Oolite 2: ship balance, starting conditions and death knells

[CommonSenseOTB]

Progression from adder to moray to cobra 1 to cobra 3 is a great idea Disembodied.

[Commander Wilmot]

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.

I like your ideas, but I would have to contend that passenger transport missions are worth it. Once you get to the top, you will get paid 20k to take someone just about ten systems or so. It doesn't pay as well as a cargo contract, but you don't need a huge expensive ship to haul a passenger like you do for cargo contracts.

[another_commander]

The passenger contracts are certainly worth it, provided that they are for sufficiently long trips. It is by design that taking someone two or three systems across will pay small change, but anything above 7 jumps or so starts becoming serious business. Of course, as Commander Wilmot has already noted, the taxi runs don't normally pay as high as cargo contracts - that's by design as well. But taxi runs are certainly one more way of making cash quickly, provided that you are willing to take the risk of long trips trhough the galactic charts.

Edit: Full explanation of how it works here and here.

[Eldon]

One benefit of starting new players off in an adder: they'd find docking soooo much easier. It's not like station rotation matters when your ship substantially smaller than the docking port.

[Oathbreaker]

One benefit of starting new players off in an adder: they'd find docking soooo much easier. It's not like station rotation matters when your ship substantially smaller than the docking port.

One problem with the Adder, best illustrated by some pictures, assuming you know the back story of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Stri ... er_Program


Which of the above two proposed fighter jets do you think got selected by the macho-man Air Force (to be fair, it wasn't all, or maybe even much about aesthetics). Hint: the US Air Force does not fly ugly planes, the A-10 being the one and only ever exception.



Plus, really - the name "Cobra Mk[random number]" is so much cooler than "Adder". Make the newbie ship the "Blackadder X-1" and have it come in a choice of two or three cool paint schemes, maybe.

[Disembodied]

Plus, really - the name "Cobra Mk[random number]" is so much cooler than "Adder". Make the newbie ship the "Blackadder X-1" and have it come in a choice of two or three cool paint schemes, maybe.

Beginners need to start in something that looks, sounds and in all respects actually is puny. A starting ship should be the equivalent of a big sister's old bike with stabilisers on it. If it's too cool then there's nothing to aspire to. In Escape Velocity, for example, you start in a shuttle. I'd let them choose paint jobs, at a price, over the basic Frating Green, though.

[DaddyHoggy]

Ah, JSF - Joint Strike Fighter, or as we called it in the MOD, when the STOVL version couldn't make it's max take-off weight, Just So Fat.

The DAS* on JSF would make an excellent concept in Oolite. (if the engine was up to implementing it).




*Distributed Aperture System**

**Which was very odd when I started working on it, because I left a team where I had been working on DAS***

***Defensive Aid Suites****

****Flares and Jammers

[Alex]

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

It is broken, though – or at least, not optimal.

I think it is optimal for the casual player and the ooly fan. Let the player deside their own game.
The Cobra Mk3 isn't any where near a strong ship.The debris of the couple of dozen cobs I destroyd trying to dock around Lave should testifie to that. An Adder is just plain masochistic. Held in reserve as a start point for real oolies to play with.

ARE YOU GOOD ENOUGHT TO START HERE? like stuff.

Remember younger generations have shorter attention spans, so I've been told.
Err.. what were we talking about?

[Ganelon]

Recently I played "vanilla" Oolite for a few days. Partially it was due to procrastination over rebuilding my folder of OXPs, but partially it was to make sure I remember what it's like starting out. I would disagree with the idea of starting the average newbie off worse than we already do. I have some idea of what to do and what to get and where some good spots are for trade near Lave and it still took me about a full night of play to get things to where it finally stopped feeling more like drudgery than recreation.

Anyone who has played Elite or has played Oolite before has some notion of what to do and that if they slog away at it for a while that they'll get it rolling. But the number of new players who played Elite in years gone by isn't going to be an increasing quantity. Elite had a bit of advantage back in the day. It was pretty much the first space fighter game of this kind, and so it had little competition. If being a space trader/fighter was what you wanted, you played Elite. These days there are plenty of other games someone can go to if they find the first few hours of Oolite boring or too difficult to have much fun with.

I don't think it's unreasonably bad in that respect as it is, but I think the notion of making it tougher on newbies will accomplish mainly one thing. Less newbies will play the game long enough to find out that it *is* a great game. I don't think we want that, do we?

Anyway, as I was playing it through and building up my ship with the initial 100 credits I was trying to see things that would be rough on an actual newbie who had no idea how to play Elite or Oolite. Quite frankly, if they didn't read Mr. Gimlet's little bit or make it to a forum to ask some questions, I doubt many people would make it very far. Most people tend to jump in on games, often not noticing if there even is a manual or any advice for a new player. In-game documentation and pointers could be more effective. Maybe they could be triggered by something like being near Lave and the commander being named Jameson or have a "do you want some guidance/advice? y/n" so it doesn't annoy returning players who already know what to do..

With the more aggressive AI, most new players would have about zero chance against even weak pirates. Evasive action is also pretty much pointless anymore. Without at least injectors, if a new Jameson with the starter Cobbie and it's pulse laser meets anything hostile, they may as well P/F2 and load their savegame.

Now allowing options for a more severe start for experienced players, well sure. Options are good things. But I fear that if we try to force actual new players through a more difficult start game than we already have, it is not going to help with increasing the player base.

[DaddyHoggy]

As we're always saying the game should allow for as much player choice as possible, why don't we just have it, so that the default is "Cobra MkIII 100Cr Lave" start, so a new user doesn't have to do anything, but to have a single additional keypress take you into a new menu that allows the user to start with any (jump capable and lesser) ship, and possible even start in a different system, different chart, even a random chart/system option...

[Switeck]

How about a Python start as well?
I can't say it'd help newbies a whole lot because it's really a terrible ship to try to dogfight in, but it would give a quicker way to get out of the pit called "nearly broke".

[DaddyHoggy]

Problem starting with a Python - is the first time you get your ass handed to you on a plate, you'll flog it and buy something else with the cash.

[Mauiby de Fug]

As we're always saying the game should allow for as much player choice as possible, why don't we just have it, so that the default is "Cobra MkIII 100Cr Lave" start, so a new user doesn't have to do anything, but to have a single additional keypress take you into a new menu that allows the user to start with any (jump capable and lesser) ship, and possible even start in a different system, different chart, even a random chart/system option...

Excellent suggestion!

[DaddyHoggy]

As we're always saying the game should allow for as much player choice as possible, why don't we just have it, so that the default is "Cobra MkIII 100Cr Lave" start, so a new user doesn't have to do anything, but to have a single additional keypress take you into a new menu that allows the user to start with any (jump capable and lesser) ship, and possible even start in a different system, different chart, even a random chart/system option...

Excellent suggestion!

It happens occasionally - I even note such events in my diary!

[Commander McLane]

The Cobra Mk3 isn't any where near a strong ship.

Really? Which of the core player ships is stronger, in your opinion? (I'm not talking about OXP über ships.)

Of course the Cobra MkIII is the strongest ship in the original set. How else could thousands of players have become ELITE flying it in all versions of Elite?