Energy Bomb power

[caracal]

I've never used an E-bomb in Oolite (that's a lie actually - in Windows I did Alt-Tab a couple of times) on purpose, so I don't know what effect it has.

Oh, it's the most amazing thing! All the ships around you instantly turn into pretty showers of wreckage. Your scanner looks like the blooming of white flowers in a time-lapse video or something. And afterwards, everything is so quiet ...

I used it occasionally back in 2008 when I was first getting familiar with oolite. It never seemed quite fair to me, and because of that, and moreso because of the recent discussions about it, I won't buy one. Which is hard sometimes, since it's always the first equipment pick after Fuel. If my fingers and/or brain stutter and I manage to pick one up anyway, I don't use it.

I wonder if Energy Bomb could be moved after lasers in the equipment store. If you pick a laser by accident, at least you can back out of it.

[Disembodied]

What about an energy bomb compromise going like this:

Make the energy damage around 400 or such. Then ships up to and a little beyond the Cobra's 256 are destroyed. Anything big or very strong will survive but be weakened.

Let NPC's have the EB, too, but let it make only 200 damage against players and let the AI only use it as a last resort. And build an EB protection in players can buy that shields against it.

Viable?

No, not really. Oolite is not a player-centric game; that's a big part of its great charm. However, it is still a game, and a single-player game at that. Literally the only thing that matters in Oolite is that the player is enjoying him- or herself. We don't have to worry about being "fair" to the NPCs, but we do have to worry about breaking the immersive feel of there being an active, ongoing universe out there all around us.

The E-bomb breaks that immersion, if only players get to use it. But, if NPCs get to use it too, it becomes a massive pain in the arse. There is almost nothing worse in terms of game design – except under very closely plotted circumstances – than letting the game press a massive "ha ha, you're screwed" button that kills or even seriously inconveniences the player. Even if you tone it down, it's still immensely annoying. And if you provide a special protection against it, you start to wonder what the point of it is. The E-bomb would go from "massive pain in the arse" to "irrelevant", as soon as you had enough money. You'd never have to think about it again.

Think how NPC E-bombs would be used. How common would they be? They're not exactly hugely expensive or even very high-tech, so you might expect to find them on maybe 25% of ships you encounter. So in a typical pirate pack there's a good chance someone's got an E-bomb. "NPCs only using it as a last resort" is no good: I kill NPCs all the time, they're always being pushed to the "last resort". So there you are, fighting away, flying like you're Roger Ramjet and generally being cool and awesome when KAPOW! – suddenly your shields are stripped, your energy banks are dangerously low (assuming you survive at all), half your prey have spontaneously died, most of the floating loot you want has vanished, and you're having to make a run for it until your shields recharge. And this happens time and time again. Not fun. You should never, ever put anything into a game that's not fun.

The E-bomb as it is is an immersion-breaker. That's bad, and reason enough I think to get rid of them – there are other tactics you can employ if you're faced with overwhelming odds – but it's not catastrophic. NPCs with E-bombs would be catastrophic.

I don't see why energy bombs can't be carried by non-player ships. Yes, Zieman is probably right to say that it should be toned down to 500 energy rather than a 1000.

I think that it ought to behave more like a Q mine, in that there is a delay between deployment and explosion. Perhaps then, you have a chance to get away on injectors. Perhaps you could get a warning message on your console to say that an energy bomb has been triggered and that it is building towards detonation.

Essentially, you're in favour of turning the E-bomb into a less dangerous form of Q-mine. That's not a bad idea: personally I think the Q-mine is too awesomely powerful. The cascade effect is cool but – for something you can legally buy and fly around with – it's way over the top. It would be a great one-shot plot device to end a mission with but for everyday use it's too much.

Again, though, having any sort of area effect, overkill weapons fired by NPCs on anything approaching a regular basis would rapidly become deeply annoying. For me, anyway, Elite and Oolite are about dogfighting in space. Why was Frontier such a letdown? No dogfighting in space. So anything that threatens to mess with dogfighting in space = bad idea.

Essentially, if the E-bomb is in the game, it should be player-only and probably weaker in effect (it definitely shouldn't kill Thargoids). But it would be better, in my opinion, if it was taken out. I don't feel that we should be obliged to stick to a game-element, just because it was in the original.

[Cmdr James]

I agree with Disembodied, I hate the e-bomb, and I hate the q-mine almost as much. The only thing I like about the q-mine is its quite a cool idea, and looks nice, as a game feature I hate it.

[Disembodied]

Thinking about this some more, it's a mistake to think of the E-bomb as a weapon. It's not; it's an "I screwed up" button. You press it when you've screwed up. But we've already got an "I screwed up" button: the Escape Pod. It's a much, much better ISU button than the E-bomb, because it doesn't break the immersion and it doesn't reward the player for screwing up: if anything, there's an element of punishment in that you lose your cargo (which, in my case, would usually mean losing a fair pile of valuable, shiny things from the bulkhead safe). The E-bomb actually rewards the player for screwing up, granting kills and loot.

Given that we already have a perfectly good, consistent ISU button, which NPCs can use as well and which adds to the game, what's the point of having an E-bomb at all? In these terms, it seems to be a piece of not-terribly-well-thought-out game design: understandable, given that Elite was made in the era of Asteroids and Defender, but redundant and a bit of an immersion-breaker.

[Killer Wolf]

My opinion : ebombs should be scaled down, available to all, but very very expensive. if possible, NPCs should have them only, say, 2% of the time : on pirates in a Tech 10+, say.
Qbombs....pfff. if we have them then they should be ECM-able, although the ECM should work only 20% of the time, say. that way you might not get your "get outta jail free" when you fire one, but also you'd get that nice gaming experience of the ice-cold stomachn, hitting your injectors and hammering the E key hoping you make it out of range or cripple the thing in time.

[Cody]

What Disembodied said!

[JazHaz]

I don't see why energy bombs can't be carried by non-player ships. Yes, Zieman is probably right to say that it should be toned down to 500 energy rather than a 1000.

I think that it ought to behave more like a Q mine, in that there is a delay between deployment and explosion. Perhaps then, you have a chance to get away on injectors. Perhaps you could get a warning message on your console to say that an energy bomb has been triggered and that it is building towards detonation.

Essentially, you're in favour of turning the E-bomb into a less dangerous form of Q-mine. That's not a bad idea: personally I think the Q-mine is too awesomely powerful. The cascade effect is cool but – for something you can legally buy and fly around with – it's way over the top. It would be a great one-shot plot device to end a mission with but for everyday use it's too much. If the E-bomb is in the game, it should be player-only and probably weaker in effect (it definitely shouldn't kill Thargoids).

But it would be better, in my opinion, if it was taken out. I don't feel that we should be obliged to stick to a game-element, just because it was in the original.

My position is definately that it should not be removed at all, just toned down a bit. Earlier in the thread it was said that in the original 8-bit Elites an E-bomb wouldn't kill Thargoids or Anacondas. Why in Oolite was it made more powerful in the first place?

I would admit I'm not the best fighter around, so I tend sometimes to use an E-bomb strategically, when on a mission with overwhelming odds, to give me more of a chance. For example when on the Thargoid Plans mission, for me an E-bomb was the only way sometimes to survive.

[Kaks]

My position is definately that it should not be removed at all, just toned down a bit. Earlier in the thread it was said that in the original 8-bit Elites an E-bomb wouldn't kill Thargoids or Anacondas. Why in Oolite was it made more powerful in the first place?

I would admit I'm not the best fighter around, so I tend sometimes to use an E-bomb strategically, when on a mission with overwhelming odds, to give me more of a chance. For example when on the Thargoid Plans mission, for me an E-bomb was the only way sometimes to survive.

No idea myself, but possibly it was more powerful in some later incarnations of Elite, if that's the case Oolite must have followed the behaviour of the latter.

One thing I'm just puzzled about myself is: the q-bomb seems to do a very similar job as the e-bomb, but gives a bit of warning and shows a blue expanding field as it destroys neighbouring ships.

I tend to play without either (I don't like that ISU feeling too much! ), but removing the e-bomb from non-strict mode would still leave you with a 'run away' & a 'kill everybody around you' option, as opposed to the present 2 'kill everybody around you' options.

And I almost forgot: you can have as many q-bombs as you like, but never more than one e-bomb.

A cobra with 3 q-bombs and an e-bomb wouldn't feel - to me - qualitatively different from a cobra with 4 q-bombs, so I really fail to understand this need to keep the e-bomb.

However, if I translate 'let's keep the e-bomb, maybe weaken it' to mean 'let's keep a keyboard shortcut to a wmd' then a few things kind of start to suddenly make sense.

It might be possible to figure out a way to use the present e-bomb key to mean e-bomb in strict mode, first available q-bomb in unrestricted mode. (& have only e-bombs in strict mode - as always, and only q-bombs in unrestricted mode)

Would it be reasonable, if we were to have that in a future version of Oolite?

[Eric Walch]

It might be possible to figure out a way to use the present e-bomb key to mean e-bomb in strict mode, first available q-bomb in unrestricted mode. (& have only e-bombs in strict mode - as always, and only q-bombs in unrestricted mode)

Would it be reasonable, if we were to have that in a future version of Oolite?

Somehow I have the feeling this was something Giles had in mind long ago when he added the q-bomb: A more visible version of the energy bomb. Even one of the roles of the q-bomb is "energy-bomb"

[Thargoid]

The other significant difference is if you drop an E-bomb, there's no risk of killing yourself. A Q-bomb however...

That's the check and balance for the Q-bomb, it's as deadly to you as anyone else who happens to be around. But the E-bomb has no such balancing - fire one off and suddenly you're in the middle of a field of wreckage and cargo, or at worst empty space.

For me there should be some sort of "penalty" involved, be it a loss of energy (like my Armoury bombs), a hike in your legal status (+200 bounty or something - you just let of a WMD that would make Saddam proud) or at least some chance that your own ship gets affected, either by shields/energy drain or by equipment damage. Now we can read the equipment list of the player ship, it would be trivial to do some equipment banging.

[Switeck]

e-bomb or q-bomb, whatever the name...are effectively unusable if there's more than 1 ship on each side. The odds of friendly fire are essentially guaranteed for both. The game already hits you with a offender/fugitive penalty if you do that with friendlies around. Maybe a pirate would do it...having no real friends anyway. But a trade ship should have zero chances of having one, and a lone-wolf bounty hunter only a very slight one.
So this makes them nearly player-only toys automatically. Only a special naval forces Asp might have one, if it was intended to operate alone often. So too might the Constrictor.

In every fight I've ever been in, even an instant-kill-everything weapon would only eliminate maybe 5-10 ships. I wouldn't consider 10+ ships at once a likely or realistic fight, except as an interstellar Thargoid ambush after they each produced a LOT of Thargons. So unless those were Thargoids, I would still probably come up far short paying for the e-bomb from the rewarded bounty and salvaged cargo.

The e-bomb definitely needs reduced damage, not just to mirror "plain Elite" but also to give the stronger ships a chance to survive. Even an untouched NPC Cobra 3 should probably barely survive...at least at longer ranges (like 10-25 km). This would place the upper damage limit at 200-250 -- far less than its current 1000.
(Even missiles maybe should be toned down damage-wise -- when's the last time you saw another ship survive a solid hit by one?)

If the e-bomb should be removed, then even the q-bomb has little point game-balance wise existing despite also affecting your ship (if you don't quickly inject away). The q-bomb is also imbalanced by not being limited to 1 on your ship at a time. (...at least for some ships like the Cobra 3)

[ClymAngus]

Forgive me if we haven't come to this conclusion before but I seem to remember a thread like this ending with one of the following solutions for those who hate the bomb:

1) Wasn't there a bit of code digging that could be done to disable it? Making it a personal choice?

2) I seem to recall some bright spark created an oxp that did exactly this.

I'm fairly sure instead of a unilateral commandment we once again put the power back in the hands of the user. Something that not only gives us a creative kick but also stops the entire win/loose cycle that really screws up the human race.

[Lestradae]

I notice an agreement with ClymAngus' position here (mine, that is).

Someone make an oxp that consists of an equipment plist which only consists of the energy bomb entry - with the TL set to 99.

Then no one with that oxp is ever going to be tempted by this WMD again.

Alternative brainstorm idea I had was, make the EB worth 10000Cr in the core game. Yes, I know, quite some people are of the opinion that just raising the price is not a very good argument but hear me out nevertheless.

If this was a very expensive item of equipment, few people would ever use it, and the arcady non-logic why not everyone uses it is a bit less cognitively dissonant. And I for one would think twice to buy the thing if it cost me 10 grand.

My current 0.2Cr.

[Disembodied]

Forgive me if we haven't come to this conclusion before but I seem to remember a thread like this ending with one of the following solutions for those who hate the bomb:

1) Wasn't there a bit of code digging that could be done to disable it? Making it a personal choice?

2) I seem to recall some bright spark created an oxp that did exactly this.

I'm fairly sure instead of a unilateral commandment we once again put the power back in the hands of the user. Something that not only gives us a creative kick but also stops the entire win/loose cycle that really screws up the human race.

Yup, I think you're right ... although in my opinion having multiple switchable options in a game design is generally a bad idea (the key to good design is leaving stuff out: the ideal game has very very few rules, but the ones it does have allow for all kinds of interesting emergent behaviour) as far as I remember I came down on the side of leaving the e-bomb in as a switchable option ...

[another_commander]

1) Wasn't there a bit of code digging that could be done to disable it? Making it a personal choice?

As a reminder for whomever is interested, here is the entry of the energy bomb in equipment.plist:

Code: Select all

(
		7, 9000, "Energy Bomb",
		"EQ_ENERGY_BOMB",
		"A one-shot super-weapon capable of destroying all small craft within range.",
		{
			strict_mode_only = false;
		}
	),

All it takes to disable it is change strict_mode_only = false; to strict_mode_only = true; An energy bomb existing in any saved game will be converted to Q-mine in the case of available pylons or otherwise be lost.