Looking ahead

[DaddyHoggy]

I would like to request four things.
[*]First, that multiple lasers be added for player ships. (I agree with Mr. Bridges on this one, but think the player should limited to two or three forward laser, maybe at the expense of the ability to mount lasers on other facings)
[*]Second, I think that ship-switching by script and/or read-write values for shipdata.plists would be nice. (This might allow greater freedom in ship-design, a player could be offered the chance to buy a special ship upon the completion of a mission, or could have the option of paying to have his ship improved upon the completion of a mission.)
[*]Thirdly, I would request that the TAF not be substituted for the in-system torus jump drive. I personally dislike the TAF (so I am biased, like everyone else), but I also think it would make the game more of a hassle, even if it worked like the torus currently does and just added the amount time it'd take to normally go the same distance at normal speed, the contracts would have to be completely adjusted to account for the extra time required to get to the station or to the sun.
[*]Fourthly, I do agree that the mass-lock radius should be turned down, however I don't think it should go away (after all there should be some safety regulations on how close to another ship or a station one can use the drive). I think that the mass-lock radius should be 10km. That would allow a strategic element and explain why pirates use fast ships as interceptors. The faster the ship the faster it's torus drive and the faster the torus drive the better the ship is equipped to intercept and force a mass lock. Maybe there should be a cool down time for the torus after a mass lock? Stopping abruptly like that can't be good for it; and that way the player can't just wait until the intercepting pirate ship goes farther than 10km as it burns past on it's injectors, and then bolt away using his torus drive. The player would have to take time to get away to break the mass-lock anyway, and if the npc is a law-abiding citizen he would have plenty of time for the torus drive to cool down.

I can't agree with 3 and it's not because I'm pro TAF, I'm anti player having stuff the NPCs do not. So I'm also anti Energy Bomb and Pro NPC shields.

The Torus drive is simply a mechanism for making the game go faster, to skip the potential boring bits, it's E/Oolite's equivalent of the Star Trek Transporter Beam. It's a magic go faster button that only the player has. TAF is you saying, yup, I accept this bit's a game, so I want it to go faster please.

And the minutes extra spent getting to a station sans Torus, is a small percentage of the jump times - and if you're cutting your contacts that fine, well, you get what you deserve...

Most of the above makes most of your point four moot too - I repeat NPCs do not have Torus drives.

[Switeck]

Running TAF at 8x or 16x speed tends to screw up NPC ships badly -- escorts fail to stay in a tight formation, ships crash into station buoys, groups don't jump out together, docking often goes very badly...etc. If you're already at <40 fps at TAF 1x, these problems are even worse at 8x or 16x.

While the torus may be a quick move-around cheat if nothing (of importance) is nearby, it at least doesn't tend to screw the system up.

[Ganelon]

Ok, why can't NPC ships have torus as well? NPC shields? Well yeah, that already exists as an OXP and it's a very good one.

I kind of favour something that would at least appear to be a level playing field. NPC ships and player ships should have possibilities that at least appear to be the same, or it feels like more of a shooting gallery than a "fair game". I say "at least appear", since if the AI was allowed to run at full capability, it'd never miss a shot and would always be quicker at manoeuvres than the player since it wouldn't make any mistakes or have any delays due to muscle and equipment response times, so it's unavoidable to have to "dumb it down" some.

But the same weapons and torus and shields and etc would be good, I think. And eliminate ships that a player can't buy, unless there's some unique reason in some cases that there's only one of them or something. While we're at it, if we really want to get away from the player being treated different than the AI, give the AI maintenance and repair expenses so they have to haul more than a couple tons of textiles to make ends meet. LOL

I don't use TAF, but the torus drive has been with us for quite a while. I don't think it hurts gameplay, but I also can't see where it'd be bad to have NPC ships use it as well, sometimes. It's just a speed factor due to some extra gear on the engines, isn't it?

Maybe I'm being overly naive about game engine mechanics... as usual. LOL

[Smivs]

re Torus drive, for all we know NPCs already have this. The point is when we are near enough to 'see' them on the scanner, they mass-lock us, and of course we'd mass-lock them as well. We would notice no difference at all in the game if they had Torus drive, because when we were close enough to them to notice it, they couldn't use it because we'd have mass=locked them.

[maik]

There is still an impact of NPCs not really having a torus drive: Assume you are trying to chase a particular ship which has a transponder that registered with your advanced space compass, so you know which direction to go. It is off the main space lanes so not likely mass-locked by others. You will always be able to catch up to it because you can use your torus drive. This tilts the odds in your favour. That could be desired from a game-play perspective, but still makes a difference that is not easily explainable.

[Smivs]

NPC Torus drive would certainly make the Constrictor hunt a much longer affair!

[Switeck]

You can sometimes see a larger ship from about 26-30 km out -- still able to use a torus drive from that range. None show signs of moving extremely fast.

An NPC ship using a torus drive heading towards you would end up probably <20 km away before it slowed down to regular speed.

There are no signs that NPCs use torus drives, but it is remotely possible to script that behavior as location changes. It would be very messy, totally lacking smooth movements even at 100 fps.

[Smivs]

Just to be clear, I actually like the idea, as I am a belever in equality. Players and NPCs should have the same features. In my own game, NPCs have Torus drive, but I never see it because of the mass-lock effect. If they really had Torus drive, great, but I wouldn't expect to actually see any difference in game (other than a tiny distant speck travelling very fast from time to time).

[Disembodied]

There will always be something that the player has which the NPC doesn't: principally, a point and a purpose ... I support the ambition of removing the player from the centre of the universe – to me, it's one of the principal attractions – but ultimately the point has to be conceded, because the player is the reason the game universe exists at all.

The game has to allow players to interact with other ships: that's the central core of the gameplay. The torus drive is a bit of a kludge, true – although to me, not as immersion-breaking as a TAF. Replacing it with a TAF (which would of course accelerate the entire universe, including all NPC ships) would seriously alter the way the game was played, and have a massive effect on the importance of top speeds for all ships, core and OXP. The potential difference between speeds of 0.35 and 0.37, say – currently pretty minor – could be huge, amplified over the expanded time. I would have strong doubts that the game could survive such a radical alteration. Probably it would need a huge expansion in scale, to allow for long stern-chases, as well as extensive playtesting and alteration of ship speeds.

A change between the range of the scanner and the mass-lock range, like Commander Wilmot suggests, might be interesting, but it might also run the risk of creating an arcade-y exploit where players can weave past pirates. It would also add to the immersion-breaking player-only sense of the torus.

Basically, I think replacing the torus with a TAF is a non-starter. I also think that any alteration with to the way the torus works is potentially opening a whole can of wormholes ... The current system works, with a few, mostly conceptual, warts. It's part of the core game mechanism. I'd be strongly tempted to leave it well alone!

[Smivs]

Agreed. As I said it's easy to believe NPCs have Torus...no evidence to the contrary, and TAF has no place in my Ooniverse at all.

[Commander McLane]

I agree with Disembodied.

The main scenario where we should strive for as much player-and-NPC-equality as possible is combat. And even in this scenario I don't mind multiple NPC-lasers, because they don't actually give an advantage (except when mounted very close to each other, which isn't usually the case in current ship designs).

In other areas there is no equality between player and NPCs, and there doesn't need to be. Most obvious example: no NPC can save their game and restart it later. And no NPC can quit the application and thereby obliviate the player.

For me the torus drive belongs in the second category. It isn't an actual property of my ship, but of the game interface. It was always a half-in-universe-justified time acceleration device, nothing more. By definition time acceleration is a feature that only makes sense for the player. NPCs don't mind getting bored by long journeys, and they have no pressing business outside Oolite. They don't have to wash dishes in-between game sessions. The truth is: they are no real people <gasp!>.

The TAF as currently existing is no alternative to the trusted implementation via torus drive, because due to how it's implemented it is screwing AI behaviour up (very noticeable if you follow a trader and its escorts with a TAF of 8 or 16; I think it starts already at TAF 4). Also it's a pure debugging feature and will not be a part of the next stable release, as far as I remember.

[maik]

Basically, I think replacing the torus with a TAF is a non-starter. I also think that any alteration with to the way the torus works is potentially opening a whole can of wormholes ... The current system works, with a few, mostly conceptual, warts. It's part of the core game mechanism. I'd be strongly tempted to leave it well alone!

I agree.

And even in this scenario I don't mind multiple NPC-lasers, because they don't actually give an advantage (except when mounted very close to each other, which isn't usually the case in current ship designs).

The advantage is that they cover a bigger area, so even if they don't aim at you precisely or you move too fast they have a bigger chance of hitting you. Plus the potential of different ship designs that you suggest.

[Commander McLane]

And even in this scenario I don't mind multiple NPC-lasers, because they don't actually give an advantage (except when mounted very close to each other, which isn't usually the case in current ship designs).

The advantage is that they cover a bigger area, so even if they don't aim at you precisely or you move too fast they have a bigger chance of hitting you.

But this doesn't work for the player, because it is (I think) more than counter balanced by the rapid overheating. I am flying an Imperial Courier. The three lasers are so far apart that I couldn't expect to score more than one hit. In other words: two thirds of my laser fire would be totally wasted. For a full salvo from cool laser till overheating I would only actually score one third of the hits which I score for my single laser. One third! In other words: a triple laser on a player IC is three times worse than the current single laser. How anybody would actually strive for that is beyond me.

New ship designs are another matter:
If we get multiple player lasers, I hereby officially predict another arms race for ships with multiple lasers very close (fractions of a meter) to the main laser, clusters of three, six, ten, twenty military lasers, taking out anything with one combined shot, a rapid descent into boring invincible cheat uber laser ship territory. I predict it with absolute certainty, and I'm not looking forward to it. Personally I'd prefer to not go anyway near of it, therefore to not allow multiple lasers for player ships in the first place.

[maik]

And even in this scenario I don't mind multiple NPC-lasers, because they don't actually give an advantage (except when mounted very close to each other, which isn't usually the case in current ship designs).

The advantage is that they cover a bigger area, so even if they don't aim at you precisely or you move too fast they have a bigger chance of hitting you.

But this doesn't work for the player, because it is (I think) more than counter balanced by the rapid overheating. I am flying an Imperial Courier. The three lasers are so far apart that I couldn't expect to score more than one hit. In other words: two thirds of my laser fire would be totally wasted. For a full salvo from cool laser till overheating I would only actually score one third of the hits which I score for my single laser. One third! In other words: a triple laser on a player IC is three times worse than the current single laser. How anybody would actually strive for that is beyond me.

Interesting. As I'm only flying the standard Cobra I expected that if I would be able to take my port and starboard lasers (which are cooled independently) and mounted them as fore lasers I'd have three independently cooled fore lasers.

New ship designs are another matter:
If we get multiple player lasers, I hereby officially predict another arms race for ships with multiple lasers very close (fractions of a meter) to the main laser, clusters of three, six, ten, twenty military lasers, taking out anything with one combined shot, a rapid descent into boring invincible cheat uber laser ship territory. I predict it with absolute certainty, and I'm not looking forward to it. Personally I'd prefer to not go anyway near of it, therefore to not allow multiple lasers for player ships in the first place.

As always, don't install an OXP that you don't agree with.

[Commander McLane]

Interesting. As I'm only flying the standard Cobra I expected that if I would be able to take my port and starboard lasers (which are cooled independently) and mounted them as fore lasers I'd have three independently cooled fore lasers.

Well, to my knowledge nobody has ever suggested or requested something like that. What has been requested is multiple forward lasers, not a way to make a side laser shoot forward (which won't happen anyway, because a side laser is pretty much defined by shooting sideways, not forward).

People who want multiple lasers in one direction want of course multiple lasers in each direction. So, apart from three lasers pointing forward you would also have three starboard lasers, three port lasers, and six aft lasers for good measure. That's what we're talking about all along.

As always, don't install an OXP that you don't agree with.

Well, yes, of course I don't. But that's only half the point.

As you know I am (amongst other things) interested in creating mission OXPs. Creating a mission is all about balancing. If you make it too hard nobody's playing it, if you make it too easy if gets boring and nobody's playing it. It is far more difficult to create a balanced scenario than to create a totally unbalanced ship. In fact, unbalanced ships make balanced scenarios impossible.

Therefore it's a little more complicated than "just don't install it". If I were scripting only for my personal needs it would be fine. But (like ship designers) I like to publish my work. But at the same time each stupid uber ship negates and devaluates my work. Those players who use the stupid uber ship for my mission and find it boring, will blame the mission and its designer, not their stupid uber ship and its designer. I find that ultimately de-motivating for my line of OXPing. And because we are humans, and every super power introduced by the game engine will be abused, I am advocating caution already when introducing the super power.