Moderators: winston, another_commander
Ain't that the truth.Alex wrote:Hi RockDoctor,
You may have noticed that this is Oolite, the game that some say give you swimming lessons in the deep blue and stuff some rocks in your pockets to help you along... Enjoy and feel free to complain to the managment about your last demise.
We all love a good laugh.
No, but an aircraft carrier can be sunk by ten aeroplanes.DrunkenPalpatine wrote:PS: A grizzly won't have to flee if it was attacked by 10 tiny, angry squirrels.
Nono, I am perfectly happy with the Andormedclass size!Disembodied wrote:No, but an aircraft carrier can be sunk by ten aeroplanes.DrunkenPalpatine wrote:PS: A grizzly won't have to flee if it was attacked by 10 tiny, angry squirrels.
If you want a giant, super-powerful ship to be nimble and hard to hit as well, there may be problems. Oolite is a small-ship game: any attempt to add player-flyable capital ships is going to face severe difficulties - especially since the NPC AI got upgraded, and enemies no longer sit obligingly still while the player shoots them.
I'm not a programmer, but I suspect it might be difficult. An aircraft carrier protects itself from attack by enemy aircraft by 1) having its own defensive fighter screen; 2) having lots of anti-aircraft guns; 3) having a wider screen of escort ships, also armed with anti-aircraft guns, missiles etc. Without this, any big ship is going to be vulnerable to lots of little ones. You'd need to code in player-escort ships, to help fend off attacking enemies, and boost the power (and the intelligence) of automatic defences like the plasma turrets - at which point, you're not really playing the game, you're watching the game play itself.DrunkenPalpatine wrote:I think it is no problem to make this a well balanced big ship fighting game as well [...]
OK, so what this needs is: huge shields on the giant ships; amendments to small-ship AI, so they don't attack the giant ships; special giant ship AI, so they ignore the small ships; a new class of middle-sized ships (the Destroyers, in your example - because at the moment, the core game ships like the Mamba, the Cobra III, the Python etc. aren't Destroyers, they're aircraft) which will attack the giant ships and which can also hold their own against the small ships (which may be a problem - how tough/manoeuvrable/well-armed are these middle-sized ships going to be? Because Destroyers can get sunk by aircraft ...).DrunkenPalpatine wrote:PS: the Airplane vs. Battle Ship (Yamato-Class) picture is not valid since we have ships vs. ships. And 10 destroyers would not sink the Yamato. 10 destroyers vs. the Yamato is EXACTLY the picture we need to talk about!!!! This is what I am talking about: 9 Übersize cannons. 30 Middle size cannons. Massive armor. On the other side 10 or 20 destroyers.
THIS would be the battle I would love to see.
And actually by 80 foot wooden hulled boats as Admiral Tanaka found out.Disembodied wrote:Destroyers can get sunk by aircraft
Thank you very much dear Stormrider. I find it amazing how you all try to help me. And have no fear because I have so much fun playing the game. If i want I can avoid any troubles with my big ships. Consider me rather as spoiled child that wants his toy to function the way HE wants it to function. As I said in my very fist post somewhere: this is your game, your project. And if you want it to be a game where tiny ships can compete with 2000 times larger ones then I have to deal with it. And if the lasers are tiny the missiles are useless and everything HAS to stay like it is then I have to use tactics to avoid the massive pure disadvantages big ships have. Which means: not buying anything bigger than a cobra.Stormrider wrote:And actually by 80 foot wooden hulled boats as Admiral Tanaka found out.Disembodied wrote:Destroyers can get sunk by aircraft
@DrunkenPalpatine
Perhaps you need to adjust your tactics, if your escorts are running into you and you are ramming ships then it seems to me that you are fighting at much too close quarters for such a large ship. I would suggest that you launch your escorts, captured thargons, and drones before the enemy has a chance to close, then turn and use your aft laser to snipe ships as you draw them towards your screen of protection.
I don't feel that any ship should be invulnerable no matter how large it is. Its really cool to Luke Skywalker a Deathstar.
May I add that the big ships should NEED to decide what they want in regards of either a big bad ass laser (multiple laser system, too?) OR a lot of shields. Or nothing of that and only cargo space!Disembodied wrote:OK, so what this needs is: huge shields on the giant ships; amendments to small-ship AI, so they don't attack the giant ships; special giant ship AI, so they ignore the small ships; a new class of middle-sized ships (the Destroyers, in your example - because at the moment, the core game ships like the Mamba, the Cobra III, the Python etc. aren't Destroyers, they're aircraft) which will attack the giant ships and which can also hold their own against the small ships (which may be a problem - how tough/manoeuvrable/well-armed are these middle-sized ships going to be? Because Destroyers can get sunk by aircraft ...).
Disembodied wrote:I'm not a programmer, but I suspect it might be difficult. An aircraft carrier protects itself from attack by enemy aircraft by 1) having its own defensive fighter screen; 2) having lots of anti-aircraft guns; 3) having a wider screen of escort ships, also armed with anti-aircraft guns, missiles etc. Without this, any big ship is going to be vulnerable to lots of little ones. You'd need to code in player-escort ships, to help fend off attacking enemies, and boost the power (and the intelligence) of automatic defences like the plasma turrets - at which point, you're not really playing the game, you're watching the game play itself.DrunkenPalpatine wrote:I think it is no problem to make this a well balanced big ship fighting game as well [...]
The only non-escort option I can think of is to make the big ships' shields so hugely powerful that little ships' attacks would just bounce off (you'd need to rewrite the little ship AI so they know that their attacks are useless, though - then they'd just run away). Then you could have big battleships moving ponderously around the place, exchanging shots with great big weapons, powerful enough to damage each other. Except that all you've got then is slow-motion dogfighting, with massive shields and massive weapons.
OK, so what this needs is: huge shields on the giant ships; amendments to small-ship AI, so they don't attack the giant ships; special giant ship AI, so they ignore the small ships; a new class of middle-sized ships (the Destroyers, in your example - because at the moment, the core game ships like the Mamba, the Cobra III, the Python etc. aren't Destroyers, they're aircraft) which will attack the giant ships and which can also hold their own against the small ships (which may be a problem - how tough/manoeuvrable/well-armed are these middle-sized ships going to be? Because Destroyers can get sunk by aircraft ...).DrunkenPalpatine wrote:PS: the Airplane vs. Battle Ship (Yamato-Class) picture is not valid since we have ships vs. ships. And 10 destroyers would not sink the Yamato. 10 destroyers vs. the Yamato is EXACTLY the picture we need to talk about!!!! This is what I am talking about: 9 Übersize cannons. 30 Middle size cannons. Massive armor. On the other side 10 or 20 destroyers.
THIS would be the battle I would love to see.
Pirate packs should still be able to penetrate my Andromeda. I do not want to be invulnerable! NOT AT ALL. The only thing I want is a more realistic advantage of mass and protection. Let them hit me with their 18 lasers, OK. But then I should at least hold a laser capable of pulverizing ships the size of a gnat with 2 shots no matter which serial number 8 or 9 it is. By now I have to hit 30 times. While I am hit with 18 lasers. Right now in Oolite I actually AM equipped like a tiny ship but I have the size of the death star which makes a giant target, too by the way! THIS is the problem.Disembodied wrote:The only non-escort option I can think of is to make the big ships' shields so hugely powerful that little ships' attacks would just bounce off (you'd need to rewrite the little ship AI so they know that their attacks are useless, though - then they'd just run away). Then you could have big battleships moving ponderously around the place, exchanging shots with great big weapons, powerful enough to damage each other. Except that all you've got then is slow-motion dogfighting, with massive shields and massive weapons.
[shameless plug mode-on]This is pretty much whatDrunkenPalpatine wrote:This could be archived by deploying the "every equipment should use up cargo space".
![[EliteWiki]](/images/elitewikismall.png){kind=small}
Ship Configuration does - all equipment takes up space, and a certain amount of cargo space can be re-utilised as equipment space.[shameless plug mode-off]