Rise of the Hunter OXZ

[Redspear]

The Cooperative's police force, concentrated near a few influential planets, can no longer maintain order. The mercenaries they hire for a few credits a kill are too few, too unreliable to do so either. And in the darkness between the stars, an old enemy lurks, fearless, perhaps waiting for order to collapse entirely.

Based on ideas first expressed here, this oxp imagines a (mostly) weaker police force and a better equipped class of bounty hunters.

• v 1.0
  • Weakens the police and strengthens hunters by taking miltary lasers from the former and granting to the latter. Enter the Fer de Lance custom, the decommissioned Asp, the Mamba racer and the new Viper Mk II (a much weaker replacement for the interceptor).

As well as including some new ships (rearmed and sometimes with boosted speed) this ship also includes the burst laser from  Laser Combat Reimagined. This is granted to the police and also to the decommissioned Asp (as described in Elite lore).

With the interceptor gone

• piracy now seems like a much less restricted career choice
• the constrictor seems like a much more cutting edge vessel
• the viper pursuit (here granted fuel and injectors) can inherit the interceptor model
• military lasers don't seem so player centric when other lone wolves can occasionally have them (hunters)

https://wiki.alioth.net/img_auth.php/c/ ... hunter.oxz

[Switeck]

Could also make things "get worse" as the player gets immense amounts of kills, just to represent the downhill slide as the years pass.

[Redspear]

Quite possibly... That's quite a nice idea if done with a little subtlety I think. However, I need to better understand just what difference I've already made first.

Clearly the interceptor packs being gone is huge in some systems but the burst laser is slightly superior to the beam and so police are otherwise boosted.

The viper mk ii is really just a viper pursuit with an extra missile and the interceptor model (it would have been a shame to waste it), so maybe the next thing would be for them to diminish.

It would probably be difficult to get just right. Maybe instead the police can't afford missiles anymore or less of them have ecm (the latter being much harsher). I don't know.

Meanwhile with the interceptor being gone the police no longer look like they can thrash the living daylights out of the average pirate pack whenever their big guns show up. Instead, they are a brave resistance, doing their best against an ever incoming tide.

[Cholmondely]

Congratulations for thinking this through! This is the sort of dynamic deterioration which Oolite is crying out for!



There are several things here.

1) General across-the-Ooniverse effects

2) Effects in poorer systems (anarchies/feudals)

I'm dubious about restricting missiles and ECMs - the costs are so cheap compared to that of the ships that unless the Thargoids/pirates hit the missile-manufacturing facilities at Ceesxe, I see little logic for restricting them.

To me it makes much more sense to keep the better ships at the Corporates and the democracies and eliminate them elsewhere. The Dictatorships/Commies (with those OXPs running) will have their own defence forces, now unsupported by GalCop, and the Confederacies/Multi-Govs will need some sort of reduced GalCop support.

I really like the idea of the increasing irrelevance of the GalCop police forces.

We might also need some sort of beefed-up Hotrods where the pirates start operating as real gangs as they face less and less opposition (apart from presumably occasional Thargoids).

[Redspear]

Also to consider, as Switeck intimates, is that the player starts their career with the police arguably being not strong enough for a trading career and yet simultaneously too strong for a life as a pirate.

There's nothing dynamic here as yet.

The viper mk ii will tend to show up previously where the interceptors did, so there's still a sense of relative police strongholds.

I don't want to create the sense that the pirates have it easy as much as I do that the police have it tough. From the view of the former their nemesis was the viper interceptor, now it's the well equipped bounty hunters with their military and burst lasers.

So yes the police are 'failing ', however slowly, but hardened lone wolves (the player being/becoming one) occasionally fight back and this oxp gives them new tools with which to do so.

To my mind:

• It's less player-centric (re lasers)
• More consistent (re ship tech levels)
• More interesting (story wise)
• Less silly (interceptors tended to crush, vipers to get crushed)

Of course, anyone might disagree, in which case they probably shouldn't be installing it.

[Switeck]

I used Math.log(player.score+1) <- is the NATURAL LOG, not base-10 log!
1 kill = 0 points
2.718 kills = 1 point
7.4 = 2
20 = 3
55 = 4
149 = 5
404 = 6
1097 = 7
2981 = 8
8103 = 9
22026 = 10

So the simple logic to get that is this:
var pkillz = Math.log(player.score+1);

Capping it out at some arbitrary number is easy enough like this:
var pkillz = Math.min(10,Math.log(player.score+1));
...will limit that to 10 max, although it will take over 22k kills to get there!

To be technically not player-centric, you can use the ingame time of...
var hourz = clock.seconds /3600;
...for hours.

var dayz = clock.seconds /3600 /24;
...For days.

var yearz = clock.seconds /3600 /24 /365;
...For years.

[Redspear]

So the simple logic to get that is this:
var pkillz = Math.log(player.score+1);

Nice

I think I'd be tempted to combine something like that with the passage of time and/or number of galactic jumps.
So the player could slow or speed the effect if they wshed... but then it's early days for this oxp.

One thing that there would be room for (as a sense of the police losing control) would be pirates getting hold of burst lasers. That would both shake things up a bit and seem reasonably likely given sufficient time.

[Cholmondely]

Wiki page now up

Will need hacking to death...

[Redspear]

Will need hacking to death...

Or maybe not...

Pretty good summary I'd say.
Thanks

[Cholmondely]

Should the "Gameplay and Balance Indicator" be a blue one?

[Redspear]

As I often find with that system, YMMV...

Weaker police makes things harder, unless you're a pirate, but then stronger hunters make things easier, again unless you're a pirate.

It depends in part upon the distribution and frequency of both police and hunters under various system governments and tech levels.

It probably makes things more trader friendly in low tech systems (no interceptors anyway) but does the opposite in high tech systems.

If you reason that there are more of the former than the latter (and assume the typical player to be a trader) then yes, you could justify 'a blue one'.