Oolite Bulletins

After many hours I have fully upgraded my ship. I have military lasers in all 4 sides and bought every expensive equipments that there's nothing more to buy other than fuels, missiles and mine.

And now the game is starting to get quite dull, because there's no reason to do trading runs anymore and combats are very repetitive.

I tried several OXPs like random hits for more challenging combats but the tactic is always same, jusy spamming missiles and holding the trigger until the opponent dies. And sometimes it gets just annoying and tedious if the opponent refuses to fight and abuses fuel injector or wormhole.

Even in harder missions it only increases the opponent ship's stat and the AI is always same and predictable.

Are there any OXPs that make combat fun and challenging even in fully upgraded ships or add more various types of enemies with their own AIs ? Or should I just stop playing oolite as I basically mastered it ?

hijong park wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:55 am

I tried several OXPs like random hits for more challenging combats but the tactic is always same, jusy spamming missiles and holding the trigger until the opponent dies.

There seems to be a step missing there. You are meant to maintain the target in the crosshairs as well and usually that's the tough part. Are you using any targeting helper OXPs?

Anyways, try Skilled NPCs. That should add some tougher AIs in the mix. Usually the NPC AI does not go above the equivalent of Poor, but with this OXP things get a bit different.

hijong park wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:55 am

Are there any OXPs that make combat fun and challenging even in fully upgraded ships or add more various types of enemies with their own AIs ? Or should I just stop playing oolite as I basically mastered it ?

Additional to a_c's suggestion you can try N-Shilds, better NPC pilots in combination with better equipped ships should spice the game up a bit.

another_commander wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 8:44 am

hijong park wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:55 am

I tried several OXPs like random hits for more challenging combats but the tactic is always same, jusy spamming missiles and holding the trigger until the opponent dies.

There seems to be a step missing there. You are meant to maintain the target in the crosshairs as well and usually that's the tough part. Are you using any targeting helper OXPs?

Anyways, try Skilled NPCs. That should add some tougher AIs in the mix. Usually the NPC AI does not go above the equivalent of Poor, but with this OXP things get a bit different.

That was never a hard job because I have flight joystick. Once I catch their six they are doomed sooner or later.

Thanks for the advise about that oxp, I'll try it now.

You could add Tough Guys - that might make things interesting!

For better AIs, Skilled NPCs, as a_c suggested. If you play fugitive, the Jaguar Company OXP NPC ships have pretty good AIs too (accuracy >= 7.5 ).

For making the NPCs tougher (it takes longer to whittle down the NPC's shields and energy... meanwhile its buddies are taking shots at you ):

• As montana05 said, N-Shields OXP will give the NPCs shields and enable any shield booster, energy grid (Naval Grid OXP) and shield cycler equipment the NPC have. It will grant Shield Cycler to a few of the NPCs too.
• Shield Equalizer and Capacitors OXP can be configured (via F4 Config for AddOns) so that Shield Equalizer and Shield Capacitors are functional for NPCs.
• ShipVersion OXP grants a bunch of equipment to NPCs: shield boosters (civilian and naval), shield equalizer, shield capacitors, shield cycler, energy unit (civilian and naval), which N-Shields will turn functional.
• Q-Charger OXP grants civilian energy units to NPCs too.
• I don't think any of the OXPs currently available on the Expansion Manager make the energy units functional for NPCs. I have a tweak for ShipVersion to do it, and I will be looking at Ngalo's Energy Units OXP: if it's functional and have a license that allows it, I will put it in the Expansion Manager this week, otherwise that functionality will have to wait for the next release of ShipVersion.

For making NPCs better armed:

• Multiple Lasers OXP gives multiple lasers to some NPCs: a Cobra III could have 3 military lasers, enough to take a normal shield down in 2 hits (0.2s) - even in a full iron-ass you will lose your shields if you're slow to react.
• Separated Lasers OXP makes some of those multiple lasers heat-up slowly depending on their physical separation.
• Laser Cannons OXP adds some hard-hitting weapons and gives them to NPCs too - they could really surprise you... some of them can take a normal shield in two hits... (I've been destroyed quite a number of times by that kind of surprise...).
• New Lasers OXP creates a bunch of hard-hitting lasers, and awards some of them to NPCs.
• SniperGun OXP also creates hard-hitting weapons and gives them to NPCs.

EDIT to add info on energy units functionality on NPCs and the AIs in Jaguar Company

dybal wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 12:50 pm

[*]I don't think any of the OXPs currently available on the Expansion Manager make the energy units functional for NPCs. I have a tweak for ShipVersion to do it, and I will be looking at Ngalo's Energy Units OXP: if it's functional and have a license that allows it, I will put it in the Expansion Manager this week, otherwise that functionality will have to wait for the next release of ShipVersion.

I just released  NPC Energy Units OXP, release notes here.