Oolite Bulletins

Sorry for the double post - does dyson sphere even exist asides from on the forums? and isn't it not a ship, but a station?

Thanks, now I have to come up with a new witty signature!

wackyman465 wrote:

Sorry for the double post - does dyson sphere even exist asides from on the forums?

Hmmm. If you have actually read the discussion about the dyson sphere, then you will realize that much deals with the fact that it is most probably impossible to create one in Oolite. This strongly points to a 'no' as an answer.

Or are you asking about RealLife™? In that case it would be safe to say: Definitely not in our solar system, and--as far as we know--nowhere else as well. (SETI is working on it, though.)

wackyman465 wrote:

And if I make a sniper python, do you promise not to include it in RS as a player ship? Please? cuz it would just miss the point

I make a point of it that I change not so much in RS or even in its upcoming successor that the original oxp author did with his ship.

The things I do change are:

I give the ships a bit of changed balance in gameplay (that takes into account what sort of ships you meet with RS in), roles (more roles are possible, but you won`t find a worm as an interceptor, for example) and cost if there is a player ship version - the costs are calculated by a formula that takes into account the ship`s stats, as those determine its practical in-game usefulness as the central "equipment item".

So if you do a ship that is supposed to fulfill a certain role and I do put this ship into RS ... (I put everything in there, because it is supposed to be of use for players, who want all ship oxps in one download, and balanced for gameplay at that) ... I will attempt to stay true to the (your) supposed role for this ship.

And if you or anyone has a request in that direction, I will usually honour that, except if that would break the whole concept of all ships in one go as such!

Down to basics: You don`t want it to be a player ship, you made it, if it then goes in there at all, then not as a player ship.

Just out of curiosity: Why would it be out of the point if a player could have a sniper python, too?

Wacky greetings

L

I'm not sure the scripting would be possible - you would just end up with a slow ship that turned relatively quickly and had a lousy cargo ship - I don't think it could be scripted to give a high laser power but slow recharge for a player ship.

wackyman465 wrote:

I'm not sure the scripting would be possible ... I don't think it could be scripted to give a high laser power but slow recharge for a player ship.

Oh, but I think you can!

Some idea similar to this was debated some time ago here on the forums. You could script a player ship that can only have a specific type of weapon (Pulse, Beam, Mining, Military or even Plasma Cannon) which comes in-built whenever you buy that ship.

Then you give that ship a very high weapons energy, and voila: Here is your sniper anything. Its recharge for the laser will be as fast as the recharge is for the laser type you chose to limit the ship to. I.e. take a military laser, you have slow recharge, take a mining laser, and you have slooooow recharge, give the ship that can have only mining lasers a weapons energy of say 200, and you have ridiculous power per shot, but not a far range and it takes a long time to recharge.

So you could create a NPC and player version, if you chose to do so. Methinks.

Looking forwards to see the results of your creativity in my game

L

I voted no, as we already have an ideal sniper weapon in the military laser.
As long as your aiming skills are good, the military laser can melt any hull within scanning range.
My favorite tactic is to cut speed and pick them off as they're coming at me; I usually manage to vaporize at least two before having to get into a duck and weave close range dogfight with the survivors. Even then, I'm trying to fall behind them and make some distance, so that I have to turn less to hit them than they do to evade.

By editing the game's files itself, you could make a sniper laser w/range + power!

wackyman465 wrote:

By editing the game's files itself, you could make a sniper laser w/range + power!

Which is a stupid idea for three reasons:

1. Generally it is discouraged very strongly to edit anything within the game itself. Better you copy it into the Config-folder within your AddOns-folder, and do your changes there. In that case you can restore the original game simply by trashing the edited file.
2. Whether you do it inside the game, or in a copied file in your AddOns-folder, the result is always the same: All lasers will be changed. Yours, and the ones of the nasty pirates you are going to meet. Therefore suddenly every laser will be a sniper laser. Do you want that?
3. You have a very good chance of breaking half of the OXPs you have installed. OXPs rely on the plists within Oolite itself. They take advantage of the existing plists, for instance by using parts of them as templates. If you change the template, everything that depends on this template will change with it. This is a very quick and very secure way to produce all sorts of unexpected and weird results, or in other words: of breaking something really badly. Success 100% guaranteed.

If you are willing to accept this, please feel free to tamper with the built-in plists in your installation. But please don't post any complaints or 'bug reports' here afterwards, because this or that doesn't work anymore as it did before. It can't, because you consciously broke it.

I guess not....

But I know that somewhere in the game files there is a list of the 5 kinds of lasers, their power, and their range. Can an OXP add one to those?

No.

i see.

no.

You could however edit the twin plasma blaster.
Nothing serious is using it... dunno if that is still true.
In any case it needs a serious update...turn it into a flamer already.
(eg. sderiously increae hull temp )

Why not make a Small Plasma Accelerator out of it?

That`s an item that will soon come up in the Oolite timeline ...

Just my 0.2 Cr

L

Hi!

Personally, I believe it would be more efficient to have a magnification, so that it's not "very short burst" - firing to check whether a military laser hits before one does shoot to kill. A sniper weapon that cannot be fired often would need such a maginification anyway in order to make it usable...and with maginification, the existing lasers should do their job well enough.

wackyman465 wrote:

Well i've done some research. I can't make it as a laser for player ships, but perhaps I could create a slow ship that maneuvers fast and has a very powerful laser - maybe twice that of a mining laser and equal range to a mil laser - you have to kill the ship before it can reload, or its second shot will kill you

Where's the special of this? Have you ever encountered the Cougar on C64 Elite? Single shot to "energy low" and a second one would kill you. Got it though, and as noone did believe me, I actually had to take the old saved game and replay until I encountered it again, then call a friend so that he would immediately catch a bus and visit me in order to be witness

Anyway...I wonder if something's wrong, because the pirates typically are so peaceful. It's very rare that a whole group of them shoots at me. It's far more common that a single ship attempts this, while the others (even if they switch to red on the HUD) just fly around without firing.

Furthermore, there's a bug in the AI, I'd say. If I pursue an enemy ship, that typically does a LOT of direction changes in order to get out of the lasers sights. However, if I am fast enough or hit the injectors just a little bit in order to get closer, then the fleeing ship stops its escape attempts and flies on a straight line, waiting to be shot down. Only if the distance grows again, the pursued ship will re-attempt to get out of my sights.

Another thing where the AI is very vulnerable: It's very easy to lure a pirate into hitting the injectors. One way is to very briefly hit my own injectors and wait, the other is a very brief burst with the military laser without causing the ship to permanently flee (fer de lance are prone to flee). Examples:
1) When the screen flashes with multiple yellow lights...I don't check whether they are pirates or not by targeting them, but briefly hit the injectors. True pirates will then use up ALL their fuel to fly around my ship. When they stop, they very soon deliver their cargo to me
2) As I installed the game shortly ago, I had the constrictor mission today. I wonder why such a whimp counts like about 250 kills...I had common Asps give me a better fight. I hit the constrictor very briefly with the laser, and then the constrictor used up all fuel in the injectors in order to make rapid approaches towards me (without firing), then turn and come back for another approach. It did not fire. So when the fuel was used up, I just pursued it with my Boa Cruiser and shot it down. It didn't even try to evasives.

So...why better fighting help for the players when the computer enemy has so much trouble?

Concerning the game: WOW! Very big THANK YOU to all those involved. This game does feel much much better than the original, which did cost me so much time of my youth, back then.

Screet who likes to ram enemy ships to death with his cruiser

Thargoid wrote:

Personally I'm still waiting for Asteroid-Player...

Oh, no! I've seen what happens there, courtesy of Winterblink's 'Warp Drive Active' EVE Online cartoons:

http://www.warpdriveactive.com/images/w ... -11-20.jpg

It actually made me feel quite inexplicably sad...




(PS: Sorry if it's terribly bad form to link someone else's cartoon relating to a different game; but it's only because I think WDA is genius. )