Oolite Bulletins

All too often, I'm wanting to plink away at an enemy ship...either because I want them to eject and not destroy the ship and/or because I'm not even sure I'm on target and just taking a passing shot.
But with beam/military lasers, I often fire 2-5 times...causing insane levels of heat.
Someone else who stated the same problem:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=142986#p142986

So how about Semi-auto/full-auto laser modes?
semi-auto = You press fire once, laser only fires ONCE.
full-auto = you press and hold down fire, laser fires till it's overheated.

And an enhancement to that:

When in "single-shot" mode, if you hold down the fire button then it will fire more slowly by remembering the current laser temperature, firing once, then waiting for the temperature to fall to the remembered value, then firing again... etc.

Forget my silly idea. It is exactly what an overheated laser does anyway!

Switeck wrote:

All too often, I'm wanting to plink away at an enemy ship...either because I want them to eject and not destroy the ship and/or because I'm not even sure I'm on target and just taking a passing shot.
But with beam/military lasers, I often fire 2-5 times...causing insane levels of heat.
Someone else who stated the same problem:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?p=142986#p142986

So how about Semi-auto/full-auto laser modes?
semi-auto = You press fire once, laser only fires ONCE.
full-auto = you press and hold down fire, laser fires till it's overheated.

I'm sure on some joysticks/gamepads you can set a constant button press to pulse - I'm sure I had an old Thrustmaster one that had a slide bar for this very thing...

how about an option to charge up a shot, fire up to you total temp in one shot. (nearly)instant kill if you hit, but if you miss you're knackered.

Killer Wolf wrote:

how about an option to charge up a shot, fire up to you total temp in one shot. (nearly)instant kill if you hit, but if you miss you're knackered.

Only if there's a 1% chance that you vaporise the capacitors on the weapon thus rendering it useless until replaced.

why would that be an option or even possible, given the lasers have heat cut-outs? if that was true then it should be an option now, if you hit the cut-out point when firing normally.

Killer Wolf wrote:

why would that be an option or even possible, given the lasers have heat cut-outs? if that was true then it should be an option now, if you hit the cut-out point when firing normally.

Presuming the laser fires at it's maximum safe output already (beam and Mil lasers both being CW or pulsed with such a short time interval as to appear CW anyway) - you suggest that this mechanism somehow is by-passed to generate a single pulsed mega-shot - all I'm saying is fine - but to do so would be a non-standard 3rd party modification of a beautifully constructed piece of equipment and therefore you should run the risk of vaporising some part of your laser's lasing infrastructure. (Ying and Yang and all that)

I didn't mean change the damage per shot OR make the lasers fire faster than they already do.

I just want to be able to fire only 1 shot when I press fire once, so I can tap enemies or fire ranging/warning shots.
This isn't even the same as just making lasers fire slower...I don't want a speed setting to make military/beam lasers fire as slow as a pulse laser.
I want them to fire as fast as I can press the fire button, up to their original max fire rate...but ONLY when in semi-auto mode.

The full-auto mode is what they already have. I don't want that removed, only for it to be the other fire rate mode.

I’m generally against adding that sort of fiddly level of control, unless there’s very strong demand. However, if we get the input handling in 2.0 to where I want it, it will be practical to expose tweak settings like that to scripts and let OXPs add extra controls.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

why would that be an option or even possible, given the lasers have heat cut-outs? if that was true then it should be an option now, if you hit the cut-out point when firing normally.

Presuming the laser fires at it's maximum safe output already (beam and Mil lasers both being CW or pulsed with such a short time interval as to appear CW anyway) - you suggest that this mechanism somehow is by-passed to generate a single pulsed mega-shot - all I'm saying is fine - but to do so would be a non-standard 3rd party modification of a beautifully constructed piece of equipment and therefore you should run the risk of vaporising some part of your laser's lasing infrastructure. (Ying and Yang and all that)

Adding to this, it sounds like an overclocked laser...hence the higher risk of permanent damage.

Switeck wrote:

I didn't mean change the damage per shot OR make the lasers fire faster than they already do.

I just want to be able to fire only 1 shot when I press fire once, so I can tap enemies or fire ranging/warning shots.
This isn't even the same as just making lasers fire slower...I don't want a speed setting to make military/beam lasers fire as slow as a pulse laser.
I want them to fire as fast as I can press the fire button, up to their original max fire rate...but ONLY when in semi-auto mode.

The full-auto mode is what they already have. I don't want that removed, only for it to be the other fire rate mode.

Ahruman wrote:

I’m generally against adding that sort of fiddly level of control, unless there’s very strong demand. However, if we get the input handling in 2.0 to where I want it, it will be practical to expose tweak settings like that to scripts and let OXPs add extra controls.

Put me down as one of the members of the (hopefully, very strong) demand.

Put me down as one of the members of the (hopefully, very strong) demand.

Me too!