Oolite Bulletins

Arkanoid - whoops! Somehow I forgot the NPC Wolf has twin lasers, which evens up the odds somewhat!

I'm just looking again at the IC's stats, and the max speed doesn't seem insane (I've got .375 and .360), but the pitch and roll figures for the NPC version are way out there (2.75 and 3.5). *That's* why I'd fancy the IC in that fight (disregarding the twin-laser thing!) - it'd be damn hard to land a sustained burst on it (or it ought to be, given competent AI). Couple that with the high energy-recharge rate (5 on the NPC ship) and the Wolfs could be chipping away for ages to no avail. And combat aside, there's the matter of the 100-ton cargo space - *80* more than the Wolf. And all for a price tag of 585K, compared to the Wolf's 580K (standard model). Don't think we need an in-game calculator to tell us this needs revising. (Don't get me wrong btw - I love the IC; I just think it's currently way too cheap!)

Incidentally, I don't understand why the stats for the player and NPC versions of the IC should be different - surely you'd be buying the same ship as everyone else?

*EDIT* themacman - I agree; I wouldn't want to see in-game limits on what we can do. And you're right, I could just alter the price myself - but somehow I'd rather be playing the same game that everyone else is playing, if that makes any sense.

but somehow I'd rather be playing the same game that everyone else is playing, if that makes any sense.

yeah that makes perfect sense, and I agree, that's why I haven't done it myself. Just thought I should point that out for those who would change it.

ArkanoiD wrote:

You cannot expect a big truck to behave like F1 car, does not matter how expensive it is.
You cannot turn at high speeds the same way you do when driving slowly. So IC pitch rate is unrealistic for the ooniverse.

I don't agree, in my idea of Ooniverse, if you have technology to witchjump between solar sistems and galaxies, you can have any pich/roll/speed/cargo you want (if you pay enough, of course...)

I think the only constraint should be price.

ArkanoiD wrote:

You cannot expect a big truck to behave like F1 car, does not matter how expensive it is.
You cannot turn at high speeds the same way you do when driving slowly. So IC pitch rate is unrealistic for the ooniverse.

If elite was based on real physics, you'd have to retrothrust to decel, and you'd have to work with vector addition for the turns.

Real life physics have jack all to do with elite/oolite. You want realism, play "Beyond the Red Line" "I've Found her" or "vega strike"

Real world physics was tried in FFE and the gameplay sucked!

Anyway at any accelation a human could stand it would take 10 to 20 years to cross a solar system with hydrogen thrusters (and thats ignoring the hyperspace violation of Newtonian Physics).

The game is set 1,000 years in the future. They've developed all sorts of fly-by-wire and "inertial dampeners" tech things to get round this

Actually, realistic physics or not, there is no reason why a truck in space would be any slowed than a car, assuming the truck has thrusters scaled to match the car for accel, and had particle screens that allowed as high max speed as said car.

There we go with the "thrusters" again. The Oolite ships don't use anything as primitive as mass-ejection or Newtonian physics to move.

They use the difference in universal constants between ordinary space and witchspace to achieve an instantaneous displacement. Since the displacement is instantaneous (rather than the continuous displacement we're accustomed to), it is not subject to Newton's or Einstein's laws, and inertia has no effect.

By modifying the structure of the witchspace drive components, they can utilize a greater or lesser amount of this potential, producing different apparent speeds. There is a maximum to the useful deformation of the drive structure, though; thus there is a maximum speed. Witchspace injectors use witchspace fuel to strengthen the coupling between the two spaces, thereby providing an increased maximum apparent speed.

Sorry. I was a Star Trek apologist. None of this is canon; it's just my technobabble. But at least it explains why Oolite ship physics is as it is.

Judebert wrote:

There we go with the "thrusters" again. The Oolite ships don't use anything as primitive as mass-ejection or Newtonian physics to move.

They use the difference in universal constants between ordinary space and witchspace to achieve an instantaneous displacement. Since the displacement is instantaneous (rather than the continuous displacement we're accustomed to), it is not subject to Newton's or Einstein's laws, and inertia has no effect.

By modifying the structure of the witchspace drive components, they can utilize a greater or lesser amount of this potential, producing different apparent speeds. There is a maximum to the useful deformation of the drive structure, though; thus there is a maximum speed. Witchspace injectors use witchspace fuel to strengthen the coupling between the two spaces, thereby providing an increased maximum apparent speed.

Sorry. I was a Star Trek apologist. None of this is canon; it's just my technobabble. But at least it explains why Oolite ship physics is as it is.

Yep, that's almost exactly what i told people about Elite physics - and i did not like Newtonian jet propulsion in Frontier at all..

I don't agree, in my idea of Ooniverse, if you have technology to witchjump between solar sistems and galaxies, you can have any pich/roll/speed/cargo you want (if you pay enough, of course...)

I think the only constraint should be price.

I strongly disagree with this. No matter what level of technology you achieve, engineering is always a compromise. The game needs to be grounded in an *acceptable* level of realism, otherwise it's just 'twitch gaming'.

I think it should be a little like how the old adventure games worked when designing a new character... you get 100 points or something, which you can allocate to 'weapons','cargo','agility' and 'speed' in whatever way you like. Any ships pushing one characteristic would lose out on others automatically.

Cheers,

Drew.

Hmm - I kind of disagree with both of you

I think themacman has the right position on this. I think having overall limits on the specs would be, er, limiting, not to mention dull. Why should all ships be about as good as each other overall? You can get good cars, bad cars and average cars (regardless of what type of car they are) - and good, bad and average everything really - so why not the same for Oolite ships? It just has to be reflected properly in the price - and here I think it's just a case of quickly comparing each new ship to what's already out there.

At the same time, I wouldn't want to fly a ship with insanely great (!) specs, no matter how much it cost, because that would also be boring. And I'm particularly wary of "speed inflation" - I think the majority of ships should remain at 0.35 and below, and only a select, very expensive few should be capable of 0.4 and above.

So I guess I'm advocating a sort of middle way, which is disturbingly Blairite! But hey.

drew wrote:

Any ships pushing one characteristic would lose out on others automatically.

I think we need a choice. If there's a complete freedom in ship's design, we have to accept price as unique variant for every ship we have in OXP. On the other hand if we want to balace ships in the way RPGs do, it's crucial to determine rules of that.

I assume now the first condition is true

The real question is:

"Do we need an algorithm to control ship's stats?"

or

"Do we need an algorithm to determine ship's price?"

this is the clue.

On the other way, we'll go on barking around without a real solution

"Do we need an algorithm to control ship's stats?"

This one gets my vote. I don't want to see ridiculously huge and expensive behemoths running rings around my Cobra Courier just because some one has a big wad. I don't mind being outgunned or outcargo'ed by a big ship, but agility/speed? Not right IMHO.

Big ships should be slow and clunky, small ships fast and agile, anything in between chooses to compromise in some direction. All fictional space environments stick to this sort of rule without resorting to accurate newtonian physics. I think Oolite should too. Seeing big ships do tight turns and high speed acceleration just looks *wrong*.

I would like to see user controlled turrets on the bigger ships, to provide some means of defence against smaller ships with better agility though. (as seen in BSG, FE2/FFE etc). Turrets should only be available beyond a certain size/class of ship.

Cheers,

Drew.

I don't think we need either. Just more awareness of the desirability of having sensible prices (and stats that aren't ridiculously, boringly good), reinforced by voting/comments on Oosat. Plus, if a ship doesn't fit well within the Ooniverse, you can always decide not to install it, as Oscar has said.

Maybe a more complete list of ships on the Wiki would help, though. On that note, will do my bit by adding my OXP ship to the list as soon as I get the chance.

*EDIT* Drew, I agree that it "feels right" for bigger ships generally to be slower and less agile than smaller ones, but I think people should be free to devise cool exceptions to this "rule". And if they aren't cool, we can say so on Oosat and/or choose not to download them!

Similarly, I agree with you on the turrets, but if someone designed, say, a Cobra Mk III-sized ship with a turret, they could just be informed of their silliness on Oosat

Fair do's. I guess you can edit things to your complete satisfaction anyway or not download OXPs etc... .I just liked the idea of playing the same game as everyone else, and having some kind of rational in force to preserve the game play.

Cheers,

Drew.

I like the idea, but I don't think it could work even with the Classic Elite Ships. A cobra just is a better ship than a worm, so you can't really have a fixed pool of points. Also to have challenging missions you need uber NPC only ships. Heretic's thargoids or Murgs Military ships would totally unabalence the game as player ships, but you'd still want to have them as NPC ships.