Oolite Bulletins

I suppose the next idea would be to get a gizmo that - for one squintillion credits - absorbs energy from incoming lasers, rather than removing it?

It's all doable, and all going towards the uber ship concept. Personally, if there are no challenges, it - well... - starts to make the game rather pointless...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

And remember anything we do to make shields better is really an unfair advantage for the player as NPC ships do not have shields, so this isn't equipment that they could be spawned with that would actually benefit them and therefore actually help balance the game back out...

They don't?

Zireael wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

And remember anything we do to make shields better is really an unfair advantage for the player as NPC ships do not have shields, so this isn't equipment that they could be spawned with that would actually benefit them and therefore actually help balance the game back out...

They don't?

No. 'Shields' in Oolite is in essence just another way of saying 'energy' (that value which decreases when a ship gets hit, until it reaches 0 and the ship 'dies'). For the player ship the developers have taken the extra effort to give it two different sorts of energy, namely 'energy' and 'shields'. The advantage being that the shields are an extra. Only if they are down to 0, the 'primal' energy is consumed. So shields are actually sort of an extra energy buffer.

Nobody bothered to do the same for NPCs.

Having said that, you will notice that vanilla Oolite appears to be quite sensibly balanced. This indicates that in fact the player needs this advantage, for instance in order to balance the NPCs advantage of coming in packs. So it isn't unfair in and of itself.

I dont agree with game balance. It may be true with vanilla game, but if you have renegades.oxp installed with every thing current oxp's provide you don't have much chance against them. So we come to the same point in time.

If NPC ships can not be destroyed easily, and if they have more fire power than the player, player needs optional equipments to gain the game balance.

Okti wrote:

If NPC ships can not be destroyed easily, and if they have more fire power than the player, player needs optional equipments to gain the game balance.

Or more experience. Or better tactical skills. Or better reflexes (not hard when you see how relatively crude the AIs etc are). Or better judgement (like knowing when to quit).
When you can live with the enemy outnumbering you, and even out-gunning you, then you can call yourself 'Commander'.

Smivs wrote:

Or more experience. Or better tactical skills. Or better reflexes (not hard when you see how relatively crude the AIs etc are). Or better judgement (like knowing when to quit).
When you can live with the enemy outnumbering you, and even out-gunning you, then you can call yourself 'Commander'.

Before or after Press space Commander:D

Changed my signuture

In any case the players with programing skills can change the way of the operation of OXP's to their benefit if they want to cheat.

But to bundle those as an OXP is another question.

Sorry Okti.
All I'm saying is that as you get better, the game gets easier, as it should. I have nothing against extra equipment, and if it helps, that's good. But it cannot replace the acquisition of skill through practise, and as you get better the game becomes, firstly more satisfying, then oddly a bit dull because you find you can take everything easily in your stride.
My concern is that by using all this extra gear, people may inadvertently deny themselves the 'hard knocks' that teach you the most.

I agree with Smivs here. Ultimately the goal of the game is mastering the game through your own skills, not via cheats. And Oolite is not a game which cannot be mastered without cheating.

Of course every player is his own judge, and is free to cheat in any way he wants. But actively encouraging or even pushing him to cheat, thereby discouraging him from properly learning how to play the game seems counter-productive to me, even a little perverse. It is definitely something I don't like to see happening too much (but of course it doesn't matter what I like or not).

@ Okti:

Okti wrote:

I dont agree with game balance. It may be true with vanilla game, but if you have renegades.oxp installed with every thing current oxp's provide you don't have much chance against them.

If the Renegade Pirates added by renegades.oxp are too hard for your current skill level you can remove the OXP until your skills have improved. Try it again after a while and find out whether they still scare you. Personally, I have killed them by the dozen, therefore I can say it isn't true that you don't have much chance against them. Actually they are not that hard to kill. You don't even need anything current OXPs provide to you. A cloaking device is certainly helpful, but you get that one in vanilla Oolite. Otherwise you only need to stay out of their turret range, and aim for their laser subentities. (And run away from the explosions of the bigger ships!) That's not so much.

Okti wrote:

If NPC ships can not be destroyed easily, and if they have more fire power than the player, player needs optional equipments to gain the game balance.

But NPC ships can be destroyed easily. For instance (as explained above) they don't have shields. All you have to do is bring down their energy. NPCs on the other hand need to bring down your shields first, before they even get to your energy.

Also usually they don't have more firepower than the player. The few NPCs that have an equal firepower to the player can be counted with one or two hands, and come basically from only two OXPs which no player needs to install. All other NPCs don't even come close to the player's firepower, if he has as much military lasers installed as possible (at least two).

Therefore I simply don't see why the player needs more advantages.

Certainly not more advantages that the NPC ships can't have...

I do find it odd that on installing an OXP where a player has yet to develop sufficient techniques and skills to defeat that OXPs ships, the request is for another OXP to improve chances of surviving, rather than just removing the difficult OXP until sufficient skill is obtained...

Later Oolite "plain vanilla" versions will have (slightly?) more intelligent/aggressive NPC ships than found in 1.72 ...so even with equal numbers, it should prove harder.

With OXPs, NPC ships can however have higher energy levels to offset their lack of shields, if game balance is so desired. Likewise, they could mostly have front+rear military lasers. ...And higher energy regen rate (from EEU/Naval Energy Units). And even Q-mines!

Maintaining the balance is the crucial thing (obviously) so if you have tougher NPC's you need to be tougher yourself, if you have OXP's that send hordes of nasties at you then you need to be tougher, to cope with them (just).

I don't see a problem with it providing you have gained the experience the hard way, but it would be wrong for a new commander to be able to make himself virtually immortal, you need to earn your spurs and gradually beef up your ship and then be able to take on the more difficult OXP's. The net result though would be that "normal" foes would be just swatted a side, and your "balanced" game play would be dependant on having to always fight the tough guys.

Well, that's the beauty of the thing, innit? As seen in the How many OXPs thread, I have a lot of them. I reckon once I've finished updating, the count will be somewhere around the two century mark.
Against all established wisdom, I basically installed everything I could get my hands on from the get-go. This is the other side of the über coin: Having 99% of all OXP ships installed, I have remained perpetually outgunned for my entire Oolite career. As a result, I've been sneaking around very timidly in the safest systems I can find while slowly getting the needed dosh to ferrorize my posterior enough to dare the occasional trip into something wilder than a Communist system.
So if I ever get to the point where I can stroll through the toughest, most Thargoid-infested Anarchy with impunity, I've definitely earned it..

CheeseRedux wrote:

Having 99% of all OXP ships installed, I have remained perpetually outgunned for my entire Oolite career. As a result, I've been sneaking around very timidly in the safest systems I can find while slowly getting the needed dosh to ferrorize my posterior enough to dare the occasional trip into something wilder than a Communist system.

CheeseRedux wrote:

Well, that's the beauty of the thing, innit? As seen in the How many OXPs thread, I have a lot of them. I reckon once I've finished updating, the count will be somewhere around the two century mark.
Against all established wisdom, I basically installed everything I could get my hands on from the get-go. This is the other side of the über coin: Having 99% of all OXP ships installed, I have remained perpetually outgunned for my entire Oolite career. As a result, I've been sneaking around very timidly in the safest systems I can find while slowly getting the needed dosh to ferrorize my posterior enough to dare the occasional trip into something wilder than a Communist system.
So if I ever get to the point where I can stroll through the toughest, most Thargoid-infested Anarchy with impunity, I've definitely earned it..

Good for you - I'm sure that's probably as "real" as you could make Oolite - death could be near instant the very next jump...