Balance between Player and NPC ships.

Commander Smivs · Post by **Smivs** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 4:58 pm

Reading this thread, it has become clear that all ships are not equal.
A Player Mk3 Cobra, for example is faster than a trader Mk3 Cobra, which in turn is faster than a pirate Mk3 Cobra. This is quite a common feature, and affects many of the Oolite ships.
I will shortly be releasing Version 2 of Smivs' ShipSet, and this might be a good opportunity to correct this imbalance, if that's what you want.
Hence this Poll.
Let me know what you think and what you'd like in terms of adjusting the performance of some NPCs to make them the same as Player ships. This only relates to the speed of the ship...equipment and options would remain unchanged.

Post by **Disembodied** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 6:24 pm

Something like this would need to be extensively playtested – for weeks, if not more, by many different players – before it could be introduced. It's bound to have significant effects on gameplay.

Commander Smivs · Post by **Smivs** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 7:06 pm

Disembodied wrote:
Something like this would need to be extensively playtested – for weeks, if not more, by many different players – before it could be introduced. It's bound to have significant effects on gameplay.

You're probably right.

It'll be interesting to see how the poll goes, but I don't think I'll start messing with the new ShipSet now as It's only a few days away from release (blatant plug

) , but after that I may create an OXP presumably just consisting of an amended shipdata.plist for this purpose.
As you realise, it's very hard to judge what affect this sort of change may make to gameplay, but it will be interesting to find out.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 8:21 pm

I guess that aegidian chose the values for a reason to begin with. So I am with my friend-in-a-flask here. Any change would need extensive testing first.

Switeck · Post by **Switeck** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 4:38 am

I already made some changes in my OXP mod that do this...the NPC Cobra 3's speeds were raised to 0.32 or 0.35 LM.

docwild · Post by **docwild** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 5:10 am

As with all AI, it doesn't take long to get used to them. I'm all for a mod which toughens them up a bit as long as it has a big warning on it for newbies.

Zieman · Post by **Zieman** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 8:25 am

Funny that "everyone" seems to want to boost the NPCs...

IMHO we should just pullt the player ship back in line.

If you look at any other core ships, they're just as slow or fast as players as NPCs.

So, I've toned down all player Cobra mk 3s, be it core game or OXP in my installation of Oolite. Because of several OXPs installed, I thought 0.30 would nerf it too much, I chose 0.32 for player Cobra mk 3.

Now it makes sense to switch from default ship to othe Cobra mk3 variants, which have less cargo space but more speed.

Post by **Micha** » Mon Jul 26, 2010 3:39 pm

Likewise, I slowed my player Cobbie3 down.

Perhaps NPCs should have a small percentage range - illegally tuned engines (with a chance of failure) or detuned (because of lack of maintenance) which slightly affects top-speed.

But IMHO all ships of the same model should be the same speed - regardless of player or NPC. You could have variations of a model but any speed differences should be offset by something else, eg, cargo space or equipment compatibility.

Post by **Getafix** » Mon Jul 26, 2010 5:47 pm

It would be fare to gradually increase the NPC's ships characteristics (reaching those of a real player),
using the player's kills as a parameter.

It is just an idea I had and I don't even know if that's possible.

EDIT: Give the poor newbie a chance!

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Tue Jul 27, 2010 10:09 pm

Pulling back the playership advantages to NPC levels sounds good to me.

I always assumed that pirates were slower due to lack of maintenance and traders like to keep flying 'in the green' to limit corrosion of the engine manifolds etc. even if those mechanisms are not actually real.

Dave McRoss · Post by **Dave McRoss** » Wed Jul 28, 2010 7:52 am

I think you should leave the player a small advantage. Even in D&D the PC are above average. So, consider speed, roll, pitch, missiles an equivalent of strenght, dexterity, constitution and all will be clear.

snork · Post by **snork** » Thu Jul 29, 2010 1:29 pm

edit : forget about this, now I see it all is discussed in-depth-est in the other topic and - once again - Disembodied expressing anything I feel about it.

Hm,

to me this seems that you thought mostly about combat.
Think too about being stuck behind a like-ship in the spacelane, not being able to use torusdrive. If the NPC ship has exactly the same speed, you'd be stuck for all the way.

And no, i do not like to use the outside-main-spacelane too often, it still feels somewhat cheat-ish or at least coward-ish to me.
And I already have to use it in those systems where the game slows down too much (in framerate).

So I am not sure I would want such change in the core game, but applicable as an OXP that does just that - sure, why not ? Noone is forced to use it, and you could easily(?) adapt-update it when players find problems with it.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:58 pm

snork wrote:
edit : forget about this, now I see it all is discussed in-depth-est in the other topic and - once again - Disembodied expressing anything I feel about it.

Oh yes. Somebody already mentioned that there are some drawbacks in the starting-three-different-threads-in-order-to-discuss-the-same-thing-approach to bulletin boards.

Oolite Bulletins

Balance between Player and NPC ships.

Should like ships have the same performance?

Balance between Player and NPC ships.