Frontier Style Equipment [my first OXP]

[Zireael]

This is my first OXP - some of you may recall my comments around a year and a half ago that FFE had some cool features I miss in Oolite.

Here's a proof-of-concept OXP, which was undoable anyways before 1.77.1 due to a bug with requires_cargo_space.

It makes some more equipment use up cargo space, similar to Frontier. The combat systems and scanner do not use any space, unlike Frontier. Therefore buying more equipment is no longer a no-brainer.

I am aware that this probably needs some more tweaking as far as prices and general balance is concerned, so feedback is welcome!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7ybip9o842v6 ... %200.2.zip

P.s. Kudos to another_commander for Notepad++ tip, as all other text editors I tried ended up borking my plist.

[dertien]

Awesome ! will try that now... This should be interesting gameplaywise for getting the best-maxed-out-ship-bang-for-your-buck-kind-of-deal; Damn, did I really write that ?

Excellent !

[dertien]

Okay, I have a little question. Would it be possible to couple this to another variable than the cargo space, like for example equipment space ? I really like this, but the fact that changing the cargo capacity for the different ships is maybe going to affect other gameplay related balances; for example:

An adder has stock value of 2 tons of cargo space. Ridiculous I know, so is the price of the Fer-de-lance, given that some of its specs are lower than a cobra Mk3 which you can get for less than half the price. But think of this , with your oxp the adder gets upgraded to 20 tons... soon, it will maybe be too easy to make money from trading because of the extra cargo and thus break gameplay balance. This could be offset by upping the prices of the goods but who knows what that will affect.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great oxp, but you might want to look into that.

On another note, this opens up new possibilities. No longer would you be unrestricted in buying a small inexpensive ship and arming it to the teeth. This adds another welcome gameplay factor... commanders should now choose what ship to buy. This will work nicely with the ship storage helper and extensive shipyards oxp. Like I said awesome.

[Zireael]

Okay, I have a little question. Would it be possible to couple this to another variable than the cargo space, like for example equipment space ?

This is a question better addressed at people who have a better idea of what they are doing with JS and plists than I

An adder has stock value of 2 tons of cargo space. Ridiculous I know, so is the price of the Fer-de-lance, given that some of its specs are lower than a cobra Mk3. But think of this , with your oxp the adder gets upgraded to 20 tons... soon, it will maybe be too easy to make money from trading because of the extra cargo and thus break gameplay balance. This could be offset by upping the prices of the goods but who knows what that will affect.

I know, that's why I asked for feedback. For example, equipment and ship prices could be upped instead, so that you need as many milk runs to upgrade your Adder to Cobra as in vanilla.
The idea of changing commodity prices is a good one, too (and nicely goes with the idea of adding more commodities a la Frontier), but I'm afraid of mucking something up. *shakes fist at flashers*

[dertien]

This is a question better addressed at people who have a better idea of what they are doing with JS and plists than I

hahaha, And I was under the impression that you knew what you were doing.

I know, that's why I asked for feedback. For example, equipment and ship prices could be upped instead, so that you need as many milk runs to upgrade your Adder to Cobra as in vanilla.
The idea of changing commodity prices is a good one, too (and nicely goes with the idea of adding more commodities a la Frontier), but I'm afraid of mucking something up. *shakes fist at flashers*

Wait till the canon people see this, they might want to put you on the proverbial guillotine.

Anyways, don't mind me, I just wanted to give you a friendly heads up and yes congrats on this great oxp and keep this up.

[Norby]

Welcome in the "dark side"!

The idea is nice, but I must ask a few things, please:
- put into the readme (which is usually .txt or .rtf) the author's nickname and a license, for example the most common CC BY-NC-SA 3 (check this topic if unsure),
- put a version number into the oxp subfolder (and zip file name) like FrontierStyleEquipment_0.1.oxp (at least, or more) and increase it at every changes.

[Zireael]

Welcome in the "dark side"!

The idea is nice, but I must ask a few things, please:
- put into the readme (which is usually .txt or .rtf) the author's nickname and a license, for example the most common CC BY-NC-SA 3 (check this topic if unsure),
- put a version number into the oxp subfolder (and zip file name) like FrontierStyleEquipment_0.1.oxp (at least, or more) and increase it at every changes.

Done

New link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/37azxa6bg9csx ... %200.1.zip

Uh, ok, forgot to change the readme extension to rtf, too sleepy, but it's a minor thing.

[dertien]

It would also be nice to know, if this will keep working with cargo space in the future, how much space the equipment would eat up, before comitting to buy that equipment.

[Redspear]

It would also be nice to know, if this will keep working with cargo space in the future, how much space the equipment would eat up, before comitting to buy that equipment.

Doesn't it tell you that on the F3 screen

Anyway, nice one Zireael. I'd tinkered around with this stuff before but never thought of overwriting the equipment list in an oxp (what's wrong with me? ) Also, I'm not familiar with FFE so my 'values' were a little different.

Some feedback:

• As it stands the Asp (arguably the core game's premium fighter) cannot equip a military laser due to insufficient cargo space. This 'Naval vessel' can now be out equipped by an 'outdated' Krait. Is this intentional?
  
  What about the Extra Energy Unit? Shouldn't that require some space too?
  
  Suppose you had a rear military laser equipped and changed it to a minimg laser, would you recoup the extra 10t taken up by the military laser?
  
  The Elite manual described the Adder as capable of planetary landing, maybe this (or at leat the core equipment of heat shielding etc) could take up more space to reduce that 20t capacity.
  
  I seem to remember the sidewinder desccribed as, 'too small for the fitting of fuel scoops', maybe that could be factored in?

Despite those concerns, I'd consider this an excellent first oxp and all of the values are very easy to customise.
Good work

[Zireael]

@ dertien: The info on how much an equipment eats up is automatically shown on buy screen, at least in my 20/12 nightly.

@ Redspear: Thanks for the excellent feedback.

This is the new version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7ybip9o842v6 ... %200.2.zip

*reduced the Adder's cargo by 5t
* increased an Asp's cargo capacity by 15t
* added the requirements to some items (missiles, extra energy unit, fuel injectors etc)

[dertien]

Will try this out as soon as I can, looking forward to it.