Split: Difficulty for new players

[Mad Dan Eccles]

occasionally, a strong force of bounty hunters might team up to make a sweep through an Anarchy system... such commissions might be available to players via the F4 screen? Go to system X, destroy Y number of pirate vessels?

SIGN ME UP


[ETA: Google 'Mig sweep']

[Cody]

Especially so if the types of pirates encountered on such rare occasions make sense (a well-armed pirate band making a large-scale raid in strength)...

I recall getting jumped by a dozen or more aegis raiders on one occasion - nasty, but great fun!

[cim]

and indeed if it was also connected to the larger galactic geography.

This is something (as I've said before) I think a lot more could be done with. A mere 56 worlds is enough to have one of each government/economy type, but there's much more potential variation possible from their regional geography. So far there have been some interesting explorations of bits of it in fiction, but the in-game use is pretty small. (A few of the mission OXPs depend on particular arrangements of systems for their plot)

Similarly, the same thing might happen in reverse: occasionally, a strong force of bounty hunters might team up to make a sweep through an Anarchy system. If there are several prosperous worlds nearby, perhaps local traders might club together and pay for a big anti-piracy raid. Maybe, even, such commissions might be available to players via the F4 screen? Go to system X, destroy Y number of pirate vessels?

Exactly. Also possible more indirectly: the local traders' union just donates ten thousand credits to the Galcop bounty fund, and bounty hunters from across the chart converge on the system hoping for some easy money.

[Switeck]

so that you might get lots of pirates in Corporate State X one trip, and none the next.

Well, I wouldn't want there to be no chance of this, either. A well-armed pirate band might well risk an occasional raid into a corporate system, where the traders think they're safe and the right strategy could distract the cops for the crucial five minutes needed to blow up a convoy, scoop the goods, and retreat into witchspace. It wouldn't happen very often (and should probably happen less often than it currently does...) but it should happen occasionally.

Narratively, perhaps more likely in some systems than others. So Ceesxe (G1), for instance, has few dangerous systems around it, and is probably consistently pretty safe. Xevera (G5) on the other hand ... well, there's a reason that region is called the Siege Worlds.

Taking a line from my hacked version of Pirate Coves OXP...
var coordinateSystem = (10*Math.random()< (1 + system.government)) ? "ps" : "wp";

A Pirate Cove that (rarely!) gets added to a Corporate State system is almost inevitably somewhat close-but-offset from the spacelane between the Planet and Sun, but one in an Anarchy is almost always between the Witchpoint and Planet.
System Populator could do something similar with pirates. For a Corporate State, overwhelmingly most could be randomly placed somewhere between Planet and Sun, so players doing little more than trading and refueling from the main station would never see those. They might think the place is really safe. But then occasionally, the same system could get roughly the same number of pirates...and maybe 1 pirate group ended up between Witchpoint and Planet.

This doesn't tackle the idea of whether pirates should only show up rarely and only in groups in Corporate States, nor does it consider nearby systems for sources of pirates and sometimes add more. I really don't like that systems "drain dry" of pirates just by the player being there but doing nothing for 2 hours. Pirates should get destroyed by various causes, flee, or leave on their own...but just like traders they should slowly arrive on their own as well, just at a slower rate than traders except maybe at Anarchies. Even at Anarchies, many newly-arrived pirates wouldn't attack newly arrived traders -- they're likely seeking to dump their wares or recovering from a recent beating (lowering their shields/energy, removing most/all missiles, lower chances of extra equipment working).

That's fair enough, I think, as long as it's an occasional nasty surprise. Especially so if the types of pirates encountered on such rare occasions make sense (a well-armed pirate band making a large-scale raid in strength) and indeed if it was also connected to the larger galactic geography. Similarly, the same thing might happen in reverse: occasionally, a strong force of bounty hunters might team up to make a sweep through an Anarchy system. If there are several prosperous worlds nearby, perhaps local traders might club together and pay for a big anti-piracy raid. Maybe, even, such commissions might be available to players via the F4 screen? Go to system X, destroy Y number of pirate vessels?

Making missions/commissions out of temporarily reducing pirate concentrations is probably better doable as an OXP, as that saves the core game devs from the extra stress.
But can the System Populator get affected by such a OXP so that it knows at arrival time to not add as many (or add more) pirates to a system that has recently received a pirate removal effort?
This might also allow an OXP to easily handle the additional case of whether nearby systems are "dangerous" enough to add more pirates. If that works well, then add it to core.

A regularly-visited system might see slight changes in its pirate population if it's constantly getting decimated of pirates...or traders!...by the player. That too is easiest done at least first in an OXP, since it seems more mission-oriented and player-centric -- but it's only a consequence of what the player does, not by the player simply being there. The Oolite universe may be really large but even local temporary changes might be caused. If the player goes around blowing up Rock Hermits, wrecking buoys, killing every ship they meet -- this should spark a local change. Recovery could be in days (for buoy, traders, pirates, and police to recover) or months (for stations to get rebuilt). At least for that one system, your bounty there might never go away till you eject and sell your ship in another Galaxy Chart!

Just as there's a perpetual conveyor belt of new traders and new pirates in any system you stay long enough in, both traders and pirates should survive more fights than they currently do. Some panic-hyperspace away, flee on injectors, or drop cargo (yeah, even dying pirates might do this)...whatever it takes to live.

Taking the concept further, there might be a low chance of pirates along the Witchpoint and Sun...higher at Anarchies than Corporate States of course. Even Corporate States might have them there due to far lower odds of running across police ships there just due to the lower odds of paths crossing -- that trip is often the longest by far of the 3 (WP, PS, WS) in most systems and normally has no asteroids either.

[Zireael]

I reckon it is accessible to new players - it's just that sometimes, the dice roll goes against you. As a_c says, there should always be an element of risk.

I think risk is only fun if there's a way to mitigate it, though. A new player really doesn't have many options for that, at the moment, and a single Cobra I or Moray can be deadly if it fires its missile (which it always does, if the player starts winning). Conversely, for an Elite pilot in a well-equipped ship, there's barely any risk at all, and that's also a problem.

What I'm thinking about at the moment as possibilities is a fairly large set of (semi-independent) changes (and this is semi-stream-of-consciousness first thoughts and talking points, nothing more). Here goes:

Principles:
(if you think these are wrong, you'll really hate the next section...)

1. Corporate States (and Democracies, almost as much) should be safe enough for Jamesons to explore and trade up a bit. Safe does not mean "no combat" as in the Diso-Leesti run in Elite, or the Sol-Barnards run in FE2. It just means you need better ways out of a fight than "die" or "kill them all", and routes to use them that are easiest in core systems.
2. Conversely, Anarchies (and somewhat Feudals) should be very challenging, even to an experienced commander. In BBC Elite, these were "you get one jump drive use, and then it's a running battle the rest of the way to the station". The station is somewhat further away in Oolite, so that's perhaps a little much, but it should never be "easy".
3. Going off-lane should never be necessary in the core game. Off-lane should be more dangerous than on-lane, not less, at least for plausible routes to the planet. Get way out into deep space and that's perhaps a bit different.

Ideas:
(Some more like the original Elite than we have now, some less like it; probably all controversial)

1. Adjust system population. At the moment, the populator only changes the number of pirate groups between governments. If it also adjusted the size of the groups and the sorts of ships in them, this would allow greater differentiation between governments. (differentiate to role=pirate-weak, role=pirate-medium, role=pirate-strong, role=pirate-freighter or similar?)
2. Adjust pirate behaviour. At the moment, all pirates are generated on system entry, sit on the spacelane until they're killed or full, and once they're gone, they're gone. If, instead, they came in to the spacelane from bases outside it (off-lane pirate coves/hermits, witchspacing from nearby systems, suitable OXP stations) the running battle feel might be there in dangerous systems It also gives more space for off-lane to be the dangerous bit with the pirates raiding into it. Make pirates reassess the odds mid-fight, too - if you kill half a pack, the rest might try to retreat, or they might go after you personally for revenge and ignore their original trader targets. Dice...
3. Adjust trader behaviour. Allow trader groups to help out each other against pirate attack sometimes. In a safe system, if you get attacked by a pirate, maybe a nearby trader will help you out. (Or even more sophisticated: let the player somehow negotiate escort or mutual protection deals as they go along? let traders do the same with each other and passing bounty hunters?)
4. Improve group cooperation: If someone fires a missile at a friendly, and they don't have ECM but you do, ECM it for them! Needs the player to be made a honorary member of a trader group, but this can give a way out of "Oh, they launched a missile. Sorry, you're dead." provided they can keep up their end of the deal and keep the Boa alive.
5. Widen the spacelane, at least in safe systems. Put multiple Coriolis's in orbit, and let inbound traders pick one. Some work needed to make them all be the main station (so you can't go to one, buy 10TC, go to the next, buy 10TC, etc.) This makes the spacelane wider, which both reduces mass-locking on the way in, and also makes you safer if you stick to the middle (which is where police and bounty hunters will patrol) because pirates have more patrolled space to get through to see you. In dangerous systems, probably everyone will stick to the narrower bit until they reach the planet, and then split up.
6. Estimate the player's role: At the moment the game engine (approximately) treats the player as having role=trader. Even if they're a hardened pirate, or a famous bounty hunter, or flying a ship with no cargo hold. It should be possible to watch their actions and assign them the role that best fits their reputation. (So one very easy way to avoid being killed by pirates: join them). This can go back to trader behaviour above - if you get a reputation for helping out fellow traders in a fix, maybe they'll help you out too.
7. Give NPCs shields: ...but to even the odds, also give them systems damage, same as the player (or the Griff Krait). Once they start taking systems damage, there's a good chance that they'll be very combat averse and just try to reach a friendly port, or perhaps even jump straight out of the system, so scaring off a pirate by blowing chunks out of its hull doesn't just buy you a few minutes until it comes back. This might actually make quite a few ships easier - a basic shield is weaker than most NPC energy reserves, so you can probably scare it off with fewer shots, even if finishing it off is trickier ... and they might start retreating before firing missiles, so Jamesons without ECM could let them go. Conversely a proper pirate pack or a freighter's escort wing can cover each other to let shields recharge ... but you'd usually have to be looking for trouble to fight those

Extra core features needed:
(Some of these you might recognise from elsewhere, and there are obviously more general uses)

1. More flexible, probably JS-based, system populator.
2. Much higher-level AI language. (JS, yes, but probably a nice AI library on top of that so that it doesn't require fifty lines of code just to fly from A to B, reacting sensibly to things on the way)
3. Internal damage model for NPCs (and ideas about what damaging an NPC's Multi-Targeting System might actually achieve)
4. Allegiance model beyond ship groups and roles; more flexibility on player's perceived role

Seconding all of those and the suggestion that Nooby's little log be added to the game releases.

[JazHaz]

Nooby's little log

Cough! Who?

[Disembodied]

Nooby's little log

Cough! Who?

I think Zireal's referring to the (as-yet unfinished) Log of Commander Nooby, Pilot of the SS Beginner's Luck, being a True Record of his First Ventures, provided by me in instalments a few pages back in this thread. It's getting increasingly out-of-date, as NPC behaviours etc. develop by leaps and bounds, although it is still current for 1.77.

[Falcon777]

Hello, "nooby" player here.

First off, I played the original Elite game as a kid on my father's old commodore computer and had a blast. When I recently saw this game (time difference of about 17 years) was available, I downloaded it immediately.

Because of my past experience with Elite, I had a basic grasp of certain things all new commanders need to know: how to make a profit from trading, how to fly the ship, how to dock, which upgrades I needed to get first (or so I thought ) etc. Imagine my surprise when I found out there were space lanes! You couldn't use the torus drive to jump straight to the mainstation! Heresy! (joking, joking). I was also impressed with how the jump drive didn't launch you forward a certain distance but instead sped up your ship. So I very, very quickly adopted the tactic of going outside the space lanes. I knew that I could probably not take on pirates with the original equipment that I had, but avoiding the space lanes had a lot more to do with just making a profit as fast as I could, thus, jump driving instead of piddlying around by following the space lanes.

That being said, I did decide to fight at least one battle with pulse lasers before upgrading to beam. It was interesting. Not too difficult, but I found that I did have to use a missile to take him down.


So, as to difficulty with new players I don't feel like I'm qualified to speak about some things (like the lack of a tutorial; my dad taught me the basics of the game from elite and I never forgot; plus I was...am a reading adict and I loved going through the manual my dad had of Elite). However, concerning the safety of a system, I think you all are barking up the wrong tree concerning pirates. If a new player wants to be safe, he'll avoid combat and avoid the space lanes as the existence of combat, by definition, is not safe. However, that being said, I do feel like there's no difference between a corporate state and an anarchy as it stands now. After iron assing my Cobra Mk III, I decided to do some passenger ferrying. Some of those routes required me to go through an anarchy system or two. At first I was terrified because I remembered how dangerous those systems were within Elite. So I made sure to avoid the space lanes and hoped that I wouldn't land myself into a pirates nest along the way. Guess what? Never once entered combat at all. In fact, I didn't even see any pirates except near the witchpoint beacon and all I had to do was fuel inject away from them before jump driving to the mainstaition

So here's my thoughts about the safety of a system: the corporate states, democracies, and confederacies are supposed to generally be safer because of galcop activity, right? However, there's always, mind you, always a battle going on within the space lanes as I'm trading, and on top of that it doesn't matter what government type of planet I'm at, the mainstation has the exact same range of safety (nearly nonexistent for all practical purposes). Why not change the range of the safety "net" that galcop mainstation provides at all systems above anarchy, doubling the range for each level up you go? This would simulate the idea of the safer planet's providing more protection while at the same time leaving the difficulty of engaging pirates where it is at now. If someone did this, I'd also recommend increasing the activity of pirates outside the space lanes the more dangerous the system gets. This would provide a double layer of emphasis to the safety (or lack thereof) of a system without taking away the possibility of danger within even the most safest of systems.

[Zireael]

So here's my thoughts about the safety of a system: the corporate states, democracies, and confederacies are supposed to generally be safer because of galcop activity, right? However, there's always, mind you, always a battle going on within the space lanes as I'm trading, and on top of that it doesn't matter what government type of planet I'm at, the mainstation has the exact same range of safety (nearly nonexistent for all practical purposes). Why not change the range of the safety "net" that galcop mainstation provides at all systems above anarchy, doubling the range for each level up you go? This would simulate the idea of the safer planet's providing more protection while at the same time leaving the difficulty of engaging pirates where it is at now. If someone did this, I'd also recommend increasing the activity of pirates outside the space lanes the more dangerous the system gets. This would provide a double layer of emphasis to the safety (or lack thereof) of a system without taking away the possibility of danger within even the most safest of systems.

In vanilla Oolite, there are no ships of any kind outside space lanes. There exists an OXP which adds pirates in deep space, however.

I second these ideas

[Smivs]

Hi Falcon777, and welcome.
Good first post , and I like the 'increasing safety-net' idea as well.

[Falcon777]

Thanks for the welcome!

Actually the idea of a larger safety net came to me back when I was playing Elite itself. The fluff of the safer systems within the manual made it seem like the cops patrolled more within the safer systems, but this didn't seem to be true, (for the most part, I did end up seeing cops plenty of times, but not often enough to give the feeling I was expecting). Instead, the difference in safety for a planet system came from the amount of pirate activity. Within a safer system you could expect to make it all the way till mass lock with the planet/space station without encountering pirates (most of the time), whereas an anarchy system was dangerous as all heck because you were flying at full speed instead of jump driving, thus mambas would catch you all the time (it always seemed like mambas were the big dogs to me as I couldn't out run them).

Eventually I got used to the idea of having less pirates within safer systems in Elite, but the reason there were supposed to be less pirates was because of greater police activity, which there wasn't. The police would come to my aid if I was close to the space station, which is true of both games, but that requires me to get there in the first place. If a system has less pirate activity because of greater police patrolling, shouldn't the police be capable of providing a larger area where they will come to you aid? This always seemed odd to me.

Now, within Oolite it's slightly different because there aren't ships outside the space lanes. By adding more and more ships outside the space lanes while simultaneously decreasing the safety net the more dangerous the planet's government is, I think you could simulate the idea of a system where the planet's government matters. By adding ships outside the space lanes you have an increased chance of catching those players that are attempting to make a quick buck from jump driving. This encourages players to stick to the lanes, especially when they know there's a greater chance of them reaching spacial area protected by the police. I think the two ideas really have to go hand in hand for the general idea of emphasizing the planet's government type to work.

[Cody]

Hi Falcon777, and welcome aboard. One thought: I believe the spacelanes are going to be widened in a future version of Oolite.

[Falcon777]

Widened space lanes don't really do anything to help out with the effect I'm talking about. Sure, they'll give greater amount of pirate activity as there's a larger amount of area for them to spawn, but it doesn't do anything for the feel of a safer system via galcop patrols. Having a larger area where the main station will come to your aid (significantly larger in the case of confederacies, democracies, and corporate states), however, makes it actually feel safer to the newer player as he knows that even though there's no cops helping him when he just makes it within the "safe" area, just continuing to burn towards the planet will yield results he won't see as the game is right now, namely police coming to his aid. Simultaneously increasing pirate activity outside the space lanes makes using them more likely for the new player, especially if he does what I did (going back and forth between Zaonce and Lave).

Essentially what I'm saying is that the fluff given for why some systems are supposed to be safe and others not isn't being used within the game itself, and (assuming the coding isn't difficult) the solution seems fairly simple and easy.

[Cody]

Widened space lanes don't really do anything to help out with the effect I'm talking about.

I never said it would - 'twas merely a thought on the subject of 'lanes. <shrugs>

[Falcon777]

Ah, I see. My bad then.