Proposal for 1.82: equipment balancing and choices

[Diziet Sma]

Yep. Starting the player with 5ly is the way to go.

No, it is not.

Combined with the new political/pirates situation in 1.80, there are very few systems in the 5LY scenario that are safe enough for a Jameson.. and many of those are unreachable simply because one has to transit very dangerous systems to even get to them, leaving only a tiny handful of not-very-profitable routes open. The only thing that would happen is that a lot of newcomers to Oolite would give up on it as 'too hard'.. and 1.80 already makes things hard enough on a Jameson that it's pushing the boundaries.

[Venator Dha]

WOW

There's been a great deal of thought put into that, thanks cim. I really like this proposal, especially the equipment - space idea. If half of this got implemented I would be very happy
Thanks for all the hard work, it's really appreciated by me.

I believe that it would give people all sorts of areas for new ideas

A couple of mine
- repeated repairs of equipment make it more fragile until it is breaking all the time - need to be replace with a new one
- uber equipment available at specific star systems - say one per galaxy, e.g. have to travel to galaxy 8 for a prototype energy unit with twice the power for half the size at four times the cost

So changing the distances that the player can jump does affect the game considerably...

Yep. Starting the player with 5ly is the way to go.

Perhaps it is. Some random thoughts :
there could be 4 types of unit available 5,6,7 & 8 LY - affecting cost and size
older / smaller ships have a 5LY unit at start e.g. an Adder that could be upgraded to a 6. Or the ANA could add 1LY to a drives capabilities.
a Cobra Mk I starts with a 6LY drive, a MK III with a 7LY thus keeping it in line with the existing game and giving a fair start to a new player

[Venator Dha]

Make all equipment sellable...

Would that include lasers, and would they take up space and become damageable too?

In principle selling lasers makes sense - and if they do take space, it's essential - but some way to stop a Jameson selling their initial pulse laser for trading capital might be needed. (Possibly the way to do that is to make the pulse laser more useful relative to the beam laser, though)

I don't see a Jameson selling his laser at start to be a problem, it's simply a risk/benefit decision - fly unarmed or not, in the beginning running away is the better option than fighting anyway.

Or being able to swap a front for a rear laser.

A suggestion for a way to make the lasers more interesting:
A 'laser' could be thought of as a barrel and an energy unit.
The space taken up by a military laser energy unit = 2 beam/mining laser units = 4 pulse laser units.
A pulse laser could be upgraded by adding up to 3 more energy units making it close in spec to a beam with one unit. The same for a beam by adding a second unit brings it close to a military laser. costs would need to be balanced. Perhaps some ships will only have a 2 pulse unit space on the side lasers.

[Smivs]

Anything below 7LY simply won't work - see charts above.

I generally like these ideas I have to say. Would the resting energy drain equipment be open to tinkering, or would this be 'read only'? Just wondering about a 'solar panels on the roof' OXP or similar.

My only real concern at this point is regarding the equipment/hold ratio and how it will work. Each ship should have a 'total capacity' which is the sum of equipment and hold space (and should probably include a small fixed space for crew etc). To make sense it would have to be based on ship size (dimensions), but as things stand (for OXP ships) the figures would be decided by the author, and this leaves open the possibility for exploit and the potential for some really silly uber-ships that are the size of a pea but have all the gear and massive holds.
So I was wondering if this could be linked somehow to the model itself. Most (but not all) of the .dat files have the dimensions in the metadata at the start of the code, but presumably at this point this is not readable by the game.
I appreciate that what I'm suggesting is a big step, but if the game could take information from the .dat file (eg a volume derived from the dimensions), and can compare that to a hard-coded formula, any ship that had more internal space (ie hold + EQ space) than the actual volume permits either fails to work (a bit harsh maybe), or suffers other penalties, such as having a stupidly low top speed enforced upon it.

[Zireael]

A big YEAAAH!!! to everything in the OP.

How about pre-plotted "escape route" -- even before you hyperspace to a system, it already has your "next" system targeted when you arrive and maybe reduces the "flee time" for that hyperspace jump to 10 seconds instead of 15 seconds? Game balance takes a hit here with quicker escape ability...but even a 5 seconds savings is often far from enough when you start taking hits. Hits when the shield is down could break the jump attempt or cause it to be a misjump.

That's a brilliant use for the ANA.
Note that I rarely do passenger/cargo contracts so I almost never use it.

Engines and Witch-Jump Range

As discussed elsewhere, there are reasons for a 7LY limit to the hyperspace drives but what if that was only from a top-end hyperdrive and others had lesser ranges? .... Couldn't make them too small or it might be very difficult to navigate but I'd have thought that there was scope for at least three different ranges with 7 as a maximum.

I say combine Redspear's in-service date and TL ideas to decide which equipment fits which ship.

As for the jump range, Pleb has already demonstrated how it would work, and I am all for it!

and can compare that to a hard-coded formula, any ship that had more internal space (ie hold + EQ space) than the actual volume permits either fails to work (a bit harsh maybe), or suffers other penalties, such as having a stupidly low top speed enforced upon it.

That's a brilliant idea!

Mossfoot, you know, this thread is closely connected to your upgrading idea...

[Diziet Sma]

this leaves open the possibility for exploit and the potential for some really silly uber-ships that are the size of a pea but have all the gear and massive holds.

That horse bolted long ago.. as you well know..

[Smivs]

A guy's allowed to try to make amends for past sins, isn't he?

[Diziet Sma]

I suspect someone will always find a way to uber-ise ships..

That said, in all seriousness, I think there's merit in your ideas, even if it does stop other ship-makers having the same fun you had..

[cim]

Thanks for all the comments so far.

If that were an indicator of their complexity then it may be that some of the lower tech ships simply can't cope with the high end equipment.

That's the sort of effect I'm going for, but I don't think it currently works with the TLs in game to do it directly. The NEU and military shield enhancement are TL14, but the cloak is TL16. All the rest is lower, usually much lower. Core ships vary between TL5 and TL11 (but really TL5 and TL9 - the Asp is the only one outside that range).

Dunno about reducing the hyperspace waiting time since in fiction it's about making complex calculations or some such.

And the ANA costs as much as about 30TC of Computers, so it probably can make complex calculations quickly...

I like the idea of letting you set a "route destination" by picking a target system a long way away and a route optimisation type, then having the ANA feed the next system to your drives each time you jump. Most of the time, of course, you'd need to stop and refuel anyway.

I'd be quite disappointed if that was no longer an option

You'd be able to carry on as before - update the SuperCobra OXP to have a very large amount of equipment space, and it can continue to fit everything at once. You might need to make a short edit to the ship OXP to update it, if it's not an actively maintained one.

I assume equipment with a resting energy drain will need to have a minimum energy level property (1 bank) at which they'll shut off rather than cripple the ship.

Yes, though probably not in general use - in most cases the total resting energy drain would be less than your energy recharge rate, so even at nearly empty on your last bank, it'd probably be okay to keep them running (and in the case of the shields, definitely desirable to). If the ship's energy recharge wasn't sufficient to maintain all its equipment then yes, shutdowns automatically occurring once energy was low.

- repeated repairs of equipment make it more fragile until it is breaking all the time - need to be replace with a new one

This is (sort of) already in - the more you get shot, the more your ship maintenance level drops, and part of the consequence of that is that it makes equipment damage on future hits more likely. It's subtle, though. There are things around the maintenance level which I'd like to expand on as well, but probably not this time.

Combined with the new political/pirates situation in 1.80, there are very few systems in the 5LY scenario that are safe enough for a Jameson..

Indeed. It also takes away the Leesti or Zaonce choice at the start of the game, which doesn't seem right (unless you hitchhike with an exiting trader, of course). In my opinion too much is tied to the 7LY range (including NPC behaviour) for changes to work, and the advantages of having one fixed range are more important.

I don't see a Jameson selling his laser at start to be a problem, it's simply a risk/benefit decision - fly unarmed or not, in the beginning running away is the better option than fighting anyway.

That's my point - it's a risk/benefit decision, but it's a fairly easy one: 500 credits is much better than 100 credits and a pulse laser.

The decision "downgrade to Cobra I?" is an interesting one - it (especially if you then fly to Zaonce for a refit in safety) really increases your early game power and lets you get some decent equipment early on ... but it'll take you a long time to get back up to a Cobra III again.

Possibly if the trade-in cost on lasers was quite a bit less than the 100% it is now, it might be interesting. (Though I'd rather solve the "pulse lasers are useless" problem by making the pulse laser more useful - we can always reduce the number of NPCs with beam lasers to rebalance)

Suggestion here: set the trade-in rate on lasers to maybe 50%, and about halve the beam laser damage output and heating rate. This makes the pulse laser only about half as effective as a beam laser, compared with a fifth as effective as now, but also means you won't overheat your beam laser as fast with bad aim. (Your military laser will still cut out in seconds, but if you can afford one of those you can afford to learn to shoot straight)

Also gives you more time to deal with NPC attacks, since their beam lasers will hurt you a lot slower.

Would the resting energy drain equipment be open to tinkering, or would this be 'read only'?

You'd be able to define it yourself for OXP equipment. I suppose that allowing negative values for it would be a way to implement extra energy units, and that then would allow for OXP energy units.

To make sense it would have to be based on ship size

It's technically possible - just load the ship model early enough in the ship initialisation process that you can get the bounding box off it to start calculating anything that requires - but I don't think it's practical for a game with Oolite's relaxed approach to scale.

I think we'd have to make the Anaconda (and actually the other freighters, which aren't by external dimensions much different to the Cobra III) a fair bit bigger than they currently are if we wanted to go down that route, which then means making the stations bigger so they actually fit through the door, which then means making the planets bigger so the stations don't look ridiculously oversized, which then means re-doing the torus drive.

I don't see the uber-ship issue as something to worry about - while these features are partly designed to make it easier to have certain sorts of OXPs without adjusting the game's balance point, they aren't trying to stop people making OXPs which do adjust that balance point.
(And people wanting a challenge might want to push it the other way - give ships less equipment space than the core game suggests)

[Pleb]

Thanks Pleb.. I was wanting to post those, to point out that even 6LY would break things, but couldn't find them..

I have to agree 7 lightyears should be left as is.

[Thargoid]

My biggest concern here is that it will fundamentally change the game and the gameplay. That isn't to say it is a bad thing, but if this is done then Oolite 1.82 won't be the game that Oolite 1.80 is, and that could be quite a shock and possibly turn-off to many people (and it will take it a significant step away from Elite, where this didn't factor in).

It also strikes me that it will make gameplay more complicated and "harder work" if everything is done at once here. And seeing how popular ships like the Caddy and the Vortex are (at least judging by their download rates at points when I've hosted the former as well as the latter) I would say there is a risk to alienate a certain proportion of the players by going this way.

For me it would be perhaps nicer to just have an "available space" rather like we already have, where equipment eats into it. In handwaviumland there would be nothing to stop me taking a large freighter like an Annie and filling its massive cargo hold with shield and energy generators. That way it couldn't carry much, but it would be a complete and almost invincible battering ram for combat usage.

One other thought could be to perhaps offer the option of internal or external mounting of weapons like missiles (launch tubes vs pylons). The former take up space but cannot be damaged in combat, whereas the latter don't but can. Something similar could arguably be done with a lot of equipment - hang it on the outside where it doesn't take up space but if damage gets through your shields then it's got a much higher chance of getting fried.

Oh, and also have equipment be able to be destroyed (as in strict mode) rather than just damaged. I coded it in Realistic Damage OXP and it seems like people quite like that judging again by the downloads, and it may be something that could be considered too?

[Disembodied]

My biggest concern here is that it will fundamentally change the game and the gameplay. That isn't to say it is a bad thing, but if this is done then Oolite 1.82 won't be the game that Oolite 1.80 is, and that could be quite a shock and possibly turn-off to many people (and it will take it a significant step away from Elite, where this didn't factor in).

This is certainly worth considering, and a change this size might be made more difficult to comprehend if we stick with Elite's list-based approach to equipment. This would be yet more work, and potentially make things a lot more complicated for OXP ships, too, but I think something like cargo/equipment space usage would really have to be dealt with graphically, via something like a plan overview of the player's ship, with boxes gridded off which the player then fills by dragging and dropping icons of equipment. This has an almost mini-game potential, if items had to be connected to an underlying power grid linked to generators, and if some items had odd shapes and/or preferred orientations (e.g. a laser could be long and thin, and would have to point in one particular way; an ECM might be L-shaped; and so on). Players could shuffle things around and it would make it immediately clear what was fitted, where, and why item X wouldn't work in the current setup; some ships (like a Python) might have generous amounts of space to work with, around the cargo bay; others might be full of awkward angles.

I realise that this sort of GUI would involve a lot more work all round - but I would worry that, without some form of visual cue, it would become very difficult to get the idea of equipment and cargo space across to players, and trying to work out the various possible combinations might be somewhat tiresome.

[Cody]

I like the idea of letting you set a "route destination" by picking a target system a long way away and a route optimisation type, then having the ANA feed the next system to your drives each time you jump.

This is something I've wanted for ages - I always have a long-range destination set, and after a jump, I immediately set my next jump.

[Diziet Sma]

Suggestion here: set the trade-in rate on lasers to maybe 50%, and about halve the beam laser damage output and heating rate. This makes the pulse laser only about half as effective as a beam laser, compared with a fifth as effective as now, but also means you won't overheat your beam laser as fast with bad aim. (Your military laser will still cut out in seconds, but if you can afford one of those you can afford to learn to shoot straight)

Also gives you more time to deal with NPC attacks, since their beam lasers will hurt you a lot slower.

I could definitely go with that.. I don't so much see the pulse laser as underpowered, as that the next step up, is far too overpowered by comparison (though I had no idea it was 5x more). The beam ought to come in at roughly midway between pulse and military, instead of being a slightly weaker version of a military laser, as it is now. Halving beam damage would fix that quite neatly.

[Diziet Sma]

I like the idea of letting you set a "route destination" by picking a target system a long way away and a route optimisation type, then having the ANA feed the next system to your drives each time you jump.

This is something I've wanted for ages - I always have a long-range destination set, and after a jump, I immediately set my next jump.

Agreed.. I like this idea a lot. This also indirectly relates to a long-standing request of mine.. much as I like the idea of in-system waypoints, what I really want is to be able to set waypoints on the long-range chart, and have the ANA factor those into a route. That way, if I take (or even consider) a contract that takes me slightly off the cross-chart route I already have plotted, the ANA could re-calculate the entire route to include the intermediate stops along the way.