Looking ahead

General discussion for players of Oolite.

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Zireael
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Zireael »

New ship designs are another matter:
If we get multiple player lasers, I hereby officially predict another arms race for ships with multiple lasers very close (fractions of a meter) to the main laser, clusters of three, six, ten, twenty military lasers, taking out anything with one combined shot, a rapid descent into boring invincible cheat uber laser ship territory. I predict it with absolute certainty, and I'm not looking forward to it. Personally I'd prefer to not go anyway near of it, therefore to not allow multiple lasers for player ships in the first place.
We could avoid it with multiple beams hitting (maybe with a slight miss chance) the crosshairs instead of straight ahead... that'd solve the 2/3 energy going to waste problem with Imp Courier too.

Banning more than X lasers total on all directions (say, 6 - is it how much the Cutter has?) would be a solution too.
[*]Second, I think that ship-switching by script and/or read-write values for shipdata.plists would be nice. (This might allow greater freedom in ship-design, a player could be offered the chance to buy a special ship upon the completion of a mission, or could have the option of paying to have his ship improved upon the completion of a mission.)
Brilliant idea!
[*]Fourthly, I do agree that the mass-lock radius should be turned down, however I don't think it should go away (after all there should be some safety regulations on how close to another ship or a station one can use the drive). I think that the mass-lock radius should be 10km. That would allow a strategic element and explain why pirates use fast ships as interceptors. The faster the ship the faster it's torus drive and the faster the torus drive the better the ship is equipped to intercept and force a mass lock. Maybe there should be a cool down time for the torus after a mass lock? Stopping abruptly like that can't be good for it; and that way the player can't just wait until the intercepting pirate ship goes farther than 10km as it burns past on it's injectors, and then bolt away using his torus drive. The player would have to take time to get away to break the mass-lock anyway, and if the npc is a law-abiding citizen he would have plenty of time for the torus drive to cool down.
I agree with Commander Wilmot here. A lesser mass lock range and a cooldown period would make the newer torus more available, thus reducing boring travels in-game.

And we could keep the torus as an interface thing, but available more often. Then it'd be like the TAF was and without its downsides.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Smivs »

Why should the run in to a planet be boring? If there's traffic there that you don't want to interact with, inject past it. A good commander will ensure he has fuel for this if he doesn't want to be held up, or just go off the spacelanes and Torus all the way.
And anyway, the run in should be the best bit....that's where you'll find your victims if you want them, that's where you'll find the on-going battles if you want to intervene, or just watch, that's where you find almost everything worth doing and seeing.
I don't get this 'boring' thing, I'm sorry. You are describing the best bit of the game. Beats the hell out of being docked or jumping through witchspace.....now those things are boring!
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Cody »

Smivs wrote:
Why should the run in to a planet be boring? If there's traffic there that you don't want to interact with, inject past it. A good commander will ensure he has fuel for this if he doesn't want to be held up, or just go off the spacelanes and Torus all the way.
And anyway, the run in should be the best bit....that's where you'll find your victims if you want them, that's where you'll find the on-going battles if you want to intervene, or just watch, that's where you find almost everything worth doing and seeing.
I don't get this 'boring' thing, I'm sorry. You are describing the best bit of the game. Beats the hell out of being docked or jumping through witchspace.....now those things are boring!
Well said... I couldn't agree more!
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Mauiby de Fug »

I seem to recall in ArcElite that the torus drive actually jumped the player, rather than just accelerating them. I prefer the torus drive operating the way it is. I'm quite happy to convince myself that the reason I don't see NPC's with them is because they're out of range. Using the TAF to accelerate time just feels...wrong! It'd be immersion-breaking, and not something I'd ever use.

I'd never thought of the arms-race thing for multiple lasers. That's definitely something to shy away from. I'm quite happy with NPC's having multiple lasers and me not, for some reason. It doesn't seem to bother me. Although I would never fly a ship which as an NPC version has multiple, and as a player version doesn't. It would also feel... wrong... I can't really put it into words at the moment.

On the issue of wanting player and NPC equality, how do people feel about side lasers!? I'm assuming that somewhere in this thread someone's already requested them for NPCs. Do the people that won't use energy bombs because NPCs don't have them not use their side lasers? Or do they have a way of explaining it to themselves?
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Cody »

Mauiby de Fug wrote:
Do the people that won't use energy bombs because NPCs don't have them not use their side lasers?
I never use the energy bomb, and I have never used my side lasers... in fact, since I fitted the railgun, I no longer use my aft laser.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Ganelon »

If we get multiple player lasers, I hereby officially predict another arms race for ships with multiple lasers very close (fractions of a meter) to the main laser, clusters of three, six, ten, twenty military lasers, taking out anything with one combined shot, a rapid descent into boring invincible cheat uber laser ship territory. I predict it with absolute certainty, and I'm not looking forward to it. Personally I'd prefer to not go anyway near of it, therefore to not allow multiple lasers for player ships in the first place.
Well, one way to "balance" it would be to eliminate them on NPC ships. But I don't see that happening. It also really doesn't make sense as a limitation from a player point of view. I mean, it is over a thousand years in the future, there is a large assortment of spaceships and 256X8 worlds and nobody has ever figured out how to mount more than one laser to face the same direction and work? It just doesn't seem likely.

It wouldn't be inconceivable for a really huge ship to have quite a few lasers, but logically they'd be on different mounting areas. The moral of the story there is simple. Don't attack a large battleship bristling with weapons in your little Cobra MKIII, or it's about a guaranteed suicide run. On smaller ships, cooling would be problematical (as has often been discussed) and also power requirements for more lasers could be brought in. To take a simple and arbitrary example, a Cobra MKIII has four energy banks and it also has four possible laser mountings. An obvious idea would be if weapons could be limited to the number of energy banks. On that note, I don't think it would be a terrible idea if mounting a railgun required losing one of the side lasers on a Cobra so the energy bank could be used to power the railgun. Even though the railgun is mounted facing forward, the power for it logically has to be coming from somewhere.

Add some disadvantage to multiple lasers fired together in one direction like have it cost shield recharge rate for both players and NPCs. That way it's a trade-off. That way neither can increase their capability for inflicting damage without weakening their own defences.

The capability for ridiculous boring "uber-icity" already exists. By either designing a ship or hacking one, a player can give it an outrageous speed, lots of energy banks, tons of missile slots and etc. Then hack the savegame to give themselves a huge credit balance. A few do, perhaps, but not most.

The most extreme case of uber I can think of in OXPs is your own KillIt, Commander McLane. Don't take this as a criticism against it, I feel it is an excellent statement and done with a nice bit of wit and sense of humour. But I rather doubt many players actually pack the OMGWTFBBQ aboard their ship. Maybe try it just to see it once, and then most likely they remove it again.

I tend to think that if anyone came up with a player ownable ship as small as a Krait with a cargo bay big enough to hold the inventory of several entire stations, speed of something like .999 LM and that had twenty simultaneously firing forward facing lasers that guaranteed a one shot kill on virtually any target, nobody would want it other than to maybe fly a test run with it just to see what it's like. I think all but the lasers are already possible, aren't they? As you've pointed out, it just wouldn't be actually fun for gameplay. I doubt that it would end up becoming "standard kit" for anyone that enjoys the game.

My complaint about NPCs using multiple lasers is that if it isn't actually useful, then why would they do it? Yes, yes, I am quite aware that there are no little people inside the computer actually making purchasing and outfitting decisions, but for game logic, there should be reasons why those fictional little people do what they do. If it is folly for NPCs, then the same folly should be available for the player.

Or here's an idea.. Move their mounting closer together on the NPC ships so that the triple beam off an NPC Imperial Courier (for example) actually *does* do a lot of damage fast. That way the player can learn that he/she should probably spend a hardhead missile on any IC they come up against to make it go evasive and then work hard to take it out very early in the fight if they want to survive. Then an "arms race" for the player to consider similar measures and have to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages could be reasonable.

All I'm saying is that it doesn't seem to make sense from a player point of view for a ship like the Imperial Courier to come stock to every NPC that flies one with a different weapons setup than is available to the player at any price. I feel that from at least a naive player point of view, it allows for disappointment if they actually fork over the three quarters of a million credits it takes to buy one.

We also have to remember that we're talking about "Even More Mythical STable Release After Next", Oolite 2, here. What might "break" the game balance of Oolite 1.XX could perhaps be workable in the game balance of Oolite 2.

PS added after seeing posts written while I was typing:

I absolutely agree that the run to the planet is most of where the game actually happens and shortening travel time too much doesn't make sense. If we're going that direction why not just have Star Trek style teleporters big enough to move cargo from station to station? I wouldn't want to play it.

The torus drive as it is works, and as a player, I would never have known the NPC ships didn't have the capability if i hadn't been told. It doesn't really change gameplay if we just pretend they use it too.

I've never assumed we were talking about three lasers on every facing. I always thought it would be more on the order of changing one or both of the side lasers to a forward mounting. I don't use side lasers in fights, though I do use one for mining. I feel that NPC ships *should* be able to use side and aft lasers if the player is silly enough to fly into the line of sight of them. I don't use the energy bomb. I tend to feel that quirium mines shouldn't be stock equipment, except maybe on Thargoid ships or maybe available for special missions. Nuclear warheads exist in current times, but I don't think we're allowed to have them in cars, are we?
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Commander Wilmot »

My proposal for multiple lasers was that they would be limited in number and/or exchanged for lasers on other sides.
Well, to my knowledge nobody has ever suggested or requested something like that. What has been requested is multiple forward lasers, not a way to make a side laser shoot forward (which won't happen anyway, because a side laser is pretty much defined by shooting sideways, not forward).
Yes, that is what I am requesting, sort of. The whole idea of side lasers seems ridiculous to me, the only use for a side laser would be to broadside an enemy ship. In space, ships aren't limited to two dimensions like in naval surface warfare, there are a lot more directions the ships can go; making combat more like a dogfight than a naval engagement. The only ships who would have a use for a side laser are less maneuverable ships like the Anaconda, which wouldn't have the maneuverability to turn to face a fast pirate ship like an asp. But those ships wouldn't be able to turn to hit such narrowly profiled pirate ships that are injectoring in on a strafing run, again because of their maneverability. Those pirate ships wouldn't want to present their side profile, which they would have to do in order to broadside the merchant ship. A combat ship designer would probably want to sacrifice the side lasers and use the extra space to support extra coolant capacitor units for the forward laser, either allowing him to mount multiple forward lasers or allowing the single forward laser to fire longer.
People who want multiple lasers in one direction want of course multiple lasers in each direction. So, apart from three lasers pointing forward you would also have three starboard lasers, three port lasers, and six aft lasers for good measure. That's what we're talking about all along.
No, I want multiple forward lasers. I can't think of anyone who has said they want multiple side or aft lasers. I wouldn't be against npcs having side lasers, in fact I heartily support it, but I wouldn't want even npcs to have multiple side lasers; because the only use for them is for npc capital ships to use them to broadside other hostile npc capital ships, and then players would start demanding them for their anaconda ("Come on, Can't my pirate's anaconda have them? They would be very useful for broadsiding slaughtering my target when he is flying an anaconda, please?..."), the all the cobra and asp pilots would be demanding them. ("How come they get them and we don't?!?!") (Mental Image of an Angry Mob chasing Ahruman through the forums)
But this doesn't work for the player, because it is (I think) more than counter balanced by the rapid overheating. I am flying an Imperial Courier. The three lasers are so far apart that I couldn't expect to score more than one hit. In other words: two thirds of my laser fire would be totally wasted. For a full salvo from cool laser till overheating I would only actually score one third of the hits which I score for my single laser. One third! In other words: a triple laser on a player IC is three times worse than the current single laser. How anybody would actually strive for that is beyond me.
Ever try attacking a npc Vampire or Werewolf with multiple lasers (If you haven't, I'd suggest installing the Vampire MK.IV Diamondback oxp and finding the nearest Purgatori variant).

Finally, what if carrying multiple lasers had a high cost? What if you had to pay 10K per each laser in order to obtain the license to carry multiple lasers? You would have to renew the license every time you had had two or three maintenance overhauls. More than two or three lasers and you be really feeling it in the wallet.
Last edited by Commander Wilmot on Sun May 22, 2011 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Cmdr James »

I dont think cost is any real issue. If you play oolite for a few hours you can easily make enough money that 10k here or there is nothing. I understand that some people would like multiple lasers, and different strength, range, etc lasers. But to me its all about balance, if some ships are too hard to kill with a military laser on each mounting, then bigger guns arent the solution, rebalancing the unkillable ships is.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Commander Wilmot »

Cmdr James wrote:
I dont think cost is any real issue. If you play oolite for a few hours you can easily make enough money that 10k here or there is nothing. I understand that some people would like multiple lasers, and different strength, range, etc lasers. But to me its all about balance, if some ships are too hard to kill with a military laser on each mounting, then bigger guns arent the solution, rebalancing the unkillable ships is.
10k per laser. Player X flies a rattle cutter. His ship has six lasers, he has already had a maintenance overall since purchasing his license. A galcop official informs him that if he doesn't want his extra lasers to be removed, he must pay 60k. Also with regards to the mil-laser on each mounting, there would be no lasers on the aft or side mountings, up to three or four lasers would be mounted on the front, the player would be sacrificing the ability to mount lasers on those other places in exchange for pure striking power. Example, the player decides to buy a ship. This ship has no side mountings, but it has an aft mount and two forward mounts. The player thinks that he will buy, it because he can then strike with the two mil-lasers on the front using injectors; and then flee while deterring the other hostile ships with his aft mil-laser. The player gains more instant kill power, but loses the ability to fire longer.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Commander McLane »

Ganelon wrote:
On that note, I don't think it would be a terrible idea if mounting a railgun required losing one of the side lasers on a Cobra so the energy bank could be used to power the railgun. Even though the railgun is mounted facing forward, the power for it logically has to be coming from somewhere.
I would do that. Unfortunately it's not possible.
Ganelon wrote:
The most extreme case of uber I can think of in OXPs is your own KillIt, Commander McLane. Don't take this as a criticism against it, I feel it is an excellent statement and done with a nice bit of wit and sense of humour. But I rather doubt many players actually pack the OMGWTFBBQ aboard their ship. Maybe try it just to see it once, and then most likely they remove it again.
I don't expect anyone to use it more than once. :twisted: Having said that, I don't actually expect anyone to use any of the bombs seriously as a weapon. I even doubt it for the missiles, due to their price.
Ganelon wrote:
Or here's an idea.. Move their mounting closer together on the NPC ships so that the triple beam off an NPC Imperial Courier (for example) actually *does* do a lot of damage fast.
Nah. That's what the Hydra does. The only sense-making mount positions on an IC are where the lasers currently are.
Ganelon wrote:
I've never assumed we were talking about three lasers on every facing. I always thought it would be more on the order of changing one or both of the side lasers to a forward mounting.
The suggestion is about multiple lasers in the same direction (= installing laser subentities next to the normal laser position). That's how it works for NPCs. That's what's requested for the player ship as well. Logically this includes all four directions. (How can it not? From a technical point of view there is no difference whatsoever between a forward and a port laser. It's a beam that's headed straight away from your position.) Changing the firing direction of a laser was never on the table, and it would contradict the game-definition of what a laser is (= a beam that's headed straight away from your position).
Ganelon wrote:
I feel that NPC ships *should* be able to use side and aft lasers if the player is silly enough to fly into the line of sight of them.
They do use their aft lasers all the time, provided they have them.

@ Commander Wilmot: Even if you up to now have only thought about forward laser, that doesn't mean that sooner or later a ship designer wouldn't think about the other directions. Of course they will, and if past experience is any indicator, they will sooner rather than later.

I find the whole idea of "I want a new property exclusively for the forward view" rather puzzling. Isn't it obvious that from a game engine perspective there is no difference between the four view points the player has? Consequently, what is possible for one of the views is automatically possible for all of them. How could it not be so?
Commander Wilmot wrote:
Cmdr James wrote:
I dont think cost is any real issue.
10k per laser.
Cost is not an issue. My commander has currently over 13 million credits in cash. 10k per laser mean absolutely nothing to him.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Commander Wilmot »

How long have you been playing? Maybe it's just that my commander has a death wish, which is good explanation for why he never does cargo missions, but I have been flying for the better part of a year, I am currently flying random hits missions and I started out doing passenger missions; while I have switched ships 3-4 times, the most I have ever had was 700k from when I did a bunch of duels at a Feudal state's Royal Hunting Lodge.

Also how come no one had any complaints when Simon B proposed this back on page 10? It would helped me know what I was getting into, though I probably should have known.

I'd liked to also propose that combat missions get added to the contract menu.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Commander McLane »

Commander Wilmot wrote:
How long have you been playing?
Since I found and installed Oolite. Second half of 2006, I guess.
Commander Wilmot wrote:
Also how come no one had any complaints when Simon B proposed this back on page 10? It would helped me know what I was getting into, though I probably should have known.
I hope you don't feel hurt or offended, because that wasn't my intention.

Multiple lasers for player ships are proposed around once a week (or every two weeks) on these boards. So you probably see why the issue isn't discussed to death every time it comes up. But everything about it has already been said dozens of times.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Commander Wilmot »

I find the whole idea of "I want a new property exclusively for the forward view" rather puzzling. Isn't it obvious that from a game engine perspective there is no difference between the four view points the player has? Consequently, what is possible for one of the views is automatically possible for all of them. How could it not be so?
Fair enough, but why not make the game so that player ships can have 4 laser mounts total? I just don't see a reason someone would want a ship with four lasers mounted on the aft and none mounted elswhere. Maybe such a ship if it was fast enough to outrun most other ships could be of use if someone makes a smuggler oxp? Also maybe someone will script the players lasers and want to make a ship with four laser mounts right next to each so that he can have them fire in a sequential order; he wants to make a ship specialized for dogfighting with four pulse lasers that will fire in order with a slight delay between each one; creating a ship with rapid firing rate, or maybe someone's a sadist and want to create a ship that will do the same thing but with mining lasers :twisted: . Or maybe he is just a rabid star wars fanatic and ever since he saw the x-wing oxp, he has wanted an x-wing with pulse laser mounted in each of the cannons at the end of the wing, which would allow him to have a star wars ship with weapons that function similar to the way they do in the movie.

I am not hurt, I was finding it amusing. Ah, well with this last comment I will have said my piece on this topic (the multi-laser player ship topic, not this whole board.) However the issue is decided, I can't wait for Oolite 2.0.
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by DaddyHoggy »

Did anybody here used to play D&D or AD&D, ever remember getting to the point where your character was so stupendously equipped, that only gods and dragon swarms like a plague of locusts even got your characters to bat an eyelid, I used to GM a game that got to this stage, so I created a quest that they couldn't win and in the end they were cursed so badly that they were flung back to being basic characters where they had to think twice about starting a bar brawl. There was much gnashing of teeth and threats to abandon the group and yet once it all settled down they started enjoying it again and I didn't have to keep creating silly monsters for them to fight.

I say this because there's nothing wrong with Oolite in its natural form, because there was nothing wrong with Elite, and, at its heart, Oolite is still Elite.

If you give the player the ability to mount all four of his lasers to face the front, then somebody will create an NPC ship with 10 lasers, etc...

I'm all for new ships and new missions but I don't see the point of an arms race. If that's what you want then you're playing the wrong game...
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Re: Looking ahead

Post by Commander McLane »

Commander Wilmot wrote:
I find the whole idea of "I want a new property exclusively for the forward view" rather puzzling. Isn't it obvious that from a game engine perspective there is no difference between the four view points the player has? Consequently, what is possible for one of the views is automatically possible for all of them. How could it not be so?
Fair enough, but why not make the game so that player ships can have 4 laser mounts total?
Well, currently NPC multiple lasers work by simply adding a subentity with a laser to a ship. Because no mechanism different from that has yet been proposed for player ships, I assume that according to the proposal the same mechanism shall be used. There is no limit for the number of subentities a ship can have. So, technically, if you can add one additional laser, you can also add a dozen or more, for each direction. There is no limit for the number of additional lasers for NPCs, after all.
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