Looking ahead

[maik]

Interesting. As I'm only flying the standard Cobra I expected that if I would be able to take my port and starboard lasers (which are cooled independently) and mounted them as fore lasers I'd have three independently cooled fore lasers.

Well, to my knowledge nobody has ever suggested or requested something like that.

I didn't mean that literally. Just that one could conceive a ship with independently cooled lasers that are all mounted at the front. Others already suggested ways to introduce limits here, e.g. 1 laser per energy bank. Or you could put an energy penalty to multiple lasers firing at the same time, so that 2 lasers fired at the same time consume more energy than 2x 1 laser fired in sequence and so on.

As always, don't install an OXP that you don't agree with.

Well, yes, of course I don't. But that's only half the point.

As you know I am (amongst other things) interested in creating mission OXPs. Creating a mission is all about balancing. If you make it too hard nobody's playing it, if you make it too easy if gets boring and nobody's playing it. It is far more difficult to create a balanced scenario than to create a totally unbalanced ship. In fact, unbalanced ships make balanced scenarios impossible.

Therefore it's a little more complicated than "just don't install it". If I were scripting only for my personal needs it would be fine. But (like ship designers) I like to publish my work. But at the same time each stupid uber ship negates and devaluates my work. Those players who use the stupid uber ship for my mission and find it boring, will blame the mission and its designer, not their stupid uber ship and its designer. I find that ultimately de-motivating for my line of OXPing. And because we are humans, and every super power introduced by the game engine will be abused, I am advocating caution already when introducing the super power.

You're too kind wrt to people's decisions to tilt the game balance in their advantage. I laud your efforts to please everyone but I don't think that it is possible even today to create a mission that will be balanced regardless of what OXPs are installed. I would only aim for the standard game's balance and leave it up to players to behave sensibly. At the same time (and maybe I'm too kind here) I think that most people are intelligent enough to understand that if they play with a very powerful ship then missions become a lot easier than intended.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to your next mission!

[JensAyton]

We could avoid it with multiple beams hitting (maybe with a slight miss chance) the crosshairs instead of straight ahead...

This. Does. Not. Make. Sense.

If they converged at the crosshairs, you’d be shooting yourself in the face. If you want them to converge at some particular distance in front of the crosshairs, you need to specify the distance. You also need to understand that if they converge at a convenient distance for close combat, they will diverge beyond that point, making it impossible to use the lasers over long distances. This is an actual problem encountered in fighter jets, but no-one tries to use autocannons for precision fire over 25 km.

It seems obvious to suggest the conversion point be dynamic, based on range to target, but that essentially makes every laser a turret, which a) is a degree of precision automation that’s entirely out of place in the Oolite universe, and b) raises the obvious question of why these turrets are only allowed to track targets “straight ahead” when they could just as easily automatically hit any target within some cone.

[Commander Wilmot]

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.

I was actually thinking of having a separate entry in the plist for the lasers. The viewpoints entry would just control the point where the player looked out from his ship for each viewpoint; and each laser would have an entry similar to the viewpoint entry with a laser_position=a specific coordinate, but with a laser_viewpoint specified to indicate the direction the laser should fire towards.

This. Does. Not. Make. Sense.

If they converged at the crosshairs, you’d be shooting yourself in the face. If you want them to converge at some particular distance in front of the crosshairs, you need to specify the distance. You also need to understand that if they converge at a convenient distance for close combat, they will diverge beyond that point, making it impossible to use the lasers over long distances. This is an actual problem encountered in fighter jets, but no-one tries to use autocannons for precision fire over 25 km.

It seems obvious to suggest the conversion point be dynamic, based on range to target, but that essentially makes every laser a turret, which a) is a degree of precision automation that’s entirely out of place in the Oolite universe, and b) raises the obvious question of why these turrets are only allowed to track targets “straight ahead” when they could just as easily automatically hit any target within some cone.

I think what people mean is that the beams should converge at maximum range.

[JensAyton]

I think what people mean is that the beams should converge at maximum range.

So do I, but that wouldn’t actually be useful. Converging at the maximum range of a military laser would make very little difference to accuracy at any range.

[Commander Wilmot]

I think what people mean is that the beams should converge at maximum range.

So do I, but that wouldn’t actually be useful. Converging at the maximum range of a military laser would make very little difference to accuracy at any range.

Would not that depend on how close the lasers are? If they were close together (not right next to each other or on top of each other) and they slightly angled to a point couldn't they hit most ships at most ranges? For example, if an asp was modified with dual frontal mil-lasers with one on each side of the prow, there would not be much room between them.

[JensAyton]

Would not that depend on how close the lasers are? If they were close together (not right next to each other or on top of each other) and they slightly angled to a point couldn't they hit most ships at most ranges? For example, if an asp was modified with dual frontal mil-lasers with one on each side of the prow, there would not be much room between them.

Well, yes. But they could hit at any range without converging, too.

[Commander Wilmot]

Then maybe they shouldn't converge, it sounds like it is a lot of work which won't effect anything.

[Smivs]

For example, if an asp was modified with dual frontal mil-lasers with one on each side of the prow, there would not be much room between them.

Around 25 metres.

[Commander Wilmot]

How many Oolite ships are under 25 meters in their width or height? I'd imagine that most multi-laser ships would not have the laser farther apart than 25 meters, unless the ship has several lasers spread out across the ship's wingspan (or width for ships without wings, but it just doesn't sound the same) as eye-candy.

[Switeck]

You're too kind wrt to people's decisions to tilt the game balance in their advantage. I laud your efforts to please everyone but I don't think that it is possible even today to create a mission that will be balanced regardless of what OXPs are installed. I would only aim for the standard game's balance and leave it up to players to behave sensibly. At the same time (and maybe I'm too kind here) I think that most people are intelligent enough to understand that if they play with a very powerful ship then missions become a lot easier than intended.

Most OXP player ships still have the limited shields that the standard ships have, at least if no extra OXPs are used. This means they're risking all kinds of equipment and cargo damage once they get in the middle of a decent furball. A higher energy recovery rate and more energy banks just prolongs that agony rather than preventing/reducing damaged equipment. OXPs like IronHide 2.00.oxp, Naval Grid 1.00.oxp, ShieldCycler 0.20.1.oxp, and ShieldEqualizer+Capacitors(v1.2).oxp change that by keeping the shields up for longer. You can use a ship's firepower for longer without as much risk, thus effective turning even the better (for combat) standard ships into super-ships.

As crazy as the defenses of ships can get, their offensive ability can get even more ridiculous due to missiles and bombs...and now even guns. Only cost and limited missile pylons keeps the player from firing them with abandon. But cost is hardly a deciding factor on complex missions/campaigns...and some super-ships have 10 or more missile pylons. Core game combat-oriented ships only have 4 or 5 missile pylons max. (Cobra 3, Boa 2)

Even if missiles+bombs are used very sparingly, a mission's "final boss" ship will probably have a 1-shot-kill missile or bomb fired at it. Case in point, the Constrictor core game mission.

One thing to do as a mission designer is use sucker bait. A nasty group of ships that nobody in their right mind with a regular ship would try to fight...except maybe to drop a q-bomb in the middle and inject out or use an energy bomb on. Simple solution to discourage that is to cause an instant fission mailed if they do that by placing something that must not be destroyed very close to them. Someone with a super-ship and "extreme confidence" in their abilities on the other hand would likely charge in and die.

While NPC ships can use a small subset of the same missiles the player can use, they won't in a reliable fashion and mission-related NPC ships certainly won't be programmed to always have+use them. Even if they did, there are antimissile OXPs that vastly reduce the chances of an ECM-resistant missile hitting the player's ship. The only NPC antimissile tactics that I've seen to date are the standard ECM system, turrets (and to lesser degree rear lasers) targeting and shooting the incoming missiles, or injecting away from them...probably removing themselves from the immediate fight. I don't recall NPC ships firing missiles at incoming missiles, but I guess it's possible as well.

A player could have 1 million credits in <100 hours playing time with simple trading between a rich industrial and poor agricultural system pair using a Cobra 3. If a Python is used, that time can probably be reduce to <60 hours. Maintenance should probably slowly get more costly the longer you put it off.

[Commander McLane]

How many Oolite ships are under 25 meters in their width or height? I'd imagine that most multi-laser ships would not have the laser farther apart than 25 meters, unless the ship has several lasers spread out across the ship's wingspan (or width for ships without wings, but it just doesn't sound the same) as eye-candy.

None. Well, at least not the ships which may be seen as serious candidates for multiple lasers. A Cobra III, for instance, is 130 meters wide and 30 meters high.

But of course, there is no rule that multiple lasers have to be mounted at the wing tips.

[Disembodied]

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...

That's it in a nutshell. I think it's a systemic problem with any game which allows for player/ship development. Every increase in power and/or capacity achieved is a little reward for the player. If that reward system starts to plateau, some players (most players, probably) feel that they're missing out on something. So there's pressure to keep the avenue of progress open. So to keep the game competitive, the opposition has to be ramped up. This just becomes a ratchet system inevitably pushing the player towards, like you say, punching out gods.

Ultimately, though, the game remains the same: if it's to be any good as a game, the player has to be presented with challenging, but defeatable, enemies. There has to be some room to allow players to actually get better at playing the game, to improve their own skills, so that maybe what was too hard for them early on can be beaten not by bigger weapons and tougher armour, but simply by being better at playing the game.

But the lots of little rewards system is a good one to have in any game. Oolite has it, to an extent, with the Elite rankings – but after you hit Dangerous they become few and far between. What I think might be better would be if we can devise some other systems of in-game achievements which can keep giving players those little reward buzzes. Random Hits does it, with its own internal ranking system, as does Feudal States and Galactic Navy.

These, I think, should be encouraged, and the addition in Oolite 2.0 of a scriptable "medals table" to the F5 screen might partially drain off the inevitable pressure for a perpetual increase in sheer ship power. These "medals" wouldn't even have to be purely combat-related: some could be for memberships of various Guilds, or for life-saving (escape-pod scooping), or for making some critical delivery on time. We're never going to completely satisfy players' urges for ever-stronger and ever-tougher ships – but there's nothing wrong with providing a space in the game for some more achievement markers which don't involve extra energy banks or bigger guns.

[Ganelon]

Converging lasers would end up going into a whole different area of technology. They'd either only be real effective at a fixed convergence point, or they'd use some form of autotracking. That latter option may sound nice, but I think response time and only being able to use it on one target at a time would make it of little interest to dogfight style players. It might be something more useful for long-range sniping, I don't know.

But parallel was more what I was thinking of. If a ship is wide, then the spread might make multiple lasers of little use except on very large targets. So ships that would work well as primary small fighters would be the narrower ones. The beloved Cobra MKIII is not narrow, but it was never intended as just a fighter, it's a general purpose ship. It probably would not do well with multiple lasers unless the pilot was unusually good at making the spread of the weapons pay off somehow. It only stands to reason that multiple lasers might only actually be worthwhile to have on ships with certain shapes, and leave the player to figure out if any given case is seriously sweet or a serious waste of credits.

Large ships that might function as cap ships, well, the logic there might be different. I've never given a lot of thought to cap ships, even though the idea sounds interesting as an option. I don't see it as something that would fit easily into the current gameplay. If a player flies a ship that's intended as more of an NPC capship, then I'd think it's just a really big ship and probably not much of an advantage. The Thargoid ships with their Thargons are probably the best "cap ship" in the game, to my understanding of the term, and the only thing in the game that acts sort of like a cap ship.

But the point I hope to get across is that the more things we have that are different for the player than for the NPCs, the harder it is to maintain the illusion of reality. I'm actually not a person who is just dying to get multiple lasers. I am just bothered, as a player, by the disparity. It doesn't bother me that Thargoid ships can launch Thargons and I can't. They're alien ships, and it might be an anatomical impossibility for a humanoid pilot to fly one. So it doesn't break the illusion to badly. But as a player, if I came up against say, a Krait, and found it a desirable ship for some reason and bought myself one, I rather expect it to be like other Kraits I see in-game. If they mount a double laser and the one I bought can only mount one, it doesn't make sense.

It's not just about multiple lasers. NPC ships being slower than player ships? Feels wrong. NPC ships not having shields that recharge? Feels wrong. NPC ships having capabilities that the player can't have no matter how rich or skilled they become? Also feels wrong, unless there can be a good obvious reason that makes sense from a player-in-the-game point of view. The player can't fly a Thargoid ship because it simply takes significantly more appendages than the player physically has? I'm fine with that sort of thinking, it makes good sense. It doesn't break the illusion of reality.

To address one of Commander McLane's points, it may be true that from a game programming point of view that all weapons facings are equal and multiple lasers would come off all facings. But the game is kind of about pretending that one is flying a real ship, and two or three lasers being able to fire at once in the same direction on a ship that can have four independent lasers does not automatically imply that one would expect three beams off every facing. Sure, it might be no difference in programming terms, but in the framework of the ship one pretends to have, that would be twelve lasers to power and cool, not four. Big jump, not intuitive from a player perspective, and I doubt it was what anyone would be expecting to have.

Now back to suggestions for Oolite 2, here's one I don't think I've seen. Universal frangibility. Make everything vulnerable to being shot off, if your shields go down. Your laser or shield generator get shot off? Better run. If your engines get taken out, better eject. Have it that way for players and NPCs alike.

[Commander McLane]

But the point I hope to get across is that the more things we have that are different for the player than for the NPCs, the harder it is to maintain the illusion of reality. I'm actually not a person who is just dying to get multiple lasers. I am just bothered, as a player, by the disparity. It doesn't bother me that Thargoid ships can launch Thargons and I can't. They're alien ships, and it might be an anatomical impossibility for a humanoid pilot to fly one. So it doesn't break the illusion to badly. But as a player, if I came up against say, a Krait, and found it a desirable ship for some reason and bought myself one, I rather expect it to be like other Kraits I see in-game. If they mount a double laser and the one I bought can only mount one, it doesn't make sense.

Keep in mind that there are no multiple lasers in vanilla Oolite. So you cannot come up against a Krait (or any other ship) with multiple lasers in the first place.

Multiple lasers are purely an OXP thing, and you don't need to install OXPs which contain NPCs featuring multiple lasers. (Of course I know that, if you for instance want to fly an Imperial Courier, this is not an option.)

Now back to suggestions for Oolite 2, here's one I don't think I've seen. Universal frangibility. Make everything vulnerable to being shot off, if your shields go down. Your laser or shield generator get shot off? Better run. If your engines get taken out, better eject. Have it that way for players and NPCs alike.

This would certainly be cool (and most likely very expensive for the player). It would need yet another feature, though: It would need physical (subentity-like) representations not only for each equipment, but even for some of the non-equipment normal specifications of each player ship: things like shield generators, engines, thrusters don't exist in physical shape in Oolite 1. And what doesn't exist can't be made frangible.

So in effect the suggestion is a completely new, completely modular approach of how ships look like in Oolite, whereby each property of a ship has to be connected to a unique part of its model.

[Ganelon]

So in effect the suggestion is a completely new, completely modular approach of how ships look like in Oolite, whereby each property of a ship has to be connected to a unique part of its model.

Exactly. I feel it would be too big a change to the existing Oolite 1.XX, which is why I mentioned it only as maybe a potential idea for Oolite 2. I agree it could get expensive, from a player point of view, but it also could add tension and more immersion for gameplay. If it was balanced so it seemed it was also sometimes expensive to NPCs, it could help fight the "race to ridiculous uberness" as happened in AD&D.

For example, say the player has a "one shot sure kill" weapon that does huge amounts of damage. It was expensive, but they can go up against anything now that they have it. Until they have a run of bad luck (or poor judgement) that has them in for a lot of repairs. They may have to sell off their high level weapon just to be able to get their engines repaired so they can get back into space doing cargo runs.

To bring up another item that could be frangible, there's missiles. There we might also consider secondary damage potentials. If one or more of your missiles get hit, you don't just lose the ability to fire them. They're loaded with explosives, so they explode onboard your ship. Of course, it would go the other way too. The player might beat down the NPC's ship and if they manage to damage the missiles, it might be enough to destroy the ship. Either the player or the NPC could get in a "lucky shot" once in a while that way. It could definitely add some balance to carrying a lot of missiles, since they wouldn't be an automatic advantage if they can suddenly turn into a vulnerability.