Oolite Bulletins

I've managed to simulate burst fire using my Saitek joystick profiler, thusly:



What this does is fire a short burst with a single pull of the trigger. Holding the trigger fires a burst, waits a half second, fires another burst... Lather rinse repeat till the trigger is released. Obviously this is useful for Saitek users, and maybe other joystick profilers.

Tactical: It takes longer to overheat a laser with this in play, and allows the combateer to 'meter' the damage dealt to hostile ships, ie convincing a pirate to eject, or a pirate's victim to drop cargo. It also adds a bit of practical edge to "turn n' burn" close-range dogfighting.

I'm thinking it may be possible - and even more practical - to do this with an equipment oxp, as a buyable, primable module for your beam/military laser. As well as opening burstfire to any controller on any platform. My script-fu isn't up to it though...
Any of you oxp wizards wanna give it a shot? (pun intended)

Ok. It could be a feature to add to the core game then, as per this thread.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

I've managed to simulate burst fire using my Saitek joystick profiler, thusly:



What this does is fire a short burst with a single pull of the trigger. Holding the trigger fires a burst, waits a half second, fires another burst... Lather rinse repeat till the trigger is released. Obviously this is useful for Saitek users, and maybe other joystick profilers.

Nice.. pity the Saitek profiler only runs on Windows.. otherwise I'd give it a shot.

(pun intended)

I know right! That's why I suggested a bustfire module as an oxp/oxz; no profiler software needed.

As a workaround, would it be possible to create a new laser weapon with pulse-firing at half-second intervals, but better damage output to simulate a burst-fired military or beam laser?

That would still require changes to the core code, I suspect.

Anything to do with lasers, with a possible exception of two known 'multiple same-facing lasers' hack OXPs, requires changes in the core code.

That said, I say YEAH to the idea.

Although that this is going to get complicated and probably will never make it ingame, why not something like this:

One laser installed:

- continuous fire (more heat) + burst fire (less heat)

Two identical lasers facing same direction installed

3 modes switchable with "b" after priming:

- alternating/cycle fire: like burst fire but being fired in turn by either laser instead of just one. (less heat)
- single fire: selected laser fires - burst of continuous
- linked fire(50%,60%,70% more heat per shot generated compared to single fire to counter ueber ships) And only allow to fire again if heat dissipation is below a certain percentage. - burst only available

Two different lasers facing the same direction installed:

- alternating/cycle fire
- single fire - burst of continuous
- linked fire not available (link config incompatible)

While trying to ignore the ppl obsessed with turning oolite into an ED clone :gives Dertien a look:, and the Jamesons who demanded laser coolers *you know who you are*, let's have a detailed look at the profiler command, to understand how it works.

In the "press" section, the 0.100 is the duration of the burst, at .10 second.
In the "repeat" section, the 0.500 is the interval between bursts; it waits a half second before firing again for a .10 second burst.

This is editable in the profiler: Setting say a duration for 0.250 and a interval of 0.150 makes a military laser act more or less like a glorified pulse laser - firing short bursts four times a second, allowing a slightly cooler operation while of course delivering the range and firepower a mil laser is famous for.

That's not taking latency into effect though, due to using outside-of-game software (the profiler) to do stupid laser tricks ingame, and needing more machine resources and cpu clock.

If this could be done ingame via oxp, then I'd propose being able to tweak duration and interval via oxpconfig, giving access of the device to NPCs (why should the player have all the fun?), being able to switch it on and off as primable equipment, being able to take battle damage, and making it a mod only usable for beam and military lasers (pulse and mining lasers already cycle-fire).

As for multiple forward guns, *PFFT!!!* Oolite is Oolite, ED is ED, let's keep that way please.

I like dertien's ideas as it may - ED has a lot of good ideas (and some bad) and dertien's putting an original spin on those. Besides, they are all OXP ideas and not suggestions for changing the core game.

Back to the issue of multiple fore weapons...
Multi fore lasers for npcs have been supported in the core since forever, but only as subents armed with lasers. The core ships don't have this of course, but oxp npcs could have as many as you could find room on the model for the subents. Caveat: Never was officially supported for the player ship, and likely still isn't.
There's some oxp "dirty hack" workarounds that can give your player ship a backup fore weapon, ie Primable Laser and Railgun.

Also supported in core, for npcs and player alike, are plasma turrets: Semi-autonomous, self-aiming, short range projectile weapons mounted on subents. Not available on core ships, but on oxp ships you can go nuts with them. Pointed forwards they make an ok backup weapon, pointed any other direction they make decent point-defense missile killers. Caveats: Bandit ship (or incoming missile) must be targeted and hostile to you, or the turret simply ignores them.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

The core ships don't have this of course, but oxp npcs could have as many as you could find room on the model for the subents. Caveat: Never was officially supported for the player ship, and likely still isn't.

The amount of weird cases supporting it for NPCs adds to the game, trying to work out which weapons they should be firing in particular combat situations, and whether they even have forward weapons armed and ready... I'm definitely in no hurry to look at it for the player.

For the burstfire module ... this is actually OXPable, from 1.77 onwards, though probably not compatibly with other laser-affecting OXPs. Here's one way, in outline, if someone wants to give it a go. Watch the laser temperature in a frame callback, to detect the player firing their laser. After the temperature has risen consistently with the desired burst length (beam/mil lasers fire a shot every 0.1 seconds, and the heat cost is paid in full at the start of the shot, while cooling is per-frame), switch the laser facing to EQ_WEAPON_NONE. Count the appropriate off-time, then switch it back to the right laser. If the player stops firing mid-burst, reset your heating watch.

The amount of weird cases supporting it for NPCs adds to the game, trying to work out which weapons they should be firing in particular combat situations, and whether they even have forward weapons armed and ready... I'm definitely in no hurry to look at it for the player.

I understand the problems with NPCs, but for the player, the idea would be to add a secondary fire key and make it fire the secondary laser. Is it so very difficult?

About burstfire OXP being possible, great news!

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

As for multiple forward guns, *PFFT!!!* Oolite is Oolite, ED is ED, let's keep that way please.

+1