[RELEASE] Fair Cobra IIIs 1.0

[cim]

A very simple OXP this one - it upgrades the Cobra III NPC stats to be similar to the Cobra III player stats - four energy banks, good recharge rate, and 0.35LM top speed. I don't find it makes a lot of difference to gameplay, as the major upgrade is to the trader Cobra IIIs rather than the hunter/pirate ones, though the increase in speed makes them a little harder to run away from.

Download Fair Cobra III

[Cody]

Interesting - that link isn't working directly, so I went via your index page instead, cim.

[Smivs]

Nice idea, cim, but I would rather see a level playing field in the core game...as you said it doesn't make a big difference.

[cim]

Interesting - that link isn't working directly, so I went via your index page instead, cim.

Fixed - thanks.

I would rather see a level playing field in the core game

At this stage that's somewhat tricky to do, as not only would the stock shipdata.plist need to be changed, but so would all the shipset OXPs. But there's then a need to have different shipset OXPs for 1.76.x and 1.77 onwards (and one of them is unmaintained) ... or the shipset OXP maintainers decide to just introduce the change early in 1.76.x as well, but you/they could do that now anyway. (Not without precedent: the Griff shipset adds a rear laser to a ship which doesn't ordinarily have one)

I may be missing an easy way around that problem, of course.

For this small a change it doesn't seem worth the hassle even if there is a consensus it should be done in the core - and feel free to try the OXP version and make suggestions on whether it should, of course. If in the future more significant changes are needed to shipdata.plist so that the shipset updating has to happen anyway, then it could be changed at that point.

[Smivs]

No, there is no easy answer. I was just saying, that's all.
As for shipsets, well mine uses the default settings as that's what I assume people expect, and there's always ToughGuys for those players who like things a bit more balanced.

[Switeck]

This was already done in Switeck's Shipping.

[Zieman]

Part of this fairness thing is number one of my pet peeves regarding Oolite: the player Cobra III is way too fast.
So every time I update Oolite to new version, I change player Cobbie's max speed to 300 (= 0.30 LM), as it was in ELITE. Same applies to any shipset that includes Cobra mk III.

The other pet peeve is too powerful Energy Bomb. Rather than getting rid of the weapon altogether, I'd have preferred to halve its damage rating (from 1000 to 500) with a slight beefing up of Thargoid Warships (for example max_energy from 500 to 640), so Anacondas & Thargoid Warships would survive the blast - just like in ELITE. Don't know if the EB's power is exactly 1000, but narrowed it down between 999 & 1001 when testing some ships a while ago, NPC (or NPS) with max_energy of 1001 survived the blast, another one with max_energy of 999 was vapour.

[Switeck]

Thargoids are also much faster than they were in Elite.

[DeathKnyte]

Should I install this, if I already have Tough Guys oxp installed?
Will it make the Cobra III even tougher or have no additional effect?

[Smivs]

I think you can install it...it won't make them even tougher still. OXPs load in an unpredictable order, so one of two things could happen. It could load TG first, then Fair Cobra, in which case Fair Cobra would take precedence and all the ships affected by TG would be OK except the Cobra which would be a Fair Cobra. If Fair Cobra loaded first, ToughGuys would over-ride it and you'd get TG Cobras - Fair Cobra possibly wouldn't do anything, although the 'lower' levels of TG don't affect non-pirates wheras Fair Cobra does so some non-pirate Cobras may be 'improved' by Fair Cobra even if it loads first.