Ship price balancing algorithm

[Commander McLane]

I think there is a responability for oxp authors to try to make their additions balanced and sensibly costed.

Unfortunately they do not

Okay, fair offer: Name your candidates. Then let's whether there was a sensible debate about them and what the outcome of this debate was. If necessary, let's re-debate them, contact the OXP-authors and argue for a fix of the price.

[LittleBear]

On the subject of Uber ships, I should point out that Uber ships actually make the game harder for the player as only NPCs benefit significantly from massive numbers of energy banks! NPCs do not have shields they have energy instead. An Adder with 2 banks has a score of 128, whereas a Cobra III has a score of 240 (4 banks). So an NPC cobra takes twice as much punishment to destroy as an NPC adder. However this rule does not apply to a player ship. ALL player ships have the same basic shield strength. Shield Boosters double the shield strength and Military Shields double them again. As a player, an Adder fitted with a Shield boosters will take TWICE as much pnishment to get its shields to zero as a Cobra III without shield boosters. True once your shields are destroyed you have 2 more banks protecting you, but energy banks only provide a tiny fraction of the protetion of a shield.

Remember also that if you install a ship OXP, pirates get access to the ship too! If you are a real bad-ass commander, put all the OXPs in and you'll find the game is much more challenging to play even flying a top ship like a Super Cobra, Tiger or Imperial Courier. You have only gained 3 more energy banks, giving you and extra 2 or 3 seconds survial under a Military Laser than you would have in the basic Cobra III. But a pirate in a Tiger will have shields that are TWICE the strength of YOUR Tiger. And if one of these NPCs happens to have both shield boosters and Military Shields then he has EIGHT times the shield strength of a basic cobra iii unequiped with any shield enhancements.

Not allowing a ship to carry Military Shields is a good balance. At first glance Ramon's Mosquito ships look uber: cheaper, faster and with a slightly larger cargo hold that a Cobra III. Until you realise that you can't fit a Military Shield and so you shiny new mossie will only take HALf the punishment of your trusty old Cobra III!

I wrote Assassins flying an Imperial Courier, but played it though again in a Cobra III before releasing it. It was slightly harder as my ship was a slower and not quite as nippy, but not significantly so.

[Captain Hesperus]

...even if you as player only have your imagination and the hints in the background infos, because you of course never see any interior of a ship (it's just a computer game).

Sorry, Wolfwood, if I have spoiled something for you here! But, it's like with Father Christmas: One day we have to faith the truth! He doesn't really exist!!!

Captain Hesperus

[Ark]

Okay, fair offer: Name your candidates. Then let's whether there was a sensible debate about them and what the outcome of this debate was. If necessary, let's re-debate them, contact the OXP-authors and argue for a fix of the price.

I think the first 2 candidates is

1 supercobra: increase of the base price from 300.000 to 500.000. Also the decrease of the energy recharge rate from 7 to 4 or 4,5

2 griffin: It has almost the same base price with cobra mk3. Increase of the base price from 185.000 to 385.000

EDIT:To be honest I took that idea because I read somewhere that there is a range limit for the equipment_price _factor.
So I wondered if in the same way the program can lock the max characteristics of the player’s ship in some uber cases. Then I thought that maybe a check to the price would be better. I didn’t want to cause such an agitation to the forum.

By the way does anybody knows if oolite has a build-in limit for max speed for example?

[Cmdr James]

I have several points to make:

Firstly, I have no problems with the suggestions of new costs, and ship changes here.

However, I think some discussion over the costing strategy would be sensible. I assume we are using the cobra 3 as the reference cost?. Speed, roll and pitch, cargo and shields are the factors altering by cost? As a very very loose approximation how should these be weighted? Twice the shield is way more than twice as good, so, maybe a n*4 relationship, whereas, in my opinion speed is not such a big deal, so maybe linear. So a cobra 4 (whatever) with 8 shields and twice the speed of a cobra 3, would cost 5 times as much as a cobra 3. something like that to give us a ballpark view?

Also, I think the primary concern should be to get balance in all the ships, and to document those that are unbalanced (Rattle Cutter would be a good example if it were available to a player). Regardless of cost, some ships are simply too good, with too few disadvantages.

[Ramirez]

For what it's worth, when designing new ships I've tended to follow the index developed by Wolfwood some time ago (sorry, I don't remember the URL so I can't give a link) as that tends to give a very reasonable guide to the price and performance of any new ship. It's very easy to create an uber ship; the challenge is to create something that fills a gap in the market and that still seems like a realistic option.

[Captain Hesperus]

(Rattle Cutter would be a good example if it were available to a player). Regardless of cost, some ships are simply too good, with too few disadvantages.

Actually, the Rattle Cutter for players would just be uberfast. Player ships cannot have multiple lasers on a single facing.

Captain Hesperus

[Wolfwood]

For what it's worth, when designing new ships I've tended to follow the index developed by Wolfwood some time ago (sorry, I don't remember the URL so I can't give a link) as that tends to give a very reasonable guide to the price and performance of any new ship. It's very easy to create an uber ship; the challenge is to create something that fills a gap in the market and that still seems like a realistic option.

Glad to hear someone found it useful!

I think this might be the table in question... It's been so long I'm not completely certain, though...

http://www.susimetsa.net/funstuff/oolite/index2c.html

[Ark]

Very nice work wolfwood

I think someone must put this on the wiki with a lebel
FOR ALL OXP CREATORS

EDIT: It seems that the range of volume (m3) and W*H*L (meters) could be wider based on the concept of miniaturization.
Opps what did I say. I just gave a big excuse to all those who created an uber ship in the past. Delete. …delete…delete

[Cmdr James]

Something I would like, but dont think exists, is a relationship between cargo capacity, and minimum size. It seems to me that some ships seem to be cavernous, without being really very big.

So, if you want to carry 300 tonnes, you need to be aprox 10 times the volume of a cobra. Or however you want to express it.

[JensAyton]

Didn’t you know? The cargo bay is a bag of holding.