Oolite Bulletins

Favourite ship is such a matter of mood and what style of gameplay you're doing at the moment.

The ship I usually end up going back to is the Cobra MKIII. Most other ships I try, I'll make a savegame branch before and after buying them so I can "go back in time" if I decide it wasn't a good choice for me. But I've bought a Cobra MKIII three times now in my main savegame, and that says something good about that ship.

Lately I've mostly been flying a Griff Boa. For that one I made a new user account on my machine so I could do a fresh start of Oolite and also try a different assortment of OXPs. I've been flying it for a couple weeks, and while one has to play for a bit to get enough CR to buy it, it's an inexpensive choice for a first ship change.

It is definitely not an "uber" ship. Pitch and roll rates are lower than the stock Boa, but I kind of like that, since I always felt the Boa and Boa Cruiser (I never tried the Clipper) were way too manoeuvrable to be believable for what is basically a cargo ship. The turrets give a good fighting chance against hardheads and the Griff Boa can pack a fair number of missiles herself. Definitely not a "floating target", but certainly a bit more of a challenge to do well in than a Cobra MKIII.

I don't know as I'd recommend it to a total beginner. The slower turn rates mean that you really don't want to make mistakes in a fight. You may not be able to bring her around fast enough to get a second chance. But she does alright in a fight, at least after upgrading to military lasers. That slower turn rate does make aiming at a distance easier than some ships, and I'll usually run the lasers right into red if I can get a hit on a distant hostile and then injector in while flying evasively to get in close enough to drop missile so they don't get much chance to run or engage them in standard dogfight. Follow the example of the AI, escorts are a really good idea in the rougher systems.

But the cargo hold is big enough to get into cargo contracts early on in the game, and it's very good for scooping loose cargo canisters. Once it's kitted out well enough to get off the short milk runs, it makes a decent enough money ship.

It's been the only ship I've flown for the past couple weeks, so I'll say it's my current favourite. I like the way it looks and handles, and I turn enough profit with it to more than keep going.

It's a prime example, in my opinion, of a good ship that doesn't happen to be an uber ship.

Kaks wrote:

Anyway, RS did exploit a few - hmm, let's just call them loopholes, in order to give players more choices than the developers had anticipated.

Some things attempted in that OXP - like offering Thargoid lasers for sale - did lead to immediate crashes, some others - like offering MASCs - don't seem to be too crashy...

Nice, maybe somebody does this in another OXP, since RS has disappeared off the face of the net...
Wait. Thargoid lasers?! I wanna one!

I'm currently a fan of the Caduceus (Omega). I traded in my SuperCobra, albeit somewhat tentatively, for I really liked that ship. It's an excellent upgrade from a Cobby III, if you don't think it's too "Uber". Different people have different ideas on what constitutes uber or not, and in my personal Ooniverse, the SuperCobra and the Caddy are about as uber as I allow. I would be skeptical about adding the Morrigan in, for example.

But yes, the Caduceus! Handles a bit slower than the SuperCobra, and I made a slight modification to the position of the viewports, but all in all a very nice ship.

I've found that the turrets can come in handy too, mainly when my computer throws a fit and drops the frame rate down dramatically. They've saved my neck a few times when that's happened in the middle of a fight - it can be almost impossible to target a fast moving ship with a laser at 8fps! But one can fight (and stay alive) by bringing the ship about and pointing the turrets at the hostile, and then hoping your shields hold out!

Ganelon wrote:

...I always felt the Boa and Boa Cruiser (I never tried the Clipper) were way too manoeuvrable to be believable for what is basically a cargo ship.

I always assume that maneouvreabilty is dependent on shape and size. For instance a long ship will not be able to pitch as fast as a short ship, and a wide ship can't roll as fast as a narrow ship. A big ship will be less maneouvreable than a small one.
On this basis the Boas could be quite maneouvreable as they are fairly 'squat', although they are quite large. The Cobra 3 is shorter than either so should have a better pitch figure, but is much wider than any Boa, so in theory should have a far worse roll figure. That it doesn't is just another of those weird Oolite inconsistances to my mind.

To be honest. a lot of the ship specs in Oolite, even the "classic" ships, seem rather arbitrary.

I can see where the Boas might be ok on roll, based on Smivs' logic. But by that same logic their pitch and yaw should be poor. I would guess that in Elite, the ships were just made to look kinda nifty and different enough to be recognisable, and specs were set just to fit them in niches for gameplay. So Oolite inherited a number of ships that don't actually make much sense in terms of physics.

My point is more that a ship that turns fast "feels" less massive. Big cargo bays imply "freighter", to my way of thinking. I find the Griff Boa to feel more like a large truck then a sportscar, to use automotive terms. Why it's "chopped" and hotrodded with a trio of engines in place of a single and then is still no faster than a stock Boa.. Uhh.. Maybe it's the mass and energy requirements of the turrets. It may have needed that much hotrodding just to bring it back up to Boa speed after putting the turrets on. That justification could also be consistent with the pitch and roll being impaired compared with a stock Boa. But for enhanced defenses against hardheads, that isn't a bad trade-off.

The game AI doesn't have to think about being able to afford hardheads and it tosses them into fights a lot more often than a player would, in my opinion. Since AI ships almost always seem to be equipped with ECM, there's almost no point in carrying regular missiles. The only way I've found that regular missiles are worth much is in a smaller faster ship (like Cobra MKIII), you can come in fast and pull up as you fire a missile. If you time it right, the missile will more collide with your opponent than track, and then they don't have time for ECM. But for most practical purposes, the abundance of hardheads on AI ships make buying regular missiles pretty much a waste of time for the player in my opinion.

I would like to see some rationalisation in the form of oolite itself determining the handling characteristics of a ship.

I wonder whether or not it would be possible for the game to calculate speed, pitch, yaw, roll based on the parameters of the ship, such as length, beam, height, cargo capacity etc.

For example

A big ship will always be slower than a small ship
A long thin ship can roll quick, but not pitch quick
A short wide ship can pitch quick, but not roll quick

A Cobra mk3 wouldn't excel at any particular characteristic - just be a good all rounder as it is now.

Of course, you might want to get more sophisticated because there would obviously be different engine configs available - but that could be reflected in cost. (e.g in cars today BMW 318 and M3 are the same size, but a world of difference in performance)

It would have the benefit of preventing outrageously uber ships and make ship design a bit more 'scientific'.

Only my ramblings.

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

Of course, you might want to get more sophisticated because there would obviously be different engine configs available - but that could be reflected in cost. (e.g in cars today BMW 318 and M3 are the same size, but a world of difference in performance)

Engine sounds? The script in BGS-A and BGS-M ships a mechanism for it and can easily be used by player-ships (already used for the Vector).

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

it can be almost impossible to target a fast moving ship with a laser at 8fps!

8FPS? Ouch.

Zireael wrote:

Well, the Thargoid Warship was listed in the list included with the Realistic Shipyards and in some others. So I don't think it a bug.

You're entitled to your opinion, of course. And I'm entitled to mine. For me RS (and its descendents) are the attempt to turn Oolite into a completely different game. I'm not interested in that.

But of course you are free to modify your personal game in such a way that it doesn't resemble Oolite anymore.

Svengali wrote:

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

it can be almost impossible to target a fast moving ship with a laser at 8fps!

8FPS? Ouch.

Yeah... It's an occasional thing, and I haven't worked out yet whether it's a problem with a specific oxp, a combination of too many oxps (I'm getting quite greedy now - I'm spending almost as much time looking through the oxp list as I am playing...), or my poor computer not able to take the strain and just having trouble. It can happen when I'm defending a station from the Thargoids (in Thargoid Wars), while there's a Furball going on at the same time (and there's always a frame rate drop when launching from a station and looking at the textured planets from System Redux). But it can also sometimes happen when I'm in deep space, not mass locked by anything. Sometimes I can reduce it by closing a few tabs in Chromium, but other times there's nothing else running on the computer.

Basically I don't know what the cause is. But it only happens every now and then (at the moment) and I can make use of the turrets when I need to! So like hell is it stopping me from playing this awesome game!

Well as i rarely trade now (prefer to fight) i am permenantly in a cobra commodore now.. its got a tiny fighting edge over the MK3, but at a cost (cargo) so i feel comfy that its not uber at all.

I do wish i could have a better hud though...ideally one with a targetting system that flashes red or something when my sniping is likely to hit lol

sunlover72 wrote:

I do wish i could have a better hud though...ideally one with a targetting system that flashes red or something when my sniping is likely to hit lol

Have you tried the Reticle Target Sensitive OXP? Seems to be exactly what you want.

another_commander wrote:

sunlover72 wrote:

I do wish i could have a better hud though...ideally one with a targetting system that flashes red or something when my sniping is likely to hit lol

Have you tried the Reticle Target Sensitive OXP? Seems to be exactly what you want.

no but i will on monday thanks... (my GF bans pc games weekends as its our 'quality time'

another_commander wrote:

sunlover72 wrote:

I do wish i could have a better hud though...ideally one with a targetting system that flashes red or something when my sniping is likely to hit lol

Have you tried the Reticle Target Sensitive OXP? Seems to be exactly what you want.

That or the perhaps the MilHud, which has target sensitivity build in.

For instance a long ship will not be able to pitch as fast as a short ship, and a wide ship can't roll as fast as a narrow ship.

...that said, I have no problem believing that the Cobras could roll that quickly - a wide lightweight ship will have its thrusters or retro-rockets (or whatever is used in the Ooniverse) at its "wingtips", so they'll have more leverage when fired because they're a greater distance from the ship's centre of gravity.

Perhaps this only makes sense in my head, or in hand-wavey sort of explanations!

Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2010 2:36 pm Post subject:
Favourite ship is such a matter of mood and what style of gameplay you're doing at the moment.

I agree, each ship has its own merits and pitfalls, which means you have to adapt your playstyle to the type of ship you are flying.

Cargo-ships usually means hauling and trading (unless you are being jumped upon when entering a system), fighters ask for combat missions. I tend to like the multi-role ships better, since I like to be doing all kind off things while cruising the galaxy.

Greetz,
Onno.