'Better' ships than Cobra MkIII?

[Eric Walch]

This OXP ship is really very good, with enough room to trade in the high profit lines, and an excellent scoop camera (available as an external view) which is unique to this model, as far as I know.

Scooping behaviour is something I always miss in ship selection. I never looked really at it because I always fly my bbc, but there must be differences between ships. From programming point of view, every collision with the bottom-front half starts the scooping process. From this collision point the cargo is sucked-in in the direction of the scooping point.

With this in mind, ships with a wide tail like the boa's have a good change of hitting the cargo with the back half and hereby destroying the cargo. With ships that have a belly and a small tail it is more likely you either miss it or scoop it in.

Also the scoop position is important because hitting it close to the scoop position will immediately suck it in, while hitting it a bit off needs the tractor beams to do the job. And that takes some time while you can loose your cargo when making a sharp turn doing this.

I don't know of any ship that has this scoop position explicit defined, so they all use the default position. By reposition it for your ship, you can make scooping slightly easier. (I tailored the position for mine bcc). e.g. place the scoop position so that after aligning the pod with a certain part of the hud, will make you always hit it on the spot.

It would be interesting which ships are good at scooping and which not.

[ClymAngus]

Shameless plug!



low cargo, but a good turn of speed, well calibrated turning speed and accuracy to die (because of) for.

V click the sig to download V

[Cmdr Wyvern]

I don't know of any ship that has this scoop position explicit defined, so they all use the default position. By reposition it for your ship, you can make scooping slightly easier. (I tailored the position for mine bcc). e.g. place the scoop position so that after aligning the pod with a certain part of the hud, will make you always hit it on the spot.

All the ships I mentioned in my post above have their scoop positions defined. Scoop points are set forward for ease of scooping. Just keep the salvage on the low part of the HUD, and *sluurrp* it's yours.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

No matter what vessel you choose to star-ride in, you'll want to purchase a small cute fuzzy cargo eating rapidly multiplying snack...err, pet to make burgers with...err, keep you company in the void.

--- Derik Roh'i, filling in (sorta) for Captain Hesperus

[Lestradae]

Captain Hesperus has started a franchise?

Damn

[Cmdr Wyvern]

Captain Hesperus has started a franchise?

Damn

Our public nuisance...err, esteemed Captain seems to have taken a holiday, else he'd be here peddling the vermin...err, the cute little buggers.

Some one had to step up to mind the store, as it were. Besides, a Kirin is an expensive ship to operate. Also, every pirate needs a trumble chewing on his laser power couplings.

[DaddyHoggy]

Captain Hesperus has started a franchise?

Damn

Our public nuisance...err, esteemed Captain seems to have taken a holiday, else he'd be here peddling the vermin...err, the cute little buggers.

Some one had to step up to mind the store, as it were. Besides, a Kirin is an expensive ship to operate. Also, every pirate needs a trumble chewing on his laser power couplings.

He's not even replying to PMs - one of the reasons my outbox is almost full...

[ClymAngus]

Captain Hesperus has started a franchise?

Damn

Our public nuisance...err, esteemed Captain seems to have taken a holiday, else he'd be here peddling the vermin...err, the cute little buggers.

Some one had to step up to mind the store, as it were. Besides, a Kirin is an expensive ship to operate. Also, every pirate needs a trumble chewing on his laser power couplings.

He's not even replying to PMs - one of the reasons my outbox is almost full...

Some where in space there is a drifting ship, at the helm a small pile of purring, cheeping critters framed by a scattering of picked clean feline bones and grey fluff.

Yup, they finally got him.

[Commander McLane]

I appreciate we've all started out with the MkIII and loved it, it's a cracking all-rounder. Fighters and traders can part-ex their MkIII for something more appropriate, but are there any standard or non-standard ships which improve stat wise on the MkIII in all areas?

I'm playing as basically a trader who likes a scrap but will try a little of everything and I imagine this will be my path through the game. I've no desire to keep buying ships depending on where my career whims take me and I want new vehicles to be improvements across the board if possible, though I suspect it may not be.

Any reccommendations?

It is noteworthy that the Cobra 3 is indeed one of the best ships in the game, with a good overall performance, and you cannot get a better ship from the original set (I respectfully disagree with the BCC-promoters here). And there is a simple reason for that: In all original ELITE-versions there was no ship-trading. You got your Cobra 3 and were stuck with it. Thus it had to be a pretty decent ship, in order to allow you to succeed in all aspects of the game with it.

For Oolite this perhaps means a slight problem. What's the point in buying another ship, if your first ship is already close to the best? Shouldn't you better start in a rusty Adder and make your way up to a Cobra? Would be a nice idea, but Oolite tries to be as faithful as possible to ELITE. So it's the other way: In order to allow you to upgrade, non-standard (OXP) ships have to be bigger and bigger in all aspects, which is why we used to have a lot of debates about when a ship is considered to be "uber". Notably these debates seem to have abated (no pun intended) these days. Probably an indicator that everybody has accepted the arms race into "uber"-territory as unavoidable...

[Sendraks]

I think possibly the debate around uber ships has subsided a little because the process of designing new ships has "matured" somewhat.

Basically ship design comes in a few flavours.

1) The trade-off approach where, if a ship is going to be "better" than the cobra MkIII but price comparable, a trade off is made. Slightly faster = slightly less cargo and vice versa. Or the changes are largely graphical. Of course the value of a particular improvement, say speed or pitch or roll, may mean a greater trade off has to be made in another area (significant loss of cargo bay or shields or energy banks).

2) A ship that is "better" in almost every respect is made much more expensive than the MKIII. Considerable work is involved in amassing the necessary cash to acquire such a ship, although the paths to doing so can be varied.

I like both of these approaches and I try to avoid any oxp which introduces a ship (like the Super Cobra) which is better than the standard MKIII in every aspect, but where the price of vessel is not stupendously high. In the case of the Super Cobra, I just don't like it, as it is to me a Cobra MKIII that has been mysteriously made "better" somehow, whereas you can see the design changes in the Cobra Courier, Rapier and Clipper versions.

If I think a ship is too "cheap" in game for what it offers I'll either modify the oxp so the ships stats reflect the cost or cost to reflect the stats. However, I think for the most part, many of the ships available to the player are broadly in the right place.

[ClymAngus]

Let's not forget rarity as well, you can't buy it if it's not being sold. Finding a certain ship can be a mission in itself.

[Sendraks]

Let's not forget rarity as well, you can't buy it if it's not being sold. Finding a certain ship can be a mission in itself.

Agreed, however, I wouldn't want rarity to justify a low price tag on a very potent ship. The opposite should be the case and is the case with many oxps.

[ClymAngus]

Let's not forget rarity as well, you can't buy it if it's not being sold. Finding a certain ship can be a mission in itself.

Agreed, however, I wouldn't want rarity to justify a low price tag on a very potent ship. The opposite should be the case and is the case with many oxps.

Of course, but it is another factor that can be put in play to rein in ooberness.

[wackyman465]

Now there aren't that many uberships out there.. For example the Imperial Courier. A lot of people might think it's an unfair ship, but when I was in G4 and the space invaders ships were hanging around the witchpoint everywhere I went, that Courier was my best friend.

Now the Courier Mk. II I made just to try for a spin.. pretty much maxed out stats.. that is an ubership.