Oolite Bulletins

cim wrote:

ioannis wrote:

This is a very good point, which I really had not thought of. In some games, there is the option to include realism settings (I remember a rather old game, Longbow Gold, that had several options). Would it be feasible to have that sort of options in Oolite?

It's possible for an OXP to make ships which suffer damage to secondary combat systems during a fight - see Eric's variation on the [wiki]Griff Krait[/wiki] for an example. A replacement shipset that did this for all standard ships (without the tie to particular parts of the ship being particular equipment, for ease of writing) could be written.

It would probably need the [wiki]NPC-shields OXP[/wiki] to make it fair.

I have included the shields OXP in the oxps I use. I think that it's just visual (it's an excellent addition, though). Same goes for the Krait, I 've seen parts of the ship getting blown away, and it was great, but I think that it doesn't represent any actual damage to the ship's subsystems.
Losing the laser in combat and having to rely on a secondary weapon, such as the railgun might also be interesting.
Either that, or causing the laser to use more energy, ie taking out a full energy bank by the time overheating stops it.
Or perhaps some equipment that "drains" power from the energy banks to cover the shields, say, 2 energy banks in order to cover the shield. This equipment could be "standard" with some large ships (since they have more energy banks and can "afford" it, energy wise).

snork wrote:

ioannis wrote:

What got me thinking on these points, was the fact that, switching from a military shielded Cobra Mk 3 to a Python, I was unable to take, in the non-military shielded Python, the amount of damage I was able to sustain in the military-shielded Cobra,

hehe, when having flown a mil-shielded etc. Cobra3 for a while, and then changing ships but the money wasnt sufficient for any shielding I found myself going pouf a lot.
It took considerable amount of time to adapt my playing-style to the no-mil.-shields situation.

I mean it said I was "dangerous" or sth. , but I had to run away a lot, stick to "safe" systems and all that. kind of humiliating.

and of course the fact that my Beam laser bursts in the Python did not "count" as much as my military lasers in the Cobra.

A beam laser deals almost as much damage/t as a military laser. It's main disadvantage is that to use it you have to get within beam-laser-distance, so everyone with a beam laser then can hit you too.

actually a beam laser should deal (very little) more damage than a mil.laser per cool-overheat time span.

Hm, I must admit I didn't know about the ranges.

ioannis wrote:

I have included the shields OXP in the oxps I use. I think that it's just visual

On the contrary. NPC-shields.oxp does exactly what it says on the tin: adding an extra layer of protection for NPCs. It's equal to 6 hits with a military laser. In other words: if you have to hit a certain ship 8 times to kill it without NPC-shields, with NPC-shields the number increases to 14.

ioannis wrote:

I've seen parts of the ship getting blown away, and it was great, but I think that it doesn't represent any actual damage to the ship's subsystems.

For most subentities it's only a visual effect that gives you the freedom to interpret something into it, for instance the loss of a subsystem. There's one notable exception, though: the loss of a weapon subentity (a laser or turret) means the loss of the weapon itself as well, because these weapons need to "physically" exist as a model.

Also, for the most part NPCs don't actually have "subsystems", so there is nothing to be damaged.

I'm summarizing with another sentence to meditate upon: The crucial part of gameplay takes place inside your head, not in the bits and bytes inside your computer.

ioannis wrote:

Or perhaps some equipment that "drains" power from the energy banks to cover the shields, say, 2 energy banks in order to cover the shield. This equipment could be "standard" with some large ships (since they have more energy banks and can "afford" it, energy wise).

Do you mean player ships or NPCs here? NPCs don't have shields (and even NPC-shields.oxp only simulates shields for them), so there is nothing to cover, and therefore nothing to drain. For player ships, of course re-charging the shields drains your energy. That's a basic function of Oolite. Most of your combat functions drain energy: firing your laser, charging your shields, using your ECM, activating your cloaking device. Just look at your energy bars the next time you get into a fight.

Commander McLane wrote:

The crucial part of gameplay takes place inside your head, not in the bits and bytes inside your computer.

What he said! Immersion coupled with suspension-of-disbelief!

Commander McLane wrote:

ioannis wrote:

I have included the shields OXP in the oxps I use. I think that it's just visual

On the contrary. NPC-shields.oxp does exactly what it says on the tin: adding an extra layer of protection for NPCs. It's equal to 6 hits with a military laser. In other words: if you have to hit a certain ship 8 times to kill it without NPC-shields, with NPC-shields the number increases to 14.

ioannis wrote:

I've seen parts of the ship getting blown away, and it was great, but I think that it doesn't represent any actual damage to the ship's subsystems.

For most subentities it's only a visual effect that gives you the freedom to interpret something into it, for instance the loss of a subsystem. There's one notable exception, though: the loss of a weapon subentity (a laser or turret) means the loss of the weapon itself as well, because these weapons need to "physically" exist as a model.

Also, for the most part NPCs don't actually have "subsystems", so there is nothing to be damaged.

I'm summarizing with another sentence to meditate upon: The crucial part of gameplay takes place inside your head, not in the bits and bytes inside your computer.

ioannis wrote:

Or perhaps some equipment that "drains" power from the energy banks to cover the shields, say, 2 energy banks in order to cover the shield. This equipment could be "standard" with some large ships (since they have more energy banks and can "afford" it, energy wise).

Do you mean player ships or NPCs here? NPCs don't have shields (and even NPC-shields.oxp only simulates shields for them), so there is nothing to cover, and therefore nothing to drain. For player ships, of course re-charging the shields drains your energy. That's a basic function of Oolite. Most of your combat functions drain energy: firing your laser, charging your shields, using your ECM, activating your cloaking device. Just look at your energy bars the next time you get into a fight.

On the contrary. NPC-shields.oxp does exactly what it says on the tin: adding an extra layer of protection for NPCs. It's equal to 6 hits with a military laser. In other words: if you have to hit a certain ship 8 times to kill it without NPC-shields, with NPC-shields the number increases to 14.

I assume that means instantaneous hits, of course, not sustained bursts of holding the fire button pressed while the enemy is in the sights. Therefore, I assume that should be about 12 seconds of continuous fire. I wasn't aware of that fact, thank you.

For most subentities it's only a visual effect that gives you the freedom to interpret something into it, for instance the loss of a subsystem. There's one notable exception, though: the loss of a weapon subentity (a laser or turret) means the loss of the weapon itself as well, because these weapons need to "physically" exist as a model.

I wasn't aware of that, either. Hostiles usually don't have the opportunity to fire back at all, after subentities begin to get blown off, I must not have noticed that.

I'm summarizing with another sentence to meditate upon: The crucial part of gameplay takes place inside your head, not in the bits and bytes inside your computer.

That is true beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Do you mean player ships or NPCs here? NPCs don't have shields (and even NPC-shields.oxp only simulates shields for them), so there is nothing to cover, and therefore nothing to drain. For player ships, of course re-charging the shields drains your energy. That's a basic function of Oolite. Most of your combat functions drain energy: firing your laser, charging your shields, using your ECM, activating your cloaking device. Just look at your energy bars the next time you get into a fight.

I was referring to Player ships. I am of course aware of the fact that combat functions require energy, but was basically thinking about a more drastic loss of energy at least for the lasers. In fact, overheating occurs far sooner than any significant loss of energy IMHO. You cannot have, for example, a full energy bank depleting faster (because of sustained firing) than the overheat function. The overheat bar will always become full long before the energy bank bar becomes empty. A more drastic loss of energy (I am talking about player ships) would force pilots of small ships to fire less in order to conserve the precious little energy from the few energy banks their ships have. Larger ships would not have that problem though at least not to that extent, translating into more "firepower" for bigger ships than for smaller ships.
Perhaps a more rapid recharge rate for "large" player ship shields (even at the cost of higer energy consumption to avoid uberships) than that of small ships would also help.
About shields, I was under the impression that they recharged at the same time as the energy banks, though, perhaps I was wrong.

ioannis wrote:

overheating occurs far sooner than any significant loss of energy IMHO. You cannot have, for example, a full energy bank depleting faster (because of sustained firing) than the overheat function. The overheat bar will always become full long before the energy bank bar becomes empty.

Ahem, you're talking about upgraded ships, aren't you? With military lasers and an extra energy unit.

I'm flying a Cobra Mk 1 fitted with beam lasers and ECM. When defending myself from more than 3 ships, by alternating between rear and front lasers and having to keep hitting the ECM, I can run out of energy. I know because it happened to me just yesterday.

ioannis wrote:

On the contrary. NPC-shields.oxp does exactly what it says on the tin: adding an extra layer of protection for NPCs. It's equal to 6 hits with a military laser. In other words: if you have to hit a certain ship 8 times to kill it without NPC-shields, with NPC-shields the number increases to 14.

I assume that means instantaneous hits, of course, not sustained bursts of holding the fire button pressed while the enemy is in the sights. Therefore, I assume that should be about 12 seconds of continuous fire. I wasn't aware of that fact, thank you.

There is no such thing as continuous fire, only single hits. A "burst" consists of a fast series of single pulses. How fast it is, depends on the type of laser, to be precise: on its recharge time, which is hardcoded for the different laser types. A pulse laser has a long recharge time, therefore a "burst" consists of single pulses with a lot of time in-between (even more time for a mining laser), while a military laser has a short recharge time, therefore a "burst" consists of single pulses with very little time in-between.

But fundamentally, there are only single laser shots. If a shot hits a target, hit points (or damage points) are subtracted from this target's energy. If its energy decreases to zero, the target dies. Obviously, the more energy a target has to begin with, the more single hits it will take to kill it. For some numbers and a more detailed explanation, please refer to the last two paragraphs of this post.

ioannis wrote:

I was referring to Player ships. I am of course aware of the fact that combat functions require energy, but was basically thinking about a more drastic loss of energy at least for the lasers. In fact, overheating occurs far sooner than any significant loss of energy IMHO. You cannot have, for example, a full energy bank depleting faster (because of sustained firing) than the overheat function. The overheat bar will always become full long before the energy bank bar becomes empty. A more drastic loss of energy (I am talking about player ships) would force pilots of small ships to fire less in order to conserve the precious little energy from the few energy banks their ships have. Larger ships would not have that problem though at least not to that extent, translating into more "firepower" for bigger ships than for smaller ships.

That's exactly how things work. Note that you probably already have installed equipment on your ship that makes your energy banks recharge faster (the Extra Energy Unit, or even the Naval Energy Unit), so the energy loss has already become less visible for you.

But I think it should be possible to kill yourself just by firing a military laser in an Adder with no energy unit (a ship that has notoriously little energy). I guess that's why it's illegal to buy a military laser for an Adder in the first place. Too many young pilots got trigger happy, and found themselves dead as a result.

Commander McLane wrote:

But I think it should be possible to kill yourself just by firing a military laser in an Adder with no energy unit (a ship that has notoriously little energy). I guess that's why it's illegal to buy a military laser for an Adder in the first place. Too many young pilots got trigger happy, and found themselves dead as a result.

I was using an Adder with a Beam Laser for some testing last night. It overheated before I ran out of energy, but not by a particularly wide margin. (That said, as with all ships, there is a safety cut-off that will stop energy required for continued hull integrity being transferred to the laser subsystems, so you can't actually directly kill yourself this way)

cim wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

But I think it should be possible to kill yourself just by firing a military laser in an Adder with no energy unit (a ship that has notoriously little energy). I guess that's why it's illegal to buy a military laser for an Adder in the first place. Too many young pilots got trigger happy, and found themselves dead as a result.

I was using an Adder with a Beam Laser for some testing last night. It overheated before I ran out of energy, but not by a particularly wide margin. (That said, as with all ships, there is a safety cut-off that will stop energy required for continued hull integrity being transferred to the laser subsystems, so you can't actually directly kill yourself this way)

That's true, of course. The killing yourself happens more indirectly, by weakening your energy so much that it'll take only very few shots of enemy fire to finish you off.

SandJ wrote:

ioannis wrote:

overheating occurs far sooner than any significant loss of energy IMHO. You cannot have, for example, a full energy bank depleting faster (because of sustained firing) than the overheat function. The overheat bar will always become full long before the energy bank bar becomes empty.

Ahem, you're talking about upgraded ships, aren't you? With military lasers and an extra energy unit.

I'm flying a Cobra Mk 1 fitted with beam lasers and ECM. When defending myself from more than 3 ships, by alternating between rear and front lasers and having to keep hitting the ECM, I can run out of energy. I know because it happened to me just yesterday.

True, I use Extra Energy Unit, but also a single Military laser (front). I understand that you ran out of energy because by alternating the lasers you had 2 bars of "overheating" to fill, which allowed for twice the amount of energy to be subtracted from the energy banks. Even so, I think it was the ECM that took out the bulk of the energy from the banks, rather than the use of the Beam lasers. The ECM does take up quite a lot of energy (which is very good, IMHO) but I would argue for some more energy consumption on the part of the laser, precisely in order to give a "superior firepower" advantage to large player ships, in relation to small player ships.
As for shields, perhaps some equipment that immediately empties, say, two energy banks in order to immediately "fill" one shield (front or rear or half of each, perhaps some equipment in combination with the "shield equalizer", or standalone) could exist. Something like an "Emergency Shield Energy transfer", perhaps? it would be cheap, but it would in effect be useable almost completely by large ship pilots (Player Ships).

That's exactly how things work. Note that you probably already have installed equipment on your ship that makes your energy banks recharge faster (the Extra Energy Unit, or even the Naval Energy Unit), so the energy loss has already become less visible for you.

But I think it should be possible to kill yourself just by firing a military laser in an Adder with no energy unit (a ship that has notoriously little energy). I guess that's why it's illegal to buy a military laser for an Adder in the first place. Too many young pilots got trigger happy, and found themselves dead as a result.

True, I do have the extra energy unit installed. I also have military laser installed, however, and my point was in favour of an increase of each laser cycle's "energy consumption" to the point of depleting at least one energy bank (even with extra energy unit installed) by the time overheating occurs. Therefore, a pilot who would want the offensive capabilities of the Military laser would have to set a good "energy foundation" for his ship. The "aim" would be to risk having what happens with an Adder, occur with, for example, a Cobra Mark 1 (I don't know if the Mk1 has fewer Energy Banks than the Mk3, I am assuming it does) or even an Mk 3, should the pilot install a Military laser without first supporting it with an Extra energy Unit.
A Python pilot, however, will not have that problem, at least not to that extent, because the superior number of Energy banks would allow him to afford this high energy consumption and survive a prolonged battle even without an Extra Energy unit.
In effect, more energy-hungry systems, would stress the difference (ie advantages of flying a larger, more powerful ship) as opposed to flying a smaller, cheaper one.

Commander McLane wrote:

But I think it should be possible to kill yourself just by firing a military laser in an Adder with no energy unit (a ship that has notoriously little energy). I guess that's why it's illegal to buy a military laser for an Adder in the first place. Too many young pilots got trigger happy, and found themselves dead as a result.

Handling of the energy banks at low energy situation has taken some thought by the dev team during 1.75 changes. Every situation asks for a different approach and trunk had several variations in the past for testing purpose. The current trunk comment writes:

1. If shields are less than a threshold, recharge with all available energy
2. If energy banks are below threshold, recharge with generated energy
3. Charge shields with any surplus energy

Because shields prevent more damage than no shields, the energy distribution has a high intelligence. This is probably only noticeable when all your energy units are destroyed and shield recharge is no longer limited by maximum recharge rates but by energy generation. Than you see a changing rise of energy to shields vrs. banks.
Before 1.75, I think shields always had priority, resulting in draining all energy from the banks, leaving no energy to fire a shot. Now at least a minimum is preserved be able to fire at least a few shots back.

ioannis, I think what you are asking for is "make the military laser an entry-level weapon" when what you need to do is use the other laser mounts so that it doesn't overheat so much, and/or downgrade to a beam laser.

ioannis wrote:

In effect, more energy-hungry systems, would stress the difference (ie advantages of flying a larger, more powerful ship) as opposed to flying a smaller, cheaper one.

One thing to remember is that in Oolite or Elite "bigger" does not necessarily mean "more powerful" - it depends what the space is used for.

The Python is a freighter - and one based on centuries-old technology, at that. Most of that extra space is cargo hold. It's popular because it's cheap (for a freighter), easy to maintain, and they produced millions of them back in the day. You can, as pirates do, just about use it as a command ship for combat, but it's really not what it was designed for. (Scooping up the loot after combat, yes. Actually fighting, no, not really...)

The Cobra Mk III, on the other hand, is a modern multi-role vessel. It's got one of the most powerful reactors you'll see on a civilian ship even before you start fitting extra energy units, and it can fit the latest in offensive and defensive hardware. It's also not actually that much smaller than a Python in terms of total volume, which is why it's so hard to dock. It's arguably the best generally-available ship in the core game, and can be a medium-sized trader or a heavy fighter (or both at once). You won't wear out its energy banks just by firing the laser, whereas you might well do eventually in a less-capable or older ship.

What Elite doesn't have (and so nor does Oolite) is a large combat vessel. Freighters/Traders go right up from tiny scavengers like the Adder, light trader vessels like the Moray or Cobra I, up to proper bulk freight ships like a Python or Anaconda. Combat ships, on the other hand, there's plenty of light fighters like the Sidewinder or Mamba, and plenty of medium/heavy fighters like the Asp or the Viper Interceptor.

What there isn't is the sort of battleship role - slow, deadly, with heavy shields. Something like that has to come from OXPs, and most of them aren't flyable by the player (most of them won't fit in the docking bay) - [wiki]Galactic Navy OXP[/wiki] has the Navy Transports - Anaconda hulls completely stripped and rebuilt for combat, and it really does make a difference to their performance! - and Frigates, and there's also the [wiki]Behemoth[/wiki] for a carrier vessel. (It also lets you fly missions alongside these ships against Thargoids, which is a nice way to see some of those "heavy battleship versus pack of tiny ships" fights, as the Thargons start swarming...

cim wrote:

ioannis wrote:

In effect, more energy-hungry systems, would stress the difference (ie advantages of flying a larger, more powerful ship) as opposed to flying a smaller, cheaper one.

One thing to remember is that in Oolite or Elite "bigger" does not necessarily mean "more powerful" - it depends what the space is used for.

The Python is a freighter - and one based on centuries-old technology, at that. Most of that extra space is cargo hold. It's popular because it's cheap (for a freighter), easy to maintain, and they produced millions of them back in the day. You can, as pirates do, just about use it as a command ship for combat, but it's really not what it was designed for. (Scooping up the loot after combat, yes. Actually fighting, no, not really...)

The Cobra Mk III, on the other hand, is a modern multi-role vessel. It's got one of the most powerful reactors you'll see on a civilian ship even before you start fitting extra energy units, and it can fit the latest in offensive and defensive hardware. It's also not actually that much smaller than a Python in terms of total volume, which is why it's so hard to dock. It's arguably the best generally-available ship in the core game, and can be a medium-sized trader or a heavy fighter (or both at once). You won't wear out its energy banks just by firing the laser, whereas you might well do eventually in a less-capable or older ship.

What Elite doesn't have (and so nor does Oolite) is a large combat vessel. Freighters/Traders go right up from tiny scavengers like the Adder, light trader vessels like the Moray or Cobra I, up to proper bulk freight ships like a Python or Anaconda. Combat ships, on the other hand, there's plenty of light fighters like the Sidewinder or Mamba, and plenty of medium/heavy fighters like the Asp or the Viper Interceptor.

What there isn't is the sort of battleship role - slow, deadly, with heavy shields. Something like that has to come from OXPs, and most of them aren't flyable by the player (most of them won't fit in the docking bay) - [wiki]Galactic Navy OXP[/wiki] has the Navy Transports - Anaconda hulls completely stripped and rebuilt for combat, and it really does make a difference to their performance! - and Frigates, and there's also the [wiki]Behemoth[/wiki] for a carrier vessel. (It also lets you fly missions alongside these ships against Thargoids, which is a nice way to see some of those "heavy battleship versus pack of tiny ships" fights, as the Thargons start swarming...

I must admit that I did not know much of all that. It seems that, because much of my experience is from the old elite, which did not include changing ships, I am not aware of some changes.
About the Python and Cobra. I just used the examples, because these two are the only ships I have flown thus far. So, in essence the Python gave such a poor performance in combat (I lost the ship just as soon as I got it) was the fact that it is outdated. It would be interested (I think that something similar was discussed) to be able to hire a pilot to fly this ship, escorted perhaps by the player. Thus, if the player wanted to carry a large quantity of goods he could use the Python, at great risk of losing the ship, but also at great potential profit. I 've seen that there was already some discussion about a sort of "garage" where the player could switch ships without essentially selling his ship.
I will download and place the oxps you are referring to. From what I understand, though, my suggestion regarding differences in performance have already been implemented, if there is difference in the ships other than the cargo space and the number of energy banks. Apparently, I play too conservatively to take notice (sticking to the Cobra Mark 3 quite a lot, finding and keeping oone or two good trading routes and fighting duels in one feudal system to make money).

ioannis wrote:

Apparently, I play too conservatively to take notice (sticking to the Cobra Mark 3 quite a lot, finding and keeping oone or two good trading routes and fighting duels in one feudal system to make money).

Well, there is a good reason to stick to the Cobby: it's simply the best all-round ship in the basic set.

And the reason for this is also very simple: precisely because you couldn't swap ships in Elite, you had to get a pretty decent ship in order to survive.

Diziet Sma wrote:

G'day, ioannis, and welcome aboard!

If war scenarios interest you, you may be interested in the Ionics mission OXP, set in Galaxy 2, which lets you fight in a revolution/civil war taking place there.. (I have a bit of a soft spot for this one, as I'm an Aussie, and the OXP introduces several new ships, all named after Australian spiders.)

I just downloaded it, I 'll install it today. Again, I 'd like to state that it looks interesting, however, I had in mind something that would make the ooniverse somewhat more "fluid" and random. For example, I you sometimes see (random) large fights, between traders and their escorts (presumably) and pirates and you can take sides. If the same could be done with ships of the X system and ships of its neighboring system, I think it would be nice. And also, if you are coming from the X system to its neighboring system, military ships of the neighboring system might attack you, mistaking you for an enemy.
Perhaps it would be possible to set a parameter of random (as opposed to set from the beginning) wars (perhaps a higher chance of that occuring in systems that have a different political system, perhaps even alliances could be formed in neighboring systems with the same political system.