Oolite Bulletins

I know, even a small pirate ships can have beam or better lasers; miliary lasers are not uncommon. Hardened missiles galore. But...

"if you don't like it, don't install the OXP". I don't mind batleships bristling with weapons, I even felt the Ixian battleship ridiculously easy to take out. Only these new technologies are even on smaller ships.
Twin, triple or even quad lasers on fighters, and turrets making their occasional apperance? Not to mention the Holy bonuses for Monk gunships ?
I go around in a Python Cruiser (its good but not uber, thanks guys), and when a flea comes at me firing several beams of military laser or eating me alive with a turret, or a Monk gunship makes rings around fighters, it feels .


To the point: I think some ships are really going over the limit. the Benulobiweed ships try to compensate by being bloody expensive, and some might say that the starter ships are but basic models, etc, but I still feel many of the new creations are an arms race - "my ship can blast yours with a wing behind her back . Oh, yeah? then check this one out! "

Can't we define some kind of parameters of what is acceptable?

Status Quo wrote:

Pointtwo lem and under was slow, pointfour lem and over was fast. Pointthree was strictly average.

When ships start going to pointsix, seven or eight lem, fast becomes a very relative thing... the same goes for weaponry and shielding.

I agree completely and even begun a thread about it some time ago:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=1796

This is about as far as I ever got with introducing some sort of standards for ship design:

http://www.susimetsa.net/funstuff/oolite/index2c.html

The thread includes a good number of ideas that could be picked up on, but I ran out of time in my schedule...

PRICE is never a good balancing factor (in fact, it is extremely unbalancing). A ship that is good in one area should always have some compensating factors in another area to make a truly balanced ship. Personally, I'd allow price increases only to increase some factor to 1.2 times the max allowed and even then I'd like to see other compensating factors in addition to the price increase.

It's all about keeping the game balance, which I think has been pretty much maintained, agreed ships and weaponry are more powerful, but so are their defences, missions are tougher and some need these type of ships to succeed. What we now have is much more variety and options, but ultimately underneath the new flashy clothes etc, it's still Elite.

But better

Personally (well I would say this as one of the offenders ), there should be a diffference between Mission Ships and Normal Ships. Mission Ships should be absurdly powerful (they are one offs and they provide the challange of the mission) or in the case of the Black Monks, harmless unless you are a debtor and then their point is really to stop the player "cheating" by getting a fist full of credits for free! But I agree that "a bit better than an Asp" should be the top range of normal ships. Except for Navy and Thargoid Crusiers. Perhaps Uber Ships (like the Crusiers) should only be encountered batteling other Uber Ships?

As Jamesons we are only civillians, so it seems fair enough that the Navy and the Bugs (or other powers) might have ships that do make us feel small!

A good balance to an Uber ship is to make it very very rare. The Renegades are way too powerful as a common pirate, but it is only 4 of 13 that have more than 2 guns or turrets and renegades only appear in lawless systems and then 10% chance, so you have about a 3% chance of a meeting a real nasty one!

i guess my Vamps are verging on the silly too, but to try and offset that, after comments on the board, i chopped down the top speeds, made them front-gun only and limited the cargo space. as long as people don't go too silly, i don't really think it's a problem. not sure about these Renegades etc w/ multiple mil lasers on them, even if the overheat factor's been programmed in, if something's so powerful it can tw@ you righteously w/ one salvo it might spoil the game a bit (maybe the "accuracy" factor could be way downgraded as an offset??). one of the draws of Elite for me was dogfighting. like the WWI flight sims, you got *in* there, trading gunfire. you could (briefly!) marvel at the ships, the beauty of the models etc. then w/ the sequels, you ended up firing at bouncing pixels : like current flight sims, you get a dot and fire a missile at it from 20miles away, never see the plane itself :-/ in short, my view is anything that spoils dogfighting (is ships that can rip you up before you even get into range, Q bombs etc) take the shine off the game.

speaking of though, in all my fights no one's yet howked a Q-bomb at me :-/

Killer Wolf wrote:

speaking of though, in all my fights no one's yet howked a Q-bomb at me :-/

It is a pretty rare occurrence but it does happen, I'd like an audible warning that it's a Q-mine, to give you a chance to try and take some sort of evasive action.
You're right about the dogfighting, for me it was also the strategy side of the game too, you got the best of both worlds, and being open ended was a total bonus too.

funny..only recently I was scribbling a list of what cargo-space an additional turret should cost on a ship.

I opted for 25 for the first one with every second one for 15 (10 goes to the generator, capable of powering two)
I'd prefer to have weapons drain the energy banks more drastically too:
more weaponsenergy: more drain. then I stopped.

Additional weapons (or weapon power) on the front should be penalised with loss of optional weapon mounts.
additional missilepylons would cost cargospace or sacrifice hull-integrity

A basic system could be set up for choosing first a hull-quality and size.
which would determine how common a hull could be and the general adaptability.
Hightech(2), standard(1), cheap design(0.5) X
specialised(2), adaptable(1), outdated design(0.5). =
base cost hull cost

High tech specialist vessels can hold more powerfull weapons or a great big cargohold while maintaining speed for example, while an cheap outdated design would suffer speed penalties for increasing its cargobay or cargo-room penalties for adding more weaponry or energybanks.
The middleway design: a standard adaptable concept would be in the range of the Cobra MkIII or just below that, as the Cobra is a brilliant design.
As for optional equipment, both extremes suffer penalties. Although this does not penalise the specialist design much, as the most optimal equipment comes as standard.
Older designs do suffer from incompatible hightechnology equipment. However there will be plenty around and spareparts aplenty, so buying one and maintenance is relatively cheap.
The middleroad ship again has acces to most items but does not have many extras fitted as standard, so add these to the basic cost when comparing prices in "Spacer" magazine.

-All these rules are only usable as guidelines for shipdesigners though.

-Also huge ships fall outside the parameters of any reasonable system.
-Designs are only as cool as their quirks, good AND bad.
-Although a nice model and texture help alot too.
-Maybe in future some additional equipment will come scripted at the expense of energy, power or cargospace if fitted. :yay:

TGHC wrote:

It is a pretty rare occurrence but it does happen, I'd like an audible warning that it's a Q-mine, to give you a chance to try and take some sort of evasive action.

Hm, that should certainly be incorporated. I've been finding that with the Renegades OXP there's a certain problem of that. I've just finished off a Renegade ship, then I slow down to scoop up any cargo or metal fragments then *BLAM*, I'm gone. I know it's a Q-Mine since I've WFI'd out of there after destroying one, then switch to aft view...there's that expanding blue sphere of death.

Only a few of the Renegades use Q-mines, but I could tweak it so that you get a comms message such as "This Q-Mine will ensure I see you in Hell!" (when it is launched) to give a bit of warning!

Magus Zeal wrote:

I know it's a Q-Mine since I've WFI'd out of there after destroying one, then switch to aft view...there's that expanding blue sphere of death.

Or to quote one of our resident literati

Status Quo wrote:

Rebecca looked down. The nearest Viper had gone, caught in the blast and yet another sphere of blue energy was heading outwards. This one much closer to her, gaining on the ship at a terrifying rate.
It had killed four fully shielded Vipers.
There was no guarantee the SuperCobra would fare any better.
The expanding effect was close now, filling the entire rear screen with hideous, sparkling light.
A blue screen of death.

A classic!

Captain Hesperus

So that's how the Q-mine works. It creates a stack underun in the propulsion system that causes the computer to lock up resulting in a build-up of Witch Drive ionization that is finally released rather cataclismically for the poor pilot.

LittleBear wrote:

Only a few of the Renegades use Q-mines, but I could tweak it so that you get a comms message such as "This Q-Mine will ensure I see you in Hell!" (when it is launched) to give a bit of warning!

I had to take Renegades out of my OXP folder for this reason, every one I encountered got me with a Q mine. It got slightly frustrating after a while.

Will also reduce the chance of them using q-mines!

LittleBear wrote:

Will also reduce the chance of them using q-mines!

Well, don't do it just for me, I can't remember anybody else mentioning it, perhaps I just got unlucky with the chances of it happening.

When I did this OXP I hadn't figured out script_actions in shipdata, had meant it to be a random chance but didn't know how to do it. So created a sort of random chance by having about 5 of the 13 use q-mines. Trouble with certain ships always using a q-mine is it then makes it impossible to scoop these ships pods.Could do it that they either eject a pod (big bounty if captured) or eject a mine. 50 : 50 of either. I wrote 13 pilots with different rankings, names and bounties, but as the renegadeAI is so dead set on fighting, they very rarely eject. If I set this as a death action then you'd have to choose: stay and scoop a vaulable prisoner or hit the injectors in case its a mine!