Lestradae wrote:The original, vanilla Oolite lets players start in a ship that is completely uber:
A player Cobra Mk III ...
I disagree here. The Cobra Mk III is a decent ship, no question. But it's not uber. And of the four reasons you give for it being uber, three are plain wrong:
* has shields (NPCs have not, so always die first in a comparable situation)
NPCs have energy, which is technically the same. (And by the way: this problem isn't solved at all by adding new player ships with even more energy.)
* the option to use injectors long enough for half the distance witchpoint - main station (NPCs have not, so you can always escape if careful on the fuel)
"NPCs have not"? What? Of course NPCs can use their injectors as well as the player can, and for the same distance. In fact, I have often pursued an NPC for an equivalent of half the distance wp-station. Whoever runs out of fuel first, loses. And in most cases that's me, because I have not started with full tanks (I had to jump into the system first), while the NPC had a full 7LY worth of fuel to begin with.
* torus drive (NPCs don't have it, so pirates, even in much faster ships, will never get you once you left scanner range and hit "j")
That's the only valid point. However, I've always considered the Torus Drive to be a time acceleration feature, nothing else. But of course, you can use it to get out of a danger zone,
if the NPC pursuing you with its injectors lets you get far enough away in the first place, that is.
* can witchspace out (NPCs ... you know the drill. They just don't do it.)
While the standard combat AIs indeed don't make NPCs try to hyper out of a battle (however, it would be very easy to modify the AIs to make them do it), I think there is a reason to it: Hyperspacing out needs 15 seconds of countdown, and during that time the ship is basically a sitting duck. Therefore in many (most?) cases the risk of being killed before the jump starts outweighs the chances of escape.
By the way: Many of the technical advantages of having a decent ship are already balanced by the numbers. As player you always fight alone, but your adversaries (pirates) usually come in packs. I remember well from the days of C64 (and later Atari-) Elite, that I used to be frightened by the sight of three or four pirates (one of them in a ship faster than mine)
plus a Thargoid chasing after me. The fight
was survivable, but barely so.
Anyway, my main argument is:
if the Cobbie III were totally uber in the native Oolite environment, all installations of Elite previous to Oolite would have been boring and non-challenging for the player. I guess it is fair to say that they weren't. Which in return means that the Cobra Mk III, while being a decent ship, is not uber in comparison to the rest of the original shipset.
.
