Feature requests for Oolite 2.0

[Zireael]

#79. Add a rating based on how much money you have (ship's value + credits). It'd be secondary to Elite rating and it'd allow people to progress not only by killing stuff.
#80. Add medals/ribbons/something for those two ratings (for example, you get a Golden Medal [stupid name, I know] for being Elite and having 5 mln of wealth

[Disembodied]

Incidentally I believe the Torus jump drive should be replaced or modified too, for the same reason - only the player gets it in Oolite. I'd personally prefer to see NPC's get to use it in Oolite 2, but lets see what Ahruman decides.

I’ve thought about the issue, but not decided anything. Another option would be to use time acceleration instead, possibly with mass locking and slowed down controls to get a similar effect to the current torus drive with no “in-universe” imbalance.

Giving NPCs torus drives could result in a lot of traffic jams, if they all use them to zoom in from the witchpoint to the station. They'll either all pile up somewhere in-system at the first pirate intercept, or around the station.

Time acceleration (or different top torus speeds) would make ship speed a much more important statistic. At present it really only matters within a bubble around other ships: with time acceleration it becomes universal. The difference between, say, 0.35 and 0.38 would mean a lot. And with mass-locking there will still be the same "traffic jam" problem.

I'm sure these can be worked around, but such a major change would surely have many, many ramifications. Traffic into the system would have to be reduced; non-hostile ships would have to learn to avoid or work around each other's flight paths; and/or there might need to be multiple witchspace entry points (which might be a good thing anyway ... no more on-lane/off-lane). But it's a pretty massive change.

[Killer Wolf]

how would you spoof an NPC using time accceleration? i can't see how that would look in-game? i thought it was just an alternative way of speeding up the perception of the game rather than some equipment actually fitted to the ship to make it go faster?

[JensAyton]

non-hostile ships would have to learn to avoid or work around each other's flight paths;

Not at all. From NPCs’ perspective, time acceleration would not exist; the only difference would be that there would no longer be a super-fast player ship.

how would you spoof an NPC using time accceleration?

You wouldn’t. Time acceleration only affects the player’s perception of time, while from an in-universe perspective the player ship is travelling at normal speeds. How the NPCs perceive time is open to interpretation.

[Disembodied]

non-hostile ships would have to learn to avoid or work around each other's flight paths;

Not at all. From NPCs’ perspective, time acceleration would not exist; the only difference would be that there would no longer be a super-fast player ship.

That's true, for time acceleration with no masslocking: they would only have to learn to avoid each other if they were using a torus drive/masslock system. The problem with time acceleration would be the large boost it could give in significance to a ship type's top speed – although this might not matter too much over Oolite's relatively short distances.

If ships do masslock each other, though, then non-hostiles might need to learn to give each other room – otherwise they would tend to pile up in big multiple-masslock balls, e.g.

[this ship:>...masslocked by...[this ship:>...masslocked by...[this ship:>...masslocked by... etc.

[Lone_Wolf]

Speedwise there are things npcs have that the player does not have.

npc
0 - max_speed : no fuel needed
max_speed to 25 * max_speed : all values possible, uses fuel injection

player :
0 - max_speed : no fuel needed
7 * max speed : fuel injection , fixed value
32 * max_speed : torus drive , fixed value uses no fuel, cancelled by mass lock

What we need is a new system that works the same for both npc and player.

[Disembodied]

What we need is a new system that works the same for both npc and player.

This is desirable in the abstract, but not necessarily in practice. I am strongly in favour of a non-player-centric game but ultimately the player is the point, purpose and epicentre of the whole universe, however much we want to pretend that we're not. The reason for making any change should be because it makes the game better for the player, not because we want to balance things up between players and NPCs.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have a new system that works the same for NPCs and players – just that it's a pretty huge change and will probably have major effects all over the game. I think it's something that would need extensive playtesting to make sure it's not breaking anything else – especially anything else that might be a lot more important to player enjoyment.

[Killer Wolf]

i'd prefer the Torus for all option, for the reason that it makes all equal and adds atmosphere in seeing other ships hurrying on their way or cruising complacently around. if the dynamic stock option is implemented, it could add to the game in you having a race to drop your cargo off first under the threat of the other guy selling first and dropping the prices slightly etc.
I'd prefer the mass lock option not to trigger until something's w/in, say, 7km tho - at the full scanner range of 25km it jut seems way overdoing it. it could also add a new piece of equipment, the Torus Disruptor, that bounty hunters/pirates could have (player too of course).

[Commander Wilmot]

About the TAF, personally I dislike it, but if everyone wants to go that way I'm perfectly willing to go with it; the only thing I am wondering is how that will affect time-based missions like the nova one.

[DaddyHoggy]

#79. Add a rating based on how much money you have (ship's value + credits). It'd be secondary to Elite rating and it'd allow people to progress not only by killing stuff.
#80. Add medals/ribbons/something for those two ratings (for example, you get a Golden Medal [stupid name, I know] for being Elite and having 5 mln of wealth

Nice idea - my DaddyHoggy character reached the dizzy heights of 18 Kills (mostly accidental when I couldn't persuade a pirate to eject and leave me alone), but has 80,000Cr in the bank

[DaddyHoggy]

Ahruman said no to #80 (or the equivalent) quite some time ago (about three years ago I think, when it was suggested for a Naval expansion where you got medals based on Navy missions completed)

[JensAyton]

That's true, for time acceleration with no masslocking … If ships do masslock each other

Er, no. The time acceleration would only affect the player’s perception of time. Mass locking would simply mean that time acceleration would stop when the player is in range of another ship. It doesn’t make sense for NPC ships to mass lock “each other”, since from their perspective there is no time acceleration. I don’t see how this is confusing.

Top speed would be no more or less important than it is with torus drive.

the only thing I am wondering is how that will affect time-based missions like the nova one.

Timed missions work in terms of game clock time, which would be accelerated. Travelling a certain distance would use the same amount of game time regardless of whether time acceleration is used, so the answer is that acceleration wouldn’t have to be taken into account for missions (unlike torus drive).

[JensAyton]

#79. Add a rating based on how much money you have (ship's value + credits). It'd be secondary to Elite rating and it'd allow people to progress not only by killing stuff.

When you die, you’re shown both your kill count and your credit balance. Whether you value one or the other more, or care about something completely different, is entirely up to you. Surely imposing a standard overall scoring algorithm would just be limiting?

[Zireael]

#79. Add a rating based on how much money you have (ship's value + credits). It'd be secondary to Elite rating and it'd allow people to progress not only by killing stuff.

When you die, you’re shown both your kill count and your credit balance. Whether you value one or the other more, or care about something completely different, is entirely up to you. Surely imposing a standard overall scoring algorithm would just be limiting?

Then why do we have the ELITE rating?

[DaddyHoggy]

Because the game is/was called Elite!

The only score B&B succumbed to was that of the arbitrary number of kills to achieve the rank of Elite...