Oolite Bulletins

I wouldn't have made this post a year ago, but the rise of OXP ships with greater and greater firepower, especially those with turrets, has outpaced shield technology. There is a fine list of ships that can cut through military shields in less than a second. One can argue that this would not be a problem if the player simply didn't install these OXP's. Being that the cat is out of the bag with uberships, should we not consider the same for shield enhancements? Existing Shield Capacitors, Equalizers and a Naval Energy Grid OXP's are still no match against a Genesis, Vortex, Kirin, etc. A Leviathan Platform, Condor or Naval Frigate are impossible targets except at very long range. I believe that greater shields are better than greater Laser power, as shields do not completely spoil dogfighting.
Perhaps one idea is to greatly increase the Shield Capacitor energy capacity, and greatly increase the discharge rate (or multiple discharges).

Opinions

GalTourist wrote:

One can argue that this would not be a problem if the player simply didn't install these OXP's.

Exactly! People who play with fire should expect to get burned.
This is an OXP 'problem' and any solution should be an OXP one. Messing with the core game is not desirable, I think.

Smivs wrote:

This is an OXP 'problem' and any solution should be an OXP one.

Definitely. Uberships need tougher opponents, which leads to uber-uberships, which need tougher opponents yet ... it's a hole with no bottom. It might be better to use (and modify, if necessary) [wiki]ToughGuys[/wiki] or [wiki]NPC-Shields OXP[/wiki].

GalTourist wrote:

One can argue that this would not be a problem if the player simply didn't install these OXP's. Being that the cat is out of the bag with uberships, should we not consider the same for shield enhancements? ...
Perhaps one idea is to greatly increase the Shield Capacitor energy capacity, and greatly increase the discharge rate (or multiple discharges).

The general problem with this approach is that you're suggesting an arms race.

Why is this a problem? Because we're not talking about RealLife™, where everything is limited by availability of resources, and therefore arms races can grow big (cf. the cold war), but never spiral totally out of control. We're talking about a computer game, where we have no actual physical limits at all. Both (player and NPCs) sides can (and will) power up in mutual response, in a never-ending game of ping pong. There's literally nothing you cannot do. Thus any arms race can and will spiral totally out of control ad infinitum.

The only way of not losing is not to start it in the first place.

Thus, Smivs is right: if you think that your OXP-created NPC-opponents are so powerful that they're impossible to match, you're playing with the wrong OXPs. Specifically with OXPs that don't actually fit well into the framework of Oolite, and perhaps shouldn't have been created in the first place.

Having said that, there's nothing to prevent you from writing a small script that automatically re-charges your shields whenever they're close to depleting. That's a piece of cake, an affair of two or three lines of code. It would give you instant immortality in combat, leaving out the intermediate steps of the arms race and going to infinity right away.

It's not my style of playing (or OXPing), though. And I know a few guys who would agree to that as well.

Now, having said that, I can also add that I've been there and done that. Not for shields, but for attack weapons. Check out [wiki]Killit OXP[/wiki], if you like, and find out how quickly your super powers get very boring.

There's always the choice of a well-placed quirium mine or cascade missile. I believe that Q-bombs and injectors in the hands of a skillful pilot will defeat any enemy. Granted, that's expensive and should be used as a last resort, but if you're tangling with that high-powered of an enemy, a tactical Q-bomb placement is more satisfying by far than a long drawn out player death OR simple invincibility.