Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

If Plasma Turrets don't use energy they're sort of a cheat weapon with unlimited firepower. That's clearly unbalanced, and for me another reason to dislike turrets for player ships.

True also for NPC ships.

maik wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

If Plasma Turrets don't use energy they're sort of a cheat weapon with unlimited firepower. That's clearly unbalanced, and for me another reason to dislike turrets for player ships.

True also for NPC ships.

Yes, but I don't get into contact with NPC turrets that much, so it's less bothering than the idea of the player using his turrets as an offensive weapon free of cost, so to speak.

By the way, why don't use turrets energy? An oversight on Giles' part? And could that be fixed without too much ado? I'd consider it a bug fix rather than a new feature.

Commander McLane wrote:

maik wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

If Plasma Turrets don't use energy they're sort of a cheat weapon with unlimited firepower. That's clearly unbalanced, and for me another reason to dislike turrets for player ships.

True also for NPC ships.

Yes, but I don't get into contact with NPC turrets that much, so it's less bothering than the idea of the player using his turrets as an offensive weapon free of cost, so to speak.

I'd wager you also don't get into contact with player turrets much unless you install an OXP that contains such ship and buy it. Sorry, couldn't resist

maik wrote:

I'd wager you also don't get into contact with player turrets much unless you install an OXP that contains such ship and buy it. Sorry, couldn't resist

Indeed. Which is why I don't install such OXPs. Or why I in the one case where I have such an OXP installed (neocaduceus) never have considered buying the ship.

Commander McLane wrote:

By the way, why don't use turrets energy? An oversight on Giles' part? And could that be fixed without too much ado? I'd consider it a bug fix rather than a new feature.

It's more complex than it looks. Because turrets are automatic weapons, having them tap the energy banks would interfere with energy management, without sufficient control on the part of the player and - more importantly - the NPCs. Think of the code that will have to be written as part of the turret handling AI. The turrets should actually stop firing if continued fire would result in bringing the ship to Energy Low condition, sometimes a temporary stand down would be even necessary or desired before actually reaching the last energy bank. And how would it be decided by player and NPCs alike that continued firing even at Energy Low would be a worthy risk? The player could have an on/off switch and good judgement, but the NPC would have to rely on its special AI.

Also note that, because turrets are not part of any built-in ship, it does not make sense to add menu options for turret handling in the core game. So no Game Option proposal for turrets would be considered good enough.

Bug or no bug, that's the way it is and any attempt to change that now would have to result in much more than a code freeze would allow. Thankfully, ships with turrets are OXP only, so the biggest and best solution is still workable and available: Don't want turrets --> Don't install OXP.

I had rather thought of a crude handling like for lasers: you can always fire until energy is 0, in which case the laser gets deactivated. So the turret(s) would continue to fire until energy is 0, in which case they get deactivated. Admittedly, rather crude.

Commander McLane wrote:

By the way, why don't use turrets energy? An oversight on Giles' part?

Turrets were introduced as an NPC-only concept for things like the Behemoth. The idea of the Behemoth being subject to the same sort of energy limitations as a Cobra makes about as much sense as player-flyable Behemoths.

I’m tempted to add a new class (literally, in the coding sense) of large ships, capable of carrying heavy weaponry (ball turrets, Thargoid lasers, possibly the articulated turrets I originally suggested for 1.66, and maybe with reduced laser heating rates). StationEntity would be a subtype of BigShipEntity, and PlayerEntity very definitely would not.

another_commander wrote:

Bug or no bug, that's the way it is and any attempt to change that now would have to result in much more than a code freeze would allow. Thankfully, ships with turrets are OXP only, so the biggest and best solution is still workable and available: Don't want turrets --> Don't install OXP.

Yep.

Ahruman wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

By the way, why don't use turrets energy? An oversight on Giles' part?

Turrets were introduced as an NPC-only concept for things like the Behemoth. The idea of the Behemoth being subject to the same sort of energy limitations as a Cobra makes about as much sense as player-flyable Behemoths.

I couldn't agree more. However, through a certain OXP we do have player-flyable Behemoths.

Also, the idea of a 'concept for things like the Behemoth' being available for small player ships makes about the same amount of sense. Yet the development team agreed to do it.

Commander McLane wrote:

I couldn't agree more. However, through a certain OXP we do have player-flyable Behemoths. :?

Modability begets nonsense.

Commander McLane wrote:

Also, the idea of a 'concept for things like the Behemoth' being available for small player ships makes about the same amount of sense. Yet the development team agreed to do it.

Well, I didn’t. I can’t reject everything someone presents as a fait accompli, what with this being a volunteer project and all. :-)

Commander McLane wrote:

through a certain OXP we do have player-flyable Behemoths.

Also, the idea of a 'concept for things like the Behemoth' being available for small player ships makes about the same amount of sense. Yet the development team agreed to do it.

I cannot imagine player-flyable Behemoths work very well, what with them practically being game-breaking in every sense of the word.

Oh, I don't know. My 6Km Thargoid Annihilator is very practical.

Maybe the turrets should subtract from the recharge rate (r.r.), then there is no need to recode, oxp-maker decides what r.r. the ship would have without turrets, there could be a suggested reduction in the r.r. for ship's turrets (say 0.5 to 1.0 off the recharge rate per turret), and the oxp maker subtracts that from his original recharge rate. He could of course ignore this and not subtract anything from the r.r., but that would be grounds for calling it an uber ship or at least an unbalanced one.

So far as I recall, no ships in the "strict mode" version of the game have turrets, so it is perhaps yet another of those "Don't want it in your Ooniverse? Don't install it." issues.

I don't know about any bigger ships that have them, I can only speak from experience with the Griff Boa. Balancing factors there include having only a forward laser capability and the ship being slow to manoeuvre. Roll 0.8, pitch 0.6, so it can turn and etc approx half as fast as a Cobra MKIII. Considerably slower on the roll than a stock Boa I. It does have more missile slots than a stock Boa, but that's really only a very short term advantage, since the cost for hardheads adds up fast if you routinely use a lot of them. Using anything less than hardheads is pretty much a waste of money in most fights these days, since ECM seems to be pretty common. Having to use even one hardhead (much less eight, to call that an advantage) will take a large bite out of profits.

I've generally considered that the "cost" in terms of manoeuvrability and laser mountings is indeed due to the presence of the turrets. They need power and need to be cooled, and logically take up some of the space and power that might normally be used for attitudinal thrusters (or whatever Oolite actually uses for that). The additional generators and or cap banks for energy weapons that throw plasma balls are going to take up space that steering jets and fuel systems would normally occupy. I hadn't ever noticed if they hit the energy banks, but I agree it is logical they would. Obviously, it's not much of an "uber" fighter, but a cargo ship with some interesting trade-offs. Even having four turrets (aft, port, starboard and top), I'd say at best that manages to take out perhaps at most 50% of incoming hardheads. Which is worthwhile for a ship that is primarily a trader, rather than a fighter. I use it as a pirate ship, but a smart pirate picks their fights carefully.

My point is that turrets are not that huge of an advantage. They have strengths and weaknesses, and take a somewhat different style of play to use effectively. I can't speak for the Caduceus style ships, since I've never flown any of them. They cost a lot, and with the current "maintenance overhauls" every few stops, I have enough trouble keeping a credit balance, much less making enough to afford high level ships. The maintenance cost seems to have increased in recent versions, and if one wants to talk balance, how was that balanced? What did players gain in return for a recurrent charge of 4k or so? LOL

True enough that having turrets available, at least on some ships, does change things a bit from just flying the default Cobra MKIII. But that's kind of the point of an expansion pack or optional add-on, I would think?

Smivs, can I have one of your Thargoid Annihilators, please? Even though - I suppose - it is an annihilator that is Thargoid, rather than something that annihilates Thargoids (although it looks like it could annihilate them too, should it want to).

As to maintenance overhalls, I too think they're too expensive (and not only 'cos some bug means my ship keeps losing its bits).

UK_Eliter wrote:

Smivs, can I have one of your Thargoid Annihilators, please?

No!