Oolite Bulletins

A post by Smivs in Outworld got me thinking ... firstly, that Oolite's lasers must have some pretty nifty cooling technology, given that they cool rapidly even with the amount of energy pumped through them, what with them being wrapped up in the vacuum of space with its amazing insulating properties and all. Then I thought about where the laser heat has to go, and it occurred to me that maybe there's an interesting wrinkle available here. The cabin temperature gauge only ever gets used when the player goes sunskimming, or atmosphere diving: for a lot of players, it has almost no function at all. So what would it be like if extended use of the laser pushed up the cabin temperature?

There's a further refinement to this. Small ships dodge better; big ships are easier to hit. But big ships are, well, bigger: there's more of them, and they have more places to put excess heat. So a Boa or a Python could, conceivably, carry on redlining its laser for far longer than e.g. a Mamba, before the ship's internal temperature reached dangerous levels.

I wouldn't want to suggest this as something that would have a serious effect on everyday gameplay. In the normal run of even quite vigorous combat, the cabin temperature of a Cobra III might not go up much higher than halfway. It would take a really, really prolonged combat, or sequence of combats with no cool-down time in between, to push the cabin temperature into the critical zone. Mostly, this would be a bit of eye-candy that might increase the sense of immersion, in that your ship would register change as you play. Although it would make combat near or inside a corona even more interesting ...

Not sure how OXPable this might be, though: is cabin temperature open to adjustment? And could an OXP make a guess at how big the player's ship might be? (this latter isn't vitally necessary, but it would be nice: more variations in performance between different kinds of ships is A Good Thing, I think)

I like that idea - but then I like any idea than can make the Oolite Universe slightly more difficult.

Diogenese Senna wrote:

I like any idea than can make the Oolite Universe slightly more difficult.

<grins> Plenty of those - handicapping yourself by only using the fore laser (as I do) is one, plus there are several OXPs that toughen/enhance NPCs.

On a mathematical side - how about a 4 to 1 temperature ratio.

I like this idea. Hands full of other things to do at the moment, alas.

Disembodied wrote:

Not sure how OXPable this might be, though: is cabin temperature open to adjustment? And could an OXP make a guess at how big the player's ship might be? (this latter isn't vitally necessary, but it would be nice: more variations in performance between different kinds of ships is A Good Thing, I think)

A quick look a the wiki says that ship.temperature is writable. Is it the cabin temperature for player ship? Ship.mass could be used to calculate how much heat the ship can absorb.

Disembodied wrote:

I wouldn't want to suggest this as something that would have a serious effect on everyday gameplay. In the normal run of even quite vigorous combat, the cabin temperature of a Cobra III might not go up much higher than halfway. It would take a really, really prolonged combat, or sequence of combats with no cool-down time in between, to push the cabin temperature into the critical zone. Mostly, this would be a bit of eye-candy that might increase the sense of immersion, in that your ship would register change as you play. Although it would make combat near or inside a corona even more interesting ...

I would quite happily have it effect the gameplay

Disembodied wrote:

There's a further refinement to this. Small ships dodge better; big ships are easier to hit. But big ships are, well, bigger: there's more of them, and they have more places to put excess heat. So a Boa or a Python could, conceivably, carry on redlining its laser for far longer than e.g. a Mamba, before the ship's internal temperature reached dangerous levels.

I like the idea.......but.

1) I don't think any of the big ships are so sluggish in their handling that this wouldn't confer a significant advantage to the player in a large ship over pirate vessels, most of which are small. The player can usually engage with a fair degree of accurracy at long range, so this sort of feature would make it much easier for a big ship pilot to quickly pop vessels before they get too close to be threatening.

2) I think if this were combined alongside changes to the handling of big vessels, making them more sluggish in handling and acceleration, this would be a nice tradeoff.

Sendraks wrote:

2) I think if this were combined alongside changes to the handling of big vessels, making them more sluggish in handling and acceleration, this would be a nice tradeoff.

YESSSSSS

As of off shoot, that might also effect handling whilst sunskimming, which would make it FAR more interesting

Sendraks wrote:

I like the idea.......but.

1) I don't think any of the big ships are so sluggish in their handling that this wouldn't confer a significant advantage to the player in a large ship over pirate vessels, most of which are small. The player can usually engage with a fair degree of accurracy at long range, so this sort of feature would make it much easier for a big ship pilot to quickly pop vessels before they get too close to be threatening.

This is partly the reason why I don't think it should have any tactical effect on gameplay, in all but the most peculiar of circumstances - certainly not until it had been thoroughly tested. I don't think it's a good idea to change core mechanics without a lot of preparation. Personally, I see this as something which can add a bit of atmosphere to the game, which would help to make the ship seem more like an active environment - not really a major gameplay mechanic. One reason to be wary about giving the player too much in-flight power over cabin temperature would be the possibility of creating an exploit for people who own certain kinds of furry friends ...

I've pointed this out in the dim and distant past, but most ships (including OXP ships) have fairly standard handling and acceleration as a rule. Instead the standard for demonstrating the "next generation" of a ship is increased energy or speed or cargo space or all three.

The values for handling or acceleration are rarely looked at.

The Python is speed 0.200LM with a cargo capacity of 100tc
Python class cruiser is 0.35lm and a cargo capacity of 145tc!

But the handling and acceleration of both vessels is the same. You could easily tone down the stats for the PCC and still have a superior vessel to the Python, if the acceleration and handling on the Python were less good. Although fiddling with all those value across the piste would be very time consuming.

Disembodied wrote:

This is partly the reason why I don't think it should have any tactical effect on gameplay, in all but the most peculiar of circumstances - certainly not until it had been thoroughly tested. I don't think it's a good idea to change core mechanics without a lot of preparation. Personally, I see this as something which can add a bit of atmosphere to the game, which would help to make the ship seem more like an active environment - not really a major gameplay mechanic. One reason to be wary about giving the player too much in-flight power over cabin temperature would be the possibility of creating an exploit for people who own certain kinds of furry friends ...

I think it has bags of potential for adding to the games atmosphere, but as you say, it does need to be tested.

It could have an interesting effect on pirates and what not, making space combat much more interesting.

Sendraks wrote:

It could have an interesting effect on pirates and what not, making space combat much more interesting.

It could, but it probably wouldn't - at least, not at the levels of cabin heating I'd imagine. If it did, it would start to intrude on the gameplay in a potentially serious way.

Most NPCs wouldn't be in combat (or, more importantly, be seen by the player to be in combat) for long enough for them to have to take it into consideration. Ideally this would be a player-only OXP that would let the player think, "Phew! That was a tussle-and-a-half" and consider taking a minute to cool down after a protracted combat, rather than something which would alter the way the player, and the NPCs, actually behave.

Sendraks wrote:

I've pointed this out in the dim and distant past, but most ships (including OXP ships) have fairly standard handling and acceleration as a rule. Instead the standard for demonstrating the "next generation" of a ship is increased energy or speed or cargo space or all three.

The values for handling or acceleration are rarely looked at.

The Python is speed 0.200LM with a cargo capacity of 100tc
Python class cruiser is 0.35lm and a cargo capacity of 145tc!

But the handling and acceleration of both vessels is the same. You could easily tone down the stats for the PCC and still have a superior vessel to the Python, if the acceleration and handling on the Python were less good. Although fiddling with all those value across the piste would be very time consuming.

Agreed, definitely - I've always thought that flying a big rig (i.e. anything with a significantly larger cargo bay than a Cobra III) should feel different, and a longer acceleration/braking time would be a good way to do it.

The major difficulty with it, I think, is the same as the reason that the existing heating effects of energy impacts on the hull are rarely noticed: in normal circumstances (i.e. not next to a star), the ship cools from maximum survivable CT to the baseline in under a second.

This could be adjusted with a frame callback to apply a much slower cooling rate; if you did then you might find that the existing heating effects were already sufficient to make CT play a role in combat (though the existing ones only start happening once your shields are down)

cim wrote:

The major difficulty with it, I think, is the same as the reason that the existing heating effects of energy impacts on the hull are rarely noticed: in normal circumstances (i.e. not next to a star), the ship cools from maximum survivable CT to the baseline in under a second.

This could be adjusted with a frame callback to apply a much slower cooling rate; if you did then you might find that the existing heating effects were already sufficient to make CT play a role in combat (though the existing ones only start happening once your shields are down)

OK, interesting, thanks! As usual, things are a lot more complicated than I first thought ...

Sendraks wrote:

I think if this were combined alongside changes to the handling of big vessels, making them more sluggish in handling and acceleration, this would be a nice tradeoff.

I believe you have a very good point here. Larger vessels, like my own, should be more sluggish than fighters, especially when slowing down.