Oolite Bulletins

Where mili-lazers overheat, is where we switch to nuke-tipped torpedoes at close range!

oh dear.... here comes E.E. Doc Smith 'serious weapon escalation' time... !!!

Actually, I like the weapon overheat function, in as much as that it makes you conserve your shots and fly well. It can be extremely frustrating when attacked by multiple bogies - especially if you load up some of the oxps that give you missions to assassinate tricky targets! Shedding heat in space isn't going to be easy; only radiation is available, there's nothing to convect or conduct heat away.

Star Gazer wrote:

oh dear.... here comes E.E. Doc Smith 'serious weapon escalation' time... !!!

Actually, I like the weapon overheat function, in as much as that it makes you conserve your shots and fly well. It can be extremely frustrating when attacked by multiple bogies - especially if you load up some of the oxps that give you missions to assassinate tricky targets! Shedding heat in space isn't going to be easy; only radiation is available, there's nothing to convect or conduct heat away.

Glad I'm not the only 'Doc' Smith fan on the BB (the description of the ships tearing each other apart in Subspace Encounters I think is amongst my favourites)

Seems my "hello" topic has turned into a scientific debate I went down the military laser route this time. Either the mining laser isn't quite the weapon it was in Elite, or I'm not the gamer I was when I was 9! Probably the latter. Anyway I've made it up to 'competent' and those 'press space commander' moments are fast becoming a rarity, thankfully.

Anyway I'm sure this has been said a thousand times over but I just want to thank everyone out there that's contributed to this project. I'm not much of a PC gamer (consoles are my thing, put the disc in and away you go, easy) and have Oolite running on the 'onboard' graphics of my frankly prehistoric computer. If someone like me can get this running, OXP's and all, that's testament to you guys seriously knowing what you're doing! The fact that all this is available for free astonishes me. Thanks again!

L0CI wrote:

Seems my "hello" topic has turned into a scientific debate I went down the military laser route this time. Either the mining laser isn't quite the weapon it was in Elite, or I'm not the gamer I was when I was 9! Probably the latter.

It may also be the former. The mining laser has a considerable recharge time in Oolite, making it not-very-useful as a weapon. This may have been different in various Elite versions. (Although personally I've never used a mining laser in any version of Elite I have ever played. To me the military laser always seemed the better choice.)

Commander McLane wrote:

L0CI wrote:

Seems my "hello" topic has turned into a scientific debate I went down the military laser route this time. Either the mining laser isn't quite the weapon it was in Elite, or I'm not the gamer I was when I was 9! Probably the latter.

It may also be the former. The mining laser has a considerable recharge time in Oolite, making it not-very-useful as a weapon. This may have been different in various Elite versions. (Although personally I've never used a mining laser in any version of Elite I have ever played. To me the military laser always seemed the better choice.)

Because fighting was so terrible in Frontier a turret mounted mining laser was the weapon of choice - Pause game -> move turret over target -> press fire -> unpause game -> wait for recharge time -> repeat until bored or bad guy is dead...

After that I got an Imp Courier - stuffed it full of shields - ignored the statement in the manual that shields didn't protect from solid impacts and rammed my enemies to death instead - on reflection - it was a pretty dreadful game...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Because fighting was so terrible in Frontier a turret mounted mining laser was the weapon of choice - Pause game -> move turret over target -> press fire -> unpause game -> wait for recharge time -> repeat until bored or bad guy is dead...

Ah, yes, the most intense, nerve wracking, sweaty palms inducing fighting ever: Turn-based Frontier!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

After that I got an Imp Courier - stuffed it full of shields - ignored the statement in the manual that shields didn't protect from solid impacts and rammed my enemies to death instead - on reflection - it was a pretty dreadful game...

I preferred the Panther (or whatever that biggest-of-them-all was called). Cram it full of shields, one of those white-beam 300MW laser that would vaporise anything smaller than a Python with one hit (for those rare occasions where ramming was insufficient) and a hull repair system (for those even rarer occasions when something actually managed to penetrate your shields). Gameplay at its finest!

Was Frontier's combat system that bad? (I haven't played it.) Was it the Newtonian system in general, or just the way Frontier did it? If it's the former, that bodes very poorly for Infinity.

Phantom Hoover wrote:

Was Frontier's combat system that bad? (I haven't played it.)

From memory: worse!

Was it the Newtonian system in general, or just the way Frontier did it?

At the time they seemed inextricably linked.

If it's the former, that bodes very poorly for Infinity.

I believe they introduced a number of non-newtonian tweaks, together with in-game servo mechanisms to account for that, so Newton & RL might well cause very few problems to infinity!

Salutations, o newly be-winged one!

Salutations back sir, & hopes for early annual merriment!

Phantom Hoover wrote:

Was Frontier's combat system that bad? (I haven't played it.) Was it the Newtonian system in general, or just the way Frontier did it? If it's the former, that bodes very poorly for Infinity.

It was awful! Not just the 'turn based' combat mentioned, but with some ships you couldn't fire a missile in flight!
Damn inconvenient when you're bombing an installation for the military (Fed or Imp), and you're nuke just breaks apart on your ship on launch

Phantom Hoover wrote:

Was Frontier's combat system that bad? (I haven't played it.) Was it the Newtonian system in general, or just the way Frontier did it? If it's the former, that bodes very poorly for Infinity.

It was pretty dreadful. Even without turrets and huge shield arrays, it was just a matter of "lock on to enemy; turn on autopilot; start firing at 8km range; turn off autopilot and move slightly to one side at 2km range; flip over, rinse and repeat".

Newtonian physics and fun space combat are not often found together, in my experience. I can see it working on a grand battleship scale: long, pounding, strategic battles, fought across gigantic areas of space, with spreads of torpedoes and massdriver salvoes; but not quick, jinking, adrenaline-high dogfights.

Frontier combat is difficult (to master) and when I play the game (or FFE) I usually resort to lots of save-scumming (shame on me). The way I can beat most of my foes is to switch engines off and then aim & shoot, + occasionally slam on thrusters to swerwe out of enemy fire. Lateral thruster control would make combat in those games a lot easier.

hi loci...!!

complete forgot about this board until i got the pm about passwords!!! welcome etc etc tis friednly about here... well it was last time!!

R