Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

Zireael wrote:

expand the list of commodities, maybe up to what was in FFE

If the commodities market is going to change, I'd go for a real overhaul. Scrap the existing system completely, and replace it with something which is (a) more complex under the hood, and (b) more flexible for scripting.

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

I remember in ArcElite that there were two columns in the Commodities market - a buy price and a sell price. Because realistically, a market isn't going to sell you something at one price, and then buy it back from you at the same price. They'd buy it back at a cheaper price than they sold it to you for. So if people are considering changing stuff about the market, I'd suggest incorporating this into it. 'Tis more inconvenient if you accidentally click on the wrong thing, but what do businesses care about that!?

Could we expand upon the standard ship set. If I remember correctly [EliteWiki] ArcElite had quite a few additional ships, and other variants of Elite had a few [EliteWiki] more I believe. If we were to include all these in the standard ship set, it would possibly give a better ladder to climb and give more choice. Also, we would sort of stay true to Classic Elite with "variants". It would create some extra work for Griff though.

I second everything I quote here.

EDIT: Yet another idea gleaned from FFE - different sized ships have different colors on the scanner. Maybe worth at least discussing?

talking about scanner colours, why are escape pods and rock hermits white? OK I know the yellow things (and purple and red/green flashy things) mass-lock you, but hermits and escape pods are manned and that seems to be the criteria otherwise.
A rock-hermit in particular is huge (you can dock an anaconda in one!) so surely they should 'mass-lock' you.

Smivs wrote:

talking about scanner colours, why are escape pods and rock hermits white? OK I know the yellow things (and purple and red/green flashy things) mass-lock you, but hermits and escape pods are manned and that seems to be the criteria otherwise.
A rock-hermit in particular is huge (you can dock an anaconda in one!) so surely they should 'mass-lock' you.

There isn't really a consistent criterion for yellow colour, I think.

Rock Hermits are white, because from the outside they're asteroids, and asteroids are white. (I also think it's because a different colour would give away the hermit on the scanner to easily. I always thought you're supposed to find it yourself in an asteroid field.)

Escape pods are white, because they're essentially cargo, and cargo is white.

The overall criterion for mass-locking capability and yellow scanner colour, if there is any, seems to be the presence of an active quirium-using engine (I think it's the quirium reaction which is actually supposed to lock you; but I'm not completely sure on that one). Therefore rock hermits don't lock you, because they don't have an engine (but what about the engines of possible docked ships?). And escape pods don't lock you, because their engine is too small (and has no jump capability, but this would exclude shuttles and sidewinders as well; perhaps the escape pod engine isn't propelled by quirium, but some other power source?).

Conclusion: there is no consistent policy on mass-locking and yellow blip colour, or at least I fail to see it. It's more like a rather general guideline, getting fuzzy in the details.

EDIT: typo

Wow, it's very tricky keeping up with all this isn't it? Lots of things being thrown in. I suppose it comes down to how much you want to gut and how much new stuff you can add (or how hot swappable you can make the core programme) without turning this into a life time project.

Personally I've always liked the ship "slots" model that allows you to slap different equipment into a ship (which is limited by size, weight, etc etc etc ) difficult to implement. I think it is important to get a good idea of what's wanted and what makes oolite "special & different". If you don't work that one out then you might as well just go out and buy galaxy on fire 2.

Smivs wrote:

The Mk 1 Cobra is a decent starting point (as most of you know I sold my Mk 3 at the start of the game and used a Mk 1 until I'd saved up for a Python), but the Mk 3 is a better bet all round. Look at the number of players who never move on but keep their Mk 3 for life.
But even with all the good reasons given above (pool of pilots available to GalCop etc) I can't see them just giving such a good, expensive ship away for free.
That's why I suggested the GalCop loan. It adds another dimension to the game as well, as players would have to budget and plan their future keeping in mind that the loan will need to be repaid. As I described it, it shouldn't delay the Iron-Assing of the Cobra or hold the player back, except the acquisition of a more expensive ship would have to wait until the loan has been paid off. I don't see that as a bad thing.

Like a government-subsidized student loan, yes? Zero-interest or low-interest. Interest is only calculated starting after graduation. Possible loan forgiveness for those in public service, e.g. those commanders who complete Naval Reserve missions.

Not really related to this, but I just started a Commander with a Cobra Mk 1, out of curiosity and for a change of pace. The pitch is only 20% better than the Cobra Mk 3, but it really makes a big difference in the turning battles. (Note that I've piloted both a Mk 3 and a Python, and never really noticed any difference.) Unfortunately, the dinky 2 energy banks and low recharge rate saw me actually running out of power for my pulse laser! The single lonely missile pylon doesn't help much for battles either. Had I been fighting alone, I would have been in trouble.

From this experience, I suspect that a new commander will not survive his first combat if he starts off in a Cobra Mk 1. Worse still, it's too slow to outrun any pirate except the Python. I think the Adder may be even worse. That means even playing as a trader will be difficult. Playing as a bounty hunter is out of the question.

Does this make starting out in a Cobra Mk 1 or an Adder not viable? I'm not sure, but I think we will need to provide some specific flying and combat training. Oolite 2 would probably need to integrate something like the Target Range OXP and/or Lave Academy OXP. We may also need to provide some way for new Jamesons to make new trade runs where they are safe from pirates, e.g. in an escorted convoy between two safe systems.

Switeck wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

That, to me, isn't an argument for starting the player in a Cobra 1, though: it's an argument for altering the stats, and earning opportunities, of the bottom-ranked ship (i.e. the Adder) to make it a viable starting point for the player.

No, the Adder is a limited purpose very cheap ship with a tiny cargo bay and a speed too low to outrun much more than an Anaconda. It would be cruelty to subject new players to the game to it. Best to leave that "hard mode" to the experts and masochists. By the time you've changed its stats to make it a viable starter ship, it won't be an Adder anymore.

My point is that – in any game which allows for player development – the player should always start at the bottom. Otherwise, whole chunks of game experience are being missed out, and the amount of player achievement is being needlessly limited. Every other game starts the player on the bottom, without requiring them to be either experts or masochists. Escape Velocity is a prime example, where you start off in a shuttle. You potter around some more-or-less safe systems, learning the ropes, eager to earn some cash so you can get to fly something better, and just at the point where you're feeling like you've got the hang of things, you find you've got enough cash to move to the next ship up the ladder and can start working on a few more challenges.

It's not worth doing unless the game is getting a major overhaul, so an Oolite 2 Adder might indeed be quite different from an Elite Adder. The important thing isn't the actual stats of the player's starting ship, it's that the starting ship is sitting on the bottom rung.

Aspects of the gameplay might need to be changed, too – for example, creating a broader spacelane from the witchpoint to the station, so players don't get caught up in traffic so much (although this has an impact on meeting pirates, of course). Alternatively, inbound traders could shift course away from the player and/or slow down, allowing the player to overhaul them and avoid getting masslocked in traffic. Other changes could include making a number of systems around the player's starting point relatively gentle and forgiving, quite low on any sort of traffic, hostile or otherwise. Trading and moneymaking opportunities need to be revised. You could also introduce a new built-in mission with some minor risks and a decent-enough little reward that puts the next ship up in reach.

These things, and/or others like them, have to happen if the player is going to start in any ship except the Cobra III (although I'd support the idea of other inbound ships moving to one side and allowing the player to go past, cutting down on masslock time, regardless of any other changes). Currently, the game works under the assumption that players are in a Cobra III – because that's how it was in Elite. Hence, currently, using any ship slower than a Cobra III is a massive pain, and making money in any ship with a smaller cargo hold than a Cobra III is a real struggle. If this basic assumption isn't going to change, then I don't think it's worth changing the starting ship at all; keep the player in a Cobra III. But if a major overhaul is on the cards, then I think it's worth making enough changes to put the starting player on the bottom rung. A properly constructed bottom rung, of course, which isn't hard to fly and doesn't present any terrifying challenge; where, for example, it's really easy to dock, because it's so small; and where the next rung up is within reach without too much effort. In short, if it's not worth doing properly, it's not worth doing at all.

Smivs wrote:

Look at the number of players who never move on but keep their Mk 3 for life.

I think Smivs hits it on the head right here. After kitting out my Cobra Mk 3, saving up for a BCC was my next ambition, but by the time I could afford one I'd decided that I was sticking with what I'd got. I think the Mk 3 is probably too good a ship in the overall scheme of things, in as much as most of the "better" ships actually involve some trade-off of features and capabilities. If the aim is not to provide uber-ships in the upgrade path, then maybe starting off with something a little under-specced would provide that room for growth.

Whatever model you start out with, I think a clearer progression of more desirable ships would provide some good targets to keep aiming for.

i like the idea of starting options, that way people could jump into their own fantasy straight away. you could have the normal Jameson, you could tweak that have a rookie just graduated from Lave w/ less money and/or a lesser ship; a better ship you got on loan but have interest payments to make until it's paid off, or alternatively a Black Monk thing, you've been desperate and borrwed from shady sources, if you don't keep up the payments you get hunters after you; an ex-Navy pilot who's finished his tour and put all his savings (or retirement money) into a good fighter.
all these and others could have a mission screen start up,showing a scenario, and perhaps a little page or two of fiction to set the scene, done by our authors here.

Killer Wolf wrote:

i like the idea of starting options, that way people could jump into their own fantasy straight away. you could have the normal Jameson, you could tweak that have a rookie just graduated from Lave w/ less money and/or a lesser ship; a better ship you got on loan but have interest payments to make until it's paid off, or alternatively a Black Monk thing, you've been desperate and borrwed from shady sources, if you don't keep up the payments you get hunters after you; an ex-Navy pilot who's finished his tour and put all his savings (or retirement money) into a good fighter.
all these and others could have a mission screen start up,showing a scenario, and perhaps a little page or two of fiction to set the scene, done by our authors here.

The thing to remember, though, like JD and Smivs point out above, is that the game is built around the Cobra III. It's what everyone is assumed to be flying. Everything is geared around that. If other, lesser ship options are going to be for anyone other than experienced players looking for a challenge, then a great many other aspects of the game – how players make money, how much they can make and how fast, how upgrades work, how much they cost, how much ships cost, what the ships' stats are like, how pirates and other traffic behaves, even to some extent the geography of the game itself – have to be altered, perhaps extensively so.

There is one other problem with giving Jamesons a choice of ship. On what basis will they make their decision? They would have no knowledge of the game or the ships and their capabilities. Rather than an informed choice they would have to 'guess' and that is both unfair and undesirable.

Smivs wrote:

There is one other problem with giving Jamesons a choice of ship. On what basis will they make their decision? They would have no knowledge of the game or the ships and their capabilities. Rather than an informed choice they would have to 'guess' and that is both unfair and undesirable.

That's another reason to have a 'clear cut progress of better ships' and to have a ship choice leaflet or sth bundled with the game.

Ultimately, this comes down to what the devs are prepared to do:

Ahruman wrote:

First of all, this is Oolite 2.0, the significant update, not Oolite II – The Sequel.

The more I think about this, the more I realise that even making an apparently simple change such as starting the player off inside a different ship has huge ramifications all over the game. Personally, I would love to see Oolite II - The Sequel. I'd also not say no to an offer of the moon on a stick. But I'd also be blissfully happy with an updated Oolite, where Jamesons start off in Lave in a Cobra III with 100Cr in the bank, with snazzy Griff-grade graphics all round, souped-up AI, superior collision detection and expanded modding capabilities to take advantage of all the creativity and cunning that lurks around these boards and this game. I suspect Oolite 2.0 will be more along those lines, where the retooling is kept to the software, rather than spreading out into the game mechanics. First Oolite 2.0, then Oolite II!

Oooooh! Swanky new avatar Disembodied. Should help you get out more

Ahruman wrote:

First of all, this is Oolite 2.0, the significant update, not Oolite II – The Sequel.

When I first read this I wasn't even sure which of the two would have more changes compared to Oolite 1.

I think an actual sequel would be a real PITA backstory-wise, especially if it comes to the time line. Where would it be placed? Not too long after Oolite 1 GalCop ceases to exist. So either the sequel would have to be placed in a time which can even be reached by playing Oolite 1 a lot, or the Ooniverse would have to look so different that we would barely recognize it at all.

I wouldn't want to twist my head around the idea of a sequel. I think my brain would hurt really fast. <insert Monty Python picture here>

We can already sell our inherited Cobra in order to buy a cheaper but better armed vessel, maybe all that's needed is an introduction you can choose to skip when starting a fresh game, and for the starting world to be a good enough tech for you to have a decent choice of equipment and affordable ships to buy. Could the game force every affordable ship (below your cobra's re-sell value) you have installed to appear at the shipyard, just at the starting world?
The introduction can explain the different ways of making cash in the start game, which balance of stats to look out for on the ships and to look at the cost of upgradeable equipment you may want to buy out of it, how to make cash within system and how to recognise the safest and most dangerous systems to visit.