Wiki-article about game mechanics

[Sarin]

Well...it's the one thing I kinda miss...I got a quite a few questions about it myself, and I believe that many new players would appreciate that...for example, are values for laser power, shield capacity and shield recharge fixed or individual for every craft...and that kind of questions.

[DaddyHoggy]

I think some of this is on the Wiki already - not in one place I'll give you that - but while some would find that an annoyance in the wiki I find it "challenging" or "intruiging"

Of course, you could always write a definitive guide yourself...

[Sarin]

Well, I definitely didn't find that there...and neither on forums.

[nijineko]

as you dig down into the layers on the wiki, some of the individual ship entries have the stats for each ship. ^^

[Sarin]

yea, but what I asked about isn't there...

[nijineko]

ah, i see.... hmmmmm. i'm sure i've seen at least a partial list of ship characteristics somewhere, speaking from a game mechanics point of view. well, if nothing else works, just open up your shipdata.plist for each ship... it's all there. then you could compile it into a resource and post it to the wiki. =D i'd start with the shipyards file, as i think that's the one that has about 80 other oxps all contained within it in one ~80mb-ish file.

[Thargoid]

Well...it's the one thing I kinda miss...I got a quite a few questions about it myself, and I believe that many new players would appreciate that...for example, are values for laser power, shield capacity and shield recharge fixed or individual for every craft...and that kind of questions.

They're all individual per craft, or at least defined craft type as defined in the ships shipdata.plist entry. So generic ships (Adder, Python, Cobra Mk III etc) will individually have the same values (two generic Adders will have the same stats) but variants with their own shipdata.plist entries can have differing stats (that's partly what makes them variants, along with possible AI and texture changes).

For your example above, laser power is the "weapon_energy" key (missiles have their own shipdata.plist entry, and the weapon_energy there is their warhead yield), shield capacity is "max energy" (NPC ships don't have shields as such, only overall energy levels) and shield recharge is "energy_recharge_rate" (same as previous comment for NPC ships).

The two simplest sources are the games shipdata.plist file (under oolite.apps/Resources/Config or similar) and the one from realistic shipyards. That will cover most of the ships in the game (everything but individual OXP ships).

Many ships already have wiki pages, but as to what content they have in terms of information is rather variable. Similarly OXPs can change stats on ships (either over-write existing ones or make variants) so such a "master list" may have limited value/accuracy anyway.

Also don't forget the later pages of the "Oolite reference sheet.pdf" file that comes with the game. That has some stats for various ships that come as part of the basic game.

[Sarin]

Thanks...finally someone explained it to me...

one thing tho...been looking through RS shipdata.plist, and lots of ships apparently don't have "weapon_energy" key...so that means it is default value?

[Thargoid]

Yup, it's the default value for whatever weapon it is equipped with. And to forestall the next question, those are (to quote the wiki shipdata.plist page I linked to before):

Default values are: WEAPON_PLASMA_CANNON = 6.0; WEAPON_PULSE_LASER = 15.0; WEAPON_BEAM_LASER = 15.0; WEAPON_MINING_LASER = 50.0; WEAPON_THARGOID_LASER = 12.5; WEAPON_MILITARY_LASER = 23.0

[Sarin]

I actually wasn't gonna ask that...I read that part before.

Overall...it really influenced my choice of future ship...I've gone through all ships I've considered, looking for weapon power...ultimately it looks like I'll take Reaper...military laser with 150% power of standard

[nijineko]

i'm using an imperial courier right now myself. ^^ i know it's not the fastest, but it's pretty good for what i need.

[Sarin]

I'll get courier once I have enough money, it's a decen all-rounder, with enough cargo space for serious trading and it's maneuverable enough to do some serious fighting...but since I started again recently cause I screwed some things big time, I have only starting Cobra III with a few basic upgrades and about 12k...and I have no idea how to get money FAST. To make things wors, I bought a trumble...and now I got half a dozen of these thing and dunno how to get rid of them...I tried sundiving, and blew up from overheating before they died....

[DaddyHoggy]

Interesting reading the weapon stats - when I used to "play" Frontier and by play I mean get terribly frustrated with - the quickest way to get through combat was to fit a mining laser to a turret - pause the game - position the turret aimpoint over the target and press fire - unpause the game - laser would fire - enemy ship would explode - the mining laser was spot on for this - slow rate of fire but some serious oomph!

[Sarin]

I played F:FE for some time...I haven't used such tactics, but really...the combat was booring there. It was just about aiming and luck...no maneuvering could help. I had Cobra III there, and along with Asp it was best ship there IMO. Enough size for 4MW laser, class 3 military drive and few shield generators to cover some lucky shots from 1MW lasers, and with its small size it was hard enough to hit to give me time to blast every enemy before they hit me. Really boring....

[nijineko]

the trick to sundiving is to bring your cabin temp just into the red, and then bobbing up and down to keep it there. after a bit the trumbles will start to make noises and act irritated. that's how you know you're on the right track. assuming that you define right somewhat different from a certain captain.... ^^