Oolite Bulletins

Getting a rear Beam Laser really is the best semi-early option.
If you don't have a Beam or Military Laser on front and back, you really shouldn't be visiting places you'll need it.
Sadly, many 3rd party add-ons can make big pirate ambushes in the most unlikely of places...

Agree with all the other posters, lasers are fine.

However...

I would like to see the lasers more modifiable though, eg: we can add super weapons of mass destruction that can destroy the entire universe... as long as it's in the missile slot, but think about having anything stronger than a military laser and STOP! hammer time... can't touch this~

Or can even have a million turrets, but modifiing lasers would unbalance the game

It makes no sense that were not allowed to add more types of lasers of varying strength through OXPs, all we can do is change their colour.

I'd also like to see visual modifications such as twin lasers (this would simply be a vanity thing not effecting the damage at all, I'd just like to see my krait fire from its guns instead of from the nose, not that I own a krait) And because I'm a big fan of the original Elite where twin lasers were the only type of lasers, overall I just prefer the look of two lasers coming from the bottom corners instead of a single laser from the bottom of my screen.

I'd also like to see player subentities able to fire lasers like npc subentities do, even if it's only a vanity thing not effecting stats.

what i'd like to see, is a closer engagement range; have the lasers only effective up to to say 50~70% of their current abilities. i loved the close-in World War I dogfights i used to have on the Amiga version, but this wish is mainly due to eye candy : there's more and more gorgeous ships coming out w/ great shader effects like glowing guns etc, but i hardly seem to see them in detail to appreciate them. i'd love to be forced to get in closer before the battle starts (same rules for NPC obviously), especially if more battle-damageable ships begin appearing.

Killer Wolf wrote:

what i'd like to see, is a closer engagement range; have the lasers only effective up to to say 50~70% of their current abilities.

The only problem with this is that you'll spend more time in range of those nice plasma turrets everything seems to have these days

I am more than happy that there is at least one area left in this game where we won't get an arms race into uberness.

well personally i find it odd that plasma turrets exist at all, when other things, like >7ly fuel and laser coolers gets kicked out as "not canon to Elite" etc

Especially since F:FE had variable jump-ranges depending on ship

Having said that, I don't consider F:FE canon, and belong in the camp that's not so keen on the turrets. I tolerate them on stations in the OXPs I install.

The key aspect of any game design is not what you put in, it's what you leave out. An argument from canonicity isn't the strongest, IMO – it's the radical effect on gameplay that's the killer. Player-ships with plasma turrets is shading the boundary, I admit, but at least they're short-range weapons: you have to get pretty up close and personal with your opponents before they kick in. A cooled military laser would, I think, run the risk of bursting the fundamentals of gameplay: you'd just point your nose in the general direction of the opposition, from a long way away, and hold down the trigger. Dogfighting – which to me is the essential core, the key fun bit, of the game – would become a routine task. Much like Frontier, really.

Disembodied wrote:

Dogfighting – which to me is the essential core, the key fun bit, of the game

Right on Commander!