Oolite Bulletins

El Viejo wrote:

Heh.. some sort of time-warp here!

Ah, the perils of not reading every single message on the BB! Odd that I've been getting very different answers in recent weeks . . .
Here endeth post 256.

m4r35n357 wrote:

Here endeth post 256.

Which gets you Elite rank... heh. Would you care to add 'Solved' to the thread title?

El Viejo wrote:

m4r35n357 wrote:

Here endeth post 256.

Which gets you Elite rank... heh. Would you care to add 'Solved' to the thread title?

I'd love to, I almost got the confirmation I asked for, but I'll settle for that for now (think the question mark will make a good place-holder). It's quite obvious to me from various answers I have received that the degree of disablement of this feature is not widely understood.

Cool! How's your RoC count doing, maresnest?

El Viejo wrote:

Cool! How's your RoC count doing, maresnest?

27 is the next up, been taking it easy since no. 25 on New Year's day, thanks for asking

m4r35n357 wrote:

been taking it easy since no. 25

I've been taking it 'easy' all along. I probably only average three or four kills per shipday, but I'm enjoying the long slow cruise.

Smivs wrote:

Relating to my points above regarding its 'use', I'd forgotten that it is advertised as

"A one-shot super-weapon capable of destroying all small craft within range."

That's what it should be doing. At the moment it kills medium and large ships as well

I'd prefer this reducing of the energy bomb's damage together with Smivs' above suggestion to just give it to NPCs over removing it, too.

maik wrote:

I'd prefer this reducing of the energy bomb's damage together with Smivs' above suggestion to just give it to NPCs over removing it, too.

Definitely! I think the bomb in Elite worked that way, at least on the Speccy. Not sure about giving it to NPCs, how "balanced" do we need to be bearing in mind the odds?

m4r35n357 wrote:

Not sure about giving it to NPCs

Absolute and definite NO to that. Disembodied has already given the justification and I have a small test OXP somewhere that gives energy bombs to NPCs just to prove the point. Believe me, you don't want this.

El Viejo wrote:

I've been taking it 'easy' all along. I probably only average three or four kills per shipday, but I'm enjoying the long slow cruise.

Agreed, still need to find an engaging role to play now the killkillkill phase is over

m4r35n357 wrote:

at least on the Speccy.

The 'Speccy' being thirty years old today (St George's Day).

m4r35n357 wrote:

need to find an engaging role to play now the killkillkill phase is over

I multi-task these days... explore, run some dope, evade the Feds, escort a convoy, help the Feds, save a poor trader, hunt bounty-hunters!

I don't know why everybody is all fired up. Like everything that's every been designed for the masses, somebody sitting on a pedestal somewhere made the decision, and regardless of what this group, or any group, says it's not going to make a difference. 99% of the time whether it's this group or Wikipedia or Google, there are those who make the decisions, and the rest learn to live with it, or they leave it.

Yes, the e-bomb does make the game unrealistic, I concede that point. However, so does allowing the player to pack military grade weapons and technology. So in the sake of realism, everyone running milspec tech should run the constant risk of being stripped of such tech and fined heavily, because that's realistic to what would happen if you were caught with a minigun mounted on your personal car. OR, people can realize that this is a GAME, not a sim.

In my opinion, as is, there's already too many disadvantages facing the novice pilot. For one, the ship is useless for trading as the cargo bay is too small. Second, the ship is essentially defenseless. (I'm running an Iron Ass Boa class and I have trouble killing pirates when they come in packs of five or more). Third, the novice isn't given enough money to buy a better ship, or even a ship that actually allows him to make money quickly enough to survive the game. (Making trade runs to earn 15cr? Pitiful.) Fourth, a novice pilot wont have the chops to stick with a pirate and take him out. That's why he's *called* a novice; he doesn't know what he's doing, nor does he know the tricks to stay alive yet. The e-bomb was an advantage, and one of very few such advantages. With that option off the table, new pilots have no options outside of modding the save file to make the game fun. Getting killed three times trying to make 15cr isn't fun, and anybody who thinks it is really needs to be forced to do so for a couple days.

The more of these 'positive changes' I hear of, the more I think it would be best to have a novice friendly version and a 'realistic version'. The novice version would be hard, but not impossible. the realistic version would have no e-bombs, no mines, no ECM missiles, no Military technology whatsoever (except for the pirates, who would have nothing but as it would be a staple on the black market), and pirates would be rampant. Unless something like that comes to fruition, the game is going to consistently move away from being novice-friendly until it's a bunch of 'veterans' sitting around bragging on their iron asses and killing pirates that weren't operating iron asses. It may not seem like a big deal, pushing the game out of the hands of novices, but I would point out; without new pilots, you have no new developers, which means that once the current developers move on with the rest of their lives, the game stagnates.

I don't frequent this forum to get into a big (deleted) match over stuff that doesn't matter as I can easily get into arguments over multiple other topics elsewhere; I come here to have fun and learn about the game. The developers will do what they feel is 'best' and what would suit them as long time players (if they actually play at all, I find in other fields a lot of the developers usually don't play as it's more interesting to them to be messing with the guts of the program, they lose touch with what it's like to play outside of testing whatever they just did), so I see no merit in arguing over stuff when nobody else is listening or paying attention. With that said, I seriously doubt I'll post again in this thread. Life is too short to argue over crap when everybody has their eyes closed, their ears plugged, and their minds firmly made up. I appreciate anyone who has read my lengthy post to this point. I especially thank anyone who took out their earplugs long enough to try and see what I'm saying.

The arguments are not about realism, they are about game design. And the feeling in the dev team is that player only weapons are not god design.

Can anyone explain why this is still an argument, I would have thought having a simple configuration option would make everyone happy, and since that exists....

CapnSkweek wrote:

Making trade runs to earn 15cr? Pitiful.

A virgin Jameson in two jumps (Lave to Zaonce to Isinor) just made over 130Cr profit. Having sold his three missiles, he now has over 300Cr (after fuel costs) to play with. That's a pretty standard and simple start with normal (and legal) commodity prices!

Edit to add: another couple of jumps, an encounter with a bunch of bandits (plus a Green Gecko 'Hardnut'), and Jameson now has this:



Not too bad for five shipdays! Great fun!

A lot of fuss over nothing very much at all. I've just bought my first ever energy bomb and used it in last nights trunk.

The tiniest of tiny OXP's that renables the energy bomb for unrestricted play in 1.77+ can be found here https://www.box.com/s/6470a1bcc4fce34919db

http://postimage.org/image/ym2lgwjj1/
http://postimage.org/image/nnrbypuxp/
http://postimage.org/image/mzihfrw7x/