Balance

[Kroc]

I prefer the native gameplay over the OXPs because most OXPs are too extreme and don't show enough restraint. But I do think the native settings need tweaking. There arn't any ships you can get early on that beat the Cobra MkIII, they're all overpriced, too much / too little cargo, and all slower! What I want is two mid-range ships that let you decide between speed or storgage; something along the lines of [email protected] or [email protected]. The one and only ship I've seen faster than the MkIII has no cargo.

[LittleBear]

Some ships do give both trading, piracy, mission and combat cababilities. The Super Cobra has an expandable Cargo of 65 tones and is nearly as good in Combat as an Asp. The Imperial Courier is a good fighter but can hall 100 tones. The PCC is a very nice ship, big hold at 150 tones but can be kitted out fully for combat.

To get a quick start in the game, I'd recockemd playing from the start with all the OXPs installed. Otherwise your stuck really with the Cobra at 35 tones and the python (usless for combat) at 100 tones. There is little middle ground, as you have to make a lot of frustrating trade runs, where you could be carrying more but you havent got enough cash to buy the next biggest cargo ship. OXPs intrudce a lot of ships with cargo capacities between 35 and 100, making the ship prograssion curve genentler on the way to affording one of the top ships.

As a general rule, don't bling you ship out with equipment. It does increase the value of your ship, but there is a sensible reduction as your gear is second hand. Save your credits to buy a ship with more cargo space. Just equip with the basics:- ECM, Injectors and scoops.

Bouncing between a low tech anarcy and a rich corperate state is good. Fly with a half full bay of computes / furs. Kill pirates and take their cargo in the anacy and be a pirate in the corparate state. Remember you only make 30 credits a tone on Computers you buy. Most cargo scooped is more as it is pure profit.

Its up to you wheather to play with OXPs in but remember THE PIRATES GET THEM TOO!!! The game was desgined to be expanded (Giles wrote many of the OXPs) and you miss out on most of Oolite if you run without them, including most of the missions. Many OXPs only give the ships to pirates. The IC may be a good ship, but try it against a multi-turreted Bandasnatch pirate! If you install them all, I think you'll find the game harder and more challenging.

[ramon]

Have you tried my marett_vol1.oxp

The Mosquito Trader has 40Ton capacity at 0.30 or for a quicker ship try the Mosquito Sport 25Tons at 0.36

I've uploaded it so it'll be back up on Oosat 2 any day now, if you've not already got it.

PS in fact our lord Giles originally reviewed it as "beautiful ships and an excellent balance of stats"

[Dr. Nil]

Some ships do give both trading, piracy, mission and combat cababilities.

To me the Supercobra is too broken a ship because it betters the MK-III in both speed and cargo. Flying it would almost be a bit like editing the credit entry in my save file. It's installed but I leave it to the NPCs to fly it. The small fast ships are out there flying around. Those pilots must make a living somehow. I'd like their sources of income to be open to players too. It's not about stopping some from hauling 35t furs one way and 35t computers the other and now and then shoot up a trader and scoop the goods when no cops are about and the computers or furs in the last system were too scarce or badly priced to fill up the cargo space. It's about making it possible for others to choose not to play like that. Opening new sources of action and income like you've done it with Asssassins 1 in Galaxy 7 (which I still look very much forward to). Did you already mention an A2 somewhere? What galaxy would it be in?

ramon: The Mosquitos are beauties and choice ships in their classes.

[LittleBear]

Working on A2. It will pick up the plot where Assassins leaves off. Completing A1 is a requirement. Assassins will leave you with clues as to what may happen next and where...

[Dr. Nil]

If you put it in Galaxy 6 and then made and A3 which required completion of A2 in Galaxy 5 etc then you could get a real nice kickback from the company producing the galactic hyperdrives

[Ramirez]

IPassenger transports with multiple passengers over short distances (1-3 jumps) with a higher pay-off.

More expensive and larger cabins for transporting VIPs at much higher prices (perhaps only available to pilots above a certain combat rating).

I do like the idea of better paid (and higher risk) passenger contracts - at the moment you get a tip if you complete a trip early, but it's nowhere near the kind of reward you get for delivering precious cargo. I've just finished off a little shuttle that would be perfect for the VIP transport market (the one in my current avatar) - I'm trying to work out whether it's possible to give its escape pods a higher-than-usual reward value without having to resort to mission scripts. For the moment though I've packed it with gold to make it an attractive target.

Is it possible to make some commodities illegal or at least very sought after in certain systems (e.g. in response to a medical emergency or civil war)? This could create some interesting trade opportunities but again may require too much in the way of mission scripting.

[LittleBear]

Should be able to increase the price of a commodatiy in a particular system with planetinfo.plist and commodaties.plist (but I haven't tried it).

A bounty can be set very easily (have tried this one). You need a characters plist like this:-

Code: Select all

<key>bbot_prototype</key>
	<dict>
	<key>name</key>
	<string>a Malfunctioning BattleBot</string>
	<key>bounty</key>
	<integer>250</integer>
	</dict>

Then in the ship's shipdata include:-

Code: Select all

<key>unpiloted</key>
<false/>
<key>pilot</key> 
<string>bbot_prototype</string>

The number in bounty is the minium number of credits paid out. Oolite does to random things to it to somtimes make it bigger.

[Dr. Nil]

Ok. It looks just like something I'd like to use for escaped astromine convicts. I might ask for some further explanitions if I start looking at that.

Couldn't help it and actually had a peek at the AI for the bots in Assassins. Being stunned by ECM as I read somewhere that they were would not be a defective feature of a ship piloted a mining convict (from the view of guards and bountyhunters).

[LittleBear]

There are different versions of the BattleBots AI. One version has a "bug" that causes them to be sent to sleep if you trigger an ECM burst when the Bott transmitts an Error message over the com-link. Once asleep the Bot becomes "scoopable". If scooped when asleep, Oolite gives the message "You have captured a malfunctioning BattleBot" (due to the piolt entry) and appears on the arrival report when you dock as "For capturing a malfunctioing BattleBot you are paid a bounty of XXX" If you just want the pod of a convict to be scoopable, then you don't need a special AI. As long as you give the ship a pod in shipdata. Or you could define a special pod and have it spwaned as death_action and give it a nullAI and piolt entry. That would cause a pod to be spewed out from the destroyed ship.

[Dr. Nil]

I'll look back into the bots at some later time. But I better play some more, so I can see them in action soon. The mining pods a very small, but I haven't really worked much at making them scoopable yet. They should become that eventually. Also it wouldn't make much sense for the regimes to give their labour camp workers escape pods, so that solution is definately out of the question. The escaped convicts should be really easy to catch once located. I was thinking something like not only having them stunned by ECM but also have the security system start a nice big flashing light and perhaps even sends a comms message. They really don't like convicts running away. I plan the rewards to be along 200Cr for killing one and 500-1000Cr for bringing a live one back to the mines. That's some cash, but there won't be that many of them, and if implemented I'll probably make them try to avoid the lanes (also to keep pirates from picking them away with a single shot. But it's all just loose ideas more or less. Better get some play time wedged in somewhere too.

[HueijRevisited]

But what would happen if you pick up escapees and then jump to a democracy so they can apply for asylum? An interstellar diplomatic crisis?

[LittleBear]

Instead of giving them escape pods, you could use the AI for the bots, but instead of having ECM set them to the "GETTING_SLEEPY" state have energy low set them to this state. That way, if the player just blasts the ship away, he gets the bounty for a kill. But if he fires carfully to get the tiny low energy ship down to energy low without destroying it (harder than its seems! - many hours of testing low energy bots!), then the whole ship becomes scoopable and if scoop will pay the big bounty when the player docks. Could also include a send commsmessage {prisoner-plea} when on energy low to give the player a clue. Looks good!