The Imperial Courier---Supreme Choice??

Sendraks · Post by **Sendraks** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:00 pm

The oxp I have installed has both the standard Imp Courier and Navy version, it's selezens version from the wiki.

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:30 pm

Now some icos i've seen have lasers mounted on the engine cowlings as well as the front.... would this be possible under 1.73 for a player ship?

Sendraks · Post by **Sendraks** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:33 pm

Yup, most of the Imp Couriers I encounter have the engine mounted lasers. Ofc, if you destroy the engines you destroy those additional lasers as well.

I do think it would be nice for player ships to have the same laser capacity as their NPC counterparts, but I think its not allowed due to balance issues.

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:37 pm

What about, perchance, the Griff Boa, which, I believe, has 3 turret mounts?
Or we could have the Imperial Courier built like the Frontier version, with dorsal and ventral turrets... perhaps for balance it couldn't use four lasers, only front and back?

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:57 pm

All NPC ImpCouriers have three front lasers. And by the way, this is exactly the reason for bothering with shooting off the engines first. Because you mainly don't shoot off the engines (there is no difference, as far as your opponent's movement is concerned), but you shoot off two beam lasers, which is important for the end result of the battle.

@Zbond-Zbond: While I can understand why you think that having a 250 t cargo capacity would be a nice thing to have, I would like to remind you that the "standard" cargo capacity in Elite is de facto set by the Cobra III which has 20+15 t. Compared with that the IC's 100 t is huge, even if it cannot be extended further. Also, while I understand why you would like to be able to buy the whole market at once, I think it would be silly if a single ship would be able to do that. Trading means making choices.

Sendraks · Post by **Sendraks** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 3:17 pm

Commander McLane wrote:
@Zbond-Zbond: While I can understand why you think that having a 250 t cargo capacity would be a nice thing to have, I would like to remind you that the "standard" cargo capacity in Elite is de facto set by the Cobra III which has 20+15 t. Compared with that the IC's 100 t is huge, even if it cannot be extended further. Also, while I understand why you would like to be able to buy the whole market at once, I think it would be silly if a single ship would be able to do that. Trading means making choices.

Agreed. Also going back to something Zbond said in earlier post, the 100t capacity cargo bay should not = an advantage in combat, just because there are other ships which can carry more. For its price, the Imp Courier is not an unbalanced ship, especially not when compared to the cheaper Python ET and Python Class Cruiser. I can't see any justification for making the Imp Courier more potent without a significant increase in price tag and when you get to a certain point, even a high price tag doesn't cut it anymore.

Having a ship that, while it may be expensive, has a huge cargo bay, is very fast, agile and with strong defenses, with no trade-offs in any area kind of makes all other ships pointless. Which to me, isn't what Oolite should be about. Fortunately the Imp courier available in the oxp isn't that ship.

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 6:31 pm

Zbond - if you want to be able to carry a lot of cargo, buy an anaconda, Deep Space Dredger, or Condor...

And the courier does have a few drawbacks... from the side, it's an ENORMOUS ship... an easy target due to its whiteness, and such and so on... ya know? But what if we implemented something like the law of diminishing returns; ie you could get a slightly better ship that the imperial courier for maybe 5 mil...?

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 7:02 pm

wackyman465 wrote:
But what if we implemented something like the law of diminishing returns; ie you could get a slightly better ship that the imperial courier for maybe 5 mil...?

Already happened, name is going to be OSE.

Oh, and it did happen to the NPCs, too.

wackyman465 · Post by **wackyman465** » Tue Aug 25, 2009 8:14 pm

Cool. There will be an "elite version" of the imperial courier generated using your auto like_ship tool? How good will it be?

And recent news: An Imperial Courier is not as strong as the side of a python ET special.

Zbond-Zbond · Post by **Zbond-Zbond** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:16 am

The OXP I have installed is:

impcourier2.oxp

The ship I have flying now has little resemblance to the ones described above. It has rotating nacelles, 4 missile slots, no mil. shields. It has fuel scoops & an escape pod.

Where is the (navy) variant/is it a separate OXP/is it in a different version of impcourier/where is that version etc.

But now off to see what it's like at Leera-G6

edit I don't mind flying the native BoaCC for trading to accumulate credits needed for (expensive!) armaments, and doing combat activities in something else. I don't necessarily want 250t: that's just what the req. would be to earn fastest.

Tivva · Post by **Tivva** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 6:05 am

Zbond
I don't have the seperate Impcourier oxp installed just RS, but I have previoously owned both Civilian & Navy versions & regulary see Navy versions for sale.

Try downloading Realistic Shipyard oxp

theres a link to V3.02b in Lestradae's signature (2 posts above)

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 7:35 am

<sigh>

You know, the V2 IC was intended to REPLACE the V1 cos the V1 was overpowered and unbalanced and has a rubbish model.

Please let it die.

Of course, my cause would have been helped if Lestradae had respected my wishes and NOT included it in the bloody RS pack...

Post by **Kaks** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 8:46 am

L has been saying that game balance is one of the major issues behind the development of OSE.
Hopefully, by the time OSE v1 is released, the only ICs found in there are going to be v2s!

Lestradae · Post by **Lestradae** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:12 am

The problem was (as far as I recall) that Selezen asked me to remove the older Imperial Courier model when people had already started using RS - taking away the older and more powerful IC model would have meant taking out backwards compatibility.

I still have that problem - RS V3.02b has been downloaded by more than 4200 people, if I simply take the older "navy" IC version out I strand people without their ship - Selezen, like it or not, your old IC is very popular (I have heard it being praised often) ...

I have to confess to being guilty of not having exchanged the old model with the new one

I promise to better myself and change it to the new one! (Put a note into my OSE WiP folder to not forget this again)

So what I'm not going to do while being sorry about it as it obviously means a lot to Selezen, is change the stats of the "old" IC, because I can't make players who have invested 2.85 million Cr earned ingame to purchase it make suddenly wake up with the I think 400000 Cr "smaller, newer" variant.

But as said, the older, less sophisticated model goes out the window for OSE!

Hope that helps

L

Sendraks · Post by **Sendraks** » Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:51 am

Surely for all those players who must have a OTT ship to fly around in, the simplest thing to do would be to take the V1 Imp Courier out of OSE and package up as a separate 1.73 oxp.

People can still have it if they want, just a little extra effort on their part is required to get it.

Alternatively, for those of us who don't want the V1 Imp Courier in OSE, simple instructions on how to remove it (I imagine this would just be a straightforward shipdata plist edit) would be good.