Disembodied wrote:True, but almost everyone in motorsport will use proflex suspension, because it's vital for their profession.
Actually even in motorsport Proflex is considered expensive, (its a relative thing) maybe 5% of rally drivers will use it. Bilsteins will do 95% of the job for 10% of the price. Money is normally always the deciding factor.
Disembodied wrote:So assuming that almost everyone with a Cobra III is flying it as a job, not just to get from A to B, then if there's an adaptation that makes the Cobra III into a much better trader, with no downside, I think everyone would take it. It's a business decision, not a lifestyle one. It's like the cargo bay expansion: it's a no-brainer. Everyone takes it. There's absolutely no reason not to have it, as soon as you can afford it. It's stupid not to fit one. If there's a way of essentially giving a Cobra III an even bigger cargo bay expansion, with nothing to worry about except the money, then again, everyone who uses the cargo bay for their livelihood would do it.
It depends on the price, many pilots can barely afford to get the basic cobra. Now if it was the case that the double size cargo bay cost double the base cobra price SOME might pick it over the cheaper larger python, If they want Combat. Now what about if the 75 ton cobra cost as much as an anaconda? Only those with a real desire for that solution will pick it. The Anaconda makes a far better trader, escorts arent hard to emply if you want to trade somewhere dangerous. A "pack" of cobras are far more effective for piracy than one with a large cargo bay. (Which of course isnt an option open to us to own multiple ships or have a hauler follow you at a safe distance hauling your wares for you
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Disembodied wrote:Ultimately, it all comes down to your concept of fun. And that's where Oolite's under-the-hood tinkering really takes off, because everyone can enjoy different aspects of the game and have the universe set up the way they want it.
Yeah its a big part of the game being able to "have it your way"
Disembodied wrote:And of course this kind of situation is where "game balance" goes out the window, because all your setup has to do is please you, and you alone. When it comes to multi-player games, though, and non-sandbox games, the balance gets much more important. With regard to Star Wars Galaxies: I haven't played the game, but as it's a MMORPG there are other people involved. Game-balance issues are therefore very important, because if one or two sets of possible character choices are much, much better than all the rest, then it's only going to be any fun for that subset of people who like playing those one or two character types. Whether they got it right or not I don't know: obviously from your point of view they didn't! But probably you were in a small minority of people who were prepared to play as something other than the best available, and still have fun. It would have been a commercial decision (obviously: no corporation will work if it's not getting paid) to try to get as many people playing the game for as long as possible.
The reaction to the decision was somewhat legendary in mmorpgs
before the big change if you wanted to do pvp you went jedi or bounty hunter \ combat medic. However the game had a HUGE role play \ social gamer sided - its actually one of the few games taht had completely non combat play styles available - crafters entertainers medics etc were complete play styles of their own, and not side choices to a main combat class!
In the name of balance they devestated character personalisation and lost a good two thirds of their player base... The game has never recovered. The game did attract people with the idea of living a a life in the star wars galaxies rather than trying to be luke skywalker, the vast majority of the players LOVED customisation, even now all the very highest priced items in games are decorative, rather than stat modifiers or equipment.
The dev team was swapped after the decision and the CEO has since issued several apologies saying they did the wrong thing.
But in that came if you wanted to power game you knew where to go but most players werent wanting power, as long as they could complete content why worry about getting through it faster or doing group content solo etc etc. It was a game where you were encouraged to pick what suited you enjoyed. My main character was a droid engineer I made and sold droids
Believe it or not doing that and spending time decorating a virtual house was well worth a subscription
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Galaxies at its best was simply not a competetive game it was far more about cooperation and interaction. There were thousands of players who spent their entire game time with their avatar dancing in bars, buffing and healing players and socialising etc. Never even handling a weapon.
Disembodied wrote:My own best example of bad game-balance is the old Games Workshop board game Talisman. Each player picked a different character with a different set of abilities and stats, and you all farted about for many hours through the night until whoever had the Prophetess won. Because it was a hugely, overwhelmingly better character than any of the others. Once someone had that character the game was essentially over, and there was even less point in playing it than before. If you dumped her from the game things got a bit better, but even still there were good characters and lousy ones: the differences between them meant that only a few of them were ever usable.
thats one of GW's games I havent played, but by the sounds of it, it was a competetive game.
Disembodied wrote:You're absolutely right, of course: "fun" is absolutely the overriding principle in making any game. If it's not fun, then it's not a game. But – in anything except a pure single-player sandbox game like Oolite – balance is an important part of that fun.
Talisman, with the Prophetess character, was no fun, because everyone who wasn't playing the Prophetess knew that they were just going to get thumped. Even for the person playing the Prophetess, it wasn't much fun, because all there was to do was sit through a long but inevitable progress towards ultimate victory. Aspects like having a coherent and well-realised gameworld and a sense of player involvement are very important aspects of fun, too, but they're harder to define, and more prone to personal taste.
For example, I actually enjoy the fact that my ship can only carry 20 tons of cargo. I don't find swapping around canisters to be all that tedious (and anyway, I've made so much money that it doesn't matter to me any more). I like the fact that if I spurn the chance to buy rock-bottom computers because the Poor Agricultural I'm heading for is a seething Anarchy, and I'll fill up the
Radio Maru twice over with salvage, then sure as fate I'll meet nothing on the way in with a bounty on its head, and I can moan and complain about Sod's Law. I like the fact that if I've blown up a pirate and scooped up some slaves, I can't dump them, even if there's a whole mass of tinned luxuries floating all around me: because in my game, in my head, I don't do that. I can't leave living beings drifting out there, maybe forever (in my head, again, when I get them to the station I'm releasing them, not selling them). Escape pods, too: I'll jettison something expensive if I have to, to take one of those on board. I find that much more involving, much more fun, having to make those decisions. If I had a huge cargo bay then the issue would almost never come up. Plus, of course, everyone knows that a Wolf Mark II SE is way cool.
If I was only killing stuff with a bounty on it I probably wouldnt have such an issue, I have to say I think this time round is the first time Ive ever really ran into it, probably beause I normally only bounty hunt rather than taking out everything I meet. Pirates dont normally carry so much cargo or so much junk. I guess those anaconda's probably make good profit carrying so much food, purely because of the size of their hold
I would end up having to cycle and dump at least 20-30 cannisters every run and that gets old very very fast.
If the interface was like the jettison screen in FE2 then Id have no problems with it (not that game doesnt have its own share of issues, but I play that often enough as well still.) but just click on the box next to the food to dump it nice and easy.
Pre notification of what was in a cargo cannister would probably help as I could just shoot the junk and then its not cluttering my scanner as well, perhaps only being able to tell what was in a cannister from a close distance would be usefull.
When you "bleed" an anaconda they can leave a very very long trail of cannisters, only a few of which I might genuinely have an interest in selling. 35t would be ample if I had an easier way to screen out the 40 ton of junk that didnt become monotonous quickly. seriously 40 dumping sessions on a run gets boring fast...
Some time or another Ive really got to get back into coding, Ive not done any serious programming for years, I often think "I wish I could do "this", would be nice to drop in such functions.
the main problem is that SC won't mine asteroids! Whether mining lasers or cheaper pulse lasers are fitted, the asteroids only ever blow up!!