Oolite Bulletins

ClymAngus wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

@ ClymAngus: I think your definition of frangibility is wrong. If I've understood it correctly, the frangible-key has to go into the shipdata of the main entity, not the subentity.

I shall take a look.

The blame is mine, I'm afraid.

Clym copied the stats from the Dragon's turrets into the Caddy's turrets, and I put the <frangible> key on the Dragon's turrets.

But that's not a showstopping bug; the turrets do as it says on the tin.
Instead, consider it an achilles heel to exploit; if you've got good aim and a whole lot of nerve, you can attempt to snipe those flak guns off.
Said guns are small targets on the Caddy and will be throwing a sh**storm of military strength plasma flak at you, so good luck trying.

Well, the bioengineering is somewhat standardised although there are the odd variation out there (as people appear to have done the nessessary alterations themselves).

Rumor has it that there is a "daddy" floating around some where keeping a low profile. Known in navy circles as the Mirias variation, it's existance is mere speculation, based on the mathmatical impossiblilty of a group of standard Caduceuses causing the kind of catastrophic system damage inflicted during the thargon insurgency.

Based on scientific samples brought back from the effected worlds. It would seem some sort of hyperpowered gravitationally constrained plasma weapon was used. Top brass christened it "The sungun" and added it to the list of things they wish to bring up with a shulth next time they captur.. errrrrr... meet one.

Translated Thargon communications give this as yet unseen ship a some what more enegmatic name,

"It comes! It comes! Hammer of sorrow!"

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

But that's not a showstopping bug; the turrets do as it says on the tin.
Instead, consider it an achilles heel to exploit; if you've got good aim and a whole lot of nerve, you can attempt to snipe those flak guns off.
Said guns are small targets on the Caddy and will be throwing a sh**storm of military strength plasma flak at you, so good luck trying.

Bit of a Flash Gordon moment:
Oh well, who wants to live forever? DIVE!

Well a mill is 23 and the turrets are 15, still thats the same as a beam, there are 3 of them each side however. What would be quite cool is a ship with a shedload of really low power turrets, weapons strength of 1-2. Not enough to instantly fry anyone but it would sure as hell put the fear of god into people.

Oh Clym, another thing I noticed.
You used texture sizes of 1024x1024. That's great for painting a texture, allows for creating details.
But ingame, it's a bit of a nuisance. A 1024x1024 texture eats texture memory, and can be slow to load. It can also result in choppy framerates.
A practice I use is to reduce texture sizes to 512x512 for the finished OXP, after painting. Results in smoother play and it's hard to tell the difference ingame.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

But that's not a showstopping bug; the turrets do as it says on the tin.

Well, it's kind of the point that they don't. Because in fact the frangible is set to 'false'. So if the turrets break off (haven't tried it myself) they do not do as it says on the tin. Which is the only confirmation I need that I was right. The main entity has no frangible set, which means that the default of 'true' is used.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

Instead, consider it an achilles heel to exploit; if you've got good aim and a whole lot of nerve, you can attempt to snipe those flak guns off.
Said guns are small targets on the Caddy and will be throwing a sh**storm of military strength plasma flak at you, so good luck trying.

Well, the only thing I would need to do is to stay more than 5 kilometers away. (If I would attack a distant Caddy he would never manage to get into turret firing range in the first place. Also, as long as he would approach me, the turrets are aimed in the wrong direction. So again no danger from the plasma.)

Commander McLane wrote:

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

But that's not a showstopping bug; the turrets do as it says on the tin.

Well, it's kind of the point that they don't. Because in fact the frangible is set to 'false'. So if the turrets break off (haven't tried it myself) they do not do as it says on the tin. Which is the only confirmation I need that I was right. The main entity has no frangible set, which means that the default of 'true' is used.

They 'do as it says on the tin' in the respect that they track and fire at targets. The misplacement, or even the lack of the frangible key has no effect on their functionality.

As for sniping the turrets off, well, I'm a bit of a sadistic bastard and like inflicting some hurt by shooting the subents off hostiles that have subents. It usually scares them into breaking off, then I close in for the kill.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

Instead, consider it an achilles heel to exploit; if you've got good aim and a whole lot of nerve, you can attempt to snipe those flak guns off.
Said guns are small targets on the Caddy and will be throwing a sh**storm of military strength plasma flak at you, so good luck trying.

Well, the only thing I would need to do is to stay more than 5 kilometers away. (If I would attack a distant Caddy he would never manage to get into turret firing range in the first place. Also, as long as he would approach me, the turrets are aimed in the wrong direction. So again no danger from the plasma.)

This illustrates a point I was trying to make awhile ago, that due to the slow fire rate, low projectile speed, limited accuracy, and as you say here, the short range, turret guns should only be used defensively.
Lasers remain the superior class of gun weapon, regardless of the blast power a turret can throw. Lasers simply outclass plasma turrets on range and accuracy. (fire rate too, esp. beam and mil lasers.)

Clym wants to deploy turrets as a battery of offensive assault weapons on the Caddy... And it doesn't work well except at almost point-blank range on large, slow ships.

Oh well, different design philosophies.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

Clym wants to deploy turrets as a battery of offensive assault weapons on the Caddy... And it doesn't work well except at almost point-blank range on large, slow ships.

Oh well, different design philosophies.

Putting words in my mouth I don't know.
The traditional broadside was ment to be delivered as closely as possible. This is not a kill everything ship (for a kill everything ship download the hammer of sorrow). To utilise the maximum portential of this ship you have to forgo ye cheating, goal hanging, cowardly sniper ways and actually try some balls to the walls close combat.

It is a different design philosophy for different tactics. Sure if you don't want to see body parts bouncing off your view screen stick to your snipernest. I personally want to be able to scoop the profits within five minutes of getting the kill, and stand a good chance of dealing with a second pirate swarm after I've popped the last lot with a E-bomb.

You do raise an interesting point however, can you slap a laser onto a turret, or is it hard coded as plasma?

I'll look into the png size issue (I can't help making big pickys I hate loosing resolution, still I tried to restrain the k count as much a s possible).
Maybe do another low res oxp tacked onto the existing oxp file. Shouldn't be too tricky.

I've also done some minor spring cleaning see the first page for updates.

ClymAngus wrote:

You do raise an interesting point however, can you slap a laser onto a turret, or is it hard coded as plasma?

Yes. Turret = plasma.

Which gives me the opportunity to repeat just another mantra: There are no turreted lasers for player ships.

(Of course you can put a usual laser on a sideways aiming turret, like you can do for multiple front lasers. But of course that would be just a usual laser which would have to be aimed the usual way. And I don't even know whether it would work for a player ship, because player ships cannot have multiple lasers = lasers on subentities.)

ClymAngus wrote:

I'll look into the png size issue (I can't help making big pickys I hate loosing resolution, still I tried to restrain the k count as much a s possible).

Which is a waste of energy, because it only effects download sizes (okay, not exactly waste of energy, because also small download sizes are nice to have—I should know, I am sitting far, far away from the nearest highspeed internet backbone after all).

But at the end of the day textures are used by the game as bitmaps. And a 1024x1024 bitmap is a 1024x1024 bitmap. Period. It has always the same number of k's (four times as many as 512x512).

Commander McLane wrote:

ClymAngus wrote:

I'll look into the png size issue (I can't help making big pickys I hate loosing resolution, still I tried to restrain the k count as much a s possible).

Which is a waste of energy, because it only effects download sizes (okay, not exactly waste of energy, because also small download sizes are nice to have—I should know, I am sitting far, far away from the nearest highspeed internet backbone after all).

But at the end of the day textures are used by the game as bitmaps. And a 1024x1024 bitmap is a 1024x1024 bitmap. Period. It has always the same number of k's (four times as many as 512x512).

Well, that was an easy fix. I'll have that uploaded this evening (if Val lets me get close to the computer that is). So in the downloadable zip I've now got everything a player could need to enjoy some caddy goodness including an optional extra ship.

Right bored with this now. by the way if anyone needs some turret designs I got through a few before I settled on my finals, I can e-mail them through.

ClymAngus wrote:

To utilise the maximum portential of this ship you have to forgo ye cheating, goal hanging, cowardly sniper ways and actually try some balls to the walls close combat.

It is a different design philosophy for different tactics. Sure if you don't want to see body parts bouncing off your view screen stick to your snipernest. I personally want to be able to scoop the profits within five minutes of getting the kill, and stand a good chance of dealing with a second pirate swarm after I've popped the last lot with a E-bomb.

Interesting that you see sniping as cheating. One of the features of the mil laser is it's extreme range, and why not use it?
Of course, it takes steady hands on the controls (especially if you fly without the 'precision mode' as I do) to nail a small ship at long distance. I usually manage to kill or severely damage a couple that way, before the rest close in to engage in a close-range turning dogfight.

Icepicking subents off requires getting in close; subents are usually too small to draw a bead on at long ranges.

I scoop spacejunk after the vermin have been neutralized.

And those that break and run? Never turn tail to the Lizard!
" Bad move sucka. Say hello to the devil when you get to Hell. "

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Quick question: Just how do you pronounce caduceus?

“The caduceus (☤) (/kəˈdjuːsiəs/, -ʃəs, -ˈduː-; κηρύκειον in Greek)…” — (the usual suspect)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Quick question: Just how do you pronounce caduceus?

could-you-see-us?

Hey, snipe-ing is a viable tactic, but if we look in "The Dark Wheel" by Robert Holdstock, we see passages like this:

"She sailed under the belly of the leader with as much calm and cheek as you please. It belly-shot at them, and she rolled the Cobra so that she could side-strafe back. All along the Boa's under-belly, shards and sparks flew brightly where the shields were lowered around the laser housings."

"The Nemesis slid smoothly along its belly and again turned side on, strafing the sensitive underparts as it matched the giant's slow roll."

Broadsides are a well documented tactic as discussed in the original novel packaged with Elite. I've just designed a ship that specialises in this tactic, making it a hell of a lot easier to pull off successfully.

I see myself as facilitating an enhanced (yet still fundimentally true) cultural oolite/elite experience

It's the tactical equivalent of trying to compare a morgan with a ferrari. One has power the other has class but they're both still cars.

ClymAngus wrote:

Hey, snipe-ing is a viable tactic, but if we look in "The Dark Wheel" by Robert Holdstock, we see passages like this:

"She sailed under the belly of the leader with as much calm and cheek as you please. It belly-shot at them, and she rolled the Cobra so that she could side-strafe back. All along the Boa's under-belly, shards and sparks flew brightly where the shields were lowered around the laser housings."

"The Nemesis slid smoothly along its belly and again turned side on, strafing the sensitive underparts as it matched the giant's slow roll."

Broadsides are a well documented tactic as discussed in the original novel packaged with Elite. I've just designed a ship that specialises in this tactic, making it a hell of a lot easier to pull off successfully.

I see myself as facilitating an enhanced (yet still fundimentally true) cultural oolite/elite experience

It's the tactical equivalent of trying to compare a morgan with a ferrari. One has power the other has class but they're both still cars.

Fair 'nuff.

I could suggest replacing the middle turret gun of each battery with a side laser mount. Still withering at close ranges, and gives something to broadside attack with at longer ranges when the turrets are effectively useless.

Your call of course; feel free to ignore the suggestion.

(Though for some reason NPCs can't use side lasers worth a hoot.)