Oolite Bulletins

A quick check on the Oolite wiki shows that the Boa has: Roll: 2.8 Pitch: 1.0, the trusty Cobra MkIII has Roll: 2.0 Pitch: 1.0.
Does this mean the Boa rolls faster and turns as fast as a MkIII, or do the numbers go the other way?

Cheers,

Alan

The Boa rolls faster because of its more cylindrical shape, The cobra is much wider and therefore rolls more slowly. Let me explain.

The closer a ship's mass is to its axis of rotation, the faster it can turn about that axis. Think of an ice-skater spinning first slowly - with arms outstretched, then they bring in their arms and wrap them around them-self to accelerate the spin.

Don't make me actually calculate moments of inertia for the ships' rotation in roll and pitch - I could, but it'd be overkill!

The Cobra has better leverage, though…

Hmmm, this is interesting. I get the whole "conservation of momentum"-like aspect of this, but how does this relate to combat ability and feel. Does the Boa feel more responsive than the cobra, or does a bigger ship always feel slower and heavier (I would try it myself, but I haven't got the credits to buy a boa, boo-hoo..). Is the damping of the boa's controls less effective (more overshoot) for example.

Alan

It's weird to hear such discussions, because in Elite you couldn't buy another ship, so the point was moot.

You could in frontier, and in that I did cheat a little, I opted to start with a Cobra and 100Cr at Lave, and promptly sold the Cobra and used the cash to pimp out a Viper. This I lived with untill I had the cash and crew to pimp out a n Imp Courier. Which sort of made the game pointless as then I had enough shields and hull repair robots to hide in the Sun. Almost nothing but the biggest ship with the biggest gun could even scratch me. Look and feel was unimportant whe you didn't need lasers, you could just ram things into oblivion

I generally preferred the Asp to the IC.

Fast, manoeuvrable, enough room for a milhyp 2 and still small enough to get some serious legs out of it, and still plenty of room for a 4MW laser and decent shields.

I took down some pretty hefty ships with the old Nightstar...

... ehhh, those were the days. Now I climb into my trusty Firewasp and I'm away!...

Isn't the Boa considerably more massive than the Cobra though? I recall the Boa's mass being around 200 tonnes unladen, whereas the Cobra was only about 20 tonnes unladen.

No way a 200 tonne ship should be able to roll as fast as a 20 tonne ship, regardless of shape. It should be like the Goodyear blimp versis the Red arrows.

In the original elite manual maneuverability is defined by 'CF' (Curve Factor?). The Boa gets 4, the Cobra Mk3 gets 8, which seems about right to my mind.

I've always found the big ships are too 'good' to be honest. Why would a Boa need escorts when it can out corner a Cobra? Fighter escorts are only necessary when a ship can't fight effectively. In classic dogfighting two things are important according to my Grandfather (WWII Lancaster Engineer)...

1. Altitude (not really relevant in Elite/Oolite)
2. Rate of turn.

Speed doesn't figure nearly as much unless it orders of magnitude in difference. This makes the Boa a better fighter than the Cobra, which doesn't seem right to me.

I'd prefer to see the Boa, Anaconda etc really be sluggish handling wise compared to 'fighter' class ships. I'd expect them to have turret mounted anti-fighter guns rather than a weapon tied to their forward firing arc. Trouble is this gets away from 'classic' Elite rather a lot.

I also think that the ships should ideally be compromised by carrying lots of cargo. A Boa stuffed to the gills should be a right lard-arse!

Cheers.

Drew.