrogation console)
• Technical Reference Library identifies ships when you target them (just ships)
• GalCop Galactic Registry - guide to the galaxy you are in
• Market Observer - useful statistics for analysing the F8 markets page (with Market Ads at the bottom)
• Vimana HUD (flashes warnings for High Temperature, Low Altitude, Low Energy & Low Shields)
• HUD Selector - optional extra (for selecting HUDs)!

• Hints - visit the station bar while docked and eavesdrop on some professionals...

• The Galactic Almanac OXZ - a guide to everything in your current solar system - stations, planetary bodies, visible rock hermits, etc. (not yet on the in-game Expansions Manager).

Ambience

These help bring the universe around you to life:

• BGS & BGS Soundset: enhances docking/witchspace travel etc - I prefer Tsoj's version here.
• Contextual Jukebox OXP: music while playing (needs Library OXP)
• Communications Pack A: NPCs come to life
• Death Comms: dying NPCs come to life!
• Engine Sound
• GNN: News about the universe
• Home System: invest in a solar system and become famous there!
• Randomshipnames OXP: the names are often a clue to identity (trader? pirate? bounty hunter?).

These give the solar systems a bit more variety

• Solar Flares
• System Features Rings
• System Features Sunspots

These add bits of Oolite lore

• Famous Planets: expanded descriptions for the F7 screen - combine this with Povray Planets for which it was written
• Galaxy Names OXP: places galaxy name at top of F6 screen
• Lave OXP: gives Lave system some colour (updated by Murgh as one of his Iron Ass retexture OXP's)
• Riredi OXP: gives Riredi system some colour
• Tianve OXP: gives Tianve system a lot of colour
• Tionisla Orbital Graveyard, Monuments & Wrecks, Tionisla Chronicle Array: bring Tionisla to life (with a marvellous cemetery!)

Dockables

• Lave Academy: has training courses in combat, docking & ship-handling!
• Superhub: adds variety - and an easy dock
• Torus station: adds variety
• Z-GrOovY Small System Stations: adds the tetrahedron & octahedron (and needs the Griff Station Bundle too)
• And take a good look at Killer Wolf's stations. Magnificent!

Equipment

• Deep Horizon Advanced Navigation Computer: enhances witchspace travel
• Email System
• Fast Target Selector OXP (helps target missiles) or Military Targeting System (automatically targets whatever you are interracting with)
• Fuel Tank: an emergency fuel tank in case of need (many others also available)
• Naval Grid Next: another defensive OXP (buy it to strengthen shields)
• Police IFF Scanner Upgrade: advance warning about known pirates
• Repair Bots: fixes broken equipment in flight
• SniperLock: for targeting lasers - vital if your aim is as lousy as mine!
• Telescope: for navigation (I tend not to use the targeting capabilities). Vital!
• Welcome Mat warning if the system is currently pirate or Thargoid infested!

HUDs

• Vimana HUD - vital warning systems if altitude/energy/shields are too low etc.

Mechanics

• AutoRefuel in case you forget!
• BlOomberg Markets creates market fluctuations which are announced on GNN news
• Illegal Goods Tweak solves issues with rescuing slaves
• Reverse Y Control helps when navigating looking at the F2 aft viewscreen
• Traffic Lights OXP helps docking - and puts a time-limit on the wait

Miscellaneous

• Equipment 'Sell Item' Color: helps make sense of long lists of F3 shipyard outfitting options
• LogEvents: helps track down problems if you need to ask for help
• Montanas Resource Pack 01: adds ambience

Retextures

• Oolite v1.88 Base Shipset Normal and Specular/Gloss Maps: better textures for ships etc, taking advantage of the major graphics improvements.

Systems

These give these systems much individual colour. If you can handle it, add Anarchies too!

• Commies
• Dictators OXP
• Feudal States

Optional - for difficulties with Combat

• Modern Start
• Barrel Roll OXP
• Paddling Pool
• Vimana Ship Overrides

Intermediate

• SW Economy: a much more realistic (but complex) trading system
• Anarchies: gives anarchies colour - but makes the game a little tougher
• Liners: adds ambience
• Deep Space Dredger: adds ambience

Look at Career Options for more tips if you favour a mining/piracy/courier etc career

Advanced

These all add a layer of realism to the universe - but increase the complexity of play.

• Diplomancy OXP: visas & taxes
• Strangers World: a much more realistic universe, and a much more realistic mechanic for the way your ship works (suite of oxps).
• Weapon Laws OXP: restrictions on buying weapons - buying your first beam/military laser now becomes an adventure in its own right!
• New Cargoes: more complex trade options needing better knowledge of the universe
• Skilled NPCs: beefs up pirate combat skills
• Smugglers - The Galactic Underworld: more import/export bans & smuggling to circumvent them

---

Some of the New Wiki pages

• Language tips and links for non-fluent English speakers

Game-play

• Vanilla game
• Expansions Manager born through not finding a guide to what the colours meant - combined with utter failure to use the x button for extraction.
• Tutorial to list the various lessons and re-iterate the method of stepping through it
• Help pages: Priming Equipment (How to), Trade (Oolite), Trade (Classic Elite), Trade (FE2/FFE), Dumping Cargo
• Witchpoint
• Maps, The Great Rift
• Technology level, Light Mach, Aegis
• Cheating, Über, Puzzles

In-game equipment

• Torus Drive felt this was very much needed (I spent about a month with Shaky Drive .oxp installed - thanks to Norby's combination packs - and could not work out why I was not flying normally! - scoured the wiki, found nothing). This led to a reworking of the Equipment pages (originally for FFE) and the adding of Standard Equipment to both the page and the template. Also added a taster of .oxp equipment to what was previously just standard optional equipment.

Also added Altimeter, Astrogation Console, Cargo Hold, Compass, Engine, Hyperspace Drive, Life Support Systems, Shields, Ship's Hull & View Screen. No others left to do (unless I find some!)

New pages for F3, F5, F6, F7 & F8 pages

• Decal

Out-game equipment

• Buttonboxes raising awareness of putative real-life Astrogation Boards!
• Joysticks and Gamepads‎‎ rehabilitated from an indirect - and now with vital information about Precision Flying on it previously buried in the BB - linked to Linux page, Dizzy's page (& the Mac Thrustmaster Harness).
• Joysticks: Guide to Setting Up‎‎ with a small selection of examples
• Keyboard Issues

OXPs

• OXZ List - redirect to http://www.oolite.org/oxps/
• New: eg Diplomancy OXP, BPlanets, Target System Plugins, FPO Lave & FPO Zaonce,
• Old: eg Extra Thargoids, Zieman's Habitat Orbital Station‎‎, Shaky Drive, Galaxy Names OXP, Distant Realms, NPC equipment damage OXP, Ebortsa's lucky charm, Antient Aliens
• Mouldy: eg Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy, Monument, BioSphere station, RS
• Ship's Library OXP with much detail about the excellent Ship's Manual and the Extracts from the Tre Clan
• The Strangers World OXPs (almost all) - and also a page on Solar Wind Flux to explain it.
• Redspear's OXPs (some)
• Mining IFF Scanner Upgrade - first OXP I've come across written by a woman!
• Vimana HUD: wanted to raise awareness of an inspiring HUD
• MFD with the missing MFD OXZs from the wiki

• How to tweak OXZ's - started - needs an expert to go over it
• Guide to Ambience OXPs - mostly finished, unsure how to complete. But I think it now does what it should.
• Guide to Unlisted OXPs - I've unearthed over 150 or so in my digging
• Guide to Accuracy OXPs - contrasting the "missile locks" with the "laser locks"

People

• User:Another_commander - see his superb essay about Oolite vs Elite combat
• User:Astrobe - lots of recent OXZs not on this wiki
• User:Captain Beatnik - lovely HUDs, ships - and Riredi orbital station is a must see!
• User:ClymAngus - beautiful maps, fiction, aids for playing, and some ship OXPs - Cadaceus has a rather different philosophy behind it!
• User:Diziet Sma - gave a lot to the community over the years
• User:Dybal - wanted to encourage the chap but he left!
• User:Gsagostinho - what an incredibly talented chap!
• Jannah Berihn - her famous blueprints
• Killer Wolf - a man with a wonderful sense of the aesthetic (ships, stations, HUDs)
• User:P.A. Groove‎ with links to his music & films
• User:Ramirez - with links to the archived version of his archive - seminal OXPs which have been kept updated
• User:Redspear & Weapon Laws OXP: felt this was needed. Lots of fascinating & useful stuff but virtually nothing on wiki
• User:Rorschachhamster of Satellites fame
• User:Stranger & some of his OXPs: felt need to raise awareness: virtually nothing on wiki
• User:Uk Eliter & Fer-de-Lance 3G OXP - Put his excellent promotional material on wiki: learned use of tables!
• User:Zieman

And all the Developers for whom I could work out what they did!

Some of the above I find quite admirable. Another_commander is very modest and has done so much for both our little community, and for the game. Our artists (of whatever bent) have had some truly inspirational ideas (Clym Angus, GS Agostinho, PA Groove). Stranger's work is just truly awesome. And then there are those I've not mentioned. And a lot of the work I'm unable to appreciate - such as that on ships for example. I really must mention phkb, too. Again, very modest. In the past year since I joined, he's been working away updating other departed authors' oxp's, as well as devising his own. When you look at his own, they are very unassuming (like him). And, like him, they make a massive difference to the game. I first noticed his common-sense oxp's (maintenance on demand, making planets look like their descriptions, e-mail system, XenonUI, liners markets, red fonts for "selling" items in the shipyard, etc. But then he came out with his GalCop Galactic Registry and I discovered his GalCop Missions, Home System, Broadcast Comms, Smugglers...). He has added an entire new dimension to the game. Just look at the equipment he has created for GalCop Missions: Cargo Stopper, Ejection Damper, Range Finder, Seismic Resonance Scanner, Solar Activity Scanner, Mass Passenger Transport Module ... And then look at his Ship Configuration.oxp! And of course, his experiments: Pirate Player, Hermitage... Just Brilliant!

Lore

• Lore, History, Time, Law, Economics, Species
• Geography, The Eight, Distance (Oolite)
• Religion, ‎Church of Giles the Creator with some theology, applied theology & eschatology.
• Amnesty InterGalactic, Edible Poets
• Tibecea (Rough Guide)‎‎ learned use of templates & added the various ship pages for the Rough Guide from the BB threads.
• The Space Traders Flight Training Manual‎‎, Oolite Literature
• Combat Manoeuvers,
• Obnoxicorp, Murgh Shipyards, Zorgon Petterson Group, Marine Trench Co., Aegidian Industries, Lance & Ferman
• Slang, Sports
• The Great Rift
• Finally added in Captain Hesperus's Dicky-Bow Run‎ which had been languishing in the back of our BB for 14 years!

Talking about Oolite

• Handwavium
• Roll vs Yaw crusades
• Galaxy Seeds
• Oolite 2.0 or II

Structure of this wiki

• With Hiran's help, new pages/redirects for all unlisted OXZ's in the Expansions Manager (zillions of the blighters!)
• Redirect pages for ANA, STE, MTS etc. Also for most equipment listed in Hiran's invaluable Index of artefacts
• New categories: Lore, Stranger's World, Racing, Classic Elites, Classic Ships, Lasers, Missiles & Bombs, Legacy Scripting, Concepts, Help pages
• Collecting the various Help pages and linking them together with a new head page: How do I ....

History of this wiki

• Wiki and OXPs redux (2007)
• Oolite Wiki (2007)

The Dark Side

• The Dark Side
• Legacy Scripting
• Brilliant but broken...‎‎ guide to brilliant oxp's which need work...

---

Major Edits

Sorting out messes

• Adding links & lists of relevant OXPs to Hyperspace/Quirium/Witch Fuel Injectors etc
• Sorting out the various Rock Hermit (Oolite) pages and their OXPs
• Sorting out the ghastly Lave & Tionisla messes with lashes of lavish linking
• Sorted out the Ascension - Sector1/Sori‎‎ mess. Also referenced Ascension in Weapon Laws OXP for those using it.
• Tried to sort out the muddle with 4/5 different library pages (library.oxp, cim's ship's library, spara's technical library, etc.) by adding a disambiguation section at the top of the most confusing pages: BB beg.
• Tidied up the OXPList‎ page, reducing entry sizes to just the one line on my screen (11 inch?), and sorted out the Ship's Library oxps.
• Sorted out all but the gnat's link on Complete Ship List
• Linked all the various Thargoid OXPs together.
• Linked the various fuel tank OXPs together to enable comparison.
• Tried to make sense of the Racing pages Zorg Racing, Ring Racer OXP et al.
• Linking together the disparate pages on systems/planets: the Oolite Planet List family with the Galaxy Guide family with the new pages on The Eight & Maps

People matter

• Lots of work on User:Cim with links to the fascinating debates on the development of v1.80 & v.1.82
• Ditto for User:Ahruman
• Editing various user pages and then pm-ing the people in a desperate attempt to draw them back. People are important and deserve recognition for the things they do right. I'm fed up with only ever blaming people for things they do wrong.
• In the handful of cases where I've been able to contribute meaningfully to the various Frontier pages, I've done so too.
• Adding in a little historical context and links to the Realistic Shipyards page
• Listed Cody's fiction

Unearthing treasures

• Trying to raise awareness of SOTL and Strangers World, so bunged in links right, left and centre!
• Ditto with User:Redspear's work
• Links for downloading older versions of Oolite
• Snark was fun. Montana05 was very helpful.

• Passenger Coms Passenger Coms v0.5 by BryonArn (2014) - see here: talking to your passengers! This was later included by Phkb in his Enhanced Passenger Contracts.

• Tetiri Planet Ring Tetiri Planet Ring: artificial ring for Tetiri (2011-14) devised by P.A. Groove‎‎ & Thargoid.
• Gsagostinho's station experiments here. (2017, unfinished, see picture at bottom of page).

Lore

• Rejigs of The Dark Wheel & Robert Holdstock
• Rejig of GalCop & Oolite timeline
• Rough Guide: Isence (Rough Guide)‎‎, Qutiri (Rough Guide) and Zarece (Rough Guide)‎‎: built up the stubs; added to the Sector1/Digebiti page
• More links for the Powers and Organisations‎‎ page
• Building up the Systems pages: Copied much of the planet-specific gubbins from the Powers and Organisations‎‎ page and detailed ship histories onto the relevant planets pages.
• Linking the better fiction to relevant pages in the wiki (eg Species).
• Added in gubbins on the history of the development of the game of Oolite
• Fixed the ghastly travesty of the stubbish-status of the Royal Hunting Lodge and of Sector1/Digebiti

Help pages

• Links for the various Help pages (some of which have hopefully been thus rescued from utter obscurity)
• Fleshed out Milkrun with sample routes and maps - also Short Range Chart‎
• More links for the Career Options page

Style

• Replacing cr./cr/credits with ₢ (Dybal did it first!).

---

To do

General Guide

Guides to all the GUIs (if that is what these things are!)

F1 page (launch)

F1 page (forwards view)

F2 page (commander "jameson" options)

F2 page (aft view)

F3 page (ship outfitting)

F3F3 page (Dockyard ships for sale)

F3 page (left/port/larboard view)

F4 page (ship and system interfaces)

F4 page (right/starboard view)

F5 page (commander "jameson": details)

F5F5 page (ship's manifest)

F6 page (galactic chart "1")

F6F6 page (long range chart)

F7 page (data on "system")

F8 page (commodity market)

F8F8 page (commodity "item" information)

OXP programming pages

I find these almost entirely incomprehensible. If I ever learn enough I would like to make them more accessible to the uninitiated. Aegidian wanted to teach people how to programme via Oolite. I wonder if the introduction of both Javascript and of the OXZ format has defeated that ambition. Especially when combined with the failure to keep the programming pages on the wiki up-to-date - or to write updated introductions for beginners.

Hiranical

Listing all OXZ's and all Equipment on the wiki

This might be more than I can cope with!

Humph! Now mostly done!!

• Links for all names/terms appearing on "GUI" screens

Pre-Hiranical

• Finish Redspear's oxp pages (where he has rejigged everything several times and one can't work out what is what anymore!)

Also swapping roll vs yaw. Could do with an OXP?

• Enliven the Sector1/Digebiti page (mostly done).

• First Finance First Finance (downloaded 77 times) by Ocz: Beginning the game with a loan to pay off - the loan! (2014)
• In-System Traders by Spara (2014) adds in-system traders to a system with such stations (eg other planets with stations).
• Loan Repayment (downloaded 86 times) - the lenders! by Ocz as above (2014)
• Risky Business.oxz (Phkb's collection below, 2020) aims to make Multi-Gov, Feudal and Anarchy systems more rewarding for traders, by tweaking prices on a few goods. Goods that are already over the average could be increased. Goods that are below the average could be reduced. Not all goods will be impacted at all locations.

• Finish incorporating programming tweaks from the BB onto the pages of relevant OXPs. (major project). Just a handful so far: Laser Booster OXP‎‎, Commanders Log OXP‎‎, Deep Space Dredger‎ & Commies‎.
• Extract lore from The Dark Wheel and incorporate into wiki pages

WIP pages

• Unfinished WIP pages (under construction)

Immersion

Realism

License

• User:Snork/to-do-list look over
• User:Spara look over
• User:Svengali look over
• User:Thargoid look over
• User:Treczoks look over
• User:Tricky look over
• User:Zireael look over

Musings

• I think that the MFD in Ship's Library should be free to encourage in-flight use of the Ship's Manual
• I think there should be a variant of Illegal Goods Tweak focusing more on the ethical than the legal - where you are not stopped by GalCop/Amnesty (as in the Vanilla game) but you can step forwards and free the slaves you bought/picked up.
• It would be nice to get rid of those ghastly kilometres and use other units of measurement (miles, cavezzi, leagues, plethrons, versts etc).
• Does the AI recognise me when I return and carry on beating up on a pirate pack?
• Apropos of Stranger's Roolite essay: some adventures or whatever giving purpose to various worlds. We have "anywhere" missions which fail to mark out places as special (eg. in RRS, Galactic Navy, GalCop Missions, Taxi Galactica, Random Hits... ).

The following call out for drama:

• Lave (Monument, Lave Academy, the moon, the planet)
• Tionisla (TOGY)
• Scandal-ridden Onrira (Obnoxicorp)
• Larais's industrial orange haze (what lies hidden there?).
• Tianve (Pulsar)
• The relationship between Lave and Zadies (both homes to significant bits of GalCop).
• Xexedi vs Laenin (home of the Comoonin) - and its three chums (Terea, Oresri & Xeoner)
• Ceesxe vs backwards Lave & Zadies
• Communist Vetitice & Inonri vs a local system
• Stuff about some of the more colourful famous planets (eg Aesbion's invasion of Aronar).

Ideally one wants more than a mere mission. Something special which keeps one coming back, and marks out the system as special in some way.

• Special price for a commodity (New Cargoes - mission involves picking it up and then one returns with more of it)?
• Special servicing for some piece of equipment, which can only be done there?
• Something building on phkb's Home System or on Feudal States which gives one a stake on the planet. Politics (... Diplomancy).
• Romance?

My oxp's

• Addons for Beginners (Vital Statistics) - downloads useful oxp's for knowing what's what! On the Expansions manager
• Hints - Help for new players (in-game): Overhear some useful (and some not-so-useful!) tips at the station bar.
• Lore Collection (Classic Elite) = downloads oxp's to recreate the world of Classic Elite's lore (rather than just that of the game code)

Tweaks to other people's oxp's

• Broadcast Comms - Digebiti Variations - the real work was all done by Phkb! On the Expansions manager
• Steampunk HUD‎‎ - added HUDSelector compatibility & posted on the Expansions Manager
• Famous Planets - Updates & corrections to the planetinfo.plist - you need to tweak it to include them!

OXP HowTo

• Spara's intro to Dockable.oxp's (2021) Override .oxp's, using the Debug Console, moving a station, fixing the market, issues with brackets.
• Phkb's intro to Mission.oxp's (2021) This and following posts explain player choices, story-line plots, timers, world events etc.
• LittleBear's into to GNN Broadcasts & bar conversations (2022)

Links

• Alternative Galaxies for Oolite: Galaxy seeds and system properties 2012 thread; OoniverseRepopulation 2017 attempt.

Fascinating threads

• See the threads listed here: User:Cim
• The pain of flying an Andromeda...or any other big ship! - see discussions on Trade/Economics
• Wishes for Oolite's development (Wolfspirit 2007) thread with several of his posts

Attempts to elicit a response

• Stranger's Roolite Essay
• OXPs - Strategic thinking!
• Government Types (anarchy/corporate state etc)

Other Links

• Sunless Skies - I came across this on the Pioneer BB. Very suggestive - I do like the interactions while docked and it would be super to have something similar in Oolite. Also to be able to build up the persona of one's in-game avatar in someway.

• Quote: ... Oolite is not "just a shooter" game. But it would be very interesting someday to see what it could be like if even half of the attention and effort that has gone into the combat related functions was expended on the economic and cultural possibilities Ganelon
• Inspiration: A man I would be honoured to meet