Oolite Bulletins

When you have more than the default weapons available for purchase, it can be confusing, based just on the description alone, what the benefits or pitfalls of a new laser might be.

That's what this OXP is attempting to assist with. No functionality changes here: all it does is add the following pieces of information to the end of the description on the F3 Ship Outfitting screen for each laser:
Range: Energy/shot: Damage/shot: Fire rate: Temp/shot:
With those specifications visible to the player, they can make more informed decisions about what laser to purchase.

Download via the download manager, or here: ExpandedWeaponInfo.oxz
Wiki page is here:  Expanded Weapon Info

Comments, bug reports and suggestions welcome!

And if I've missed any lasers, please let me know and I'll add them in a future release.

This OXP adds in the second green line at the bottom:







O Supreme Savant and Quaffer of the Gins that are Pink

Useful!

As regards additional lasers, I'm presuming that you have worked your way through this. But might it be an idea to add in the information for RailGuns to this one?




Edited to add in Screen shot and to add in link to Category:Lasers page

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 9:52 am

I'm presuming that you have worked your way through this.

Aye, that I did. I've covered 58 lasers from core, "New Lasers", "Laser Cannons", "Eco Lasers", "Thargoid Weaponry", "Sniper Guns", "Gatling Lasers" and the "Vimana Laser".

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 9:52 am

But might it be an idea to add in the information for RailGuns to this one?

Tricky. Rail Guns aren't lasers from the game's point of view, so there are few correlations in terms of stats. Range, maybe, and damage per shot. Also, given it's limitations (ie, having to prime equipment and use the activate function to fire, and the projectiles won't have an owner, so mission objectives may fail when using it) puts it in the experimental category, in my view. A fine experiment, but not something you can easily recommend without a bunch of caveats.

Wondering about damage/shot.

The other numbers are reproducible in real life™ - but damage/shot? energy points? Those are clearly game statistics.

Maybe replace damage/shot with "tons of TNT equivalent" or "tons of Phkb equivalent"!

Energy could be in marci/cavezzi/second or perhaps in Prouts



Would any of this make sense for lasers, though?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:36 am

but damage/shot? energy points? Those are clearly game statistics.

Correct.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:36 am

Maybe replace damage/shot with "tons of TNT equivalent" or "tons of Phkb equivalent"!

But all I'd be doing is replacing one number with another. The point isn't the number itself - it's in relation to the values of other lasers that you get to see whether one laser has more damage per shot. That, coupled with the fire rate, gives you a good indicator of the damage potential.

Would "Damage per second" be preferable? It would mean taking the Damage/shot and Fire rate and turning it into one number.

Actually, I think even if I added a DPS value, I would still want to know the fire rate. So I'm not sure DPS is a better number to include.

The point for me is immersion.

And accordingly the avoidance of "game-language", kilometres, etc.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 4:22 pm

The point for me is immersion.

Which is a fair point. However, on the flip side: All the numbers I'm showing reflect what you can actually observe in the game. So, the Energy/shot value is the number of units of energy it takes to fire one shot. That's how much your energy banks will drain each time you fire. The Damage/shot is the number of units of damage that will be taken from the NPC ship when the laser hits in its optimal range. The Temp/shot is how much your laser temp will increase with each shot. There values are directly related to observable stats in the game.

It's kind of like the little stickers or labels on the underside of electrical goods that tell you the amp/voltage requirements, part numbers, etc. For the lasers, I see these numbers as the meat and potatoes behind the marketing fluff that's in the description.

I suppose there is scope for adding some kind of unit value for each of these numbers, but I wanted to keep the space to a minimum, keeping the stats on a single line for most fonts. Adding units would push it to two lines in pretty much every case.

Damage/shot is the Damage = [#] from a shipdata.plist --- can also be expressed as Damage per Shot

Fire rate is the recharge_rate = [#] from a shipdata.plist -- this is equivalent to the number of times per second that the Laser fires
0.1 = 10x per second (a continuous beam) ---> 1.0 = 1x per second (very slow) ---> any number between these two can be used --- can also be expressed as Rate of Fire

The calculation to determine the Damage per Second of a given Laser

Damage per Shot / Rate of Fire = Damage Per Second

For actual numbers let us have a look at a personal favorite of mine, the Uber Laser RimmerAce Quadcooled 'ImpasseResolver' from NEW LASERS.

20 / 0.1 = 200

The veteran community members that regularly post on these forums would already know this. The information above is posted for our Guests and Newcomers.

P.S. to phkb
Consider putting some additional information in this OXZ about the Eco Reactor from ECO LASERS. While not a Laser or even a weapon of any kind its Energy Banks recharge ability is really an essential piece of kit if you want to fight your way Across the Ooniverse.

Edited to include the corrections that phkb mentioned in his follow up post. Math was never my strongest subject. When first playing the game, lo those many years ago, some mislabels and misunderstandings on the charts made to ease myself into a better understanding of the game lead to some wrong conclusions. This has been corrected.

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 9:33 pm

Damage / Rate of Fire = Damage Per Shot

Given that the fire rate is in seconds, what you've described is the damage per second value. The value of "20" is the damage per shot. The laser is firing every 0.1sec. So in 1 second, the laser will fire 10 times. 10 x 20 = 200 DPS.

Nite Owl wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 9:33 pm

Consider putting some additional information in this OXZ about the Eco Reactor from ECO LASERS. While not a Laser or even a weapon of any kind its Energy Banks recharge ability is really an essential piece of kit if you want to fight your way Across the Ooniverse.

And this is where I hesitate, because when I look at what the Eco Reactor does, I kind of feel it's moving into the "cheat" territory. Happy to be convinced otherwise, but on the surface I can't explain how it is regenerating energy. The laser system is drawing down on your energy in order to fire. How can the Eco Reactor put back energy into your banks? Where does that energy generation come from? Feel free to jump in and put forward the explanation!

So several OXPs add several weapons to the game. And now we add one more OXP that adds descriptions.
What if I installed only half the weapon OXPs? What if I add weapon OXPs providing future weapons?

Would it not be more straightforward to have such description as part of the OXP providing such a weapon?

And if any of the oxps from which laser info is collated were to be updated then would this oxp be able to read directly from that oxp or would it require an update on your part? Supposing someone were likely to rethink values they'd chosen years earlier (ahem).

hiran wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:08 pm

What if I installed only half the weapon OXPs?

It will only update the weapons you have installed.

hiran wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:08 pm

What if I add weapon OXPs providing future weapons?

Then either (a) the new weapon author can add the details in the same format as this OXP, or (b) I update this OXP to include the new weapons.

hiran wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:08 pm

Would it not be more straightforward to have such description as part of the OXP providing such a weapon?

Yes, but I'd probably end up as maintainer of even more OXPs!

Redspear wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:28 pm

And if any of the oxps from which laser info is collated were to be updated then would this oxp be able to read directly from that oxp or would it require an update on your part? Supposing someone were likely to rethink values they'd chosen years earlier (ahem).

Yes, it would require an update to this OXP to match, or the OXP itself could add the details, and this OXP could be adjusted so as *not* to update them.

Also, the benefit of doing it this way is that anyone who considers the information being displayed as providing too much information, they can choose not to install it. As soon as weapon OXP's put the info into their descriptions, there is no longer any choice.

hiran wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:08 pm

So several OXPs add several weapons to the game. And now we add one more OXP that adds descriptions.
What if I installed only half the weapon OXPs? What if I add weapon OXPs providing future weapons?

Would it not be more straightforward to have such description as part of the OXP providing such a weapon?

Except - Phkb is providing the information in the same format for each laser. If you compare the rest of the descriptions you will see that they vary widely in style and author's purpose.

His descriptions only appear for each laser which is actually on sale at that local station.

Future laser OXPs can do the same as this OXP - or someone can update this OXP for them.


I would guess that the reasoning is historical. Classic Elite gave no F3 information other than the equipment names - you had to look in the instruction manual for more.

Aegidian probably wrote the original short descriptions and leading BB authorities such as Commander McLane inhibited the publishing of accurate statistics such as Phkb has just done.

Commander McLane wrote: ↑Wed Jul 24, 2013 12:49 am

Let me explain where I'm coming from:

The numbers belong to Oolite's internal workings. They're part of what's "under the hood" of the game. But they don't exist in-Ooniverse (just like there's no number that could be displayed next to your car, which would indicate after how much more scratches it will explode). All we have in the Oolite world is  Energy banks. Those are already displayed on my HUD. And they can't be scanned for other ships.

Thus, I don't want to see any numbers in the game. It's un-Oolitey.

If I'm desperate to see (for instance for debugging reasons) how much energy I have (or a target has), I open an inspector window (Mac-only debugging feature).

The only exception is bounties, because at the end of the day you get them as an amount of credits, and it's reasonable to assume that this amount is known in advance.