Laser Effectivity?

[CapnSkweek]

Let me preface this by saying, as designed, I love Oolite, I do not want it to be easier, I'm asking about the capacity of the lasers as currently coded. Let me also say, I'm a lousy pilot, were it not for docking computers, I'd be dead daily, and it's likely that with my propensity to forget to save at every station, I might never get out of the first 3.5 Light-year radius. If a person were to mark on a flagpole the quality of pilots, the pinnacle would be an expert, two inches below, the average pilots, three inches below, the novices. Eighty seven feet of pure rabble passes and there sits yours truly.

How effective are the lasers? I'm not asking specifically about how they are coded (I want to learn to code, I'm studying python, and oddly, I'm a better pilot than coder at this point) I'm asking about their in game capabilities. I killed a ship that I believe I only hit four times with Military grade lasers. Four shots. I'm not entirely sure, because I did lose sight of him evading a missile while going for my ECM and there were two ships in the vicinity, so I'm not sure if he was the guy I hit earlier, or if he was a new guy. He came straight at me, and then rolled off the top to go the other way, giving me a clean belly shot. I punched the laser four times, and he went blooey. Point blank, no adjustment needed on my part, just let him maneuver in front of my laser, and give him the dose.

Keeping well in mind that I am not privy to his shields, I'm curious how many shots it has taken other pilots to bring down a single vessel. Four... I'm almost convinced that I had put a couple shots on him in the minute before, or someone else did, because I've peppered ships with twice as much and they just soaked it up like a sponge. Usually it's a fairly long event, taking me minutes and several shots to make a kill. That's 99% of why I prefer to avoid fights!

Would anyone else care to chime in with their own experiences on this topic? I've been an Oolite pilot for less than two weeks, so I don't have a big history of my own to draw from.

[Diziet Sma]

I'm far from expert in this, but I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong..

There is some variation amongst NPC ships when they are spawned.. different weapons/missiles and so on.. I believe this even extends to how much shield-strength they have when spawned. Different ship types also have considerable variation.. after all, an Anaconda should not be as easy to kill as a Worm.

It is also worth bearing in mind that one of the key differences between Elite and Oolite is that Oolite is not player-centric.. it doesn't all revolve around the player. Rather, the player is just one small entity in a much bigger Ooniverse.. The pirate you splashed with just a few shots may have been involved in a furball outside of your scanner range shortly before you encountered him, his ship shot half to pieces and his shields still only half recharged..

Unlike in Elite, as you tool along the spaceways minding your own business, there are often life-and-death battles raging around you, beyond your scanner range.. at times, off in the distance, you'll sometimes see hints of laser fire and the odd explosion.. (and sometimes more than hints.. I recall one time, off to the side, there must have been a big naval engagement going on.. and somebody set off a q-bomb, as blue globes suddenly erupted way off in the distance.. had to have been a big fight, as the fireworks went on for what seemed like several minutes, across hundreds of kilometers..)

Heading for the scene of such battles is often a good way to scavenge for cargo.. there's usually good pickings to be had, once all the death and destruction is over..

[CapnSkweek]

Wow, didn't know that! I always figured this game was player centric, with all the 'shows' for my benefit like most other games. Having never played Elite, I assumed this line of games was no different than others in that, if you see a guy, something you did likely triggered his presence. In another game I noticed that regardless of what I did, when I rounded a certain corner, the bad guy would pop out from behind a crate. I could do so in a jeep, a tank or on foot, he'd be there and I'd have to deal with him. I have been (wrongly) assuming that when a single ship appeared on my indicator, and called for help, he was a lure to get me to bite the trap. Turns out, he's been getting kicked around prior to me even jumping into the planetary set. Very good to know, and very clever on behalf of the game designers.

That makes Oolite significantly cooler than I had initially expected! I'm just an operator! (I did think that, as somebody who is supposed to live and die by his ability to soak up punishment, four shots was fairly lame, to whomever softened him up, thanks!)

[Diziet Sma]

Yeah, it really is one of the cooler things about this game.. when you jump into a system, a whole bunch of entities are generated, and randomly, if logically, positioned, and they then go about performing whatever tasks their scripts assign them.. be it traders, patrolling cops, pirates on the prowl, you name it.. the randomness factor built in ensures that from time to time, some really cool interactions between NPC's take place. You'll sometimes see accounts written up here on the BB, describing some of the more amazing things we've seen in our travels..

It very much helps with the immersion factor of the game.. it's like there's a 'real world' going on around you..

And yes, NPC traders really do get in trouble and call for help.. and you're free to wade in (on either side) or not.

[Capt. Murphy]

I'm far from expert in this, but I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong..
There is some variation amongst NPC ships when they are spawned.. different weapons/missiles and so on.. I believe this even extends to how much shield-strength they have when spawned. Different ship types also have considerable variation.. after all, an Anaconda should not be as easy to kill as a Worm.

Almost....! Different NPC ships in the default game have different values for their energy and energy recharge rates (equivalent to the player's energy banks). The higher the energy and/or the energy recharge rate the more hits needed from any given laser to kill the ship. They don't actually have the equivalent of the player's shields (e.g if a stock NPC Cobra III and a stock player Cobra III politely exchanged shots one at a time with the same Laser type the player always wins, because he/she has got shields and energy banks as opposed to the NPCs energy banks only). There is an OXP (NPCShields) by McLane that redresses that balance though.

[Commander McLane]

To answer the original question: As the others already explained, different ships have different stats. There are ships with high and low speed, with high and low agility, with high and low energy, with high and low cargo space, etc. In the original set (without OXPs) there are two ships which have little enough energy to be killed with four hits of a military laser: the Adder and the Worm. There are also ships which would need more than 20 hits until they're dead. But the Adder and the Worm are indeed scarily weak vessels. Worms are mainly used as shuttles which only travel back and forth between the station and the surface of the planet. So they never get out into the dangerous zones of deep space. There are however some pilots who use an Adder to patrol the whole system. Depending on your point of view you can call them brave, reckless, or stupid. Of course we can only guess about their reason for choosing this ship over a better, more robust vessel, but it's of course considerably cheaper than the other alternatives, which may prompt young adventurers to try their luck in an Adder, and use it to make the money that'll allow them to purchase a better ship.

Information about the stats of different ships can be found in the Reference Sheet that ships with your Oolite installation, and on the ship pages of the Wiki.

One technical information for your convenience: the way the game is programmed, a hit from a military laser deals 23 damage points to the entity that was hit. Damage points are simply subtracted from the ship's current energy. Thus every ship with an initial energy < 4x23 (= 92) can be killed with 4 hits of a military laser (the other laser types, together with having a smaller range, also deal fewer damage points). The Adder's initial energy is 85, and the Worm's initial energy is 75 (only 55 in the Miner variant), thus both ships fit the bill.

The values for the ships' max energy (and for everything else about them) are determined in a file named "shipdata.plist", which resides inside "Oolite.app/Contents/Resources/Config/". You can open and view it with any ordinary text editor. Opening and viewing (and gradually understanding) the files in that directory is how most people got into creating OXPs, so it's a good exercise.

[Diziet Sma]

See what I mean, CapnSkweek? It didn't take long for some definitive answers to be provided.. That's what I like about this place.. there's lots smarter folk than me around.. I learn a lot!

(I knew about the NPC's have energy banks only thing.. but 2 years away from Oolite has made my brain rusty.. yeah.. that's a good excuse.. I'll use that.. )

The values for the ships' max energy (and for everything else about them) are determined in a file named "shipdata.plist", which resides inside "Oolite.app/Contents/Resources/Config/". You can open and view it with any ordinary text editor.

View, yes.. write, not necessarily, if you're using Windoze, at least.. Wordpad is ok.. Notepad++ is better.. plain old Notepad is purest evil, and does horrible things to Oolite files..

It's a good thing you're using Ubuntu, CapnSkweek.. you don't have to worry about that whole business. Any text editor will be fine.

[Commander McLane]

The values for the ships' max energy (and for everything else about them) are determined in a file named "shipdata.plist", which resides inside "Oolite.app/Contents/Resources/Config/". You can open and view it with any ordinary text editor.

View, yes.. write, not necessarily, if you're using Windoze, at least.. Wordpad is ok.. Notepad++ is better.. plain old Notepad is purest evil, and does horrible things to Oolite files..

Note that I did not mention writing, and for a good reason.

You should never ever ever write anything to any file inside the file structure of "Oolite.app". Never ever. Ever. Period. (The sole exception would be GNUStepDefaults, if that resides inside Oolite.app in the first place, which I'm not sure about, because I don't use Linux.)

If you want to change or modify something, that's what your AddOns folder is for. Copy whatever file you want to play with into your AddOns (create an appropriate sub-folder first; e.g. if you want to play with shipdata.plist, put it into AddOns/Config/). Make your changes only in this copy. They will override anything that's inside Oolite.app. If you have screwed something up, you will at least have the original untouched. You can scrap your screwed-up copy and make another copy from the unharmed original.

Thus I was only talking about opening and viewing, not about saving. Just don't do it, whatever editor (or rather 'viewer') you use.

[Diziet Sma]

Thanks.. that's good to have clarification on.. and particularly since CapnSkweek does want to start fiddling with things at some point, judging from what he's said elsewhere..

[CapnSkweek]

Thanks to all for the help, and the advice about how not to save files. I'm appreciative of the help there. I've finally found the Oolite folder, which was nowhere close to where my Windows mentality expected it... looking, but not touching, but I'll learn. I've already had a look at the Textures and I'm pretty sure, having painted race cars for years in games, I could come up with some nice ones for my addon folder.

Speaking of addons. Commander McLane, the cobra MkI you posted in the "Alternative start positions" thread, I didn't want to poke my head in over there as I had nothing to contribute, but that Cobra, that is a pretty vessel, sir.

Thanks for the numbers, Commander, good to know. One thing I certainly like is, I can't really say much for sure. "Oh, if I hit ___ with my ____, he's going to be debris", it just doesn't work that way. I like that.

[Cody]

Speaking of addons. Commander McLane, the cobra MkI you posted in the "Alternative start positions" thread... but that Cobra, that is a pretty vessel, sir.

That's from  Griff's shipset OXP, and they're all very tasty ships (if you've got a shader-capable machine, that is).
You can even add your own custom decal(s) to your player-ship.

[Commander McLane]

Speaking of addons. Commander McLane, the cobra MkI you posted in the "Alternative start positions" thread... but that Cobra, that is a pretty vessel, sir.

That's from  Griff's shipset OXP, and they're all very tasty ships (if you've got a shader-capable machine, that is).
You can even add your own custom decal(s) to your player-ship.

The screenshot is also using the BackGroundSet ( BGS.oxp), which creates the nice background (d'oh!).

Finally, it's using my personal German Oolite translation (unreleased, because it's still not finished (the random planet descriptions are really a nightmare)).