Oolite Bulletins

Here's a little story about something I call the "Hassoni-Kruger Burst Laser". In the final shakedown and modifications of this device today I stumbled onto a pirate ambush, 3 distinct groups all around me. I dove in, fuel injecting to close the distance to the first group, a pirate python and his escorts and a moray. I got onto the python's six and let loose a three shot burst. My quarry seemed to act startled as he let loose all his missiles. Another burst and the fireball erupted in a flurry of cargopods. Hit the ECM and I was down over one energy bank on my precious cobra3. Turned to the moray and closed the distance under 2km and let loose. Sparks flew as the stunned pilot attempted to flee a zigzag course. Just then one of the escorts, a sidewinder came straight at me head on. I waited, taking a few hits as I closed the distance to under 1km. bada bada bada! Nothing left. Now under 2 energy banks left and a nearly overheated laser indicator. The second and third groups were scoring some hits as they closed. Fuel injectors wide open I played chicken with one cobra3 and as he veered off got on the other cobra3 wingman's tail. I veered an erratic course, dodging incoming fire as I kept on his six, waiting for the laser to cool down some. Ready now! Two bursts and that was it for him. By this time a missile was on my six. Hit the ECM. It didn't pop. I'm in the red on energy bank 4, I have 70% shields aft and redline lasers. Hit the injectors out of there. Ten seconds later I notice the blasted Krait on my tail. I let off just long enough for him to catch up and veer away then he came back and did a sight see not attacking. Hitting the injectors to close up I got a top view shot and let loose a volley. All hit and sparks trailed. His injectors lit up as he gained some distance on me and this time I missed 2 out of 3 from another salvo but that was just enough to end his days.

This was the most hairy and fun combat I've had playing the game with no oxps, just my custom lasers. I nearly bit the big one, what with the energy demands and quick laser heat up, but they never had a chance with the Hassoni-Kruger Burst Laser and my trusty CobraMkIII.

More progress...yesterday I got the energy use and extra damage routines working and today has been a finicky trial and error(mostly error) to get all the elements of the "Burst laser" working in top form but now I have a weapon with a max range of 15km, energy use of 20 per 3 shot burst, some extra heating at the start of every burst and the extra damage is based upon range to target. At 15km you will do no extra damage to your target. At 2.5km and under you do 75 extra damage per shot. The burst cycle time is one 3 shot burst per second firing at 0.1sec fire rate. These performance requirements mean that you must dogfight and at very close ranges to get any real advantage. And you must know when to bail out on a fight with this laser because chances are that mixing it up with a dozen opponents at once in a tight dogfight is surviveable, just watch the energy bank like a hawk. Oh, and be accurate with your aim. The laser is now at a point where it acts and operates as well as the original ones did. Practically seemless with rock steady fire rate and no stuttering. Just need to tune it a little more and this one's ready for the test pilots.

I like being able to blow up a python with two 3 shot salvos. Gives me a really warm feeling.

Will you take the JK challenge? by CommonSenseOTB, on Flickr

Edit to add: After having some combat experience with the JK Pulse Laser I can now say it is an interesting challenge for the experienced pilot. Combat with lone opponents is not too difficult, except when they have injectors, then it's just a waiting game till they run out of fuel as while they make strafing runs you may hit a few shots, they have ample time to regenerate the meager damage you inflict. It took me 54 shots to take out a lone python and laser overheat takes a whopping 75 shots with the trigger continually pressed, that's 49.5 seconds of steady firing. Multiple opponents take some doing and more than 3 at a time should probably be avoided with this weapon. On the other hand, the low energy consumption makes using this with the adder and cobramk1 a natural for these ships low energy recharge. During one combat I had my front laser damaged along with other equipment and this took me by surprise as I had to do a double take and realise I needed to do a hasty retreat. Quite refreshing to have the tables turned in this way.

Sounds like another jump in Oolite evolution--good work, CSOTB!

Now available for testing CustomLasersv0.1

Requires 1.77trunk to work. Download here.


https://www.box.com/s/ddc5a83a4c923ff1261a


This oxp is about a third complete and has reached a stage where testing by many other people may be of great benefit. Things like damaged laser effects, setting damage probability and how much cargo space is taken, at least 10 more weapons, some other parts of the main code and a part of the menu are not yet complete. However there is enough here to be useable for playtesting and in this way many other eyes can see potential issues/problems that I may not be able to see.

BEFORE adding this oxp to your AddOns folder you must do the following:

SELL YOUR LASERS, preferably by using the sensible lasers oxp or if not then at least reduce your laser down to the basic pulse laser. Currently the original lasers will just disappear so just warning you. Will remedy this in the future.

Also SAVE your game first and use a different save file for testing. Just a precaution. And when you are finished testing, if you want to keep this save game for use, sell the custom lasers using the built in sell feature BEFORE you save and then remove the oxp from your AddOns Folder.

All feedback from testing is very much appreciated.

As I mentioned it is very much a work in progress so please excuse the scaffolding and watch for open manholes.

Have fun with this!

I have experienced no problems up to press, I did find it curious that I had to be a "safe" distance away from the planetary station for the heavy top of the range laser to work (much like the witch space jump capability). This is not a problem , but..should one use furball or the Thargoid oxp where they attack the station .It might be a problem...

I also wondered whether it might be a possible suggestion worth considering to make each specific laser type identifiable (for aesthetics more than anything else but also in a secondary purpose to let the player know that the laser they have is the laser they purchased) by attributing each laser it's own beam colour.


I am sure other niggles will likely turn up from other testers . but this is just my first blush at play testing it. Well done , This is Good stuff and look forward very much for the stable release

Duggan wrote:

I have experienced no problems up to press, I did find it curious that I had to be a "safe" distance away from the planetary station for the heavy top of the range laser to work (much like the witch space jump capability). This is not a problem , but..should one use furball or the Thargoid oxp where they attack the station .It might be a problem...

Thanks for testing Duggan. I am unable to replicate this. There is nothing in the oxp that was made to act in that way. Can you provide more information? What oxps are you running?

My currently installed oxps;

APRIL,Combat HUD v2.0,Deep Horizons Lights Down,Deep Horizons Nav Buoy,Delightful Docking,Galaxy Info,griff coriolis normal mapped alt v2.0,griff debris.griff dodo alt 2.0,griff Ico alt v2.0,griff rock hermit,Griff shipset replace,griff shipset resources, I Missile,Ironhide,Military Fuel injectors,Naval Grid,neocaduceus,Q charger, Dark Rainbow tweak,Random ship names, renegades,Sensible lasers,Sensible Sun,Stear 9s ship set,System redux,Target autolock plus,Target Tracker,Welcome Mat,Z Groovy System Stations.

It might be worth mentioning that I experienced the issue of safe distance with the Dark Rainbow ...with the Cobra MkIII it seems fine.

Edit .Scrub that ..They don't work on the Dark Rainbow..My own stupidity for trying them on an oxp vessel in the first place...Basically speaking the weaponry appears in the equipment manifest F5 but do not operate on the vessel when pressing A... My bad please disregard my inane mutterings

Duggan wrote:

My currently installed oxps;

APRIL,Combat HUD v2.0,Deep Horizons Lights Down,Deep Horizons Nav Buoy,Delightful Docking,Galaxy Info,griff coriolis normal mapped alt v2.0,griff debris.griff dodo alt 2.0,griff Ico alt v2.0,griff rock hermit,Griff shipset replace,griff shipset resources, I Missile,Ironhide,Military Fuel injectors,Naval Grid,neocaduceus,Q charger, Dark Rainbow tweak,Random ship names, renegades,Sensible lasers,Sensible Sun,Stear 9s ship set,System redux,Target autolock plus,Target Tracker,Welcome Mat,Z Groovy System Stations.

It might be worth mentioning that I experienced the issue of safe distance with the Dark Rainbow ...with the Cobra MkIII it seems fine.

Edit .Scrub that ..They don't work on the Dark Rainbow..My own stupidity for trying them on an oxp vessel in the first place...Basically speaking the weaponry appears in the equipment manifest F5 but do not operate on the vessel when pressing A... My bad please disregard my inane mutterings

Well I just finished a good test with the neocaduceus and dark rainbow tweak oxps, tried to make the lasers fail after buying them and launching and could not. A check of the property lists for the dark rainbow reveals a slight anomaly of having EQ_WEAPON_MILITARY_LASER in the shipyard.plist extras as well as listed correctly under forward_weapon. I don't know if these will conflict with each other or affect something when you first buy the ship but it did not for me after a dozen or so attempts. Also not sure if there is any effect having the forward weapon listed in the shipdata for the player version of the ship. In any case I could not make it fail once the new weapons were installed. Just out of curiosity could your weapons toggle online have been set to off when you tested? The custom weapons do respond correctly just like the originals do. Other than that I can't think of anything in the other oxps you listed that would cause the weapons to fail. The frame callbacks would have to be suspended in my oxp or the weapons continuously set to null from another outside script for this to happen or the equipment removed. You are using 1.77trunk, right?

Very puzzling...

The Nightly build with the straight lines between night and day on the planets. That would be the one.. I got it from

http://terrastorage.ath.cx/oolite/status_win32.html


I will re install it and see what happens

I have resolved the issue. I had both trunk for 1.76 for a saved game. I had also installed the nightly build 1.77.0.4941... I was clearly creating some kind of conflict on my machine so I removed 1.76 entirely from my machine and now..so far each of the three new lasers I have tested works fine. So as suspected, the problem lay with me.

Duggan wrote:

I have resolved the issue. I had both trunk for 1.76 for a saved game. I had also installed the nightly build 1.77.0.4941... I was clearly creating some kind of conflict on my machine so I removed 1.76 entirely from my machine and now..so far each of the three new lasers I have tested works fine. So as suspected, the problem lay with me.

Ok, no problem then. Guess I'll just continue the work for v0.2 then.

Discovered a minor bug: JK laser will have the same damage as a normal pulse laser instead of reduced damage. This will be fixed when v0.2 is released next week.

Cheers!

I require some help. I'm on trunk 1.77 rev 4926. I can't get the following to work. Am I doing something wrong or is there a bug when trying to read what laser the player has currently?
Please help. I'm stuck on this one. Thanx.

You can assign "EQ_WEAPON_MILITARY_LASER" to a slot, as a shortcut, but the actual variable type which you'll get if you read it is the EquipmentInfo object for the laser.
So:

cim wrote:

You can assign "EQ_WEAPON_MILITARY_LASER" to a slot, as a shortcut, but the actual variable type which you'll get if you read it is the EquipmentInfo object for the laser.
So:

Code: Select all

if (player.ship.forwardWeapon == EquipmentInfo.infoForKey("EQ_WEAPON_MILITARY_LASER") {...}

Oh, I see what you mean now, thank you cim!