Oolite Bulletins

i think it would be interesting to add capitol ship weapons. weapons that are so large it requires being mounted to the spine of a very large ship, like a behemoth, and has ferocious recharge and heating requirements. big big laser. can destroy a linear area of ships. =D

thoughts?

some thing that i thought of. i understand that it is rather difficult to change the type of laser-ish weapon that oolite uses. so instead of that, what if we used an actual object shaped and textured and glowing like a giant laser shot. set it's hp high enough so that it can survive a collision with several ships, and then set it's speed really high so that it looks more like a laser than a ship/object, and have it expire somehow after a certain time/distance so that it has a range and all - presto! capitol ship weapon! ^^

also thought of was a special missle that releases a series of energy bombs or cascade mines in a line of effect to come close to a similar effect.

Sometimes I am thinking of the plasma cannons as capital ship weapons. So actually I am not too unhappy that they are not available for the player ATM.

Have you ever tried to mess with e.g. a Military Station. Or a Black Monks' Station? There you see that Plasma Cannons are quite lethal, especially when there is a bank of them. Which is only feasible on a capital ship or a station.

It’s “capital”. And this has been on the “definitely not” list for a long time.

Can be done by creating arrays of subentity mounted lasers.
To vary recharge-time you can use mining lasers for longer pauses.
'combined' beams will always look like seperate beams though.
Subentity weapons can be only FORWARD thus can be considered 'spine-mounted.

Probably turret-firing rate can be altered by using weapon_energy and max_energy in the same range, combined with a low energy_recharge_rate.
Using low max_flight_pitch max_flight_roll and thrust, would make the turrets slow to track targets.

Large caliber torpedoes can be used as another big-weapon, however, no *flashers* can be used on launched missiles. Use "missile_role".
One could use flashers IF one uses the "defenceShip_role" to create missiles.
This however introduces unlimited arsenals. (limited only in that [max_defence_ships] number of special-missiles can be in-flight per special-missile-launch-capable-ship at any time.)
Add a glowy shader and you got your super-collider weapon.

Perhaps I wasn't precise enough.

IMO we already have a capital ship weapon, and it's the Plasma Turret (more than the Plasma Guns).

Just start a fight with an Ionics Funnelweb, and you will see what I mean.

Doesn't however mean that a "capital ship" would be invincible, as the turrets have a serious drawback: their very limited range.

Commander McLane wrote:

Perhaps I wasn't precise enough.

IMO we already have a capital ship weapon, and it's the Plasma Turret (more than the Plasma Guns).

Just start a fight with an Ionics Funnelweb, and you will see what I mean.

Doesn't however mean that a "capital ship" would be invincible, as the turrets have a serious drawback: their very limited range. :twisted:

Serious range is one of the defining characteristics of a capital ship weapon, isn’t it? For instance, the USA has pulled its battleships out of mothballs more than once in order to use them as artillery (and cruise missile) platforms, because they can reach far inland.

Ahruman wrote:

Serious range is one of the defining characteristics of a capital ship weapon, isn’t it? For instance, the USA has pulled its battleships out of mothballs more than once in order to use them as artillery (and cruise missile) platforms, because they can reach far inland.

Well, yeah. But I really don't care much. In the Ooniverse every goody comes with a drawback, doesn't it? It's all about balance. And other than in RealLife™, where one of the players can become a "superpower", in the game we have watchful creators preventing that.

So I agree completely with capital weapons being on the "definitely not" list. Couldn't agree more. But at the same time I like to say to everybody who is longing for something like this: "Take the plasma turrets as capital weapons and be happy." And if you like, invent a background story that explains why in the Ooniverse there is no Star Destroyer capable of blasting away a planet, and no capital ship artillery capable of taking out the station from witchpoint distance.

That's more or less my position in this matter.

There are in fact very good reasons why there are no Star Destroyers capable of blowing away a planet. The absence of long-range artillery and missiles is harder to explain away.

capital ship weapons would have little effect on the player except oblitterating him instantaneously and unexpectedly.
The only real reason to include them would be to enable cinematic fleet actions for thargoid vs Navy battles.

And turrets can be made as deadly or annoying as you like by tweaking the weapon_energy. (annoying because a ship with n turrets of little power can spew out alot of chaff, eating into CPU resources.)

Long range artillery in space would be a missile with hyperspace capability.
Longrange + unguided projectiles (or lasers) are meaningless in space, unless the target is totally station-ary.
(And blowing up stations is a nono in OOlite, the system would lose most of its value)

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

Longrange + unguided projectiles (or lasers) are meaningless in space, unless the target is totally station-ary.

Well… a projectile can be dodged. A laser can’t, because you can’t see it coming. Certainly the movements of stations are predictable enough that you could shoot them from light-hours away if you had a beam with sufficiently low dispersion.

The remaining problem with long range lasers is still predicting target movement.
Blowing up stations could be feasable, but may be Pyrric.

Turret energy can indeed be increased to silly levels (see the Turrets on Griff's Black Monk Monastary), but the range is (I think) hardwired to about 5km. This can make a carrier very vunerable to laser fire if you give it a sensible faily slow speed and poor pitch / roll values, as you can just keep out of range whilst wearing it down with Military lasers. Would it be feasable to have a <key>turret_range</key> to go in set-up actions? The turrets on the Monestary are about as big as a Cobra Mk III, so could "realisticly" have a longer than normal range.

I feel turrets are too small generally. You can barely make them out.
Oh well. cosmetics.

While we are requesting.
how about a plasma-radius key, defining the radius of the fired plasma bolts.
speed?
linear or exponential weapon_energy decrease per second after firing?
custom animation files/shaders for these bolts?

I know these are 'extremely unlikely' and apologise in advance to Ahruman for making his head hurt.

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

I feel turrets are too small generally. You can barely make them out.
Oh well. cosmetics.

While we are requesting.
how about a plasma-radius key, defining the radius of the fired plasma bolts.
speed?
linear or exponential weapon_energy decrease per second after firing?
custom animation files/shaders for these bolts?

I know these are 'extremely unlikely' and apologise in advance to Ahruman for making his head hurt.

What about the rate at which the plasma turrets fire? If it were increased (and the damage energy amped up with the weapon heat turned down), then the turret fire would go from being a single bolt to something akin to a plasma stream. That'd be pretty scary to see, a lance of plasmatic death arcing towards your poor, defenceless Python....

Captain Hesperus

ooo.
flaming plasma of doom.
however, I'd turn down the damage and up the heat-damage instead.
would be cool combined with increasing diameter + decreasing brightness over distance.
...more probably a rear firing weapon though...or very short range..