Oolite Bulletins

Am I right in thinking that in Oolite, all ships have the same basic shield strength (although different numbers of energy banks)?

What I mean is does say a Cobra III with Shield Boosters and Military Shields take the same punishment to get it's shield to zero as say a much larger ship like a PCC with the same shield enhancments?

If I'm right about this, could this be changed in the next version, as I think it makes it difficult to balance ships.

In FFE a huge ship would (or at least could) carry a massive shield as it could be packed out with many shield generators. This seems realistic as a small ship like an adder wouldn't be able to put out the same power to its shields as a Boa.

Could it be done by setting a value (say 1 for a Cobra and 5 for a PCC as default shield strength), then Shield Boosters increase this factor by say 0.25 and Military shields by say 0.75.

The game is very realistic in the way in the way other ships hit your ship, a massive target like a Boa gets hit a lot more than an Eagle, but by the same token the Boa should be able to absorb a lot more damage.

The only current problem is apart from cargo space, big ships are unattractive.

The number of energy banks is dependent on the amount of energy each ship has divided by 64 (iirc).

Take a look at this tentative listing that I made when I tried to balance some of my ship designs (work still in progress, btw). Some data may be out-of-date, but you'll see the general stuff there easily. Energy refers to total energy and the Rate refers to the rate at which the energy regenerates.

http://www.susimetsa.net/funstuff/oolite/

Indeed, big ships should be able to take more hits than small ships, and for most big ships this is indeed so.

Dosen't this just effect how long you can survive once the FWD / AFT shield has failed (ie how long your energy banks hold out), rather than the strength of the FWD / AFT shield itself?

As once shields are out, your energy banks quickly get cut to ribbons, this dosen't increase the ship's defences that much.

Or I am completly Wrong!