Oolite Bulletins

Advanced Tactic "Circle the Wagon" for use on ships slower than the NPC, must have a side weapon. Get within 500m to 1km(how close depending on the target's speed) and maintain max speed(no injectors) and continously face and attack with that side weapon, effectively circling the wagon so to speak. I've tried this tactic out pretending to be a pirate attacking core freighters with escorts like the boas and anacondas and even without dispatching the escorts first this is a very effective strategy. Was using my test ship cobramk3 and a new close in weapon system based on the twin plasma cannon that requires to get in close(really close) for the damage advantage and accuracy reasons. I could see NPCs using this weapon or any other for a "circling the wagon" broadsides attack against slow freighters.

Advanced Tactic "Kamikaze/Chicken" for NPCs to use when a ship is on their six and they have no injectors and can't shake them. They simply cut speed to half and turn in towards the ship pursuing and when the angle is just short of a collision they increase speed to max attempting to maintain that angle until just past the other ship(this may result in a glancing blow), at which point either come to a full stop and fire at the ship with the forward laser or slow to half and use a side laser.

CommonSenseOTB wrote:

Advanced Tactic "Circle the Wagon" for use on ships slower than the NPC, must have a side weapon. Get within 500m to 1km(how close depending on the target's speed) and maintain max speed(no injectors) and continously face and attack with that side weapon, effectively circling the wagon so to speak. I've tried this tactic out pretending to be a pirate attacking core freighters with escorts like the boas and anacondas and even without dispatching the escorts first this is a very effective strategy. Was using my test ship cobramk3 and a new close in weapon system based on the twin plasma cannon that requires to get in close(really close) for the damage advantage and accuracy reasons. I could see NPCs using this weapon or any other for a "circling the wagon" broadsides attack against slow freighters.

Essentially this is the NPC side weapon tactic already, with the exception of "get within 1km". They can mostly aim just fine at longer distances, but are less likely to be hit by return fire, assuming their target is bigger and slower than they are.

There seems to be a fair consensus behind "slow down, turn round, open fire" as the solution to being unable to shake an aggressor by evading, anyway.

cim wrote:

There seems to be a fair consensus behind "slow down, turn round, open fire" as the solution to being unable to shake an aggressor by evading, anyway.

"Slow down, open fire" is an ok tactic to use from range as well, especially if mounting a military laser. Getting in close generally only helps the fast and maneuverable. Once it's taken too many front hits, (energy medium/low?) turn and move away while using rear laser.

Switeck wrote:

"Slow down, open fire" is an ok tactic to use from range as well, especially if mounting a military laser. Getting in close generally only helps the fast and maneuverable. Once it's taken too many front hits, (energy medium/low?) turn and move away while using rear laser.

If they have rear lasers as well, they'll tend to do that. The sequence goes:
- attack with front laser.
- get hit, take evasive action
- end evasive action, which makes them reassess their attack strategy
- note that rear laser is cooler than front laser, turn around and use that.
Ships below the accuracy threshold to do take evasive action will sometimes end up reassessing their attack strategy when hit anyway, and swap lasers with similar effect.

I've added some tactics for short-range dogfighting, counters to the player getting on their six, a way to get on unskilled targets' sixes, and slowing down for some long-range shots when firing at a target which is targeting someone else.

The combination is pretty effective, especially if there's more than one of them. Three stock Sidewinders with accuracy 10 pilots are a very dangerous fight.

cim wrote:

Three stock Sidewinders with accuracy 10 pilots are a very dangerous fight.

<grins> Yeah, I can believe that! I have regular encounters with an 'accuracy 10' pilot. Sounds good!

@cim: I only hope it won't get too hard for new Commanders...

Svengali wrote:

@cim: I only hope it won't get too hard for new Commanders...

Cim didn't mention it explicit, but ships that don't define an accuracy, get a random one in the range of -5 to 5. Those ships should be as difficult as before. If not, things must be calibrated. The special attacks will only be used whit an accuracy > 5 and that will only be oxp ships. And than its the choice of mister Jameson to allow them in his universe

Eric Walch wrote:

And then it's the choice of mister Jameson to allow them in his universe

That's Commander Jameson to you, Mister Walch.

And in today's lesson:

Wildeblood wrote:

Eric Walch wrote:

And then it's the choice of mister Jameson to allow them in his universe

That's Commander Jameson to you, Mister Walch.

or, "How to upset a Slightly Grand Rear Admiral" in one easy lesson.

A quick additional feature for flasher sub-entities: they now have a new "bright_fraction" parameter, which is the proportion of their cycle for which they are bright. Varies between 0 and 1, with the default (which corresponds to 1.76 flasher behaviour) being 0.5

A short video example

cim wrote:

A quick additional feature for flasher sub-entities: they now have a new "bright_fraction" parameter, which is the proportion of their cycle for which they are bright. Varies between 0 and 1, with the default (which corresponds to 1.76 flasher behaviour) being 0.5

... I foresee the imminent re-issue of half the OXPs in existence, and everyone upgrading to the nightly just for this feature...

cim wrote:

2) NPCs now have identical laser overheating and cooling to the player.

Amazing work you're doing here cim with all these new features, thank you very much for programming in all this new stuff!
Does this mean now that NPC ships get glowy lasers just like the player ship does if their shaders are using the 'laserHeatLevel' uniform binding?
i think at the moment for NPC ships, the heat level goes from 100%- 0% per shot, so their guns sort of do a 'muzzle flash' effect rather than heating up like the player's gun does

Griff wrote:

cim wrote:

2) NPCs now have identical laser overheating and cooling to the player.

Does this mean now that NPC ships get glowy lasers just like the player ship does if their shaders are using the 'laserHeatLevel' uniform binding?

Yes. I've seen a few of your Cobras go past with their lasers glowing red hot after an attack run.

As with the player ship, the shader binding now also refers to the temperature of the currently active weapon (rather than strictly the forward weapon). The feature request at Berlios has a bit about providing shader and scripting read access to the heat levels as four separate parameters (with the fifth "current" one for backwards compatibility and convenience), but I've not got round to that bit yet.

if you can find a way to keep the current 100%-0% heat level per shot as a 'fifth method' then that would be great - it can be used to drive the 'recoil' effect on turrets by using it to offset the model's verticies along their Z-axis in a vertex shader

Griff wrote:

if you can find a way to keep the current 100%-0% heat level per shot as a 'fifth method' then that would be great - it can be used to drive the 'recoil' effect on turrets by using it to offset the model's verticies along their Z-axis in a vertex shader

That's possible, yes - and quite straightforward since there was already code to give that value. Since it has nothing to do with "heat level", now, I've called it weaponRecoveryTime. 0 when the weapon is ready to fire, 1 when it has just fired, decreasing to 0 over time. Should be in tonight's nightly build for testing.