Oolite Bulletins

Kraits are the ones that once to me have shown the most interesting attack style.
It was two of them, from far away they speeded towards me, fired a few shots and swoosh, they were past me before I could align and fire back. Far away they turned around and did the same again. and again.

The two of them were on opposite sides, so it was like a symmetric attack.

It was pretty annoying, I wasn't fully equipped by then, probably not even with shieldboosters, and I was unable to hit them.

But I have never again encountered this behaviour.

snork wrote:

Kraits are the ones that once to me have shown the most interesting attack style.
It was two of them, from far away they speeded towards me, fired a few shots and swoosh, they were past me before I could align and fire back. Far away they turned around and did the same again. and again.

The two of them were on opposite sides, so it was like a symmetric attack.

It was pretty annoying, I wasn't fully equipped by then, probably not even with shieldboosters, and I was unable to hit them.

But I have never again encountered this behaviour.

This "style" is typical for NPCs "on adrenalin" (read: with injectors and too much fuel at their hands). It's not actually a style, either. The reason for their behaviour is simply that their acceleration is so poor. They come in on injectors, of course overshoot you, and then need the full scanner range (sometimes even more) to come to a stop before turning around. Then they accelerate again. Rinse, repeat, until they run dry. Or they indeed are so fast that they leave scanner range before stopping, whereby they lose you as a target and are never seen again.

Yup, purpletailing is pretty common for pirate Kraits. Lock the injectors open and let it burn till the tanks are dry. Sometimes they'll go kamikaze too, and try to ram you.

I gave the Goliath a whirl, did a deliberate misjump to see it in action.
While I didn't see it taking shots at Bugs (I was too busy with the Bugs myself), I noticed it swinging from side to side, shooting off rounds as it moved - and that was after the swarm was eliminated.

Is that normal behavior?

Back on the topic of the fastest ship, I don't really need a fast ship, but it would be nice to have one that's on par with Viper Interceptors. Otherwise they shoot at you on injectors and are too fast for you to hit them. So they win and piracy does not pay. A Vortex or Falcon, or anything with 0.45-0.50 LM, would be enough for me.

Zireael wrote:

I don't really need a fast ship, but it would be nice to have one that's on par with Viper Interceptors.

That's a bit of a contradiction. The Viper Interceptor is the fastest of the core ships (except the Constrictor - a special case) and is a dedicated pursuit ship, so has no cargo space or any creature comforts for the crew.
It is therefor un-reasonable to expect a more rounded ship (in terms of cargo capacity etc) with the speed you are looking for to even exist. Obviously they do, because OXP authors (myself included) have decided to 'invent' them. A few do make sense within the Oolite canon, most do not.
At the end of the day, it's up to you what ships you include in your Ooniverse, and how much you are prepared to be 'flexible'.

Zireael wrote:

Back on the topic of the fastest ship, I don't really need a fast ship, but it would be nice to have one that's on par with Viper Interceptors. Otherwise they shoot at you on injectors and are too fast for you to hit them.

Not entirely true. Attacking ships are never faster than the ship they attack when they come in shooting range but adapt their speed to that of their target. When you look closely at the distance when fleeing, you'll notice that the distance stays the same. And when you start using injectors, your perusers will start their injectors. Only player ships can reduce their speed faster than npc ships, so that your perusers close in, every time you stop using your injectors.

In my opinion pursuing ships should be allowed to fly up to 10% faster than the fleeing ship. It stops the endless fleeing without success and faster ships will always be able to get slower ships. I have had that changed in my own compiles but the current way is probably canon.

One thing I hadn't considered up until recently (because it was mentioned on the forums) is that as long as you ship points in the right direction, no ship can ever get away because when it gets out of range you simple jump drive after it. It'll run out of fuel eventually (while you'll still have yours hopefully). Granted, for extremely fast ships it will still be hard to take them out but it's doable.

Zireael wrote:

I don't really need a fast ship, but it would be nice to have one that's on par with Viper Interceptors. Otherwise they shoot at you on injectors and are too fast for you to hit them. So they win and piracy does not pay.

You may have trouble catching a Viper Interceptor in a long stern chase, but they don’t tend to run like that. However, you can certainly take out an Interceptor in a standard Cobra Mk III… if you’re good enough! Contrabandistas rule!

The plasma cannon is still too slow in my opinion. If you spread the bolt up to the speed of a bolt from a turret then it might work and maybe someone could add a lead reticule to the hud via the STE.

Sorry, hadn't realized the conversation had moved on.

Commander Wilmot wrote:

The plasma cannon is still too slow in my opinion. If you spread the bolt up to the speed of a bolt from a turret then it might work and maybe someone could add a lead reticule to the hud via the STE.

Sorry, hadn't realized the conversation had moved on.

The plasma cannon has always meant to be a point defence system and/or for big ship v big ship combat where turning to fire nose or tail lasers was virtually impossible.

They were originally conceived as NPC weapons only - opening them up to the player was a bonus (and considered by some of the devs to be a mistake) and has lead to an increasingly often requested "make them better"/"more accurate"/"more powerful" etc...

Plasma is best as a defensive weapon, in my opinion. To use it offensively you either have to be very close in, or try and lead an opponent into a bunch of it you're laying down. The first is by far the easier tactic.

But for like a freighter ship that turns slow and doesn't run very fast, a plasma turret off the aft is a good answer to hardhead missiles and will often take one out if you keep just ahead of the missile for a little bit. It gets the hardhead more often than I ever did when trying to shoot them with the aft laser.

It's certainly no uber-weapon, and I don't think it was ever meant to be. But it can add variety to your tactics and it can be used while you let your lasers cool.

From what I understand, some of the big OXP ships like the Caduceus may have multiple turrets along the side. That would allow for old fashioned "broadside" attacks and might make trad naval manoeuvres like "crossing the T" viable. I don't know first-hand on that though, since I've never flown a Caddy.

On the Griff Boa, there are turrets on the sides and top as well as aft, but only one laser (the fore). It's possible to do quite a lot of damage on an opponent if you can match their speed and course, pull up alongside at very close range and roll your ship while keeping parallel. Considering they'll be trying to get away from you, that's harder than it sounds. But it's possible as a bit of "fancy flying". But turrets take a second or two to recharge between shots, and if you spin at the right rate one is always firing while the others are recharging and it can batter an opponent pretty well. If nobody else has given a name to that particular manoeuvre, I'd like to move for calling it a "Zaria Pinwheel", since I first figured out I could do it at a certain moment while playing the Ionics OXP. No details to avoid possible spoilers for that OXP.