Oolite Bulletins

Is the Constrictor armed with a beam laser or a military laser? Giving it a rear laser would make the mission quite a bit tougher, too ...

The Griff Constrictor has mil lasers fore and aft.

Disembodied wrote:

Is the Constrictor armed with a beam laser or a military laser? Giving it a rear laser would make the mission quite a bit tougher, too ...

It has a forward military laser, and no rear laser. Indeed, giving it one would make the ship a lot tougher.

In 8bit-Elite the Constrictor was the first (and perhaps only?) NPC with a military laser you ever met. Thus it was very tough simply by comparison to the much weaker ships that were your only fighting experience so far. I recall that, once I acquired a military laser, I used to feel superior to the normal pirates because of the higher firing rate of my laser compared to their pulse laser. For every shot they fired on me I could fire two or three times, which was a huge advantage. Then the Constrictor came along and scared the living daylights out of me, because my advantage was gone. We were firing alternatingly. For every hit I scored, I was also hit once while fighting head on. And if I missed I had a disadvantage, because my energy would deplete faster than his. It was a quite epic fight until I finally had worn him down.

And indeed, coming from that experience, the Constrictor mission in Oolite feels rather anticlimactic.

I thought I would offer my personal definition as to what makes a ship uber.
Firstly, a Cobra Mk. III can be made uber with equipment such as shield capacitors, SniperLock and a Primable Military Laser. Any ship must have a discrete balance of equipment and base ship performance in order to create a lasting balance with the other ships in the game. A lack of balance can significantly impact the long term personal pleasure of Oolite.

Assuming no OXP equipment is added to a ship, what base parameters make for reasonable interaction with the core ships? I do not believe that a .6 LS fighter with 2T cargo capacity is necessarily uber. Performance in itself is not a game spoiler. If that ship has 10 missiles however, it is unbalanced. I believe that the combination of large cargo capacity and high speed and agility is lopsided. Examples of these are the Morrigan, the Tiger Mk. 1, The Firefly and the Falcon. I do not see the Contractor as uber due to its lack of cargo space. The Condor on the other side of the coin may have 1500 T of Cargo space and a top speed of .52LS, however, it is not Uber because it performs like a sloth in mud and has no turrets.
I feel that any ship with a turret is uber, except for the Kirin CV (not the XM) and maybe the Dragon. In the case of the Kirin CV, a few turrets are necessary due to its large profile, low speed and agility. Furthermore, it has only 4 energy banks. The 12 turrets of the XM are uber in my opinion. The Pelleas with a top speed of .655LS would not be Uber because it only has 2 energy banks and 1 missile. One problem with ships like the Pelleas however, is that their appearance is so out of context with the game, it requires more OXP ships just to somewhat normalize its presence.
Now as for the monstrous Vortex and Caduceus Omega, they are only really suited for missions, not for standard play.
Then there are the two Extreme Uber ships the Wonderworm and the Dark Rainbow. I have no problem with their existence, but because they are so unbalanced, they have the effect of removing the commander from the game. Having tried both, the experiences are akin to an escapee from a different video game looking for a new computer screen to ransack.
A rational player will become quickly bored playing with Extreme Uber ships. I wouldn't worry about their existence for this reason. I will say though that as the bad guys get stronger, so will the likelihood of even more powerful ships than the Wonderworm and the Dark Rainbow, if that is even possible.

Having read through this entire thread, I'd like to weigh in with a couple of observations..

a) This entire thread is a great testament to the concept that (as Forrest Gump would put it) "Uber is as uber does".. There is clearly no 'right' way to do things, and the huge range of possibilities within Oolite is a big part of its charm and attraction.

b) The "Rough Guide to Creating Balanced Ships" formula that started out so well, thanks to Smivs and CheeseRedux's efforts, really really deserves to be brought to completion.. I was very sorry to see it lost in the discussion after half a dozen or so pages.. Whether any given ship designer chooses to use it or not, it would be tremendously helpful if such a guide were at least available to use, as it would appear to have the potential to make certain design choices much less of a hit-and-miss affair..

Smivs & CheeseRedux, please consider continuing to develop the formula.. perhaps as a joint project.