The Assassins Guild OXP - Beta

[ramon]

I liked Tarquin too,it was fun, but the ships looked like they'd been borrowed from somewhere else. Can't think where though...

I'm pretty sure that was the point.

[LittleBear]

@Jonsmith

Thanks for the feedback! Looks like you being doing some all-nighters!

1) On Inspector Thorstan, he can crash into things during the battle. I think this is just due to the number of things about. (The Station and the 30 odd Thargoids and Special Branch Asps). In playtesting I found he was always doing this and so took away his fuel injectors and made him slower than the normal Special Branch Asp, whcih seemed to stop his accident prone nature. I guess he still can crash though. I could avoid this by putting him in the space lanes on patrol, but it seemed to make more plot sense for him to be in the thick of things by the base.

2) On the closed Courthouse launching traders. Unfortuantley this is somthing that is hard-wired into Oolite. A station will occasionally launch a trade ship and I cannot stop Oolite from doing this. However any non-military / police ships in the area will be fired upon by the Bots and Cluster Bombs! Perhaps these Traders were told not to launch until the base was re-opened by the GalCops, but worried about all that food rotting in their cargo-bays they've launched without clearance!

3) On the Battle Station mission. ATM this mission is WIP and unfinished. Heretic is designing a Station made of Sub-entries. In the final version of Assassins (still offically in Beata at the moment), it will be Heretic's Battle Station that you have to destroy. The Military Station (with reduced shields) is just there as a "stand-in" otherwise the mission could not yet be completed. The Battle Station is massive (twice the size of a Tourous Station) and cannot be destroyed by any amount of fire-power to the outside. It is hollow however and you will have to fly inside the super-structer to find the vunerable reactor core. Lasering the reactor core will blow the station. However, the tunnels inside the station atre only 80m wide, so you'll need some fancy flying not to crash. Also, you will have to be in a small ship (like an Adder or Eagle) to fit in. Untimatley I think this will be the toughest mission in the game, but you'll have to wait for the Final Version of Assassins to play the mission properly. ATM it is dead easy as it is really a test of the battle code and to allow you to play the missions after this one.

3) On earning undeserved kills. This is a problem. In Elite you'd very rarely meet more than 4 or 5 ships at once so you coudn't really energy bomb your way to Elite. Oolite opens up the possiblity of real space battles! The Special Branch Asps and the Deathwreaker Thargoids are too tough to be Energy Bombed. If you play with Heretics Tharigon Threat OXP installed then instead of normal Thargoids you also be assaulted by his Thargoids, which are also too touch to be E-bombed. So if you hit TAB, you won't do enough damage to kill anyone and both the Thargoids and Special Branch will attack you!

Cheating your way to Elite it already possible with Sleezan's Graveyard. You could just dock, by an E-bomb, bomb the Graveyard, pick up 300 kills and repeat - but whats the fun!

4) On the slowdown. I think this must just be a difference between the way the PC and Mac handle large numbers of ships. My PC is pretty low-power (I can't even play Doom 3 ). On my PC, you get a big hang on entering the system (10 seconds frozen), but when the game starts up there is no slow-down in game play. I guess the Civil War missions are really pushing Oolite to the limit of what it can do.

5) The Mafia Image coming up grey is odd. I think that must be a monitor setting as it is has a black background.

Hope you enjoyed it anyway. I will make some more tweaks for the next release, but I think a few oddities are envitable given the complex stuff the OXP is demanding of Oolite.

PS: You should stay in G7 until the name Agent Wombat means somthing to you, as this will unlock some bonus goodies!

[ArkanoiD]

When i enter Ataneris system for a duel on my dragster ship, i instantly bump into something and get destroyed! If i trade my dragster for PCC, it's ok. What's the reason?

[LittleBear]

There are a lot of Mine Sweepers about (within 25 Km of the beacon), but O-Ren Ishii and the Crazy 88s are added 4 km away. I suposse it is possible to be unlucky and emergy hyperspace exactly where a minesweeper happens to be (unlikley though), but I'm a bit puzzeled as to why this should only happen in a Draggster. There is also a moon in the system, but this is miles away from the beacon.

[ArkanoiD]

There are a lot of Mine Sweepers about (within 25 Km of the beacon), but O-Ren Ishii and the Crazy 88s are added 4 km away. I suposse it is possible to be unlucky and emergy hyperspace exactly where a minesweeper happens to be (unlikley though), but I'm a bit puzzeled as to why this should only happen in a Draggster. There is also a moon in the system, but this is miles away from the beacon.

At last i did not crash after 3 or 4 tries.

Well, i forced O-Ren to comply to duel rules by q-bombing her companion ships Then there was the duel itself - and i killed her using forward laser and nothing more.

Spent 30K+ for ship repairs and maintenance after that, though.

BTW shouldn't e-bomb be banned there also?

[LittleBear]

With her Naval Shield Generator (not the watered down rubbish the Military allow on the open market!), even if you use an e-bomb her remaining shields are still three times those of an off-the-peg Cobra III, so its only fair to allow her opponent the chance to reduce her shield strength a bit. (See Guild Rule 13(a) - Duelists using stolen military tech. - non application of the e-bomb rule )

Still can't think of any reason why you blew up (but only in the Dragster)!

[ArkanoiD]

With her Naval Shield Generator (not the watered down rubbish the Military allow on the open market!), even if you use an e-bomb her remaining shields are still three times those of an off-the-peg Cobra III, so its only fair to allow her opponent the chance to reduce her shield strength a bit. (See Guild Rule 13(a) - Duelists using stolen military tech. - non application of the e-bomb rule )

Still can't think of any reason why you blew up (but only in the Dragster)!

Well, NPCs do not have e-bombs, right?

I blew up on FdL NG as well, but never on PCC.

[LittleBear]

Not usually, but the can be given them in Shipdata. However, an e-bomb delivers 1000 points of damage (or there abouts). The Cobra III has 350 energy points, so it would be pretty dull to give NPCs e-bombs as the player would just suddenly blow up for no obvious reason.

O-Ren Ishii's Hooded Cobra with Naval Sheild Generators has 2000 energy points, so even if you e-bomb her, her ship is still much tougher than any ship the player could be flying.

Not giving NPCs energy bombs may be unrealistic, but the game woudn't really be any fun to play if they did have them.

Is it only at the time of the duel that you've blow up on exiting w/s in the Dragster and FdL or does this happen whenever you visit the system?

[TGHC]

In classic elite energy bombs have traditionally always been a bit of an issue, being too easy a cop out, and you were not really an iron ass if you used them. Some people (me included) deliberately did not use e-bombs to get to elite for that reason. However Oolite and OXP's like Assassins has totally changed that, and they are now an essential item to actually complete a mission.
Q-mines are also an excellent addition in Oolite, and occasionally some NPC's do use them, I'd like an audible warning that an enemy has deployed one, and it would be cool if the "explosion" was a bit more graphical, the blue is ok but imagine a chain reaction with multicolors and flares etc.

LB is right about NPC's having e-bombs, you'd be forever restarting a the game.

[ArkanoiD]

In classic elite energy bombs have traditionally always been a bit of an issue, being too easy a cop out, and you were not really an iron ass if you used them. Some people (me included) deliberately did not use e-bombs to get to elite for that reason. However Oolite and OXP's like Assassins has totally changed that, and they are now an essential item to actually complete a mission.
Q-mines are also an excellent addition in Oolite, and occasionally some NPC's do use them, I'd like an audible warning that an enemy has deployed one, and it would be cool if the "explosion" was a bit more graphical, the blue is ok but imagine a chain reaction with multicolors and flares etc.

LB is right about NPC's having e-bombs, you'd be forever restarting a the game.

Well, i'd not call it "essential", i fly several hundereds LY on a ship which is not e-bomb capable and i do my Assassins missions with that ship.

Maybe it's a good idea to add a scripted counter e-bomb device which instantly damages e-bomb if you enter a place where e-bomb is banned? Or even makes it explode in your hull he he

[TGHC]

i fly several hundereds LY on a ship which is not e-bomb capable and i do my Assassins missions with that ship.

It will be interesting to see if you can complete it without an e-bomb, now there's a challenge!

[LittleBear]

Yep, the e-bomb and the Q-mine and cloak were the real head-ache in trying to make the OXP a challenge, as I didn't want the player to just be able to press TAB or M to complete the mission!

All the Marks (apart from poor old Be Soin!) have sufficent energy to survive an e-bomb blast, but they recharge quickly so unless you follow up the e-blast with a proper dogfight pretty quickly, you've really just wasted the e-bomb. I don't think the missions would be significantly harder without the e-bomb.

The cloak is neatured by the Mark Transponder Scanner

The mine-sweepers were my answer to the Q-mine, although these devices can be circumvented with cleaver play (and the tougher Marks have sufficent fuel / speed to have a fair chance of evaiding the blast). I'm not too bothered about the fact that the mine-sweeper fields have blind spots (or cleaver work-a-rounds can be found), as this encoughes a bit of lateral thinking!

EDIT : Some plans for the DeathBurger, dowloaded from the memory banks of an R2 unit! :-



On removing the e-bomb. It would be fairly easy to do with about 5 lines of script (status=exitingwitchspace, planetnumber=XXX, checkforequipment, found boole = YES, then either a removeequipment R-bomb or a setstatus to dead to remove / detonate the bomb in the hold), but this seemed a bit conveluted plot-wise, so I just made the Marks tough enough that an e-bomb didn't actually help that much!

[LittleBear]

UPDATE:-

I have uploaded a B7 to Oosat2. Assassins will not be on Oosat2 for a bit, whilst Winston updates Oosat. If you click the link on my signature though, this will take you to the Box link and you can download B7 from there. B7 takes account of the possibility of destroying the Repire Base. If you do, you will become a fugitive and as long as you remain in Galaxy 7, there is a chance of being attacked by Vengfull Security Kraits. The description of Beatle also changes.

To avoid a spoiler (for people who haven't read this thread) I've refered to the update in the Oosat text as a "secret mission".

[ArkanoiD]

UPDATE:-

I have uploaded a B7 to Oosat2. Assassins will not be on Oosat2 for a bit, whilst Winston updates Oosat. If you click the link on my signature though, this will take you to the Box link and you can download B7 from there. B7 takes account of the possibility of destroying the Repire Base. If you do, you will become a fugitive and as long as you remain in Galaxy 7, there is a chance of being attacked by Vengfull Security Kraits. The description of Beatle also changes.

To avoid a spoiler (for people who haven't read this thread) I've refered to the update in the Oosat text as a "secret mission".

Does that mean you remain fugitive forever as long as you are in G7?

[LittleBear]

No. Your legal status goes down in the usual way. Although GalCop will forget your deed in time, the Kraits never will! The chance of being attacked by Kraits is quite low though.

This feature will only work though if you destroy the base after installing B7.