Oolite 2: ship balance, starting conditions and death knells

[Disembodied]

Tradition is hard to break, so as a compromise...you can start in a Cobra 3, but it was bought on credit.
...Done in such a way you will be forced to pay off the loan for it before equipping it, such as a semi-high interest rate -- though nothing like the Black Monks usury. So maybe about 100-500 credits per jump on a loan of 50,000 credits?

As for how great the player's Cobra 3 is...how about increasing its cost and/or reducing its max speed to 0.30 LM?

It's all possible – although let's face it, it's not, and never will be, up to me! Personally though I think it would be better to make the player start at the bottom, and a Cobra III – even a beat-up, debt-ridden Cobra III – is a long way off the bottom. It would need substantial changes elsewhere in the game to ship stats and prices, too, of course, to build in a proper progress ladder. Or rather a series of progress ladders: one going up the combat route, via (say) the Krait and the Asp to the Fer-de-Lance, and one going up the merchantman route, via the Moray and Cobra I before splitting off to the Cobra III on one side (for the jack-of-all-trades), and the Python and Boa on the other.

The trick is to parcel out incremental awards to the player: lots of little steps, all heading generally upwards. Using the basic ship set, the Cobra III is going to be many players' dream ship: the target to which they aspire. I think it would be a mistake to hand that over right at the start.

[Smivs]

Which is why I've always favoured the player being given a chunk of money to start the game, enough to buy a tooled-up Adder, or a decent Mk 1 Cobby, or perhaps even a very basic Mk 3 Cobby with a small loan to repay.

[Disembodied]

Which is why I've always favoured the player being given a chunk of money to start the game, enough to buy a tooled-up Adder, or a decent Mk 1 Cobby, or perhaps even a very basic Mk 3 Cobby with a small loan to repay.

Still, though, that's probably too much. The more I think about this, the more I think players should start with enough money to buy a new Adder, or a second-hand Adder with some problems and some change left over for a little bit of basic kit. If you're going to have a game where players progress upwards, it makes sense for them to start at the bottom. This was one thing that Frontier got right: you started the game in a crappy long-range fighter with hardly any cargo space and not much else, and worked your way up. It needs careful adjustment, to create a proper career path that's challenging but feasible, but I think it makes for a better game. It makes for a better story, too: it's more fun to hear about the guy who worked his way up from the bottom, than the guy who worked his way up from somewhere above the middle.

[Killer Wolf]

i'm totally against anything but Griff's as the basic set. As McL rightly points out anything else is OXP, and even if a couple come close to the quality none match the consistent theme and feel of Griff's and would stick out like a sore paw, i feel.

Overlooking the fact that (currently) Griff's ships are OXP, I fear that this is the death-knell for OXP ships in general. The fact is very few people have the skill, knowledge and ability to come close to that high standard. We should accept that when Oolite 2 does come along, new ships that "match the consistent theme and feel of Griff's" will not feature heavily in the OXZs available.

Firstly, as McL said, Griff's ships are OXP now, but they won't be in Oolite 2.
Secondly, there's no reason at all that it'll be the death knell. I'm still doing stuff (working on a new ship now, the Phantom, and have scribbles for a half-dozen other things) and i've no doubt others will too : if not, the game's about dead. What my point was, was the core ships : they should be standardised and of one theme/look. Griff's do that - adding in Neolites, eg, as core too would break that : they're nothing alike. Saying that automatically means all shipwork in OXPs should stop is illogical to me. you have the same sitch going on now, a bunch of core ships of one distinctive look, and all flavours and standards of OXP craft. nowt will change, save the standard of the core ships will be far more eye candyish.

[Ganelon]

Considering how often new players seem to complain of the difficulty of making enough to kit out their ship and cope with surviving long enough to get anywhere in the game. They run for performance and weapon OXPs fast enough as it is. Putting them in a ship that's harder to make an income with isn't likely to encourage a new player.

Wanting more challenges in the game is more the mark of the experienced players. I would raise the point that it might be questionable to increase the challenges at the beginning of the game.

It's hard enough to make credits at first in the stock Cobra MKIII. The 20 ton cargo bay is more than a bit of a challenge when the player can't afford much but food on their first few runs. Those first few runs are when most players will either dump the game or get hooked. An Adder has such a small cargo bay that starting out in it as a trader would be very difficult for someone where it was their first exposure to the game. It would take forever to trick it out or afford another ship. It doesn't really have the weapons mounts, speed or energy recharge rates to make it much of a fighter, either.

Starting the player out severely (from the POV of a beginner) in debt also may "raise the bar" to where few new people would play the game for long before they erase it off their machine.

Seriously, is Oolite "the future of space trading", or "the future of space sadomasochism"?

[Smivs]

there's no reason at all that it'll be the death knell. I'm still doing stuff (working on a new ship now, the Phantom, and have scribbles for a half-dozen other things) and i've no doubt others will too : if not, the game's about dead. What my point was, was the core ships : they should be standardised and of one theme/look. Griff's do that - adding in Neolites, eg, as core too would break that : they're nothing alike. Saying that automatically means all shipwork in OXPs should stop is illogical to me. you have the same sitch going on now, a bunch of core ships of one distinctive look, and all flavours and standards of OXP craft. nowt will change, save the standard of the core ships will be far more eye candyish.

Which is one of the points I was making. One consistent set of core ships is essential. At the moment the 'core' ships are, well, dull at best (with all due respect), which is why myself and others have made pretty replacement shipsets. There is clearly a demand for these.....Smivs'Shipset has been downloaded over 300 times, and it's likely that some of the others have been similarly successful. With Griff's ships as the default in Oolite 2 there will be absolutely no need for replacement shipsets, unless someone has the time, skill and ability to do a complete set with a totally different look/feel to them. I think this is Unlikely!
Also, novel OXP ships currently don't have to be brilliant to stand out from the crowd. With Oolite 2 stand-alone OXP ships will have to be at least as good as, if not better than Griff's work. If not, they will look poor and un-inviting, and certainly won't 'fit in' to the Oolite 2 Ooniverse comfortably. I can't help but think this will put people off making these, although for someone with the necessary talent, it is do-able. The trouble is not everybody has that talent, and where today someone who can do a bit of modelling and a half-decent texture can put out a good OXP, that will not be the case under Oolite 2.
Speaking personally I do not feel able to compete at this level, so don't expect to be making any ship OXZs. It's up to others what they do of course.
Griff did mention somewhere above that there is some hope and that the 'materials' may become sophisticated enough to make this possible, and I hope that is the case.
Please don't mis-understand me. I'm not saying that the move to Oolite 2, and a move to more sophisticated 'core' graphics is a bad thing. I'm not. It's really good. All I'm doing is pointing out some of the possible consequences.

[Commander McLane]

It's not that I don't understand your point, Smivs. However, the idea of purposefully designing Oolite 2.0 to be dull strikes me as a little odd, to say the least. The main goal is to improve the game, and the improvement everybody seems to want is eye-candy. Therefore I see no point in deliberately leaving the eye-candy out of Oolite 2.0.

I can't anticipate the ship designers' reaction to a non-dull original set. Perhaps it will spark their creativity? Maybe we won't have as many alternatively textured sets of the original ships as we have now (although I see no reason why the currently available sets shouldn't continue to exist). But, honestly, what gives? It's not like re-texturing the original set again and again is the Mount Everest of OXPing. Personally I don't really care about sets of re-textured original ships. I have none of them installed, not even bothered downloading any of them.

I do like ship sets, but not those with the same ships all over again, only with different skins. I like new ship sets, like the Executive Systems ships, the Pteradyne ships, the Ixian ships, the Far Arm ships, the Aquatics ships, Amen Brick's ships, Charlie's ships. None of these ship sets (and there certainly are more of them) will be affected in any way by an upgrade of the graphics of the original ships.

[Mauiby de Fug]

See, I can only run with shaders on simple, and to me, Griff's ships are just a somewhat boring metallic grey. Granted, 'tis a very impressive metal look, but that's it. Other ship sets have more colour, and brighten the place up a bit. I have numerous ship sets installed, both different ships and re-textured ones, and my in-head explanation for the differences is that they come from different ship builders. I wouldn't expect all ships in my 'verse to be consistent. It may well make sense for Griff's to replace the core set which are rather dull. But I fail to see why this would mean that other ships would cease to be produced.

The idea of starting out in an Adder worries me a bit. Every now and then when I remove most of my oxps for to test my own scripting and use a fresh game, I occasionally take an Adder out for a spin, and I find it rather awkward. I'm by no means the best of pilots, but I'm 300 kills or so off Elite and then only reason I was able to get there is due to remembering the feel of flying the ship and tactics from when I played ArcElite for months on end on my Dad's computer. As Ganelon said, I can't see new players sticking around if all they're given is an Adder to begin with. If you're going to change how you start out, I'd say at least make sure there are different options for those with different skills.

[Smivs]

It's not that I don't understand your point, Smivs. However, the idea of purposefully designing Oolite 2.0 to be dull strikes me as a little odd, to say the least. The main goal is to improve the game, and the improvement everybody seems to want is eye-candy. Therefore I see no point in deliberately leaving the eye-candy out of Oolite 2.0.

With respect I think you might have missed my point, rather than understood/not understood it.

Please don't mis-understand me. I'm not saying that the move to Oolite 2, and a move to more sophisticated 'core' graphics is a bad thing. I'm not. It's really good. All I'm doing is pointing out some of the possible consequences.

I meant that.
In no way did I suggest Oolite 2 should be 'dull'. It shouldn't and it won't, but in my opinion one inevitable consequence of this is that there are likely to be far fewer ship OXPs (sorry OXZs).

[Commander McLane]

In no way did I suggest Oolite 2 should be 'dull'. It shouldn't and it won't, but in my opinion one inevitable consequence of this is that there are likely to be far fewer ship OXPs (sorry OXZs).

Also with respect, I doubt that. Apart from a few orphaned OXPs with licensing issues (these do exist, and we have to figure out a way to deal with it) I expect all existing ship OXPs to become OXZs. So there won't be fewer of them. And I also expect people to continue to make new ships. So I am not worried about it. We'll have more ships OXZs, not less (just like we right now have more than we had two or three years ago).

The only possible issue I can see is with replacement ship sets. But, as already stated above, I don't find those important. (To be honest, personally I've always seen the release of different replacement ship sets as sort of a competition for which one will eventually become the default set. The competition seems to be over, and Griff is the winner. For me that makes all other ship sets sort of obsolete. I don't expect anybody else to share this view, though.)

[Gimi]

It's a big Ooniverse out there. In my imagination it would be totally impractical for all Cobras to be made at the same factory and to an identical design. So for that reason I install different ship sets. They are variants and local adaptations, catering for totally different trends and fashions. Ideally I would like to see Griffs ships being common in Galaxy 1 and 2 and subsequently becoming rearer in galaxy 3 and 4 where, for example, Neolite ships are the dominant design and so on. Variation is a good thing. This concept could even influence prices.

[Ganelon]

With ships, I think it's cool to put the basic Griff set in as the core ships. But I don't think it would or should discourage new ships being invented and installed by OXP. I would think of it as being more a case of the core ships being a very popular line, especially where the player first starts out.

Maybe it could be possible to have different shipsets be more likely in different galaxies? Say we think of Griff's as shipset "A". B, C and D would be shipsets that develop from ones that are current or that are new by the time of Oolite 2, that have been upgraded over that time to make use of the newer graphics features that are being planned. So Griff's set would be mostly what you see in G1, G2 and G3, say 80% of the time. B would be what you mostly see in G3 and G4, C in G5 and G6, and the D set would be mostly what you'd see in G7 and G8. You might see ships from any set in any galaxy, and a player might buy and fly any of them, as they find them. But it could give a natural sort of sense of what you'd see the most of as being due to being nearer to where they're built.

I mean, you may see many of the very same cars in the US, the UK, Germany, and Japan. But the markets and what is available tend to be different, so what you'd see the most of is probably different, I'd think?

It could give more of a feel of travelling to new places when the player starts galaxy hopping. Or if the galaxies are all one big map in some way by then, it would still give the feel of things being different as one travels great distances.

[Fatleaf]

In Oolite 2 will it be possible to have the player with multiple forward lasers? So that would make buying a wolf or Imperial trader and the like more sense.

[Capt. Murphy]

The idea of starting out in an Adder worries me a bit.......... If you're going to change how you start out, I'd say at least make sure there are different options for those with different skills.

That would be my preferred option - a range of start-up scenarios (including the original new recruit from the Lave Academy) for the player to choose from (different ship, location, equipment and backstory) which could be rated as more easy or difficult than the standard.

[Zireael]

In Oolite 2 will it be possible to have the player with multiple forward lasers? So that would make buying a wolf or Imperial trader and the like more sense.

Seconded.

The idea of starting out in an Adder worries me a bit.......... If you're going to change how you start out, I'd say at least make sure there are different options for those with different skills.

That would be my preferred option - a range of start-up scenarios (including the original new recruit from the Lave Academy) for the player to choose from (different ship, location, equipment and backstory) which could be rated as more easy or difficult than the standard.

Seconded too.