Oolite Bulletins

Eric Walch wrote:

Switeck wrote:

How quickly does the maintenance level drop by 1%?
Is it time based, jump based, or also increase due to "hull" damage (when hit with no shield up)?

It is only based on hits at the hull with shields down.

<dons his dumb-pilot's hat> So, if I avoid any serious combat, I'll not need an overhaul, yes? That doesn't seem quite right, somehow.

El Viejo wrote:

<dons his dumb-pilot's hat> So, if I avoid any serious combat, I'll not need an overhaul, yes? That doesn't seem quite right, somehow.

There's also a chance on any jump that your service level will drop a few points. If you don't get into major fights, and always get your repairs done at the best shipyards, you're probably looking at about 50 jumps between refits.

cim wrote:

There's also a chance on any jump that your service level will drop a few points.

Ah, good... that makes sense. So lots of short jumps (as is my habit) rather than fewer long jumps would probably drop my service level faster... yes?

El Viejo wrote:

Eric Walch wrote:

Switeck wrote:

How quickly does the maintenance level drop by 1%?
Is it time based, jump based, or also increase due to "hull" damage (when hit with no shield up)?

It is only based on hits at the hull with shields down.

<dons his dumb-pilot's hat> So, if I avoid any serious combat, I'll not need an overhaul, yes? That doesn't seem quite right, somehow.

On the other hand, undoubtedly hull damage is going to be the main reason for maintenance work. By the way, scratching your hull through 'creative' docking should suffice, too.

If we assume that your shields take care of micro-meteorites and dust particles, there isn't much else that'll cause tear-and-wear in the vacuum of space. Other than yourself, of course. So perhaps we need an OXP that randomly tells the player:

Your cockpit consoles are so sticky from the leftovers of the junk food you're consuming all the time that nothing works anymore. Also, the floor is totally covered in garbage. And if you bang your head against the view screen once more it'll fall off. Get a maintenance overhaul.

Just a thought on economics. I could be wrong, but . . .

The basis for the following is a SuperCobra with various bits of equipment added which means when I see this overhaul thing the garage wants 22 or 23 thousand which is not a problem, you can trade with a SC fairly well and might even be able to make that amount of cash before the game wants you to spend more.

What if you fly an Asp? You can't trade, you can only shoot. You need to shoot, what, 1000 pirates to make 20k. This is an activity which pirates don't like so they shoot back which should increase your "wear and tear" so you need the garage fairly often.

I don't dislike the maintenance idea but the presence of Asps at all implies you can actually keep them in a reasonable state of repair.

How does that work out? Seems something's inconsistent - is it my preference for powerful and expensive ships?

Just a thought

Rich

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

I don't dislike the maintenance idea but the presence of Asps at all implies you can actually keep them in a reasonable state of repair.

How does that work out? Seems something's inconsistent - is it my preference for powerful and expensive ships?

I think this would imply that people who fly Asps need other sources of income besides shooting pirates for the standard bounty: being a courier; trading in precious metals and gems, perhaps; becoming a hitman and going after larger payoffs; becoming a hired gun in a pirate band. The last option isn't currently open to the player, of course, but they would all help offset the wear-and-tear costs of an Asp pilot.

cim wrote:

Hmm, I wonder if now that overhaul cost is tied to maintenance level, we should change the lower bound on service level so that it can drop lower than 75% (but keep the calculation of maintenance level after overhaul the same as now so you don't get asked to do two overhauls in a row).

Don't think that last bit would work without a bit of a tweak to the calculation of the serviceLevel increase given you only get an increase of 11 points at the lowest Tech Level EQ_RENOVATION is available.

another_commander wrote:

Assigning a percentage to the status of the ship that the player can refer to will only make the game more arcadey-like than anything.
.

True, I was more thinking of an alert of some kind. Perhaps just a simple maintenance status (85 or more = "Good", 80 to 85 = "Poor", less than 80 = "Urgent"). Probably best done via OXP on the manifest screen, and maybe a few arrivalReport alerts along the lines suggested by Disembodied.

Eric Walch wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

e.g. degrading their engines, reducing top speed/acceleration/handling? .

Reducing acceleration is easy to add. Needs just the serviceLevel to be multiplied with thrust at two places. A bad maintained ship than accelerates 25% less fast. When you start timing how fast you reach max speed from zero, you notice it, but generally not. Even with both compiled versions open simultaneously you must watch closely to notice the difference. So, adding it to acceleration will not be a big game changer and thus a reason to add it.

One thing that would probably effectively encourage maintenance, and have a real impact on the player would be if the energy recharge rate was affected. Yaw, pitch and roll rates could also be reduced along with thrust.

But given the player (unless missing sub Ents) can't normally access renovation until serviceLevel is below 85, I would use this as a starting point for the multiplier. So maybe a 3% reduction in thrust/yaw/pitch/roll and energy recharge rate for every serviceLevel point below 85 (so a maximum 30% 'disablement' on a very badly maintained ship).

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

The basis for the following is a SuperCobra with various bits of equipment added which means when I see this overhaul thing the garage wants 22 or 23 thousand which is not a problem, you can trade with a SC fairly well and might even be able to make that amount of cash before the game wants you to spend more.

What if you fly an Asp? You can't trade, you can only shoot. You need to shoot, what, 1000 pirates to make 20k.

But what would you need 20k for? Maintenance cost is a fixed percentage of your ship's value. Does an Asp cost exactly as much as a SuperCobra?

Capt. Murphy wrote:

cim wrote:

Hmm, I wonder if now that overhaul cost is tied to maintenance level, we should change the lower bound on service level so that it can drop lower than 75% (but keep the calculation of maintenance level after overhaul the same as now so you don't get asked to do two overhauls in a row).

Don't think that last bit would work without a bit of a tweak to the calculation of the serviceLevel increase given you only get an increase of 11 points at the lowest Tech Level EQ_RENOVATION is available.

Sorry, I wasn't being very clear there. I meant "keep the result of the calculation of maintenance level after overhaul the same as now", not keep the algorithm that calculates it the same.

Disembodied wrote:

I think this would imply that people who fly Asps need other sources of income besides shooting pirates for the standard bounty: being a courier; trading in precious metals and gems, perhaps; becoming a hitman and going after larger payoffs;

And an Asp is a small fast target with good energy recharge and military shields available - the average pirate band shouldn't be landing hits on the hull at all!

Another nice option to make money faster is to join a police patrol - when they run into pirates, pretty much every target you shoot down will have high Fugitive status. Hunting Thargoids is another option - 350Cr. per warship if you shoot all the drones too.

I like the idea of others pointing out your poorly-maintained ship or you at least noticing it's needing it badly.
But I don't like the idea of performance loss starting as early as 85%, when your ship "barely" needs maintenance.
Maybe starting at 75% instead ...and then getting progressively worse?

By 50%, you should be almost forced to do an overhaul due to the ship just not being reliable (constant misjumps, loses fuel, reduced acceleration, etc)...maybe even fined (and given a tiny bounty if really bad?) by higher tier governments (like corporate states) after docking at the main station for not meeting "safety codes".

I'm guessing the chance of random ship quality loss happens on EXITING a witchspace jump, IE: this.shipExitedWitchspace = function() or this.shipWillExitWitchspace = function() for the javascript equivalent? ...Pretty much the same time as you might lose part of any bounty score on you?

So... No bounty score reduction occurs if you're jumping around in interstellar space, but doing that a lot can do a number on your ship's resale value even if you don't get hit by a Thargoid!

Switeck wrote:

Maybe starting at 75% instead ...and then getting progressively worse?

By 50%,

As it stands it doesn't get any worse than 75%, but cim has already suggested lowering that limit.

Switeck wrote:

I like the idea of others pointing out your poorly-maintained ship or you at least noticing it's needing it badly.

As the variable is now exposed to JS, this seems a job for a dedicated OXP.

Eric Walch wrote:

Switeck wrote:

How quickly does the maintenance level drop by 1%?
Is it time based, jump based, or also increase due to "hull" damage (when hit with no shield up)?

It is only based on hits at the hull with shields down.

Sorry to drag this up again but I just had an offer of maintenance which surprised me given Eric's statement. I started a new commander (1.76.1 and no oxps other than the debug one) and have been carefully moving around G1. Careful as in avoiding any contact with any ships (still Harmless) - no firefights at all so far. I've only had one docking "event" which I am quite sure was only a ~10% drop in shields and the drop in shield energy stopped before the circle-y things appeared. The maintenance offer did not appear until well after this and as far as I can tell I have no trouble docking manually. I'm flying between Xexedi (TL14) and Laenin at the moment. Is it possible to get a big hit on shields and the hull during docking without really noticing? Is there another way to "accrue" maintenance problems? Rich.

richard.a.p.smith wrote:

Eric Walch wrote:

Switeck wrote:

How quickly does the maintenance level drop by 1%?
Is it time based, jump based, or also increase due to "hull" damage (when hit with no shield up)?

It is only based on hits at the hull with shields down.

Sorry to drag this up again but I just had an offer of maintenance which surprised me given Eric's statement.

Cim slightly corrected Eric's statement a few posts later.

cim wrote:

There's also a chance on any jump that your service level will drop a few points. If you don't get into major fights, and always get your repairs done at the best shipyards, you're probably looking at about 50 jumps between refits.

Thanks for the explanation, chaps! I missed that bit of the text when going through it. Rich.