DeepSpacePirates
Contents
Overview
This is just a basic oxp that increases the chance of an encounter with pirates outside the space lanes and in deep space. This is the area were the pirates start their career and do their combat practice. Some of these pirates still have a clean status as they never have been caught in the action by an official copper or never let a victim escape to report the crime.
Minimum version requirement Oolite 1.71
Background of this oxp
The original Elite was written for slow computers. It couldn't cope with to much action, so ships were only added near the player and when the player left them behind they were removed from the system. (Player centred game)
Oolite was developed for much faster computers. With Oolite the system is populated first and than the player is put in the middle of it. That means there is also a lot of action in places the player can not see. But more ships still means more calculations so there was made a choice to only add ships at routes the player is likely to travel along. This is the spacelane: witchpoint --> main planet, and in a lesser extend: main planet --> sun. Outside these routes the space is quite empty. When you see ships outside these lanes they are usually added by an other oxp. DeepSpecePirates.oxp also adds ships outside the spacelanes, based on the players location, direction and speed. This way you can meet random ships everywhere in the universe.
This brings realism into the behaviour of traders. In plain Oolite the area around the space lanes is free of piracy and it would be more logic when a trader would make a small detour to avoid lurking pirates in this situation. With this oxp trader behaviour makes more sense. There are also pirates outside the lanes. By travelling inside the lanes traders have a higher change of getting help from police or bounty hunters when attacked. Avoiding the space lanes becomes now dangerous for the trader or player. Most of the times the player still will manage to reach the station save when he avoid the crowded space lane, but there is no longer a guarantee this route is free of pirates.
Encounters
Currently it adds pirates and asteroids. Frequency of adding depends on government type and distance to the spacelane. The chance of adding is much higher just outside the lanes than in deep space.
Download Link
Update Notes
The version posted on the Wiki is the latest version of this OXP. Version 0.16
Installing and Playing
To play the OXP, unzip the download file. This will create a folder named "Missile Analysor". Open this folder and you will see a folder named "Missile Analysor.oxp" and a readme. Move the Missile Analysor.oxp folder to AddOns. As with all OXPs, its the folder ending .oxp that you need to put in Oolite's AddOns folder, otherwise Oolite will not read it.
