Oolite Bulletins

A bomb that I can carry that blows up everything around me but leaves me untouched!?!?

In a real OOverse with things like these why would I want a Cobra with 4 missle racks?

The missles are drifty in use. They often don't hit their mark for one reason or the other. No I'd want a Cobra with E Bomb racks!! And then I'd paint my Cobra with bright safety orange so that every body would know me. That's the guy who sets off an E Bomb if you just shoot at him once. A kind of version of MAD (mutual assured destruction) would eventually exist. Everybody would be carrying a rack of E bombs on their ship. And with their ships marked for all to see. In the end, I believe that peace might break out....

Which would really mess up my reaching Elite status.

I hope you are aware of how the Energy Bomb works? Let me just quote the two important sentences:

A powerful one-shot device that emits a high-powered electromagnetic pulse, disrupting plasma containment in drives of nearby ships, resulting in catastrophic damage. ... The pulse is harmonised with the drive of the firing ship.

So the harmonization with the firing ship results in its systems not being damaged. (And anything else would be foolish, wouldn't it?)

And the overwhelming power of the Energy Bomb is precisely the reason why you can carry only one of them at a time. No rack.

Oh, and just in case you haven't noticed: As it is an indiscriminate weapon you have to be very careful when and against whom you use it. If there is any police vessel in range, or you fire it in the station's aegis, you will find yourself on the "Galaxy's Most Wanted"-list pretty soon!

If you want a rack full of WMD, try the Q-bomb or one of its variants!

I still hold to, that the E bomb is too Powerfull... in original Elite it didnt destroy undamaged Thargon Invasion ships... and im pertty sure even an undamamged python could survive the blast...

the E bomb is too Powerfull... in original Elite it didnt destroy undamaged Thargon Invasion ships... and im pertty sure even an undamamged python could survive the blast...

Thargoid warships still aren`t destroyed by an energy bomb! And Pythons and suchlike were destroyed in original Elite, at least on the C64, where I used to play it.

The question I would ask would more be of the kind why e-bombs are never used against the player - q-bombs often are!

Suggestion:

One possible solution (just my pov!) could be to change the e-bomb to work like a q-bomb, but without creating additional wavefronts. So ships that couldn`t take it would still explode, ships which could take it would survive, albeit damaged, inside the e-bombs wavefront, but no secondary explosions.

Such a changed e-bomb could then also be used against the player by unscrupulous opponents. And the AI of NPC ships could get changed that, if they detect an e-bomb wavefront approaching in time, they turn away from it and fire all they`ve got through their fuel injectors.

With those changes, it might get more strategic and less pro the player?!?

Oh, and in the Realistic Shipyards there are a few ships you could meet as traders, pirates or police that won`t go down under one e-bomb. That said too.

Just a few 0.1 Cr

L

The problem with letting the NPCs use energy bombs is that people will suffer from Sudden Pointless Death Syndrome, i.e. they'll blow up without having had any chance to avoid it. You're tootling along in your not-massively-modified Cobra III, and get jumped by a pirate. You dogfight away, he zaps you, you zap him... you're a bit beaten up but you've got on his tail and you're closing in for the kill, then BAM -- Press Space, Commander. Not great, from a gameplay point of view.

Personally, I think the easiest solution would be to disable the energy bomb entirely and just use the q-bomb as the weapon of last resort.

Personally, I think the easiest solution would be to disable the energy bomb entirely and just use the q-bomb as the weapon of last resort.

Well, but what about changing the e-bomb the way I suggested? Then it would de facto act like a weakened q-bomb - and not just "game over" for the player if used in his/her direction!

Lestradae wrote:

Well, but what about changing the e-bomb the way I suggested? Then it would de facto act like a weakened q-bomb - and not just "game over" for the player if used in his/her direction!

That would be OK, as long as there was some sort of warning. You can see a q-bomb being launched, and get a chance to grab your arse and run -- but the energy bomb is invisible. If you've been a bit beaten up in a hard fight, it would be really annoying if you just blew up because the NPC fired off an energy bomb. I know at present we can do that to the NPCs, which is unfair, and unsatisfying, but fundamentally they don't care...

If the energy bomb was really changed, so it was a weaker (earlier?) type of q-bomb, launched in the same way, and giving players and NPCs alike a chance to scuttle off out the way, that would be fine by me.

If the energy bomb was really changed, so it was a weaker (earlier?) type of q-bomb, launched in the same way, and giving players and NPCs alike a chance to scuttle off out the way, that would be fine by me.

Yeah, that was exactly what I was suggesting: E-Bomb as, essentially, a Q-Bomb in all aspects (including the warning on the radar) - just without the additional blast spheres of the Q-Bomb. And then, NPCs could have one too.

And for the E being the "old version" of the Q: Interesting idea (methinks)!

Personally, I find that when a pair of Rattle-Cutters/Basilisks are making my Naval Energy Unit look like a bicycle dynamo, I'm really grateful for the e-bomb!

Disembodied wrote:

Lestradae wrote:

Well, but what about changing the e-bomb the way I suggested? Then it would de facto act like a weakened q-bomb - and not just "game over" for the player if used in his/her direction!

That would be OK, as long as there was some sort of warning. You can see a q-bomb being launched, and get a chance to grab your arse and run -- but the energy bomb is invisible. If you've been a bit beaten up in a hard fight, it would be really annoying if you just blew up because the NPC fired off an energy bomb. I know at present we can do that to the NPCs, which is unfair, and unsatisfying, but fundamentally they don't care...

If the energy bomb was really changed, so it was a weaker (earlier?) type of q-bomb, launched in the same way, and giving players and NPCs alike a chance to scuttle off out the way, that would be fine by me.

IMO, the E-Bomb behaviour should be changed to some kind of EMP device.

If you use the EMP, it should deplete your energy banks entirely and the
performace of such weapon will depend how "full" your energy banks are (range & power ).

The NPC's will take damage, you'll take damage. How you'll use it, is at your own discretion... Is still powerfull, but not without their own quirks!

I always think that use of a E-Bomb was the same as "cheating". Don't pick fights you can win!

Anyway my 0.2c...

I don't pick fights I can't win (most of the time, at last). That doesn't mean that every now and then a whole pack of morons won't pick one with me...

In any case, I trigger more e-bombs by accident than I do on purpose...

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

In any case, I trigger more e-bombs by accident than I do on purpose...

Same here... I stopped carrying them after one embarrasing incident too many!

Cmdr. Maegil wrote:

In any case, I trigger more e-bombs by accident than I do on purpose...

that Alt-Tab keystroke doesn't half make you jump when all you are trying to do is switch windows!

is it alt-tab to fire the e-bomb? i've never managed to use one. ^^ perhaps instead of just destroying everything around it, it causes a chain reaction to fuel. so it would do some damage, and drain all fuel and fuel tanks. and then it could still cascade like a qbomb, but then nobody is hauling tail, cause noone will have any fuel left to do it with! dogfighting skills to the rescue. it would be amusing if somehow everyone was granted a temporary turbo booster which is how the fuel gets drained-one that can't be turned off. this would be explained as the fuel being released before it goes critial and destroying your ship.