Looking ahead

[Commander McLane]

I don’t expect to change the core game’s economic model, but I’d like to implement it completely in JavaScript so it can be replaced.

Sounds interesting! For those people who might not have any clue about what's possible with JavaScript (*cough* ), what might that entail? Would it be possible to remodel it to the extent of, say, introducing different buying and selling prices in the same market? i.e. so the player might be able to buy Computers for 62Cr/ton but only sell them for 45Cr/ton? (Selling prices would always have to be lower, for obvious reasons.)

I don't know if this would be possible. Currently the GUI has only room for two columns, so transferring the commodity handling from code to JS would in itself not be sufficient for doing this.

What could probably be achieved is to add more commodities. Instead of the current 17 commodity types we could have 25 or 34 or 50. The clue would be that per station still only 17 commodities would be traded. In other words: not every station would have a market for every commodity. This would add a new element to the game: You have managed to buy a hold full of kitchen appliances for an absolute bargain. Now you first have to find a place that is buying them at all before you can cash in.

This could also be dynamic: The market in the same station could change between visits.

[Disembodied]

I don't know if this would be possible. Currently the GUI has only room for two columns, so transferring the commodity handling from code to JS would in itself not be sufficient for doing this.

What could probably be achieved is to add more commodities. Instead of the current 17 commodity types we could have 25 or 34 or 50. The clue would be that per station still only 17 commodities would be traded. In other words: not every station would have a market for every commodity. This would add a new element to the game: You have managed to buy a hold full of kitchen appliances for an absolute bargain. Now you first have to find a place that is buying them at all before you can cash in.

This could also be dynamic: The market in the same station could change between visits.

I'm not sure that adding more commodities this way would be a good idea. I always found that annoying in Escape Velocity, where you had a cargo you couldn't sell because the planet you were visiting didn't trade in it. It would seem a bit strange if in an entire planetary economy you couldn't find a buyer for something, even if it meant selling at a loss. It would probably get even more annoying if this changed constantly, to be honest!

Losing money on the deal is one thing: business is risky, fair enough. Losing everything on the deal, and being stuck with a cargo that you can't shift at all, just dead weight in the hold that you have to schlep onwards with in the hope of shifting it somewhere else, sounds like too much of a PITA to me.

[Commander McLane]

1: Un-hardcode the AI for fighting, so we can OXP our own attack patterns.

This makes only a limited amount of sense. All basic ship behaviours are hardcoded, and have to be hardcoded. The AI is merely calling one of these behaviours at a time. I am more than happy that a simple command for flyToDesiredRangeFromDestination exists, and I don't have to program each of the gazillion hardcoded steps which are triggered by this command myself every time.

Not the smallest reason for that is that AI programming is very complex and difficult, and most of us (myself included) would horribly fail at it. And I don't want to play a game which mainly consists of horribly failed and broken AIs.

Having said that, I also would like to have a little more influence on what NPCs do when fighting. (Perhaps I'd also like to have a little more influence on what they do when performing other actions; but fighting is the most interactive of their actions, and therefore perhaps the area where more variation is most desirable.) One thing that springs to mind is replacing the current, purely random-based use of lasers by NPC by something more tactical, combined with the implementation of an overheating mechanism.

Introducing more laser types may help as well. I think that much of the disappointment with lazy-at-firing NPCs actually comes from the fact that most NPCs are fitted with either pulse or beam lasers which simply lack the range to engage the player early. Replacing them with military lasers is not a solution, because those pack too much of a punch too early. So what would probably be needed is a laser with high range but lesser punch, that would allow a bunch of pirates to hammer at the player as soon as they detect him, but still leave him a chance of survival.

[DaddyHoggy]

I don't know if this would be possible. Currently the GUI has only room for two columns, so transferring the commodity handling from code to JS would in itself not be sufficient for doing this.

What could probably be achieved is to add more commodities. Instead of the current 17 commodity types we could have 25 or 34 or 50. The clue would be that per station still only 17 commodities would be traded. In other words: not every station would have a market for every commodity. This would add a new element to the game: You have managed to buy a hold full of kitchen appliances for an absolute bargain. Now you first have to find a place that is buying them at all before you can cash in.

This could also be dynamic: The market in the same station could change between visits.

I'm not sure that adding more commodities this way would be a good idea. I always found that annoying in Escape Velocity, where you had a cargo you couldn't sell because the planet you were visiting didn't trade in it. It would seem a bit strange if in an entire planetary economy you couldn't find a buyer for something, even if it meant selling at a loss. It would probably get even more annoying if this changed constantly, to be honest!

Losing money on the deal is one thing: business is risky, fair enough. Losing everything on the deal, and being stuck with a cargo that you can't shift at all, just dead weight in the hold that you have to schlep onwards with in the hope of shifting it somewhere else, sounds like too much of a PITA to me.

I think there should the the equivalent of WeBuyAnyCargo.com in every system for when you need to shift cargo...

I feel a pre-emptive YAH ad coming on...

[Commander McLane]

I'm not sure that adding more commodities this way would be a good idea. I always found that annoying in Escape Velocity, where you had a cargo you couldn't sell because the planet you were visiting didn't trade in it.

IIRC this was true only for the special cargos, which usually had only one planet that would sell them, and exactly one other planet that would buy them. One of the first things I did was compiling a list of those planet/station couples. And only when I knew that I was passing by both planets/station on the same run I would buy the special commodity. Usually there was one, and only one among them that would be very profitable, but this invariably required a long journey from selling to buying system.

[DaddyHoggy]

1: Un-hardcode the AI for fighting, so we can OXP our own attack patterns.

This makes only a limited amount of sense. All basic ship behaviours are hardcoded, and have to be hardcoded. The AI is merely calling one of these behaviours at a time. I am more than happy that a simple command for flyToDesiredRangeFromDestination exists, and I don't have to program each of the gazillion hardcoded steps which are triggered by this command myself every time.

Not the smallest reason for that is that AI programming is very complex and difficult, and most of us (myself included) would horribly fail at it. And I don't want to play a game which mainly consists of horribly failed and broken AIs.

Having said that, I also would like to have a little more influence on what NPCs do when fighting. (Perhaps I'd also like to have a little more influence on what they do when performing other actions; but fighting is the most interactive of their actions, and therefore perhaps the area where more variation is most desirable.) One thing that springs to mind is replacing the current, purely random-based use of lasers by NPC by something more tactical, combined with the implementation of an overheating mechanism.

Introducing more laser types may help as well. I think that much of the disappointment with lazy-at-firing NPCs actually comes from the fact that most NPCs are fitted with either pulse or beam lasers which simply lack the range to engage the player early. Replacing them with military lasers is not a solution, because those pack too much of a punch too early. So what would probably be needed is a laser with high range but lesser punch, that would allow a bunch of pirates to hammer at the player as soon as they detect him, but still leave him a chance of survival.

Could have the Hard-code AI as the default unless it's over-ridden by a scripted one - if it turns out that the OXP writer has written a good OXP with sucky AI then it would be a "simple" case of editing the OXP config file change a new token (some like ScriptedAI...) from True back to False so that when the OXP is reloaded the game doesn't load up a script specific AI but uses the default one in the code (converted to JS as Ahruman eludes to).

I like the idea of a "Long-Range Pulse Laser" though.

[JensAyton]

I'm not sure that adding more commodities this way would be a good idea. I always found that annoying in Escape Velocity, where you had a cargo you couldn't sell because the planet you were visiting didn't trade in it.

The fix to the EV model always seemed simple to me: make the jünks (special items) variants of normal trade goods. If you buy a load of Camembert and can’t find a buyer, you can still sell it as generic food. Having more than one buyer and one seller would be an obvious improvement, too. Practically speaking, though, the jünks were really a kind of interactive flavour text.

[Switeck]

So what would probably be needed is a laser with high range but lesser punch, that would allow a bunch of pirates to hammer at the player as soon as they detect him, but still leave him a chance of survival.

The Thargoid laser has the range and lower hitting power. Pirate ships using it could even color it red so it doesn't LOOK like the Thargoid's laser.

[Disembodied]

IIRC this was true only for the special cargos, which usually had only one planet that would sell them, and exactly one other planet that would buy them. One of the first things I did was compiling a list of those planet/station couples. And only when I knew that I was passing by both planets/station on the same run I would buy the special commodity. Usually there was one, and only one among them that would be very profitable, but this invariably required a long journey from selling to buying system.

True, but it was still a pain ... and with a random mixing of sellable and unsellable cargo, there wouldn't be any way to avoid the pain.

The fix to the EV model always seemed simple to me: make the jünks (special items) variants of normal trade goods. If you buy a load of Camembert and can’t find a buyer, you can still sell it as generic food. Having more than one buyer and one seller would be an obvious improvement, too. Practically speaking, though, the jünks were really a kind of interactive flavour text.

Interactive flavour in Oolite would be a big boost to the current, somewhat insipid, situation ... if it was possible to tag each product with its planet of origin, and perhaps add a price modifier based on distance travelled along with the occasional chance of a jackpot ... of course, this would have to apply to cargo scooped in space, too: it would have to be generated as "Luxuries: Isence" or "Slaves: Reinen", etc. And then you'd have mixtures of different cargo types in your hold: "Luxuries: Isence - 3T"; "Luxuries: Zaonce - 2T" and so on. That could get complicated pretty quickly. Unless it was possible to make all cargo into (effectively) jünks as per your Camembert model?

[Commander McLane]

So what would probably be needed is a laser with high range but lesser punch, that would allow a bunch of pirates to hammer at the player as soon as they detect him, but still leave him a chance of survival.

The Thargoid laser has the range and lower hitting power. Pirate ships using it could even color it red so it doesn't LOOK like the Thargoid's laser.

It is also omnidirectional, which disqualifies it as an alternative to standard lasers.

If the Thargoids don't have a unique, scary weapon, why have them in the game in the first place?

[Thargoid]

And maybe some more abstract ones like:

Unobtainium
Religious Paraphernalia
Collectables
Tribbles
All 450 remixes of Friday by Rebecca Black

WAIT NO NOT THE LAST ONE PLEASE!

Makes a few notes for the next update of Pods.oxp...

[Thargoid]

It is also omnidirectional, which disqualifies it as an alternative to standard lasers.

If the Thargoids don't have a unique, scary weapon, why have them in the game in the first place?

If we didn't I'd have to script one for my fellows...

[Ganelon]

Left and right arrow keys rather than Enter

Umm. The Enter key can be used instead of the arrow keys? I've been buying and selling everything one ton at a time, because I never knew that.

[Switeck]

So what would probably be needed is a laser with high range but lesser punch, that would allow a bunch of pirates to hammer at the player as soon as they detect him, but still leave him a chance of survival.

The Thargoid laser has the range and lower hitting power. Pirate ships using it could even color it red so it doesn't LOOK like the Thargoid's laser.

It is also omnidirectional, which disqualifies it as an alternative to standard lasers.

If the Thargoids don't have a unique, scary weapon, why have them in the game in the first place?

NPC ships already use a laser that can fire off-center of directly forward or to the rear. Omnidirectional may look wrong, but it would make them more effective. Maybe on a turret?

But...Thargoid Lasers are not a particularly unique or scary weapon. They hit from decent range (~20 km?), but do worse damage than a pulse laser and don't seem to fire as fast as one (when the player uses it) either.

A few NPC ships using military lasers is balanced enough, considering their rate of fire is likely lackluster anyway. The faster ships, such as escorts, shouldn't need military lasers...they should already be able to close the distance quickly.

Having a ship "roll some dice" when created to determine how well equipped they are and how skilled the pilot/s are seems the best compromise. More/most ships should have ECM, just to avoid 1 missile obliterating them. Shield boosters could possibly be rarer on account of their costs. Injectors are so useful that they should be more common even on "slow" ships.
While a poorly-equipped ship might have a good pilot, just to stay alive... few really well-equipped ships should be piloted by idiots, at least not for long!

Fight-or-flee behaviors for NPC ships definitely needs improvements. Traders currently ignore almost everything around them...and even when they're under attack by hopeless odds often continue to go towards the attackers while sending out a distress message.

Finding and reacting to friend and foe is a large part of this. I discovered this to my surprise/frustration when doing pirate versus Thargoid tests. Pirates do not react to Thargoids in any way till they are attacked by them. Unless the pirates in the area are all in 1 group, they do not assist or flee...so Thargoids can kill them 1-by-1. Getting pirates to react better to non-prey (but hostile) ships seems extremely difficult.

I've heard NPC ships are randomly given a 6oclock (tailchase) or 12oclock (head-on) attack pattern/goal...as well as possible others, such as the losing "strategy" of making an off-center first pass. How quickly they break off their attack or even turn-to-flee if getting repeatedly hit seems hard-coded, though at least I can make fleeing happen sooner with medium/low energy checks.

On another thread, it was pointed out that carrier ships (Giant Ray from Commies! OXP) basically drop what they're doing and stop to accept docking ships. Why ships would be docking in the middle of a furball...seems a little strange.

[Ganelon]

Why ships would be docking in the middle of a furball...seems a little strange.

I would think it might be to refuel, reload missiles, or get emergency repairs?