Oolite Bulletins

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

Why not show off my ride, a Dragon M:

Now that, Commander, is both stylish and intimidating! Must be bloody hard to pick out against the stars, too ...

Disembodied wrote:

Without having to worry about how big the drive is, or the power plants or fuel tanks, it can be done any way you like, right enough: but in the abstract sense of game design (as opposed the the practical sense of making the game the way you want it) personally I feel there's always got to be a plus and a minus to any serious in-game decision. Choosing what ship to fly is one of those decisions. Price balance is one way to work it, but – since money in Oolite is just a matter of time, really – it shouldn't be the only factor. If a ship gets better in one direction, then ideally it should suffer in at least one other. More cargo space should mean lower speed or acceleration or handling, or (actually, probably and) presenting a bigger target. Smaller, faster and more nimble should mean less cargo space, and/or poorer shields or energy. If an option is always right – if there's no cons to weigh against the pros – then there's no fun in making the decisions, because they're obviously the right thing to do.

Which of course is not to say that you shouldn't do whatever you like, or that people shouldn't make tiny speedy nimble ships that can carry canisters bigger than they are. After all, nobody has to download an OXP they don't want. And anything anyone makes can be easily hacked to conform to how you want it anyway. If you make a "fat" Cobra III that can take 65 tons without losing any combat capabilities, I can always alter it in my own system to suit my own tastes!

Now heres a question what affect does mass have on handling and thrust requirements when operating in a gravity free vacuum of space? I have no idea of What it does.

I think for me "storyline" or "fluff" "reality" are very important, I like something that "makes sense" that "fits in" or has a sense of character to it. I like a good reason for something to be the way it is.

The difference in cargo hold size only makes a difference to time it takes to earn money. It frees up time ditching all those food and textiles that may only add up to a hundred credits or so at most per run, Is it a game balance thing when it just cuts down on house keeping work, and you have to pay extra to get that facility?

Id think that even adding 10% to the length of the cobra effectively making it easier to hit is more than compensating for not having to sort and discard the lower value part of your haul.

Azathoth wrote:

Lestradae wrote:

Azathoth wrote:

If only I could get my hands on a Black Monk’s Gunship!

You will, in time

Could you please explain. A quick look at the wiki says that it is available to the player. So have I just been unlucky to not see one for sale, or is the wiki incorrect?

I think he means that if you play with RS then you get all the ships availble, even if they were intended to be NPC only.

Davidtq wrote:

Now here's a question: what effect does mass have on handling and thrust requirements when operating in a gravity free vacuum of space? I have no idea of what it does.

No different than anywhere else (not that space is truly gravity-free or a vacuum): it always requires the same amount of energy to accelerate a constant mass by a certain amount.

You just don't have significant gravitational forces or atmospheric drag to contend with…

So does that mean acceleration is affected rather than top speed?

Dont space craft normally "drift" once they're at the speed and course they desire?

Just trying to remember nasa launchs and I seem to remember big burns initially and for landing but the main journey being virtually power free.

Davidtq wrote:

Now heres a question what affect does mass have on handling and thrust requirements when operating in a gravity free vacuum of space? I have no idea of What it does.

The greater the mass of an object, the greater its inertia – so it takes more thrust, or the same amount of thrust over more time, to change velocities. An astronaut with an aerosol can could push himself about in space with a few squirts here and there. If he's leaning out the window of his ship, and squirting the same aerosol, he can eventually move his ship around too, but it'll take a whole lot more spraying.

However, from the fluff side of things, Oolite ships are (I think) decidedly non-Newtonian, so the mass of an object might not make a difference. Or, it might mean that a much bigger power-plant or drive is required to cancel out the ship's mass. Technobabble can cut it either way.

Davidtq wrote:

I think for me "storyline" or "fluff" "reality" are very important, I like something that "makes sense" that "fits in" or has a sense of character to it. I like a good reason for something to be the way it is.

See, this to me is a good reason not to go overboard on the überness. If there was a really splendid all-round ship out there, almost everyone would be flying one. The only possible reason why not would be if the ship was spectacularly expensive. If Ford invents a transit van that can do 100 miles to the gallon and can lug 5 tons of gear around at the same time, that sells for somewhere near the normal transit van price (or even twice or three times the stndard amount), all the other van makers will either go bust or they'll start producing knockoffs of the new model. And in a game like Oolite, where making money is just a matter of time, it just becomes a matter of time until everyone inevitably upgrades to this brilliant ship. By "everyone" I mean "everyone in your own private ooniverse", of course, but if it was to make sense you should see loads of the new überships and only old, clunky models of everything else.

Davidtq wrote:

The difference in cargo hold size only makes a difference to time it takes to earn money. It frees up time ditching all those food and textiles that may only add up to a hundred credits or so at most per run, Is it a game balance thing when it just cuts down on house keeping work, and you have to pay extra to get that facility?

Speaking personally, I'd say yes. If you want to make lots of money hauling big cargoes, and scooping up everything that comes your way, then buy a big hefty freighter. If you want to be a hotshot combateer, buy something small and swift, and pick your cargo canisters carefully. If you want to be a bit of both, mixing a bit of bounty-hunting with a bit of fast-and-loose trading and smuggling, buy a mid-size jack-of-all-trades like the Cobra III. Which isn't to say you can't go bounty-hunting in a Boa, just that it's going to be harder because you're a big target and not so handy in the turns. The upside is, as you say, you don't have to hum and haw about whether to buy some of those cheap computers, only to "find" plenty floating about in space on your way to the destination. But there's still a tradeoff involved, and a decision to be made.

Ultimately, though, any question of game balance is only ever solved by testing it out. If you find that lengthening a Cobra III by 10% makes you an easier target, and that the extra difficulty in combat is a good payoff for the extra cargo space, then fine. If you find yourself fighting as happily as you did before and hauling loads more stuff into the bargain, you might want to make more tweaks.

But: your game, your storyline, your rules!

All I can say is that there’s a lot quicker ways to find the easy setting in this game than to look for an “uber” boat.

Azathoth wrote:

All I can say is that there’s a lot quicker ways to find the easy setting in this game than to look for an “uber” boat.

I don't know. Half the fun of this game is popping the hood. The fact that this game can be Kobayashi Maru'd acts as a big hook for me.
#

Screet wrote:

I really can't imagine to switch to any other ship...

If it's only the looks, the neolite fer-de-lance!

I also like the model of the Merlin/Kestrel very much, but it's too tiny, much like cheating...

Screet

After taking your comments into account I am doing a version 2 which should look more bio. I have a working theory for a working shield, camo sub-entity too. But it's being a bit of a bitch to model at the moment. The turrets are being slightly outrigged to give a better field of fire and the "lard ass" has beed extensively remodelled. She's also currently undergoing wing redesign, profile reduction (to make landing and shot avoidance easier), 3d cargo checks to get a more accurate cargo count and a laser realignment.

We might use this as an excuse to tone down the handling (which is currently too fast for acurate manuvering (over shoot is a serious problem)) and a minor speed increase (visually represented by the dual counter rotational spiric engines. (More sub-entities)

Azathoth wrote:

All I can say is that there’s a lot quicker ways to find the easy setting in this game than to look for an “uber” boat.

What is a "hard" setting in the standard game? I think youd have to go overboard to get something "hard". Perhaps ECM'less pirateing in a anaconda with a single puls laser? Even equipping the starter ship with a ECM and witch fuel injectors makes the game easy. Money making is nothing challengeing theres a very limited range of products to buy and sell and you can normally find a cargo ferrying route which makes money both ways, rinse and repeat. Docking isnt a challenge, not after over 2 decades of playing elite. If I do it manually I generally go in with injectors on full, to force concentration and add a thrill of "danger" to the manouvre.

I enjoy the pace of combat it makes you think fast, its not "difficult" as such it just demands concentration to not make a stupid mistake. Im not the type to make something unnecesarily demanding for the sake of challenge, sure I CAN fight adequately with pulse lasers, but all it does is extend the length of the fight

Diesembodied wrote:

See, this to me is a good reason not to go overboard on the überness. If there was a really splendid all-round ship out there, almost everyone would be flying one. The only possible reason why not would be if the ship was spectacularly expensive. If Ford invents a transit van that can do 100 miles to the gallon and can lug 5 tons of gear around at the same time, that sells for somewhere near the normal transit van price (or even twice or three times the stndard amount), all the other van makers will either go bust or they'll start producing knockoffs of the new model. And in a game like Oolite, where making money is just a matter of time, it just becomes a matter of time until everyone inevitably upgrades to this brilliant ship. By "everyone" I mean "everyone in your own private ooniverse", of course, but if it was to make sense you should see loads of the new überships and only old, clunky models of everything else.

Not necesarily if the splendid allroundness was the work of a unique customisation. Rather than a "mass marketed" production model. Proflex suspension is "uber" for cars but its hardly used by anyone outside motorsport, why? it can be setup to give comfort of standard suspension with far better handling. 90% of car drivers have never even heard of proflex, and 99.9% wouldnt be worried enough about handling quality to spend the extra money. I would also think that the standard CObra for much of the ihabitants of the galaxy would be a "splendid" allrounder, Judging by the level of challenge I find in regular pilots they cant possible be gathering as much carge as I do in a run . Just as most people in our world find a production "GTI" or "sports" model plenty good enough. When competing in motorsport a "production" model of any type is "junk" its just not up to the job. Would things be any different in oolite? wouldnt the majority pick "production" machines and even though "uberness" is remortgage away. It comes naturally to me to equate elite ships and cars, as part of the reason I got into rallying was that it gave part of the challenge you imagine would come from space combat. Just mostly in 2d rather than 3d (rolling isn't a good tactic):D

I like to think of oolite as a "simulation" in the real world there is an awefull lot that can be done with most things that although easily available the majority of consumers stick with the "production" version.

Ive been building my self a "cockpit" arcade machine type setup for playing video games, its cost me next to nothing, Im using left over wood and an out of homolagation bucket seat, its great for playing games, but despite the fact that this sort of thing is "available" to most people the majority cant be bothered with it. For most people an "office" chair is enough for gaming on. I like to customise things to take the experience further or to make things easier.

Diesembodied wrote:

Speaking personally, I'd say yes. If you want to make lots of money hauling big cargoes, and scooping up everything that comes your way, then buy a big hefty freighter. If you want to be a hotshot combateer, buy something small and swift, and pick your cargo canisters carefully. If you want to be a bit of both, mixing a bit of bounty-hunting with a bit of fast-and-loose trading and smuggling, buy a mid-size jack-of-all-trades like the Cobra III. Which isn't to say you can't go bounty-hunting in a Boa, just that it's going to be harder because you're a big target and not so handy in the turns. The upside is, as you say, you don't have to hum and haw about whether to buy some of those cheap computers, only to "find" plenty floating about in space on your way to the destination. But there's still a tradeoff involved, and a decision to be made.

I dont buy cargo then top up with scooping. I ONLY trade in what I scoop, the extra cargo space isnt about making high profits its about not having to do "boring" house keeping to get rid of "worthless" low value containers. A bit like docking computers I CAN dock manually as easy as can be - (Ive been playing elite variants for well over 20 years) but I buy docking computers to skip repeating the manouvre over and over. I do it manually from time to time, generally with injectors on full, I also manually dock at space bars rock hermits and those express stores, as automated docking is the slower method on these. I "skip" the more routine boring tasks wherever possible. I would happily pay 5x the credits on fuel to not have to go through the routine of "filling up" every time I dock. Call me lazy but filling up is "good story line" but repetetive game play Its not a big hasle but I would happily sacrifice profit margin for the convenience of it being automated Looking at the standard game a 15 ton "large cargo bay" increases your cargo space by 75% with the only trade off being a measly 400credits.

Im not at all convinced that "game balance" is the be all and end all, personally I think "fun" is more important. If game balance was an overriding concern I would have to get rid of my military lasers because the way I fight the "over heating" trade off doesnt have much impact on me.

An example of picking game balance over fun would be star wars galaxies in the name of "Game Balance" they took down a system where you mixed and matched skills and professions to create your own unique character and replace it with a system where you took one of 9 "professions" and followed the same path as everyone else. The reason they did this was that they couldnt balance all the possible cobinations. Unfortunately it pretty much killed the game for me because I didnt look for power I looked for fun, my "build" was considered underpowered, BUT I loved the "style" of my character, It gave me a lot to pin down his life story. After the changes sure he might have became comparatively far more powerful and in line with every other character out there but he lost most of the traits that made him "fun".

I can see that in a competetive PvP arena Game balance can be necesary to give everyone a level footing, but to my mind balancing things in a game at the cost of introducing tedium and damageing fun is a mistake.

Its a bit like the limited bag space in many mmorpgs, all it does to the game is force you to visit the vendors to ditch junk more often, Its a time sink that isnt "fun" to my mind.

If big bank balances were my main goal then I could achieve that easily enough by editing a save game or running a big rig out of the traffic. As it is I think I find more fun in outnumbered combats, they arent "difficult" I just enjoy being made to think fast and keep on my toes.

Just as my posting this isnt because I need anyones permission to do what I want I just find the discussion and the subject interesting.

ClymAngus wrote:

Azathoth wrote:

All I can say is that there’s a lot quicker ways to find the easy setting in this game than to look for an “uber” boat.

I don't know. Half the fun of this game is popping the hood. The fact that this game can be Kobayashi Maru'd acts as a big hook for me.

Actually that is VERY VERY true I do love poking around, trying to come up with my own storylined new ship designs, etc etc. Even just giving your ship your own paint job makes it "feel" better.

Davidtq wrote:

Not necesarily if the splendid allroundness was the work of a unique customisation. Rather than a "mass marketed" production model. Proflex suspension is "uber" for cars but its hardly used by anyone outside motorsport, why? it can be setup to give comfort of standard suspension with far better handling. 90% of car drivers have never even heard of proflex, and 99.9% wouldnt be worried enough about handling quality to spend the extra money.

True, but almost everyone in motorsport will use proflex suspension, because it's vital for their profession. So assuming that almost everyone with a Cobra III is flying it as a job, not just to get from A to B, then if there's an adaptation that makes the Cobra III into a much better trader, with no downside, I think everyone would take it. It's a business decision, not a lifestyle one. It's like the cargo bay expansion: it's a no-brainer. Everyone takes it. There's absolutely no reason not to have it, as soon as you can afford it. It's stupid not to fit one. If there's a way of essentially giving a Cobra III an even bigger cargo bay expansion, with nothing to worry about except the money, then again, everyone who uses the cargo bay for their livelihood would do it.

Ultimately, it all comes down to your concept of fun. And that's where Oolite's under-the-hood tinkering really takes off, because everyone can enjoy different aspects of the game and have the universe set up the way they want it.

And of course this kind of situation is where "game balance" goes out the window, because all your setup has to do is please you, and you alone. When it comes to multi-player games, though, and non-sandbox games, the balance gets much more important. With regard to Star Wars Galaxies: I haven't played the game, but as it's a MMORPG there are other people involved. Game-balance issues are therefore very important, because if one or two sets of possible character choices are much, much better than all the rest, then it's only going to be any fun for that subset of people who like playing those one or two character types. Whether they got it right or not I don't know: obviously from your point of view they didn't! But probably you were in a small minority of people who were prepared to play as something other than the best available, and still have fun. It would have been a commercial decision (obviously: no corporation will work if it's not getting paid) to try to get as many people playing the game for as long as possible.

My own best example of bad game-balance is the old Games Workshop board game Talisman. Each player picked a different character with a different set of abilities and stats, and you all farted about for many hours through the night until whoever had the Prophetess won. Because it was a hugely, overwhelmingly better character than any of the others. Once someone had that character the game was essentially over, and there was even less point in playing it than before. If you dumped her from the game things got a bit better, but even still there were good characters and lousy ones: the differences between them meant that only a few of them were ever usable.

You're absolutely right, of course: "fun" is absolutely the overriding principle in making any game. If it's not fun, then it's not a game. But – in anything except a pure single-player sandbox game like Oolite – balance is an important part of that fun. Talisman, with the Prophetess character, was no fun, because everyone who wasn't playing the Prophetess knew that they were just going to get thumped. Even for the person playing the Prophetess, it wasn't much fun, because all there was to do was sit through a long but inevitable progress towards ultimate victory. Aspects like having a coherent and well-realised gameworld and a sense of player involvement are very important aspects of fun, too, but they're harder to define, and more prone to personal taste.

For example, I actually enjoy the fact that my ship can only carry 20 tons of cargo. I don't find swapping around canisters to be all that tedious (and anyway, I've made so much money that it doesn't matter to me any more). I like the fact that if I spurn the chance to buy rock-bottom computers because the Poor Agricultural I'm heading for is a seething Anarchy, and I'll fill up the Radio Maru twice over with salvage, then sure as fate I'll meet nothing on the way in with a bounty on its head, and I can moan and complain about Sod's Law. I like the fact that if I've blown up a pirate and scooped up some slaves, I can't dump them, even if there's a whole mass of tinned luxuries floating all around me: because in my game, in my head, I don't do that. I can't leave living beings drifting out there, maybe forever (in my head, again, when I get them to the station I'm releasing them, not selling them). Escape pods, too: I'll jettison something expensive if I have to, to take one of those on board. I find that much more involving, much more fun, having to make those decisions. If I had a huge cargo bay then the issue would almost never come up. Plus, of course, everyone knows that a Wolf Mark II SE is way cool.

I guess fun is defined in many ways depending on one's point-of-view. I'm not a competitive person. Quite frankly, I don't care to play games where I compete with other people. However, I love the idea of games that support the concept of team work.

The other things I like are exploration which Oolite provides a nice universe that is continually updated by other OXP's, and modifying with textures, sounds, perhaps other scripts. I'm a tinkerer and explorer by nature.

Randy

Personally I have an interesting philosophy: If you play Little Fighter, I am a huge fan of the Reinforced version; if you don't, it's too long to explain here

What I do is to increase the power in my ship to a point where it becomes bizzare - then - wait for it - manually tweak the settings of OXPs to give an even greater challenge. What I get is something like 20 Tiger Gang members swarming my ships, all of them armed way beyond spec

I like the concept of big guns on everyone - myself, and my enemies. makes the game more of a do-or-die rather than a death-by-attrititon, but hey, that's just my personal style

Davidtq wrote:

Azathoth wrote:

All I can say is that there’s a lot quicker ways to find the easy setting in this game than to look for an “uber” boat.

What is a "hard" setting in the standard game? I think youd have to go overboard to get something "hard". Perhaps ECM'less pirateing in a anaconda with a single puls laser? Even equipping the starter ship with a ECM and witch fuel injectors makes the game easy. Money making is nothing challengeing theres a very limited range of products to buy and sell and you can normally find a cargo ferrying route which makes money both ways, rinse and repeat. Docking isnt a challenge, not after over 2 decades of playing elite. If I do it manually I generally go in with injectors on full, to force concentration and add a thrill of "danger" to the manouvre.

I agree that Oolite can be an easy game. But only easy if you reload the last save game when you die. Then, its just a question of time before you become Elite and have the money to buy any ship you want. But that’s only because you are effectively invincible.

Try playing it so that when you die, you die. Now it’s a completely different game. Every dogfight has your finger hovering over the ejector seat button. It just takes one enemy to fire an ECM-hardened missile at point blank range and your toast, finished, game over, back to a harmless commander in a basic Cobra MkIII with 100 credits in the bank.

I’ve never made Elite playing this way. Has anyone? I’m sure it can be done, but I’m also sure it takes a lot of running away and a lot of luck.

Yeh, for me Oolite is a hard game.

@Azathoth - That's what I term my Ironman game. I am allowed to save and reload, but only due to play hours - NEVER DEATH. I have made a few exceptions here and there though... I launched from a station and was INSTANTLY dead once or twice. I think I launched while someone was docking. A few things like that... And yes, the game becomes much more 'intense'.