Oolite Bulletins

El Viejo wrote:

Fatleaf wrote:

Did I read somewhere there is a ToughGuys Apocalypse out there somewhere?

Coming soon, as I understand it... I think Smivs is still testing it.

Probably the worst-kept secret of the year so far It's actually been upgraded to ToughGuys Armageddon now!
As El Viejo says it's in testing. I don't want to give too much away, but imagine the original with three levels of increasing nastiness from the baddies and you won't be far wrong. It's actually going to be a bit more than that, but you'll have to wait and see.
Won't be too long, hopefully.

curtsibling wrote:

Thargoid wrote:

There is only one

Ah! It's a reference to an old Elite short story!
And indeed, sir - It also could be taken as a nod to your good self!

Nah, I'm just a full-scale working model... [/url]

Hi,
I'm new to the BBS. I agree about uber ships, so I was wondering about a
ship. I play a game called Evochron Legends. I am trying to learn
Blender and was thinking of making a ship based off the Evoch-C and some
other favorite ships from various games as a project. It would be a
heavy interceptor for bounty hunters and mercenaries which would be in
the price range of Isis Interstellar's ships.

my original thoughts on stats was this:
Wilmot Aerospace:
X-F-248 Executioner
Stats:
$900,000
Chance: .4
Tech Level: 15
8 missile slots
8 energy banks
20 tons cargo
.40 ls

I realized that's overpowered, probably way over powered, and changed it
to:
Wilmot Aerospace:
X-F-248 Executioner
Stats:
$900,000
Chance: .4 (Could it maybe require Thargoid Plans?)
Tech Level: 15
8 missile slots
6 energy banks
10 tons cargo (might eliminate cargo space altogether)
.40 ls

What do you think? Still overpowered? I agree that to a certain degree the term uber ship is relative; but I thought that if I did end up making it, which is by no means certain, I might as well publish it and it might be worth getting a consensus on what other people thought it
should be in their version of oolite, to get an idea of what stats would be good for the most people.

My character currently flies a Vampire IV Diamondback and complete
random hits and naval reserve missions for the fun and for the money, in
that order. I play with toughguys 2 anarchy and npc shields installed
and find it not unusual to be jumped by 7-14 pirates at a time in
anarchy systems flying high end, i.e. Isis Interstellar etc., to uber
ships, i.e. Benulobiweed ships etc., so I probably don't have a good
perspective on what most people would think of as an uber ship.

Could you maybe put out a kit with a read-me and ready made .plists for a
ship, so new ship oxp makers could have a formatted template to insert
variables into? The read-me could say what are the minimum variables
needed to make a player ship and an npc ship and explain the different
variables are and the values that one can insert and give examples from
the basic ships; for example, the pitch and yaw variables could be
compared to an Asp MKII, a Cobra Mk III, and an Anaconda, to give the
oxp maker an idea what a balanced variable for his ship was. Sorry for
the long post, I have had a long time to think about my answer.

One last thing, I was wondering where the Oolite 2.0 development forum
was. I saw it one day, but couldn't find it again. I tried searching for
it, but the words Oolite and 2 are too common.

Here: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... king+ahead

And here: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... eath+knell

And welcome to the friendliest board this side of RiedquatTM.

If it's a bounty hunter's ship then I'd say it should have an opportunistic 1 or 2 TCs maximum as cargo capacity - 10TCs is the same as an unmodified Cobra Mk1 and that's a basic trade ship!

There should definitely be some "balancing" for a ship with so much energy, missiles and speed.

Hi Commander Wilmot, and welcome.
As you realise designing a balanced ship is not an easy thing to do.
A few general 'rules' can be useful though.
1) Consider the size. A small ship will not be able to have as much as a big ship. I know that sounds obvious, but a lot of people seem to overlook this. The 'core' ships are a good reference. Basically don't try to fill a tiny ship up with missiles, energy banks etc. The only core ships with more than four missiles and four energy banks are the big freighters (Anaconda, Boa and Boa2). Also smaller usually equals faster.
2) Price. The more you get the more it should cost. Again obvious.
3) Think about the ship's role. A fast, well armed fighter shouldn't have much/any cargo space, whereas a 'lugger' won't normally be heavily armed.

One approach is to take the ubiquitous Cobra Mk 3 as a benchmark. If you want to add an energy bank, remove 5 tons of cargo space. If you want to add a couple of tons of cargo space, lose a missile. As a 'rule of thumb' this approach will keep you close to the 'straight and narrow'.

As for your 'template', just copy the data from one of the core ships (the closest to the one you are designing) and substitute code to suit. Have a look at shipdata.pilist from several ships (including some OXP ships) and you'll get an idea how it all works.

Final bit of advice....don't be frightened to ask! You will find all the help and advice (and second opinions) you need here.

Best of luck with it

Thanks, as part of balancing it I thought that I might make it forward weapon mount only. But lasers take a long time to cool, maybe by the time I get it out, they'll have made a decision on whether to include Gatling lasers and/or whether to beef up the twin plasma cannons.

@Commander Wilmot

Hello there. Your ship - especially in its revised version - is less uber than my 'Fer-de-Lance 3G+'. On the other hand, your ship is much cheaper. Details here (I hope you can read them):



Also/actually, I've been thinking that maybe I should remove an energy bank from my 3G+ (and '3G+(t)')- even just from the point of view of enjoying flying it. For, when the ship is fully kitted out (with lots of OXP equipment, and standard stuff), it is not that far from invincible. (And if I dropped the energy bank, I'd reduce the price by, I don't know, 10, 000?)

But, anyway: I wish you joy with your ship!

My initial reaction was to follow Thargoid's advice, but I ran across a forum post that indicated that the Asp MK. II, which has no cargo space, is able to take cargo missions where the player is offered cargo contracts involving the transport of small amounts of precious metals and gems. The player claimed that he was offered a bunch of these contracts when he bought his Asp. Was it just coincidence that he was offered them or is this an intentional choice on the part of the developers? If it's the later then I'll definitely won't include cargo space so that the ship has a use in otherwise vanilla oolite.

Commander Wilmot wrote:

My initial reaction was to follow Thargoid's advice, but I ran across a forum post that indicated that the Asp MK. II, which has no cargo space, is able to take cargo missions where the player is offered cargo contracts involving the transport of small amounts of precious metals and gems. The player claimed that he was offered a bunch of these contracts when he bought his Asp. Was it just coincidence that he was offered them or is this an intentional choice on the part of the developers? If it's the later then I'll definitely won't include cargo space so that the ship has a use in otherwise vanilla oolite.

I don't think the contracts are triggered by buying a ship with no cargo space. Once your reputation gets high enough (i.e. once you've completed a certain number of F8-F8 cargo contracts on time) you'll get offered much more valuable contracts transporting precious metals and gems. At this point, if you buy a ship with no cargo bay, you can still do these cargo contracts. If you keep completing them on time, you'll keep getting other contracts offered to you. Spending too long doing other things, though (or jumping to another galaxy), and your reputation is liable to fall and you'll only get offered bulk contracts.

another_commander wrote:

The Constrictor is an experimental secret-project Navy ship. It is supposed to be uber by mission design. So it is perfectly justified to have it in game the way it is.

Agreed about the Constrictor but the AI (or script) that orchestrates it's actions is lame. I have completed this mission three times with Oolite and it is nowhere near as tough to defeat as the Elite version I played on a C64. On that machine it did not run from a fight. It used it's uber stats to the max making it difficult to maintain laser fire on target. One felt a sense of great accomplishment and relief when the battle was finally won.

CaptSolo wrote:

I have completed this mission three times with Oolite and it is nowhere near as tough to defeat as the Elite version I played on a C64. On that machine it did not run from a fight.

Running is a sensible thing to do though. Fleeing only starts when the energy drops below 25% of max. When fighting against an opponent that already managed to lower 75% of your energy, its likely he will destroy you soon. So the ship must realise that the opponent is stronger and its wise to evade the battlefield. Fleeing makes him even tougher to defeat

The constrictor AI is identical to a pirate AI, fleeing is just a bit more pronounced with this ship because its high speed and fuel injectors.