Oolite Bulletins

One topic I noticed that keeps popping up here, is lasers overheating too fast. They do, brutally, and somewhat unrealistically so.
Here's what I've been playing with in my personal custom build.
For the nongeeks, this lets the lasers run cooler, but with a twist: The heavier the weapon, the more power it draws and the faster it heats up.
For instance, plasmas run very cool and barely draws any energy, while military lasers heat up at slightly less the origional rate and suck on the energy banks so hard, running mil lasers sans an energy unit is a very bad idea.

It's a good idea. I'm always frustrated with how quickly my military lasers heat up too. Let me go plug in the code and take her for a test run.

I don't mind the heating, as long as I had the possibility to buy a "laser cooling booster"... But I don't think we have such in the game, do we?

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

One topic I noticed that keeps popping up here, is lasers overheating too fast. They do, brutally, and somewhat unrealistically so.
Here's what I've been playing with in my personal custom build.

Code: Select all

		case WEAPON_PLASMA_CANNON :
			weapon_energy =						10.0;
			weapon_energy_per_shot =			2.0;
			weapon_heat_increment_per_shot =	3.5;
			weapon_reload_time =				0.2;
			weapon_range = 5000;
			break;
		case WEAPON_PULSE_LASER :
			weapon_energy =						15.0;
			weapon_energy_per_shot =			2.0;
			weapon_heat_increment_per_shot =	4.0;
			weapon_reload_time =				0.5;
			weapon_range = 12500;
			break;
		case WEAPON_BEAM_LASER :
			weapon_energy =						18.0;
			weapon_energy_per_shot =			2.4;
			weapon_heat_increment_per_shot =	4.2;
			weapon_reload_time =				0.1;
			weapon_range = 15000;
			break;
		case WEAPON_MINING_LASER :
			weapon_energy =						50.0;
			weapon_energy_per_shot =			5.0;
			weapon_heat_increment_per_shot =	7.0;
			weapon_reload_time =				2.5;
			weapon_range = 12500;
			break;
		case WEAPON_THARGOID_LASER :
		case WEAPON_MILITARY_LASER :
			weapon_energy =						23.0;
			weapon_energy_per_shot =			4.0;
			weapon_heat_increment_per_shot =	5.0;
			weapon_reload_time =				0.1;
			weapon_range = 30000;
			break;

For the nongeeks, this lets the lasers run cooler, but with a twist: The heavier the weapon, the more power it draws and the faster it heats up.
For instance, plasmas run very cool and barely draws any energy, while military lasers heat up at slightly less the origional rate and suck on the energy banks so hard, running mil lasers sans an energy unit is a very bad idea.

That's cheating! You still can blow out any ship with your regular military laser, but sometimes it is *supposed* to be hard.

Of course, you can always locally modify what you have.

But the laser heat issue has been gone over a few times. To summarize - there will not be a laser cooling booster, and the general opinion is the laser heat rates (particularly the military laser) are spot on.

If the lasers heated more slowly, it would take away much of the tactics of the game. Currently, you have to be careful with the more powerful weapons - be accurate, and save your shots for targets that mattered. Lower the military laser heat-up rate or reduce the quench time, and Oolite becomes an arcade shooter with much reduced tactical play - IOW, increase the laser cooling rate and you reduce Oolite's playability because you remove an important element of the game. It just makes it too easy.

Flying to a pirate infested system should not be an easy ride - it should be difficult to survive, and you should have to make tactical choices rather than just blasting away at ship after ship. The current laser performance means that you have to make choices - do I spend the money on these hard head missiles in case I'm overwhelmed and my laser is in the red? Do I keep some fuel in hand so I can use injectors to get out of Dodge? Do I learn to fight with the aft laser? Should I now fire the hard head missiles and get some of these targets off my back while I let the lasers recover? Should I spend all this extra money on shield boosters? All this becomes moot if you have a military laser that cools off too fast 'cos all you then need to do is wade in and just pound on your targets with your super laser. This quickly becomes boring once you pick up any kind of skill.

In the origional Elite (C64 version) the military laser would kill most pirate ships with only four hits and barely get warm doing so, and it's power consumption was somewhat moderate.
The mil laser in this code mod is far from being an effecient weapon; it eats like a drafthorse energy-wise, and still gets hot. It can overheat in a hard dogfight with a pack of pirates while sucking your energy down, especially with battered shields and often triggered ECM drawing their share. Then you can add energy management in with heat management as something else to worry about. Worry becomes panic if your energy unit gets shot off...
And the lasers still have to cool at the same rate.
So how is that cheating, pray tell?

No one is talking about cheating - but it does modify the game balance. Generally I have found energy isn't a problem if you can dispatch your enemies quickly. The current heat/quench rate on the military laser means you have to be very accurate to do that.

I'd actually have to try it to see how it alters gameplay balance, but the consensus is to be pretty careful with this or anything that could start making going to dangerous systems easier. Of course Giles is the final arbiter of what goes into the game

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

In the origional Elite (C64 version) the military laser would kill most pirate ships with only four hits and barely get warm doing so, and it's power consumption was somewhat moderate.
The mil laser in this code mod is far from being an effecient weapon; it eats like a drafthorse energy-wise, and still gets hot. It can overheat in a hard dogfight with a pack of pirates while sucking your energy down, especially with battered shields and often triggered ECM drawing their share. Then you can add energy management in with heat management as something else to worry about. Worry becomes panic if your energy unit gets shot off...
And the lasers still have to cool at the same rate.
So how is that cheating, pray tell?

Because some things became easier and some things became harder and the balance is ok, i'd even say it is better, the game is more interesting now. Getting rid of things that became harder ruins the balance for sure.

Remember, MkIII was your only ship on c64.

winston wrote:

the general opinion is the laser heat rates (particularly the military laser) are spot on.

I'm not sure that is accurate.

Perhaps we need a poll.

It is however our Master and Commanders opinion, and that is good enough for me.

TGHC wrote:

winston wrote:

the general opinion is the laser heat rates (particularly the military laser) are spot on.

I'm not sure that is accurate.

Perhaps we need a poll.

It is however our Master and Commanders opinion, and that is good enough for me.

It depends on skill level. And until a novice gets better in working with lasers he (hmm, are any female pilots here? ) cannot realize that. When i started, i compared my expirience to original Elite and thought military laser is too weak. Now i can blast off a large pirate group or a sixpack of thargoids with robot fighters and stuff without using bombs and mines and i agree it is just good enough. Well, maybe thanks to narcoleptic AI from 1.64 that got slightly better with 1.65, but anyways..

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

One topic I noticed that keeps popping up here, is lasers overheating too fast. They do, brutally, and somewhat unrealistically so.
Here's what I've been playing with in my personal custom build.

how does one go about implementing code like this?.

Is it a file your create and put into the addons/config folder?

doh.

nevermind.

I just realised that is a code snippet from the oolite source tree.