Oolite Bulletins

... a magnified laser sight please? Picking off targets at long range is tricky, especially with a military laser that heats up really fast. It would be great to have a piece of equipment which allows the central portion of the screen to be magnified, maybe with a corresponding reduction in the sensitivity of the ship's controls.

hear! hear! it's alright if it's a python or something, but *sigh* the wee things can be a right pain in the... whatevers.

The best way of picking off targets at long range is to use fuel injection to get closer, or alternately use mouse control (or joystick control on Linux which has a sensitivity modifier).

gah, i know

but sometimes you don't have enough fuel, etc...

Surely you mean, "one possible way to pick off targets at long range" is to get closer. It's certainly not the only one, nor is it always the best one.

Getting closer increases the risk of being missiled, it makes you an easier target for laser fire yourself, and it means abandoning any cargo you might have been in the process of collecting - plus, witchfuel is a limited resource with better uses. (Request #2, can we get the option to buy a bigger fuel tank at the expense of a little cargo space please?)

The 'bigger fuel tank' question has been discussed in previous threads...
It would take away a major aspect of game balance.

AndyC_772 wrote:

... a magnified laser sight please? Picking off targets at long range is tricky, especially with a military laser that heats up really fast. It would be great to have a piece of equipment which allows the central portion of the screen to be magnified, maybe with a corresponding reduction in the sensitivity of the ship's controls.

Sorry I don't agree. To become Elite you have to hone your flying and combat skills to a level that means you can pick off an enemy on a jousting run at virtually one pixel!!!! There's a great degree of satisfaction in taking out a posse four sidewinders/mambas etc without them scoring a hit on your own craft. If you want to make it easy then ask for unlimited energy bombs, but where is the fun in that?


Direct Quote from the Elite Training Manual:-

To become an elite combateer requires great skill and great patience

The Grey Haired Commander

TGHC wrote:

To become an elite combateer requires great skill and great patience

I know, I've done it at least twice!

I see a magnified sight as a logical device to build; it's not very technologically demanding, yet would overcome a major limitation of all the laser weapons - namely that they're difficult to aim accurately. There is no reason why, in a real Ooniverse, such a device wouldn't exist - and that, to me, is a good reason to include it.

Other ships would have them as well, of course, which would make distant enemies more dangerous. Maybe that would spoil the gameplay, though I'd rather find out than just assume that would be the case.

AndyC_772 wrote:

Maybe that would spoil the gameplay ...

Spot on!

Well there is an alternative that I've mentioned before, and that is a targeting computer. My old fave Xelite has one and it is superb, as soon as I get mass locked by another craft, I hit 'b' and cross hairs appear around the target, even if it cloaks itself, also up pops data giving the craft type, distance, velocity and the no of credits received on a kill. Keep hitting 'b' and it toggles through all the ships, asteroids, rock hermits, cargo cannisters, escape pods etc. Very useful, and negates the need to buy a ship identifier.[/img]

Doesn't sound too cool to me. It would make things too easy.

BTW, now I get my ass kicked repeatedly, and I curse, sometimes thinking Oolite has become too hard but... It's more fun in the end, and the feeling of having been able, eventually, to bring that pesky enemy down after a long dogfight is so much greater than ... hitting 'b'... and 'a'...

Personally I’d quite like a way to select a target other than pointing at it, which when you get right down to it is a pretty silly selection method…

it definitely isn't the most discrete way of checking someone out or locking a missile target.

NPC's don't have to, do they?

it would make a nice expensive toy, a TargetSeeker. not that it would tell you the pilot's birthday, but one that can lock toggle between objects within the chosen view direction, within a certain range..

Now, if you think about it a bit, none of these equipment ideas are really that silly.

You're sat in your ship. Your view of the Ooniverse is through your ship computers display screen - you don't look out a window, you're looking through a camera.

Technology levels are obviously higher than they are here on Earth in 2005, yet we are capable of producing targetting systems here today that can zoom in on targets. Why should we not have that kind of feature on our Oolite ships?

As for the argument that it would make things too easy, remember that enemy ships move, and fine adjustment of your ship position will still be as tricky as it ever was. Yes, it would make things slightly easier in targetting far off ships, but it still won't make it trivial to line things up in your sights.

Yes, to that point i wholeheartedly agree: identifying NPC's with the crosshairs/weaponscanners is not great, esp around 15-25 km out... You *really* have to line the crosshairs very precicely, i often grumble it is too narrow (the zone which does the 'locking')
i often get the feeling it's 'pixel-precision', and if you go down to 10-15fps, it's near impossible, even at closer ranges...