Because Oolite is a more modern, higher fidelity game than the original Elites, a ship can be seen in the distance even when it's much further away, relative speeds seem a lot slower because we're working with more granular space, the local bubble is effectively much larger. Even if ranged combat were deeper strategically (and I'm not sure that it is), it's visually less appealing to be fighting pixels far off in the distance.
Fuel injectors are considered necessary to close the distance in a fight, or to escape one - this is a really cool piece of equipment, but having to use it for every combat encounter puts too much pressure on the player's fuel resource, which is also necessary for reducing the tedium of being mass-locked. I don't like the idea that the player has to gamble their real-world time waiting out boring situations to ensure they are optimally prepared for combat.
Idea:
-lasers do less damage when further away?
Energy Bombs have been removed and ostensibly 'replaced' with the Quirium Cascade Mine. I actually like the reasoning behind this (energy bombs break immersion because NPCs don't have them, and if they did it would be unfun), but there are A LOT of problems with this:
1. The Q-Mine costs 2500 credits compared to the 900 of the Energy Bomb. If a player is using 1 energy bomb every milk run, that already eats into almost their entire profit and doesn't single-handedly grant safe passage through dangerous systems. This doesn't seem imbalanced to me, and Q-Mines cost more than twice as much
2. It's mounted to a pylon like a missile, so it's not a panic button anymore. I'm pretty sure this was just the result of a limitation to adding new deployable equipment in earlier versions of Oolite, and that limitation doesn't exist anymore.
3. I'm not sure if pirates immediately scramble when they see a Q-Mine, if not the player will still be vulnerable for 5 seconds.
4. I'm pretty sure the player requires fuel injectors and/or a fast ship to outrun the explosion of their own Q-Mine, if they do that could be problematic for balancing fuel economy or slow ships.
Ideas:
-900cr Q-Bomb you can drop behind you
-a q-bomb (or similar effect) that detonates with the player in the eye-of-the-storm and grants temporary invulnerability (NPCs could also use this and the player could actually have a chance to escape)
In the original Elite, ships don't have individual roll/pitch speeds as far as I know. In Oolite they do, and the Cobra Mk 3 is fast and tanky but with relatively poor roll/pitch maneuverability, it's also relatively large. This feels more like RPG or euro-shmup balance (let the player tank hits) than arcade (let the player avoid hits). Overall the balancing of the ships is quite nice though. The player's Cobra appears to be speed 350, while the enemy Cobras are speed 300. This speed increase does pretty much make the player's ship the second best after the Asp (and not including the Viper police ships, Constrictor mission ship, etc...), but with the non-player centric Cobra the balance is a bit closer. A Moray has slightly less energy and a slower energy recharge rate, but beats the Cobra in pitch and roll.
Ideas:
-make all ships faster - player or NPC - across the board (and maybe remove the player's 50 point bonus on the Cobra)?
-give the player an extra 50 speed regardless of ship-type, letting the Moray serve as a more agile but fragile alternative?
All enemies seem quite tanky, you can hit an enemy ship without missing and your beam laser can overheat before it dies. This removes the sensation of zako/popcorn/fodder enemies that was so perfectly filled by the Gecko, and to a lesser extent the Krait and Sidewinder in the original Elite. You can be sitting behind a ship for 10-20 seconds unable to kill it because your laser has overheated, but with it posing absolutely no threat. This gives other pirates an opportunity to attack you, forcing you to break off, which then gives the enemy ship you were trailing a chance to replenish its health (EDIT: Apparently this is intentional). I respect this as a punishment for the player misusing their laser, or against tougher bounty hunters/police/etc..., it just seems poorly tuned for encounters with packs of pirates where there large numbers should be offset by squishiness. It also means the enemy can sometimes fuel injector/hyperspace away and the player just has to let them go whether they want to or not, which can interfere with the risk/reward of damaging your ship in a fight and not even getting a reward for it. Worst case scenario combat literally becomes a waste of time (i.e. if I have a choice between using fuel injectors to avoid the fight, or to help me fight - why wouldn't I just run?).
Idea:
-lasers do more damage when closer? (ties in neatly with the first solution
)I honestly don't expect anyone to feel the same way as me about this, but I thought it'd be better I make a thread than keep clogging up the discord and forum chats.
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New lasers
