Oolite 2: ship balance, starting conditions and death knells

[Smivs]

Above I was referring to the current situation.
I do quite like the idea of alternative starts though, particularly for experienced Commanders looking for a Fresh Start. However they will have some funds behind them and could sidestep easily into a new, alternative career.
My concern is that a newcomer to the game will not know enough about it to make an informed choice.

[m4r35n357]

It's in the readMe that comes with the game. (Although I'm still not sure whether it comes on all platforms, but it should.)

hmm, I only discovered this key recently after watching an Oolite video - I missed it completely (if it was present) on the Spectrum and Atari ST, how embarrassing
Incidentally, the "i" key also does something on the galactic screen, highlighting certain systems, but I can't work out what it's telling me - anyone?

[Commander McLane]

Incidentally, the "i" key also does something on the galactic screen, highlighting certain systems, but I can't work out what it's telling me - anyone?

It highlights all systems whose name begins with 'I', just like all the other letter keys.

It's part of the search function. You're typing a name and it appears below the map, and the system gets highlighted. As long as there are multiple systems with the current combination of letters, all of them are highlighted. (Typing 'LA' highlights Lave and all other systems beginning with 'La', if there are any.)

[m4r35n357]

d'oh!

[Killer Wolf]

... (ie you begin the game w/ an Offender/Fug status) ...

I'm not sure as it makes sense to start a player with an Offender/Fugitive status. How would they have it, if they were a beginner? Are we postulating that pirates are basically "born guilty"?

no, we're postulating that the pilot/player has a history before the game starts. pilots aren't "born" - we're all of an age, have been to the Lave Academy etc. This new start is a player is perhaps a criminal, petty or otherwise, who has made their way to a station and acquired a ship - perhaps illegally, adding to the status drop. it's just a starting-up configuration, your imagination can do the rest.

[Zireael]

Above I was referring to the current situation.
I do quite like the idea of alternative starts though, particularly for experienced Commanders looking for a Fresh Start. However they will have some funds behind them and could sidestep easily into a new, alternative career.
My concern is that a newcomer to the game will not know enough about it to make an informed choice.

Splat something to the readme or to Mr. What-Was-His-Name's advice...

[Ad_Astra]

Talking of flexibility, how about having players start at a different system than Lave? You could have it as a totally randomised selection of one of the Galaxy 1 systems, or even a random system from any one of the eight Galactic Sectors

The starting location isn’t arbitrary. It’s a reasonably safe space with decent trading nearby, while still not being perfect, so there’s an incentive to explore. You really, really don’t want to start a newbie in Xeenle.

OXPs rely on the sequence of galaxies to place harder missions and situations “later” in the game.

Having several possible starting locations in galaxy 1 might be possible. Random starts are not happening.

Well you could have semi-random, as opposed to completely random start points, within certain criteria, e.g. having at least 6-8 connected systems within 3-jump range that are Multi-Government, or more lawful, with at least 25% being Agricultural/Industrial.

I don't see why you can't start out at place beyond Galaxy one. None of the missions are compulsory and the built-in missions (Trumbles, Constrictor Hunt, Nova, etc) could be re-jigged to happen at {Starting Sector number + 1} rather than Galaxy Sector 2, for example. Given what is written about Academies being set up in other Sectors (as per the Lave Academy OXP) it makes perfect sense to me.

What exactly is the expectation (in terms of the original game design) regarding pilots moving from one Galaxy Sector to the next compared their ratings and "career progression" (for want of a better term)? I'm a shade off 2000 kills, have an Iron Arse (save a Naval Energy Unit) and I'm still in Galaxy Sector 2.

[DaddyHoggy]

I think it would be nice if there was an option to NOT start in Galactic Chart 1 when you first start, but which ever chart you start in the early missions are also moved to your start chart - would make for an interesting start to a player's career.

And for the youngsters who don't remember Elite won't necessarily understand the need/point of starting at Lave

[Oathbreaker]

I would strongly support making the lower-end ships more significant in general gameplay.

I understand many players want an "ultimate weapon" and an "ultimate ship" - after all, anything that's overpowered is always fun. But not fun for very long.

Fun for a long time is having to work your way up and being able to try different ship and weapons and load-out configurations and then exploiting your build to its fullest potential in given situations, while avoiding other situations.

I.e., Adders and Morays and Cobra Mk1's should be viable in early game, and should definitely be situationally viable in later game missions and some general-purpose stuff.

At the very least bump the starting player down to a Cobra Mk1 and add some early simple missions that lets them make some cash off that 10t cargo capacity. This would also mean a general re-balancing maybe of the early starter systems.

Ideally a player would start out and have a chance to realistically choose any one of the following career paths right from the get-go without having to do a ton of stuff that they don't want to do in order to score a sufficient ship:
"Clean" Trader
Privateer/Bounty Hunter
Pirate
Smuggler
Mission Junkie

As it stands, I have never taken on an unmodded Oolite taxi/passenger mission - it's just not worth it. Trading is over-powered as a means to an end. At the same time, experienced players should have the option of almost immediately switching to a more dangerous section of the galaxy, and very quickly prove how good they are by taking that Adder or Cobra Mk1 up against superior odds and winning for a good set of cash.

[Dragonfire]

You make some good points, though there really isn't much of a way of getting around the trading, logically. Unless you start with more cash. And yes, you can edit your savefile to give yourself more money (credits) if you're eager to upgrade and shift purely to bounty hunting.

[DaddyHoggy]

You make some good points, though there really isn't much of a way of getting around the trading, logically. Unless you start with more cash. And yes, you can edit your savefile to give yourself more money (credits) if you're eager to upgrade and shift purely to bounty hunting.

Actually, if you're good and lucky, you can sell your Cobra MkIII, buy a Cobra MkI or Moray, equip it up as best you can at Lave and surrounding systems... A good pilot, equipped with injectors and an EU and a beam laser front and rear will make mincemeat of vanilla pirates in groups of 1-3 even in just a Cobra MkI, you could start bounty hunting and scooping free cargo as a bonus almost immediately. (especially if Random Hits is installed too)

[Oathbreaker]

Good points.

My imperative is that you shouldn't have to jump through mad hoops outside the game (editing save files, downloading content, searching forums) to choose one of these paths. It doesn't have to be immediately obvious - secrets are after all pretty cool to discover - but at least something letting a person who has NEVER seen or heard of the game or the original, know that "Hey - I can be a space pirate if I just get this thing hooked up to my ship so I can steal cargo!"

Alternately a little menu button in-game that let's the player download & install optional content with an auto-restart. I realize this is far off seeing as how the vast majority of people tinkering with Oolite are just that, tinkerers, and very web/technology-savvy to begin with. For those of you who write all these awesome downloadable mods it's great - you know what to load and not, how to do it and how to tweak it and it's great that you're making it available for free. But the vast majority of players don't know, just want to play and may or may not have enough tech skills to know what to put in what folder.

I just want the cool stuff to be easily accessible to the masses as well. The average noob who comes here straight from a career playing Halo or Hello Kitty Online should be able to get going without having to find three different documents listing keyboard commands and keyboard shortcuts that they wouldn't know existed unless they read about them outside of the game.

But to each their own.

[Dragonfire]

It wouldn't be hard to create installers for OXPs, actually.

[Alex]

Re: Starting conditions;
I don't see why you should fix something that's not broken. I remember the first time I started, the number of ships I destroyed just trying to learn how to dock!!! Never mind fighting of pirates.

100Cr seemed really low when I looked at prices, took ages to save for basic equipment.

I'm sure when a total newbee firsts loads the game they want to just take off and fly, I know I did.
I would think a lot wouldn't even know about selling their cobby to down grade ship and up grade equipment. Or for that matter the existance of so many oxps or this BB.
I would also have thought that most new players wouldn't be too confident about "hacking" the ship.plist or saved game either.

So it's my opinion leave a perfectly good start position alone.

Though having operating links to BB and wiki pages on start screen might be a good idea. Or would that only work with wndows mode of play?

[Disembodied]

I don't see why you should fix something that's not broken.

It is broken, though – or at least, not optimal. It's a starting condition designed for a game where you couldn't ever change ships, so the game starts you off in the best all-round ship in the entire game, by a long, long way. You don't have any equipment, and you've got hardly any money, but still, you start off in a great ship.

There were perfectly good reasons for this being the starting condition for Elite, but there are perfectly good reasons for modifying this in a game which allows for a greater range of player development. It would need a significant overhaul to do it, but I think it would be worth it.

I'd start the player off in an Adder, with 100Cr. I'd give the Adder 3 tons of cargo space, expandable to 5, and I'd provide a range of cheap non-cargo parcel deliveries via the F8-F8 screen. I'd also put the starting player in a relatively safe kiddy-pool part of the galaxy, with enough close-together milk-run systems coded in to let them get used to the basics. Ideally, by the time they'd just started to get frustrated by the Adder (and maybe had one or two frights from pirates – who could be bought off by ejecting cargo, and wouldn't be automatically fatal), they'd have earned enough money to upgrade to something like a Moray. The they could explore a bit further, and maybe tell the occasional lone pirate where he could stick his demands for loot. The next ship on the ladder would be a Cobra I ... your very own Cobra III would be something to aspire to, and work towards. Ship and equipment prices would have to be modified, of course: maybe even equipment prices could be keyed to the value of your ship – so it would be a lot cheaper to fit a fuel scoop to an Adder than to a Cobra III, for example. The same could be true for fuel, too, which would help keep trading relevant for players even after they'd made a bundle and got a dream ship: it might cost 12Cr to fully fuel and Adder, say, but maybe it would cost 60Cr for a Cobra III ...

The game has a development ladder built in. It seems a waste to start the player so near the top.