Ships, decisions, decisions.

[Commander McLane]

(Is it possible that this discount can be horribly abused? If you buy a quirium torpedo at half-price and sell it at to the dredgers at twice its original value, you could make a ton of easy money that way.)

Yes, it is possible, and has been done. One of the reasons why I personally don't like Galactic Navy.oxp too much, and haven't installed it.

I'm still being attacked by those elitist bastards though. They didn't seem to like me blowing up Hesperus. In my defense, it was either me, or an entire wing of navy newbies with military hardware and itchy trigger fingers. I even went out of the way and picked up his escape pod AND bought most of his (surviving) trumbles as a sign of goodwill.

Nice gesture of you, at least to rescue the unfortunate Captain. I am also quite sure that you got most of his surviving trumbles for free! By the way, as the guy who scripted Personalities.oxp, I would have loved to give you multiple trumbles through his escape pod and his cargopods, but unfortunately this is impossible. Only one trumble can be awarded to you by script, subsequent awards are ignored, as long as you still have at least one trumble on board.

As far as the attacks by "those elitist bastards" are concerned: what doesn't kill you, only makes you a better fighter! And we are a generally close bunch here. If one of us gets eliminated, the others don't take it lightly. But in Personalities.oxp there is also a limitation to this. Whenever you are responsible for the elimination of one of the personalities, only the next personality you meet will try to get revenge on you. If you run away from him, nothing further happens, the score is settled. However, if you kill him as well, the next one will try to revenge him. And so on. Oh, another detail: If the personality you have eliminated is just a trader or a bounty hunter, they will always be revenged. If it's a pirate (like my own personality), they will only half of the time be revenged. So there is the chance that the other personalities think they've deserved what they got.

I want a ship with four forward lasers :/, any idea where I can get my hands on one of those babies?

As the other guys already stated: not possible. Only NPCs can have multiple lasers in one direction. It is also questionable if you really would want it, because it has its drawbacks. (1) all lasers fire exactly parallel to each other, so chances are that actually only one of the four hits any part of your opponent's ship, nevertheless (2) they heat up four times as fast, because they are all on the same cooling circuit. So basically having multiple forward lasers for the player would be the same as having one a single laser, but by default missing at least three quarters of the time. I for one wouldn't want that.

[Diziet Sma]

Only NPCs can have multiple lasers in one direction. It is also questionable if you really would want it, because it has its drawbacks. (1) all lasers fire exactly parallel to each other, so chances are that actually only one of the four hits any part of your opponent's ship, nevertheless (2) they heat up four times as fast, because they are all on the same cooling circuit. So basically having multiple forward lasers for the player would be the same as having one a single laser, but by default missing at least three quarters of the time. I for one wouldn't want that.

Given my (brief) run-ins with Rattlers, I presume the NPC versions don't suffer from these limitations? Certainly, they seem to score hits with at least 2 or 3 of their lasers most of the time, and they don't seem to overheat any faster...

[Commander McLane]

Given my (brief) run-ins with Rattlers, I presume the NPC versions don't suffer from these limitations? Certainly, they seem to score hits with at least 2 or 3 of their lasers most of the time, and they don't seem to overheat any faster...

It depends very much on your ship's geometry. If it is quite bulky, chances are that a ship with multiple lasers can hit it with more than one laser at a time. Again, it also depends on the aggressor's ship geometry. If the multiple lasers are positioned very close to each other, the chances of hitting multiple times increase. Therefore I tend to think that the Hydra is probably an even more formidable opponent than the Rattle Cutter, because it seems to me that its laser positions are closer to each other. But I could be wrong on that.

<looks it up> No, I am not: The hydra spikes are much more centred than the rattle fangs. But the most concentrated firepower (at least within military.oxp) is in the Basilisk. It has only three laser subentities, but they are very close together. So it will very likely hit you with all its lasers.

On the opposite end of the spectrum there is the Imperial Courier. Three forward pointing lasers, but a very wide geometry. If you fly a ship that is simply narrower than the IC (which isn't difficult, given the IC's extreme wideness), the two outer lasers will miss you every time.

I am not sure, however, whether the multiple lasers lead to a faster overheating in NPCs. For a start, I am not sure at all about how overheating is handled for NPCs in general. Watching the laser temperature gauge in the target inspector tells me at least that it seems to be handled weirdly...

[ClymAngus]

Invalid or deleted file...

Is there another link? I'd love to give it a try.

Sure. Here's the link you're looking for.

As for the Kirin, Cows pointed you to the Kirin Sport, which is the smallest, lightest, fastest, and cheapest of the Kirin line. The most lightly armed, too.
Guess you'll have to wait for the wiki to be fixed to get the heavy Kirin.

http://www.crimsonforge.co.uk/cloister/kirin.zip

a couple of run-ins with Capt. Wyvern and his beastly warship show that I'm eventually going to have to change ships to avoid being horribly outclassed. He doesn't seem to agree with my policy blasting every ship in sight into space debris, and his accursed cloaking device prevents me from suicide blitzing him.

Yeah, well they'll do that. My makes are something of an acquired taste. Still they do what they were designed to do. Flay monks.

Maybe Cilice or flagellare would have been a better title. That said as we're trying to keep things a bit "snakey" it was one of the only good ones left.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

While a Caddy is good at giving those leg-breaking priests an attitude adjustment, it really excels at teaching the Thargoids to know fear again. A Caddy is one of the few ships that can give a Thargoid Battleship a close-range slugout and come out the winner, if a little bruised up and bloody. Of course, that depends on the tactical skills of the Captain and crew.

[tonyhippy]

My favourite ship so far has to be the Star Wars B-Wing (from the Star Wars ships OXP)
It bears little resemblance to the fighter/bombers from the films - it's way too big, for a start. It has a decent little cargo hold, is very fast and manoeverable, but the clincher is a huge amount of missile pylons. I can't find any ships to top it so far!
My other captain traded in a very lovely and nippy Rigel Tactical Bomber for a long sought Cadeucus Alpha, but regretted it: For some reason EVERYTHING seems to want to crash into a Cadeucus - anything that comes anyway near, and usually with fatal results (whereas things bounce merrily off Captain Jagger's B-Wing) and poor Cmdr Jerkov (such was his name) couldn't get near (let alone dock with) a feudal Hunting Lodge!!![/img]