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Launch Oolite and the first thing you'll see is your ship, a Cobra Mark III.
Press 'N' to dismiss the option to load a saved game, and you'll be presented with a screen which shows a number of different space craft and things you'll encounter playing Oolite. When you wish to continue, press the space bar.
This is the status display. You can call it up at any time by pressing
f5 or
5. You've got just 100 credits with which to make your fortune, you're docked at a place called Lave, and you are rated 'harmless'. For the moment you are called Commander Jameson, this will change when you save your game under your preferred name. Let's do that now, press
f2 or
2 to go to the game options display.
The first thing highlighted on this screen is 'Save Commander', press return and save the game. We'll keep using the name Jameson, but you can save the game under any name you choose. You can explore the other options now, or later, when you're ready press
f6 or
6.
This is a local star chart. The green cross marks your current location and the green circle the range available to you given your fuel (7 Light Years). Aside from Lave, you can see there are 6 systems within the range of your ship's 'witchdrive'. Press
f6 or
6 again.
This is the galactic chart showing all the systems available in the first galaxy. Your position and flight range are still marked in green. You can toggle between the local chart and the galactic chart by pressing
f6 or
6 and the charts are available to you at any time. Now, let's find out a little more about Lave, press
f7 or
7.
Lave is a Rich Agricultural planet, with a Dictatorship government. I wonder what a Laveian tree grub looks like? Hmm. Let's have a look at another planet, press
f6 or
6 to bring up the local chart again.
Now use the cursor keys or click the mouse to move the red cross hair to another system. We chose Zaonce. Press
f7 or
7 to call up information about the selected system.
Zaonce is a tedious place, an Average Industrial Corporate State. But that high Tech Level makes it a tempting shopping destination. Let's leave Zaonce selected as our first place to visit.
Next we're going to find out about buying goods, while you're still docked press
f8 or
8 to call up the local commodity market here on Lave.
Here's what's available, and the local prices. We only have 100 credits to spend, so we had best choose wisely. On an agricultural world Food and Textiles are cheap, we'll buy some of those and some Liquors and Wines to sell at Zaonce.
Use the up and down cursor keys to move up and down the list, and the right and left cursor keys to buy and sell goods. Pressing return will buy or sell as much as possible of the selected commodity.
Now we have our trade goods, let's get flying. Press
f1 or
1 to launch!
These glowing rings appear when you launch or dock with a space station or use your witchspace engines.
We're in space. Ahead is the planet Lave, and between it and ou is a large navigational buoy. We'd better not hit it, so hold down
s to bring your ship to a stop. You can see the speed read-out (labeled
SPD) at the right of the display. If we need to, we can press
w to increase our speed again, but for the moment, let's stop and look around.
To switch between views you use
f1,
f2,
f3 and
f4 (or
1,
2,
3 and
4). Try this now, you'll quickly see which key is associated with which view (
f1 forward,
f2 aft,
f3 port,
f4 starboard). Behind us is the 'Coriolis' space station for Lave.
This is the view to port, the big glowing white thing is the sun. Note the green dot and line on the central scanner, that's the space station. The flashing green/yellow blip is the navigation buoy.
Now try using the left and right cursor keys to roll your craft, it's sensitive so small movements are best. The up and down cursor keys control your pitch. You can see how the blips in the scanner move according to the direction your craft is pointing.
Now with control over speed and direction you could fly anywhere. We want to go to Zaonce though, so press
h to start the witchdrive sequence.
Zooooom!
And here we are at Zaonce. The planet's a long way off, even at full speed it's going to take a while to get there.
Fortunately the Cobra Mark III has a special in-system drive that can propel it many times faster than normal, provided there are no other ships or planets nearby. You activate this drive with the
j key, so centre your crosshairs on the planet and press
j.
Space dust whizzes past us - we really must be careful not to bump into anything at this speed, so watch out for asteroids, hitting one at this speed would be the end.
A warning beep and this message let us know that there are ships within the limit for the in-system hyperdrive. They're the purple blips on the scanner. As we're not sure what these are, let's activate the identification system by pressing
r.
The identification system needs to be locked onto a target by moving the object you want to identify into your cross hairs.
It's a GalCop Viper, a police ship. Purple blips are always police ships. We can move closer for a better look.
Ships are often found flying in close formation. These Vipers are patrolling the Zaonce system looking for pirates and other trouble makers.
Here's a yellow blip, that's another 'neutral' craft.
A Python is a large merchant ship, used by traders and pirates alike.
Gosh, space is busy around here, there seems to be no end of police ships!
If a blip turns red, that means the other ship has locked weapon systems onto your ship!
A warning klaxon sounds and the status light (normally green or yellow) flashes red.
The Python's hostile, but surrounded by so many police he won't last long!
And a short while later, we're back to 'yellow' status.
That small group of blips ahead looks interesting...
It's another Python, flying in formation with two smaller escort craft. They're friendly this time, thank goodness.
We can just zoom carefully past them.
Once they're out of range of our scanner we get a 'Target Lost' message. Once we pass that other blip we can re-engage the insystem hyperdrive...
Wheee!
We're getting pretty close to the planet now.
You may already have noticed the little blue scanner at the bottom right of the main scanner - the blip on that shows the position of the planet: green if it's ahead and red if it's behind us. This is your space compass.
As we get closer to the planet, the space compass begins to point in another direction - towards Zaonce's space station.
We center our crosshairs on the the space station using the compass. It's just a distant blob at the moment but you should be able to make out that it's rotating.
As we get closer a green S appears on our screen to inform us that we are approaching the space station.
We're getting very close to the planet too. Look at the altimeter - it's the gauge at the bottom-left labeled
ALT.
This space station is a different shape to the Coriolis station we left at Lave.
It does however have a standard docking slit and to use that we have to be pointing in the right direction. Here's how we do it.
First, slow down and find the Navigation Buoy (it's the green and yellow flashing blip).
Great, we're going to fly right up close to the buoy.
As you approach the buoy slow down to a stop.
SLOW DOWN!
Okay, (phew), next we turn our ship to face the space station, the docking slot should be pointing directly at us.
With the docking slot in the centre of our crosshairs we slowly approach the station.
Confident that we are heading for the slot, we can match our craft's roll to the rotation of the station.
...5
Hold your nerve...4
...3
...2
...1
Docking rings!
We made it!
The first screen we see after docking is the status display. Time to sell our cargo, to access the local commodity market press
f8 or
8.
Look, the prices for Food, Textiles and Liquors and Wines are much higher here than they were at Lave.
Selling them we have a new total of 180 credits. That's not all profit however, we need to replace the fuel we used on our trip. Press
f3 or
3 to call up the Ship Outfitting screen.
This lists all the equipment you can buy at the technologically advanced Zaonce. There's a lot of tempting stuff here we can't afford, yet.
Press
return to buy fuel, you can only ever purchase enough fuel to fill your tank.
Once bought, if you can't buy an item a second time, it disappears from the screen. We can't really afford to buy an extra missile yet. Let's save the game instead. Press
f2 or
2.
Press
return and go through the usual Mac file saving procedure. Then we can decide where to go next.
Press
f6 or
6 to bring up the local star chart.
Now we're at Zaonce the map centers on that system.
Let's examine Isinor, select it and press
f7 or
7.
Isinor is a Poor Agricultural world, we can bring them technology's rich benefits.
Let's head back to the commodity market (
f8 or
8).
Three tons of machinery should sell well at Isinor.
A press of
f1 or
1, and our next journey begins...
