Proposal for 1.82: equipment balancing and choices

[Venator Dha]

Thinking about this some more, might it be possible to introduce dependencies for certain high-powered items, e.g. the military laser? So that, for example, you can't fit a military laser to a ship unless you have Naval Power Couplings installed first? I don't know what would happen in such circumstances if your Naval Power Couplings got damaged ... having the laser cease to work at all would be a real pain. Maybe it would just downgrade to a beam laser? (Of course, it's possible that a "military laser" isn't actually a physically different weapon from a pulse or beam one - it might be the same piece of kit, just with a lot more juice running through it.)

One thing I've noticed, starting a new Jameson, is that the beam laser stage doesn't last very long (or didn't, in my case, anyway). I think I maybe made about five or six trips, tops, armed with a beam laser before I could afford to fit a military one. My pulse-laser days lasted a lot longer.

Taking the laser power dependencies to one possible conclusion:
there is only one type of laser unit (that cannot be damaged) but it's output in damage/heat/range is dependent upon the energy units and power grids/couplings that are installed. Damage to these will just reduce the power output of the laser, as would the suggested temporary disruptions.

I've always thought that the high end equipment is very cheep, once you have got enough money for a full hold on a Cobra MkIII, it doesn't take many runs to get them.

[Switeck]

A simple balance fix for the Beam Lasers is to reduce their rate of fire so they're not almost a magnitude better than Pulse Lasers. Don't touch damage or heat build-up. Problem solved.

The way laser fire is drawn means that it's actually easier to halve the damage+heat per shot than it is to halve the rate of fire (assuming we want to keep the 'beam' visual), even though the effect on weapon power is basically identical.

Ok, I can support your method especially if it's easier to do. Missed shots would matter a LOT less if damage+heat per shot is low. However this can be balanced in a sense that Military Lasers require precise aim while Beam Lasers can be walked across a target because you can afford the heat costs of a lot of misses.

[Norby]

I think we'd have to make the Anaconda (and actually the other freighters, which aren't by external dimensions much different to the Cobra III) a fair bit bigger than they currently are if we wanted to go down that route, which then means making the stations bigger so they actually fit through the door

I do not want larger doors, the dock of new Coriolis in v1.80 is 26% wider and 60% taller than before.
I also do not recommend to enlarge the freighters due to the volume of all ships are already enlarged to 36 times more (3.3*3.3*3.3) than the ancient size. If must get larger differences then shrink the smaller ships.

[Wildeblood]

I also do not recommend to enlarge the freighters due to the volume of all ships are already enlarged to 36 times more (3.3*3.3*3.3) than the ancient size. If must get larger differences then shrink the smaller ships.

What's all this? Have the ship models been enlarged? So ship scale is even further removed from planet scale? Say it isn't so.

[cim]

No changes have been (or will be) made compared with earlier Oolite versions. This was in response to a question about calculating ship equipment/cargo capacities automatically from their bounding box.

[Norby]

Have the ship models been enlarged?

I mean long times ago when Oolite is formed, which is disccussed in the rescaling topic.

Another argument to shrink and not enlarge is the much better aim of NPCs in 1.80, so the smaller sizes can lower the to-hit ratio nearer to 1.77.

[maik]

My biggest concern here is that it will fundamentally change the game and the gameplay. That isn't to say it is a bad thing, but if this is done then Oolite 1.82 won't be the game that Oolite 1.80 is, and that could be quite a shock and possibly turn-off to many people (and it will take it a significant step away from Elite, where this didn't factor in).

This is my impression, too. It seems the changes would move Oolite further away from its rather arcade-type roots to a more simulation-type game. I do like the quirkiness of the current game, where nothing really fits but can be explained anyways with enough handwavium. I can't say the proposed changes are a bad idea, in fact they all sound reasonable, but I tend more towards wanting to see them implemented in another game.

[cim]

Having been thinking a bit more over the last few days about how this might work, trying to put actual numbers on it, etc. I think that the additional customisation - energy banks, engines, thrusters, etc. is going to be very difficult to make work without some extremely unpopular sacrifices.

The essential problem - I'll show it with engines, but it applies to the other types of equipment too - is that you need some way to determine whether a ship has a speed of 0.30 because it's a Mamba (small, light) with a light fighter engine, or because it's a Cobra III NPC (heavy) with a much bigger engine. The "obvious" answer to automatically calculate that from the ship's mass falls apart because the mass numbers aren't much use - the Cobra III is heavier than the Boa II. Fortunately we don't really use the mass number for anything other than working out how far you have to be from the main station before you can enter witchspace, some mostly irrelevant calculations for how long a wormhole stays open (usually the wormhole's own mass far outweighs the ships in it), and determining how many hundred times you died in a head-on collision.

So essentially you need to specify something in the shipdata - either override the automatic mass calculation, or add an explicit engine_effect parameter - which says what effect they have. Ships with that parameter can replace their engines; ships without get their speed read in from shipdata and it's assumed that they have a fixed engine that can't be upgraded. Now that's a complete mess - two entirely separate ways of calculating a ship's top speed which also affect its equipment eligibility (and there's no way that "every ship OXP" is an acceptable loss from a deliberate compatibility break, either)

Repeat for thrusters, energy banks, energy generators, etc. (banks and generators are a bit easier, but thrusters are much worse)

Take those bits out, though, and there's not enough left to make it particularly interesting for a low OXP game: assuming the player sticks with the Cobra III, then there aren't that many alternative configurations available just with the basic equipment set - it just becomes "how close to owning everything do you get before you sell the Large Cargo Bay". Without that, the scope for OXPs to add further interesting decisions is also fairly limited, especially since it'll be a while before any of the existing equipment gets modified to take up space ... and as Thargoid said they can always use hold space directly, and just assume the player is flying something roughly similar in capacity to the Cobra III. The ability to use hold space hasn't exactly caught on much since 1.77 fixed the bugs in it, so maybe there's not that much demand for this.


So ... what does that leave?

• Remove the "optional_equipment" section from shipyard.plist and "available_to_all" from equipment.plist and replace them in the core game with more use of condition scripts. These are virtually useless to OXP equipment anyway.
• Make all equipment sellable, including a configurable sale price, at stations which have the TL to repair it. Pylon weapons continue to be sellable almost everywhere. Need to be a little careful here that selling the initial pulse laser becomes an interesting decision rather than an automatic one.
• Adjust the install/repair/removal times for core equipment items to be more interesting.
• Breakable standard equipment might still be worth considering even if you can't remove it to save space
• Remove the Multi-Targeting System, since no-one spoke up to say it was important to their combat strategy.
• Make equipment damage proportional to attack damage so missile hits really hurt even if you survive
• Introduce 'disrupted' equipment state.
• ECM graphics improvements
• Increase NPC equipment usage and damage
• Advanced Nav Array allows specifying a distant system as a jump destination and automatically updates your route as you travel. I think with the chart improvements kanthoney has made this might be practical. (Intermediate waypoints ... probably not for now - route calculation is slow enough as it is)
• Halve beam laser damage/heat to make it not quite as big a jump over the pulse laser and make fights last a bit longer.

I've bolded the ones likely to make a significant gameplay difference.

[Cody]

Remove the Multi-Targeting System, since no-one spoke up to say it was important to their combat strategy.

<coughs - raises a belated hand> I missed this bit - it is something I use to rapidly fire three/four missiles at three/four different pre-locked targets. I suspect it would be a slower process having to cycle through all possible targets using the TSME, but I'd need to experiment.

[cim]

Fair enough, then. I might change it so that if you fire a missile and your next missile doesn't have a target set yet it just copies the previous target to that missile, though.

[Norby]

banks and generators are a bit easier

There are energy units but I missing an extra energy bank equipment. The "emergency" and "capacitor" oxp solutions are not as good as if there is a support to add a real bank. The equipment itself can be in an oxp if not voted to include into the core. An additional_banks value in shipdata can determine the maximal upgrade, using 1 bank as default if not specified.

selling the initial pulse laser becomes an interesting decision rather than an automatic one.

There is at least one bribed dock worker in every station who will report to the bad guys if somebody undock without lasers anytime so should facing to harder travels.

[mossfoot]

Having been thinking a bit more over the last few days about how this might work, trying to put actual numbers on it, etc. I think that the additional customisation - energy banks, engines, thrusters, etc. is going to be very difficult to make work without some extremely unpopular sacrifices.

Perhaps some level of customization can still be salvaged in a variation of the 3 tier "Pimp My Ride" suggestion? https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16543

Rather than working out bigger/smaller engines, it's more a matter of fine tuning and customizing what you already have. The base stats are factory spec, and while you can tweak it (like overclocking a CPU) the more you do, the more likely you'll have it breakdown, malfunction, etc? Not sure if you weighed in on that thread before or not.

[Disembodied]

• Halve beam laser damage/heat to make it not quite as big a jump over the pulse laser and make fights last a bit longer.

I've bolded the ones likely to make a significant gameplay difference.

Can anything be done with regard to the price of the military laser? At the moment, assuming the "best" order for equipment installation (i.e. get injectors, a LCB, and an ECM before upgrading the laser) the pulse laser lasts for about the first dozen trips. Once fitted, a beam laser only lasts for five or six before there's enough cash to buy the unquestionably superior military laser. But if the beam laser can be made to stay active for longer, by halving its heat rate, then it might become the preferred weapon for people who would rather fight a close-up free-fire furball than a precision sniping match. And if the military laser was a lot more expensive, then people might have the chance to try it out before upgrading. Maybe make the military laser cost C*12,000, instead of C*6,000?

Also, would it be worth making the mining laser into some sort of "big, slow punch" option? E.g. same range and rate of fire as a pulse laser, same heat and damage as a military laser, maybe? It might then be thought of as a potential emergency (rear?) gun.

[Smivs]

Having had time to think about this, and that it now seems that balancing space between cargo and equipment is probably not workable, I think that we should maybe just develop the existing system further.
One idea that might go some way towards making this more immersive is to link equipment more. For example make energy-thirsty equipment more dependant on the ship's energy system. For example, set items like shield boosters as requiring an Extra (or Naval) Energy Unit. Possibly also link them to total energy, so you need say four energy banks to allow fitment of shield boosters, and at least two energy banks are required before an ECM can be fitted.
Perhaps also the energy drain rates could be looked at as well, to re-balance things a bit, and make more equipment actually drain energy - the big oddity of Oolite is that plasma turrets don't drain energy. They should, a lot!
As far as 'space' is concerned, I think we should assume that any given ship has space available for the optional equipment avaiable for it, but extra equipment (OXP equipment in other words) should require hold space to be given up. Perhaps a minimum of 1TC for most equipment, but giving the author the option of requiring more space to be required/used for really powerful equipment. There should also be a requires_cargo_space = 0 (zero) option for obviously small items or those intended for fitment into the cockpit.
This approach should be simple, relying mostly just on condition scripts, and leaves the equipment options more or less as they are but adds a bit of realism to the system as well. It will depend a bit on OXP authors embracing the concept of equipment actually needing space, and players recognising the same thing - that you don't get something for nothing. But overall an approach like this could deliver a more realistic and believeable system which is familiar to players and authors alike. An evolution rather than a revolution.

[maik]

So ... what does that leave?

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I like that list a lot, the items are thoughtful evolutions of Oolite.