The Oolite NPC ecosystem (and other questions)

[cim]

Before any Vipers (or indeed hunters) can fully get their act together, I've picked out a trader who is getting the hell out of dodge and I, along with my squadron, follow through his wormhole, secure in the knowledge that the cops and/or hunters will not follow us*.

Yes, that should be workable. For timing to work out, probably the thing to do would be to:
1) Wait for a trader launch to be scheduled at the main station.
2) Launch from the planet a medium or heavy pirate freighter, together with its usual raider wing. Follow the trader through the wormhole. Unlike usual, launch from directly below the station. Once through the wormhole it can just behave like a normal remote-system raider, and return as usual, perhaps with the advantage that by hitchhiking it's got into a system which isn't normally bothered by remote raiders, and doesn't routinely have the patrols to handle them.
3) Also launch a larger-than-usual number of pirate-interceptors, who'll keep the cops busy while that's going on.

I definitely like that approach.

Another possible raid: just send a bunch of pirate-interceptors alone into the aegis, have them blow stuff up, kill a few cops, and then retreat. So long as the system isn't high tech enough to have Viper Interceptors available, they can retreat pretty safely on injectors.

*Unless that's going to change?

Shouldn't think so, for those types: even those with witchdrives don't have a lot of incentive to chase someone to who knows where. I'm considering an "assassin" type which will follow through witchspace and mainly goes after the trader-courier ships (which the ordinary pirates largely ignore as not carrying appropriate cargo), though.

[Cody]

That 'follow a trader from the aegis' tactic could be used by a crafty lone bandit too - sneak into the aegis at the right time, and dive straight into a trader's wormhole.

[Cody]

Another possible raid: just send a bunch of pirate-interceptors alone into the aegis, have them blow stuff up, kill a few cops, and then retreat.

I missed that 'blow stuff up' bit - you thinking the nav buoy? That's what I'd target (in fact, I actually do frag nav buoys occasionly).

[Disembodied]

Odds calculation compares the group strength of your target with your own group's strength, so attacks on the station or its defense ships will get a very unfavourable assessment. Attacking ships within the aegis won't automatically do so, but the check for a hostile station is a separate check. Unless you tell the AI to skip that check (which is easy, but not done for most of the standard AIs) any hostile station within 2x scanner range will cause the AI to break off its attack.

Does the main station would count as a "hostile station" to pirates in general, though? In other words, is it the odds calculation that keeps most pirates away from the aegis? Or do they have to hit the station/a defence ship to trigger the "hostile" status?

[cim]

I missed that 'blow stuff up' bit - you thinking the nav buoy?

Potentially, though not if there's anything more interesting about like a Viper patrol, or some launching ships. (The problem with blowing up the nav buoy is that it literally only inconveniences the player right now)

Does the main station would count as a "hostile station" to pirates in general, though?

Yes.

[Disembodied]

Does the main station would count as a "hostile station" to pirates in general, though?

Yes.

Splendid! The whole environment is coming alive ... This creates interesting possibilities for OXPs like the old Dictatorships and Commies: in-system stations could start to effect the distribution and behaviour of NPCs. It might mean that they would need to be judiciously placed, perhaps just off-lane - or that certain non-Galcop stations would have to have their own relationship with in-system pirates.

[Switeck]

Ok, I've been very slow to follow or respond to this thread...partly because I've already explored some of these issues in Switeck's Shipping OXP.

In my OXP, certain ships were rarer. Boa 2's and Kraits were less common simply because 1 is a semi-new model and the other is out-of-production and dwindling.
Boa 1's were much cheaper than Boa 2's (300k vs unchanged ~495k) because I never saw any point to them otherwise...they're still 50% more than Pythons!
Fer de Lances got extra equipment installed by default but kept the original stupid-high price.

I think we can almost abandon fixed-in-stone roles for NPC ships, if anything those are only fit to increase or decrease the odds of seeing them in those roles from default.
While I can't see an Anaconda in a bounty hunter role, I can a Boa 2...and fully equipped, it's scary.
Likewise, all the freighter types can be pirates at least rarely. They become the "mothership" a pirate group is built around. Once again, a Boa 2 in this role is probably best avoided. Even an Anaconda could be bad news on account of all the missiles it's carrying. Maybe traders and pirates could have random number of missiles, weighted lower in safer systems?

Even the composition of traders and pirates should depend more than currently on systems -- an anarchy should not have poorly-armed solo traders wandering around in weak ships, they typically should show up in (small) groups of 2-7 ships. Anacondas could have more variety than Cobra 1's for escorts. Nonstandard mix-ups could be possible, like 2 freighters and 1-5 fighter/escort types. Maybe even give Adders a minor extra role here -- tagging along with Anacondas or Pythons that they can at least barely keep up with. Asps might be escorts as well, but typically only found in especially dangerous systems. A Cobra 3 could be either a fighter or a mothership/freighter depending on the makeup of the rest of the trader (or pirate!) group. Overall, this will raise the variety and sense-of-danger levels found in the core game while still keeping ship numbers about the same as before.

In World War 2, convoys were organized into slow and fast types depending on ship types. Likewise in Oolite a fast convoy could be restricted to ships at least 0.3 LM speed. This means the only freighter types possible are Boa 2s and Cobra 3s. A slow convoy could have anything, since having fast escorts even with slow motherships is still useful. May not be necessary to code this, as just creating random groups of 2-7 ships may accidentally cover this anyway. OXPs can add more specialized and/or larger convoys as desired.

An odd side-effect of this minor convoy system is it will create larger empty spaces between ships in dangerous systems assuming roughly the same number of ships per system as before.
The player will have to choose the relative safety-in-numbers of tagging along close to one of these slow-moving trader groups or mad solo dash to the main station and hope not to stumble across off-lane Deep Space Pirates (OXP) along the way. As it should be!

A rare courier type (typically Cobra 3's, Fer de Lances, and Asps) might inject all the way to the main station. These were "Joyriders" in my OXP, unfortunately my OXP lacked the finesse to only set ships to that type if they had injectors and were fast to begin with.

There's almost no point in "stocking" a system with many traders/couriers heading for the sun -- they're easy to miss if you're trying to go there yourself. Bounty hunters would have little reason to run that route if pirates are likewise seldom there due to the difficulty in finding such traders. So too would Police ships.

I'm not comfortable with many/most pirates having their bounties reduced to 0. Solo bounty hunting is a high risk vs reward role to begin with. Each pirate ship in a pirate group should probably be worth more than they would be solo as well...from the notoriety gained from working together. "The Dalton Gang"
Lone pirate bounties can be low such as 10-20 credits, but with gangs they may be worth 30-50 credits each. Making them worth more than Thargoids seems excessive. The bounty-boosting tricks in Oolite v1.76 and earlier probably shouldn't apply...at most they can reach 127 credits unless created higher than that by an OXP.

Opportunistic traders that attack the player when nobody else is around should be rather rare, especially in safer systems and for new players. This could be a surprise event the player "earns" by going somewhere dangerous or after a couple weeks gametime.

How a ship is outfitted should entirely depend on where and how it's encountered.
A lone pirate is likely to have a beam laser and maybe an ECM, fuel injection is a good backup in case things go badly for it.
Other equipment should be possible but less likely.
Rear-mounted lasers are an extra frill NPCs could have, especially in more dangerous systems.
Traders doing "milk runs" in supposedly safe systems are likely to have fewer escorts and be less poorly equipped even than pirates, since repairs are cheaper that way and attacks are deemed unlikely.

"Core" democracy/corporate state systems in Galaxy Chart 1 could be a little safer than any other Galaxy Chart, to give new players a little more security. Anyone who uses a Galactic Hyperdrive should be well-equipped. This extra safety may only last till a Galactic Hyperdrive is used...or the player indulges in piracy. It could be time-based too, so after a few weeks/months "things get worse"(tm) in-universe without the player doing anything useful. While this may be player-centric, we have a big problem with getting and keeping new players who often find docking to be a challenge and fighting pirates even harder. It won't change whether they've earned Elite status, if anything it may make Elite harder to get with fewer pirates to kill.

A lone pirate may be a hard but winnable fight...at least till missile/s hit the player's ship. Nearby traders, bounty hunters, and certainly police should "throw the poor dog a bone" by sometimes ECMing pirate missiles chasing the player's ship.

What really kills new players is pirate groups, so these are reduced in "safer" systems.

There might be a way around this, and around the Furball OXP problem too: use the pre-existing odds calculation system, and make stations count as very powerful ships. Galcop main system stations would be extremely powerful, and hostile to Offenders, Fugitives and Thargoids (although I don't think the bugs use odds calculation, so that won't make any difference there). But it should, I think, mean that most pirates would be scared off by the station's presence - but a very powerful pirate fleet could still attack ships within the aegis (or, more specifically, within scanner range of the station).

Heck, make stations very powerful ships! Stations could have missiles, probably of the hardhead type for main stations, for defensive purposes. Quicker to launch than defense ships! The launcher probably should be pointing away from the normal docking port, just to avoid accidental friendly fire.

Thargoids in general have little reason to head to the main station, instead they should mass up along the space lane and head to the witchpoint...maybe wait there for a minute and head back down the space lane if they don't get any action. If they run into max-sized convoys + police/bounty hunters, they'll need roughly equal numbers just to have some survive that fight. Having only 1 or 2 show up at a time is pretty much a joke event. Even a group of 10 that stick together typically get wiped out in my Switeck's Shipping OXP within <30 minutes by random trader traffic, despite having Thargons that follow them around!

[pirate boss mode] I've got a pack of a dozen or so loyal, experienced followers, and I'm hanging-out in an industrial anarchy system cursed by dreadful civil war (Edxexe, for example - a nice place to do business).

Economy-wise, somewhere fluffed as having a civil war likely won't have lots of cargo for sale at its main station...but it might be willing to pay more than normal FOR cargo! That's because the system should have more pirates plying its shipping lanes.

Stocking up on Furs is already hit-or-miss, even an Adder isn't guaranteed to fill its hold with Furs at a poor agricultural system's main station.
Minerals are too plentiful at main stations at least on the rich industrial side. Rock Hermits would have "more", but they're set too high and flip over back through 0. So it's a little bit hard to play the role of miner without my OXP and Ore Processor OXP.
Gold is the same way, but probably should be kept rare due to its nature.
If anything, rather than simply greatly reducing the profits between RI<->PA systems, change things around at the other systems. A Mostly Industrial system for instance pays poorly and has little worthwhile for sale currently, yet I'd expect such a system to have a much larger and active economy than a Poor Agriculture. Their demands might be for more computers that they appreciate and can immediately use than a Poor Agriculture. They might have (simple?) machinery for sale that an Agriculture-type desperately needs. A Rich Agriculture might have more Liq/Wines and Furs, but at higher prices than a Poor Agriculture. Better to be able to fill your Cobra 3's hold than to get a great price on only 1-4 TC of Furs. Food price range between RI and PA can be slightly larger, since it's so low-profit that it almost only matters to new players starting out. No freighter types can fill up on food without using cargo contracts.

[cim]

I think we can almost abandon fixed-in-stone roles for NPC ships, if anything those are only fit to increase or decrease the odds of seeing them in those roles from default.

There's a few which don't really fit, but yes, it's much more for odds management than a simple yes/no. All ships have a much more varied role map than previously. Here's an example:

Code: Select all

trader-courier hunter-medium(0.75) hunter-heavy(0.75) pirate-medium-fighter(0.5) pirate-heavy-fighter(0.5) pirate-interceptor pirate-aegis-raider escort-heavy asp-pirate

While this may be player-centric, we have a big problem with getting and keeping new players who often find docking to be a challenge and fighting pirates even harder.

A useful thing here will be that it's now possible to reliably surrender to pirates. Though, the lack of any sort of cheap Ind->Agri trade good will mean that only works for half of the trips. There are also other new tactics to avoid pirates, at least in the semi-safe systems. And...

What really kills new players is pirate groups, so these are reduced in "safer" systems.

Considerably so, yes. The local pirates for a Corporate or Democracy system will be poorly equipped, low-skill, and in small groups. Depending on the local geography there may be better equipped raiders from nearby systems, of course.

Conversely there are some very nasty pirate packs coming together in the Anarchy and Feudal systems.

Heck, make stations very powerful ships! Stations could have missiles, probably of the hardhead type for main stations, for defensive purposes. Quicker to launch than defense ships! The launcher probably should be pointing away from the normal docking port, just to avoid accidental friendly fire.

Oolite has the setting feature that it has no decent capital ship defense weapons for the Cooperative. Turrets are powerful, but very short range; missiles are easy to outrun or ECM; the Thargoid laser - and, we can therefore assume, any sort of turreted laser weapon - is beyond their ability to construct. So defense ships and heavy shields are about all that's left.

(At 350Cr a shot and TL:10, probably only the very richest systems can afford to use hardheads in the quantities needed to convincingly defend a station)

Really, for a slow-moving capital ship or station to be able to defend itself independently, it needs to be able to mount turret weapons with at least the same effective range, and ideally greater, than the primary weapons of the fighters. Giving the Cooperative turret military lasers would be a massive setting change, though, and not a route I want to go down. (The easy availability of fixed-mount military lasers is already messy for game balance)

Thargoids in general have little reason to head to the main station

They'll mainly hang around on the shipping lanes now.

[Eric Walch]

Oolite has the setting feature that it has no decent capital ship defense weapons for the Cooperative. Turrets are powerful, but very short range; missiles are easy to outrun or ECM;

The main defence for carriers and stations is missing here: Vipers. Vipers are for stations what missiles are for small ships.

[JazHaz]

...the lack of any sort of cheap Ind->Agri trade good...

Hello, try machinery?

[Smivs]

Really, for a slow-moving capital ship or station to be able to defend itself independently, it needs to be able to mount turret weapons with at least the same effective range, and ideally greater, than the primary weapons of the fighters.

What they need are defence sattelites like the ones protecting Earth in Babylon 5

[cim]

...the lack of any sort of cheap Ind->Agri trade good...

Hello, try machinery?

Machinery might be the cheapest Ind->Agri good, but it's not cheap. The only Agri->Ind good more expensive than it is Furs (and even then only some of the time). It's not even that cheap - at a Rich Ind, Machinery is about 80% of the price of Computers. At a Poor Agri, Food is about 4% of the price of Furs.

In the context of a starting player: if you're carrying cheap Agri goods - Foods, Textiles - and a pirate forces you to dump 3 or 4 of them to go free, your initial 100 credits probably still bought you enough to make a profit on the run. If you're carrying Machinery, and you dump 3 or 4 to go free, you're probably broke.

[Diziet Sma]

(At 350Cr a shot and TL:10, probably only the very richest systems can afford to use hardheads in the quantities needed to convincingly defend a station)

Umm.. this is GalCop we're talking about...

a) They don't pay retail prices
b) They probably manufacture their own

[cim]

Umm.. this is GalCop we're talking about...

a) They don't pay retail prices
b) They probably manufacture their own

Okay ... let's call it 200Cr. a time, then. Still too expensive to be useful. A hardhead or a hundred hardheads; either way it's only going to destroy an unprepared and under-equipped attacker - and the Viper patrols can do that more cheaply.

[Disembodied]

In the context of a starting player: if you're carrying cheap Agri goods - Foods, Textiles - and a pirate forces you to dump 3 or 4 of them to go free, your initial 100 credits probably still bought you enough to make a profit on the run. If you're carrying Machinery, and you dump 3 or 4 to go free, you're probably broke.

Hmm ... it's verging on heresy but perhaps it would be worth introducing a low-value Industrial trade good? "Trinkets", perhaps? Or - easier - perhaps Textiles could be flipped and turned into an Industrial product ... after all, cheap cloth and brummagem were the cornerstones of Britain's export trade following the Industrial Revolution.