Or just have a "local sandbox" of stations around Lave (and possibly Lave Academy - I'd defy anyone not to be able to dock with my station there!) of a type with such more easy docking. Or indeed even extend it to having more advanced stations (with more tricky dockings) either as you go from G1 --> G8, or just as the game time advances and stations get rebuild and updated.
Personally I'd like to see things get more advanced as you go from galaxy to galaxy, if nothing else just to give some more variety and differentiation between them. Missions (OXP and native) aside, there is little other than the physical layout of the maps which differentiates the galaxies at the moment. It might be nicer if there are more flavours of ships and stations which only appear in certain galaxies, or after certain game-times, just to make things evolve and maintain interest. I know some of this is now done by OXP, but some nicely subtle "back story" to how things go on might be an interesting addition.
Of course what then happens when you go from G8 back to G1 could require some narrativium and handwavium, but I'd sure some of the clever literary types around here could add something interesting there.
Why not have at the core of the game in future a shipset that has a different look for each of the 8 galaxies. Call it variations on the same design with manufacturers building their own variants based upon local taste and culture. To do it now I would/might use the shipsets already available and some might need completing. The shipsets' style chosen for each galaxy would be based on what has currently been created for them so that ship styles blend together better and some galaxies would be meaner and have meaner looking designs, etc. All oxp's for ships would be relegated by conditions and their roles chances to have largest chance for the chosen galaxy and a minor chance or no chance for other galaxies. If I was going to have a combined shipset oxp in my addons folder that's what I would like to see.
Take an idea from one person and twist or modify it in a different way as a return suggestion so another person can see a part of it that can apply to the oxp they are working on.
The only downside of this is human nature itself - given that we all start the game in Chart 1 and not everybody even makes it all the way to Chart 8 (or even Chart 7 unless they want to play Cataclysm) - who would go to the effort of designing a Chart specific ship set that a substantial number of players would never see? If there was an option to start the game at a random planet in a random system then that would make it more interesting and worth having "quirks" specific to each chart.
For Mega missions like Cataclysm you'd have to perhaps go round once to get back to Chart 7 if you start in say Chart 5,6 or 7 because it will be difficult to build up enough experience to start the mission the first time round.
In-game missions such as the Constrictor could perhaps start in whatever system you start in and then cause you to jump to the next one, whatever that Chart may be.
Just a thought DH. Might encourage people to get out and look around in the other galaxies. Knowing that most changes by galaxy currently brought about are mission related many might just simply be content to stay in G1. I say put all the eye candy spread among the other galaxies. You want to see it then you go exploring, and there still will be small chances to see galaxy specific ships in other galaxies including G1(NPC's travel too you know!) That's realism. (as a side thought this could also be applied to any additional(G9+)galaxies as well if that becomes possible and this would be great continuity in the idea that everywhere you go things are different)
The random start if one could work around the built-in missions is a good idea if possibly tied to difficulty level as well. Nice idea.
Take an idea from one person and twist or modify it in a different way as a return suggestion so another person can see a part of it that can apply to the oxp they are working on.
I get the feeling a few people won't like this one since as far as I know, I'm the only person in the universe who only played Elite for the Nintendo (OK not true)
My suggestion is a little complicated for anyone who hasn't played Elite on the NES, so here's a video of the opening sequence to save me some explaining:
Anyway, my suggestion is this: I'd like to see parts of Elite-NES's opening in Oolite (Not the scrolling text part, that's too retro) specifically starting in space under attack by 3 weak pirate ships. My reasoning is pretty simple, starting in a docked station is kinda boring, and doesn't really show what Oolite has to offer, plus grabs new players attention unlike the station screen. You're straight into the action, and it's sort of like a basic tutorial.
Perhaps some sort of button to skip it would work too, because not everyone would want to do it.
I wonder if a beginning player could be forced to take a mission and have the player launched and then positioned way out in space off of the spacelanes with ships to fight and if you win the mission ends and you get your pilot's license and are positioned back in the station and if you lose you don't die but have failed the test and are positioned back in the station and have the option to try again but you are unable to leave the station without the pilot's license(that's the final test).
Could make it with numeric gauges for score, etc. High score gets a cash bonus from GalCop perhaps.
Just a thought.
Take an idea from one person and twist or modify it in a different way as a return suggestion so another person can see a part of it that can apply to the oxp they are working on.
Ok, why can't NPC ships have torus as well? NPC shields? Well yeah, that already exists as an OXP and it's a very good one.
To my mind, NPCs already have Torus Drives, you just don't see them being used as they're outwith scanner range.
NPC shields I'm ambivalent about, as NPCs almost always have a numerical advantage over the player; I frequently find my Cobra Mk III up against 5 or 6 - or more - hostile ships simultaneously, especially on Random Hits OXP missions, which are hard enough as they are.
While it may seem "unfair" or "inconsistent" to allow players Shields but not NPCs, you don't get to gang up with your mates to even up the odds - well, not unless you're willing to fork out between 750 and 1500 Credits courtesy of the Escort Contracts OXP.
Ganelon wrote:
I kind of favour something that would at least appear to be a level playing field.
The term you're looking for is "Game balance", which is not the same as a level playing field. The only way you'll get a truly level playing field is to develop a multi-player Oolite so you can form up your own iron arsed flying convoys to deter even the most aggressive pirate attacks.
Now rated Deadly flying a Military Stingray in Galsector 2 causing chaos, panic and disorder as a hitman and trader.
NPC shields are workable. They do make the game more than a trifle tougher. As the game currently plays, the OXP wouldn't be a really good idea for most beginners to install. But they are one way of addressing the player almost inevitably getting better as regards strategy and reactions while the AI doesn't.
Is it a realistic level of challenge for the player to be able to defeat six opponents, unless maybe those opponents are in considerably weaker ships or fly poorly (perhaps imitating someone less experienced)? The problem there is that the current size of hostile ship groups was based on what worked with a certain set of parameters, and adding NPC shielding changes one of those parameters rather drastically. But back to that mention of "realism", it also isn't likely that a group of opponents would squander what could be a half million creds worth of ships just to get the player's load of a few tons of computers or furs. Unless they're doing an awful lot of drugs, they should usually run at some point in that sort of fight.
As the player gets more experienced, the challenge level effectively drops. The player learns to be less easy of a target, and learns the AI's weaknesses and how to exploit them. The AI does not get better. The illusion of the game actually being a battle can be lost. I have gone up against over twenty NPCs in a fight and won. I'm not all that good. Even in game terms, I'm no "Elite Combateer", not even a quarter of the way to that "rank". There just really shouldn't be any way that a player can expect to defeat that many opponents all against him/her at once. But it is quite possible, if you fly evasively and patiently wear them down one at a time, lead a few away from the pack to deal with them and then return to draw away a few more, etc.
With their shields able to recharge, a pack of five can be enough that I may have to weigh what can be gained against the repair bills and the chance of getting killed and consider a strategic retreat, rather than closing in. If I already have some damage or the opponent(s) are in decent ships, I may have to consider that with less than five. It's more believable, and I get to sweat a bit in a good fight.
Unless you add OXPs, the game presents a more or less flat level of challenge. At first, things seem hard, and you're fighting to stay alive. Then you get a bit better an you hold your own well enough against reasonable odds. But after a while, a single opponent in any standard ship is zero challenge, and less than three or four of them barely seems like it was worth slowing down for.
I don't claim it's just shields. There are a lot of factors. It is too easy to "iron arse" a ship. It can all be done in G1, without even travelling more than a fairly small portion of the map. Want people to travel more? Spread the tech and other features out through the galaxies better.
I don't see it as a game imperative for players to travel all the eight galaxies. Part of the original appeal of Elite was that it was an open ended game. It wasn't something where you "worked your way up through levels" and then had fights at each level with level bosses and finally finished the levels to get a "game over" and a score, possibly a place on the high scores board. Like life, you could play it as big or as small as you liked. But if someone wants a specific piece of gear that can give some edge, maybe it needs some travel to a more dangerous area (like a different galaxy). Maybe they could have to have a clean legal rating and do some Navy service to get one piece, have to be a bounty hunter in good standing to get some other piece, have to live for a while as a fugitive to get into some pirate base to get another piece, and so on. Risk and challenge should be part of what makes gear hard to get. Sure it'll cost a bit as well, but the attempts to restrict gear by strictly setting higher prices on it are deplorable, in my opinion. Problems aren't solved by throwing bills at them any more than every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. Risk, in the form of mysteries to solve or deeds to accomplish or exploration into dangerous areas can provide better drama for the players.
Sadly, the usual response to the game needing challenge has usually been to simply increase NPC opponents, and at some point that solution becomes absurd. It isn't actually necessary for the game to be a 100% fair match between the player and the NPCs. What is needed is to not break the *illusion* that it is fair. It's pretty obviously broken when NPC ships can sport more weapons on the very same sort of ship or when the player can survive by flying evasively to let their shields recharge while the NPC opponent obviously can't and can be whittled down by nothing but patience.
So far as a multi-player Oolite being the "level playing field", I disagree and would have little to no interest in it. Multi-player games as described are *not* level. The potential for the player to quietly go about their business is rapidly lost and and one ends up with a game imperative to join guilds or clans or convoys just to survive, or they will be nothing but prey to those who do. Just another "noob to "pwn". I play in some multi-player games online. I play Oolite when I'm really sick of all the crap that goes with them. Besides, I don't see how the game could remain open-source and open to development by the player community if it became multi-player. If the code is open source, hacks would be very easy to come up with and very hard to eliminate. It would likely result in a "smaller" game in the creative sense, in my opinion.
I don't see it as a game imperative for players to travel all the eight galaxies. Part of the original appeal of Elite was that it was an open ended game. It wasn't something where you "worked your way up through levels" and then had fights at each level with level bosses and finally finished the levels to get a "game over" and a score, possibly a place on the high scores board. Like life, you could play it as big or as small as you liked. But if someone wants a specific piece of gear that can give some edge, maybe it needs some travel to a more dangerous area (like a different galaxy). Maybe they could have to have a clean legal rating and do some Navy service to get one piece, have to be a bounty hunter in good standing to get some other piece, have to live for a while as a fugitive to get into some pirate base to get another piece, and so on. Risk and challenge should be part of what makes gear hard to get. Sure it'll cost a bit as well, but the attempts to restrict gear by strictly setting higher prices on it are deplorable, in my opinion. Problems aren't solved by throwing bills at them any more than every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. Risk, in the form of mysteries to solve or deeds to accomplish or exploration into dangerous areas can provide better drama for the players.
To an extent, this already happens: if you want to be able to buy a Naval Energy Unit, you need to go to G3 and complete a mission for the Navy. To get the Cloaking Device, you need to be in G5.
But I agree that more of this would give players more of an incentive to travel. Ahruman has already said that he's looking towards data-driven galaxies (I think!) – this would allow for special areas, special systems, even special stations where certain unique upgrades are available (something like an engine tune-up, say, that adds another 0.2 to your top speed or something). Of course, an OXP can always work around these sorts of things, but that's not really the issue.
Increasing the challenge to match the player's increasing kit and ability is always going to be hard. Players should always be able to simply get good at the game: to become the hero fighting off a dozen enemies at a time, rather than just a spear-carrier dying regularly in the background. Which is not to say that the AI couldn't get better, and learn to, say, run away more, or respond to a player's Elite ranking and decide that they'd rather not attack someone with such a fearsome reputation. That, though, could mean that it gets harder for players to make new kills, if their opponents start fleeing incontinently as soon as they show up: the knock-on effect might be that it gets harder and harder to actually reach ELITE. Not necessarily a bad thing, but – since dogfighting and blowing NPCs away by the hundreds is the point of the game, really – it would need to be carefully handled.
Edit: although allowing NPCs to respond to a player's rank/reputation would be a possible mechanism to steer weaker enemies away, and bring stronger enemies with more robust tactics to bear against them. Worth thinking about anyway!
Some other things are also already happening. For instance, in 1.75 NPCs have become much more evasive when running away. I feel it has become considerably harder to finish off a fleeing opponent. They constantly evade sideways. I like that.
An easy change to the AI would be via their accuracy. The AI is programmed to miss a certain percentage of the time. If it shoots a little better as the player's ranking goes up, it would feel like you were going up against a better class of opponent. That could be interesting if the player hacks their ranking or q-bombs the Tionisla graveyard.
Is there currently anything like a "sniper" AI? I'm thinking an NPC that takes some shots at very long range and then flees if you return fire or try to close, only to crop up again in a few minutes to take a few more shots and see how much paint they can peel off your hull.
Or a "tag team" AI, where two or three ships work together. One engages you, and then starts to flee when it takes x amount of damage and the next engages. They rotate till you take their "team" down to one member.
That could give some variety to the apparent tactics of the AI and give the impression that they're maybe actually trying to stay alive.
Random Hits has a good feature with the vengeance strikes mounted by friends and family of the recently departed bounty target. Add maybe a small random chance for any kill (not just due to bounty contracts) that the victim's family set a bounty hunter on the player. That way players that like picking fights would find more of them easily and if a player decides to play more peacefully, their life might be quieter.
Bounty hunters don't cost so much to hire that it might not be a common enough practice to fall afoul of on occasion. I mean, you cost somebody their only son/daughter/hatchling/larvae and 100k creds' worth of ship, and vengeance isn't going to seem like an expensive memorial. It'd probably cost them less than a funeral at Oolite prices.
Which is not to say that the AI couldn't get better, and learn to, say, run away more, or respond to a player's Elite ranking and decide that they'd rather not attack someone with such a fearsome reputation. That, though, could mean that it gets harder for players to make new kills, if their opponents start fleeing incontinently as soon as they show up: the knock-on effect might be that it gets harder and harder to actually reach ELITE.
Do NPCs have any kind of ranking system? With simple AIs given to an NPC Jameson, and more intelligent/accurate/skilled AIs given to Deadly NPCs? Or is it all down to exactly the same AI, with every ship having exactly the same chance to hit you?
Do NPCs have any kind of ranking system? With simple AIs given to an NPC Jameson, and more intelligent/accurate/skilled AIs given to Deadly NPCs? Or is it all down to exactly the same AI, with every ship having exactly the same chance to hit you?
Well, there are different AIs for different ship roles, of course. Basically there's route1traderAI for traders, route1patrolAI for police and hunters, and escortAI for escorts.
So yes (and as long as we're talking about the generic roles and AIs), all police ships you ever encounter have exactly the same AI, all hunters you ever encounter have exactly the same AI (which is also the same as all police ships have), and all traders you ever encounter have exactly the same AI.
And if it comes to actual combat behaviour, this isn't even covered by AI, but completely hardcoded. Beyond issuing the performAttack command the AI has very little control over what follows. The actual combat stuff (where to fly, when and how to use a laser, when to fire a missile) is handled by the game code itself. There's only very small room for adjustments from a scripter's perspective.
An easy change to the AI would be via their accuracy. The AI is programmed to miss a certain percentage of the time. If it shoots a little better as the player's ranking goes up, it would feel like you were going up against a better class of opponent. That could be interesting if the player hacks their ranking or q-bombs the Tionisla graveyard.
Is there currently anything like a "sniper" AI? I'm thinking an NPC that takes some shots at very long range and then flees if you return fire or try to close, only to crop up again in a few minutes to take a few more shots and see how much paint they can peel off your hull.
Better aim from NPCs would be good, as would more aggression. One thing an NPC never does is just seriously attack you. They take a couple of shots then start messing around and it's really annoying. I'd like to see real blood and guts, no holds barred persistent and violent attacks from them....the way I treat them!
Snipers would be good, but no standard NPC has better than a beam laser, so they don't have the range. A few 'core' NPCs with mil lasers would be good as well. At least this deficiency is covered by some OXPs.
Commander Smivs, the friendliest Gourd this side of Riedquat.
Being hardcoded it would be nice to have a variety of alternate performAttacks. Developers could create ai that with JS could determine the players' rank and/or check a predefined variable for difficulty. Leaders of pirate groups would have a more lethal and experienced combat prowess. Occasionally attacking that big trader ship would be a big mistake as a seasoned vet would be the pilot. Jettisons Jamesons would have a set grace period on easy difficulty where combats are manageable/survivable. PerfomFlees could also be offered in a few types. Newbie pilots are easy targets while veterans are near impossible to shoot. These 2 modifications alone would vastly improve the gaming experience at the foundation. When it's hardcoded there is little we can do except work around it.
Take an idea from one person and twist or modify it in a different way as a return suggestion so another person can see a part of it that can apply to the oxp they are working on.
My Swi-mod does add a couple extra trader behavior types, for better or worse. I keep trying to update it, only to find out that what I want to do (NPC hitchhikers "borrowing" other NPC wormholes) doesn't work well or at all.
But I did get improved performflee behavior for some NPC traders...making them harder to kill.
There's a brave type, a normal type, and a cowardly type trader.
(OK not true)
