Oolite Bulletins

In Overpowered I complained about superships with uberweapons, but... is it possible to make an OXP to include turrets and multiple laser mounts for sale on the shipyards?

Unfortunately not, AFAIK. I know that multiple laser mounts are NPC ships only and I think that its the same situation with turrets.

Yes, I agree with Uncle Reno. Actually I just tried out a turreted laser on my ship and ... nothing. No visible laser fire at all. Only the laser temp increasing and my energy draining at the same prodigious rate. No good.

And if you think about it, turreted lasers for the player make no sense. After all, it's all about aiming and hitting, isn't it?

Well, it used to be... before the player ships became sort of obsolete on the modern battlefield.

You know, with the arms race and OXP escalation.

Tish and Tish! I fly the trusty Cobra Mk III (Dark Wheel Version) and fully equipped it's still a mean piece of kit!

Although it does not really attract me personally to get a ship with turrets,


but it may be possible as an automated turret:


EQ_TURRET
a subentity with independent crewAI,

EQ_CREW...hired as equipment if EQ_TURRET is on the ship,
scripted to cost money every jump payable when docked at mainstation, remove EQ_CREW if not paid.

EQ_TURRET is active if EQ_CREW is onboard.
movement is slaved to that of playership like a subentity, with degrees of freedom like a turret or defined in deg=90 for half sphere.

AI checks for EQ_CREW, if present, scans for hostiles. hostiles are engaged.

a keystroke to deactivate/activate the gun might be handy, to prevent overheating or hitting police/navy in big furballs.


Sorry for rambling on about impossible dreams.

I think I'd like that. It should be, of course, stupidly expensive to fit one - something on the Cr15,000 order? And never available for anything smaller than, let's say, a Cobra I?

But forget the crew thing, or we'd have to calculate exactly how many crew each ship needs.

just one for the cannon.
and it will cost you cargospace too!
You could fit one on a C3, but at the expense of 30TC:
you'd basically have an Adder with a meteoric iron ass.

One for the cannon and a lot of union problems... I think it's a complication the coders could go without, not to mention the consistency of the proposal.

As for cargo space, make that 20 and I'll agree. It'd leave enough room so that a pirate player wouldn't have to go to a base after each and every combat.

I thought it a near meachanism for having a piece of kit working or not depending on another piece (EQ_crew_gunnar).

I think the main problem is getting a subunit to use AI.

--
IF it would be small, any ship would fit one! and where does that leave traders?

IF it would be small, any ship would fit one! and where does that leave traders?

I see your point. I'll take the chance to forward something that I always found annoying: the cargo ejection mechanism.

It ejects whatever you picked up last. Let's say you have 5t of cargo space and scoop a bunch of canisters at the same time.
-food
-machinery
-textiles
-minerals
-luxuries.
And your cargo hold is full. You can't get rid of the cheap stuff without ejecting the luxuries first, and the food would be the last to go...

Is it possible to put a eject selector on the cargo manifest screen like on FE2 and FFE?

*EDIT*: I opened a new topic for this suggestion

That is indeed very annoying.
But never fear!

Actually you can already cycle through your cargo...Giles implemented it the before last version upgrade.
I forget the specific key though...should be in the wiki or otherwise somewhere on the forum.

should be in the wiki, if it isn't yet.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

should be in the wiki, if it isn't yet.

Shift-r to cycle, d to dump.

Captain Hesperus

I tried to make a player version of the renegade python as a player ship (with auto turrets that always attacked pirates and somtimes had a bug that made them attack the police! as a game balance), but it didn't work as the sub-entries wouldn't follow an AI. Gave them ThargoidAI as a test and although when I looked at them in external view, they seemed to be moving to track non-thargoids, they woudn't fire. Think sub-entries may be hard-wired to always follow nullAI.

I suspect Giles deliberately prevented players from having armed subentities.