Oolite Bulletins

UK_Eliter wrote:

Smivs wrote:

[. .] unless you are looking for a super-sidewinder for some reason.

There is already a 'SuperSidewinder' - available here.

Oh yes, that goes way over the top.

spara wrote:

UK_Eliter wrote:

Smivs wrote:

[. .] unless you are looking for a super-sidewinder for some reason.

There is already a 'SuperSidewinder' - available here.

Oh yes, that goes way over the top.

Well, I don't think it is that over the top. The main changes are, only, greatly improved recharge rate, slight increase in speed (and, admittedly, fuel injectors as standard), room for one (one! a miserly one!) missile, and shield boosters, and four (only four!) tons of cargo capacity, and ability to mount lasers on all sides. OK, that's a great improvement on the original Sidewinder (hence the 'super'), but it doesn't make the ship uber. (Hmm: 'super' but not 'uber' . .) Well, that said, I suppose it does add up to quite a challenging opponent. For while the ship is not particularly tough, it is fast and manoeuvrable.

To be honest, when I started to think about a navy sidewinder, I only checked the military version of super sidewinder. It has recharge rate of over 10, military jammer, ecm, shield enhancer that up's the energy to over 500, flight speed of over 400, injection, shield booster, hyperspace motor and thrust of nearly 50. Looks uber to me when considering the small size of the ship, but that's just my opinion of course.

spara wrote:

To be honest, when I started to think about a navy sidewinder, I only checked the military version of super sidewinder. It has recharge rate of over 10, military jammer, ecm, shield enhancer that up's the energy to over 500, flight speed of over 400, injection, shield booster, hyperspace motor and thrust of nearly 50. Looks uber to me when considering the small size of the ship, but that's just my opinion of course.

I'd forgotten about the military version. Perhaps I should tone that one down a bit. (Still, the recharge rate simulates adding a naval energy unit to the original SuperSidewinder model . . .)

OK; I've slightly reduced the chance of it having a jammer, I've restored its speed to that of a normal (or 'normal'!) SuperSidewinder, and, indeed, reduced the speed of a normal SuperSidewinder from 425 to 400. (A fully standard Sidewinder's speed is 370.) And/but I've left the prices as they were (= a normal SuperSidewinder, which is the only buyable kind, is slightly cheaper than a Cobra III - the rationale for its being cheaper being that, for all the Super goodness, the SuperSidewinder has only one missile slot and hardly any cargo capacity).

Have fun designing your version of the Sidewinder, Spara! I should note also that the naval version of my Sidewinder will appear in-game only rarely.

I'm using very vanilla version here and when there's 10 in the air supported with the carrier and it's turrets and big gun they are vey deadly. The only thing I have upgraded is the beam laser. And as Smivs suggested, they all have escape pods. These ships are meant to be cheap and replaceable, but the pilots are worth their weight in credits with their accuracy of 8.

spara wrote:

...as Smivs suggested, they all have escape pods. These ships are meant to be cheap and replaceable, but the pilots are worth their weight in credits with their accuracy of 8.

Maybe they should have a special (i.e. cheap) short-range escape capsule that docks with the carrier rather than goes off to a station. It would seem logical that they would do that, and it would look cool

cim wrote:

The shockwave from a missile is big enough to destroy another missile within a couple of hundred metres.

Is it just me, or does that distance/range seem a little excessive? Not only do I find the concept of shockwaves in a vacuum rather questionable to begin with, but, even if we take it as a loose metaphor for 'expanding cloud of shrapnel and debris', the chances of another missile being destroyed by the blast should reduce with distance in accord with the inverse-square law.

Thoughts?

Smivs wrote:

Maybe they should have a special (i.e. cheap) short-range escape capsule that docks with the carrier rather than goes off to a station. It would seem logical that they would do that, and it would look cool

There are two things I'm pondering right now and they both seem to require some AI tweaking. Which I'm quite a beginner with I'm afraid . But I'm learning .

The first one is to return those escape pods to the carrier. Not really tried to implement this one yet.

The second one is to implement Navy Thargon Collectors that will launch from the carrier after things have cooled down, collect all Thargons and return to the ship. So far I've managed to launch special transport ships with scoops and collect all Thargons only to find out that the Carrier has left . Also the state of 'cooled down' is a bit vague. I'm trying to not use timers and I've been launching Transporters after each defender docks in. Finally, when the last defender docks, the carrier leaves. Preventing that will require some AI change, I suppose.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Is it just me, or does that distance/range seem a little excessive? Not only do I find the concept of shockwaves in a vacuum rather questionable to begin with, but, even if we take it as a loose metaphor for 'expanding cloud of shrapnel and debris', the chances of another missile being destroyed by the blast should reduce with distance in accord with the inverse-square law.

It does, in fact, reduce in accordance with the inverse-square law. The missile is intended to do about 250 points of damage to the target, with detonation around 30m off the surface. The remaining missiles only have 5 energy, so can be destroyed at around seven times that distance.

Decreasing the damage done by the missile would make it fairly ineffective; increasing the toughness of missiles would make it require two shots to laser them down; decreasing the designed blast radius of the missile would make it likely to miss the average ship entirely, especially at low frame rates.

Admittedly, if they were cap-ship missiles for use against other cap ships (let's call them torpedoes?) they could probably afford to be slower, which means that the detonation distance could be much shorter. (But in practice an unspread set of missiles tends to clump together much closer than 200m anyway)

Diziet Sma wrote:

Is it just me, or does that distance/range seem a little excessive? Not only do I find the concept of shockwaves in a vacuum rather questionable to begin with, but, even if we take it as a loose metaphor for 'expanding cloud of shrapnel and debris', the chances of another missile being destroyed by the blast should reduce with distance in accord with the inverse-square law.

In addition to what cim wrote I would also raise the point that space probably isn't a vacuum in Oolite. Aegidian himself threw the word "phlogiston" into the arena during a debate about the physics of powered moving objects in Oolite.

cim wrote:

On the scales involved in Oolite, that probably wouldn't help much, at least not with standard missiles. The shockwave from a missile is big enough to destroy another missile within a couple of hundred metres. Unless both the capital ship and the target are significantly bigger than that length, and also considerably closer to each other than they are long (which implies that they're either well within plasma turret range of each other, or they're the size of a small planet) the missiles will converge to within the interference range before impact.

Hmm ... then maybe the missile launches should be staggered: bow - forward midships - aft midships - stern. They will converge on their target but the aim should be to keep the missiles coming at a rate high enough to do potential damage, while avoiding as far as possible the shockwaves from their colleagues' explosions.

Commander McLane wrote:

In addition to what cim wrote I would also raise the point that space probably isn't a vacuum in Oolite. Aegidian himself threw the word "phlogiston" into the arena during a debate about the physics of powered moving objects in Oolite.

Or, at least, that space-time itself is tangible to certain sorts of physics (hence reactionless drives, no inertia, etc.). Pick what's fun, and make the physics fit ... otherwise you end up with Frontier.

Disembodied wrote:

Pick what's fun, and make the physics fit ... otherwise you end up with Frontier.

<chortles>

cim wrote:

Decreasing the damage done by the missile would make it fairly ineffective; increasing the toughness of missiles would make it require two shots to laser them down; decreasing the designed blast radius of the missile would make it likely to miss the average ship entirely, especially at low frame rates.

Understood.. life is often about finding a workable compromise..

spara wrote:

Smivs wrote:

Maybe they should have a special (i.e. cheap) short-range escape capsule that docks with the carrier rather than goes off to a station. It would seem logical that they would do that, and it would look cool

There are two things I'm pondering right now and they both seem to require some AI tweaking. Which I'm quite a beginner with I'm afraid . But I'm learning .

The first one is to return those escape pods to the carrier. Not really tried to implement this one yet.

The second one is to implement Navy Thargon Collectors that will launch from the carrier after things have cooled down, collect all Thargons and return to the ship. So far I've managed to launch special transport ships with scoops and collect all Thargons only to find out that the Carrier has left . Also the state of 'cooled down' is a bit vague. I'm trying to not use timers and I've been launching Transporters after each defender docks in. Finally, when the last defender docks, the carrier leaves. Preventing that will require some AI change, I suppose.

Couldn't you launch the Thargon Collectors with a defender role (as you probably have a custom AI anyway)? And would the carrier wait for them, too? Just asking...

Rorschachhamster wrote:

Couldn't you launch the Thargon Collectors with a defender role (as you probably have a custom AI anyway)? And would the carrier wait for them, too? Just asking...

Oh, if I only knew how. I already have setup the sidewinders as defenders and I don't know if it's possible to launch other ships as defenders. I don't want those collectors to be launched as defense!

I think I'll take another, easier route . It's all about the setting really. This Carrier carries a swarm of reservist elite pilots flying Sidewinders. A number of cheap and small light fighters armed with beam lasers in capable hands will make a difference in war with Thargoids. For collecting Thargons, there is a group of civilian scavengers aboard. No need to invest into new Navy Ships as funds are low anyway.

I also tried returning escape pods to the carrier. A bad idea in the heat of the battle. Better send them somewhere elsewhere. Maybe they get collected by the scavengers aboard, maybe there's some other ship that will collect them and return them to the carrier.