Oolite Bulletins

Just some stuff that might be interesting to do...

Dumbfire missile: Cheap, quite damaging, but dumb. Comes in packs of three.

Torpedo: Bigger, slower, but makes a big bang. But don't try to hit fighters with it.

Scatterpack pod: fires a barrage of small rockets, easy to hit with but won't do much damage on smaller targets. If you happen to fire a few on Condor, tho...

Mass Driver: pretty much 30th century machinegun. Probably done the same way as chaff dispenser-buy the hardware, then put the ammo on pylon. As far as I know, you can't hold down missile button for continuous fire, so I thought of firing bursts, like 5 bullets within a second. Ammo pack could have, if possible ammo for like 50-100 bursts. It would not be so strong tho-I thought of damage output about same as beam laser, but with advantage of higher range-in real, kinetic weaponry in vacuum have virtually unlimited range, so perhaps like 30 km would be fine. Of course, aiming it will be tough.

I recognise some of these ideas I think some of them have been done already although I can't remember the name of the OXP!

Sarin wrote:

Scatterpack pod: fires a barrage of small rockets, easy to hit with but won't do much damage on smaller targets. If you happen to fire a few on Condor, tho...

Check out the trident missile in Aquatics (you need to complete the mission first, then go shopping at HQ).

They're all possible, but how do you ensure that dumb missiles blow up before they go too far? If you miss, they could hurt some innocent bystander.

I couldn't do this myself, as I can't make models that are any good. Don't even ask me to think about making textures. The rest would be fairly trivial, though.

Nemoricus wrote:

They're all possible, but how do you ensure that dumb missiles blow up before they go too far? If you miss, they could hurt some innocent bystander.

I couldn't do this myself, as I can't make models that are any good. Don't even ask me to think about making textures. The rest would be fairly trivial, though.

Might not be a bad idea if they did fly a long way. A possible penalty for using one, if they hit an innocent?

Its worth thinking about the oolite game as well, it isnt a good idea to have too many objects kicking around for the game to track. If you give things unlimited range and allow NPCs to have them, you need to have a way to ensure that there arent too many of them flying about. I imagine you are thinking of a high speed low cost thing that will be launched in fairly large numbers.

Also, if they are launched out into deep space, some weird things might happen if you let them travel a really really long way -- I dont know how far things have to go, but eventually you may encounter weirdness due to floating point precision/rounding and so on. This isnt normally much of a problem as most AIs keep most things near the space lanes, and I expect your unguided missiles will be a lot faster, and so travel much further than the typical things we have.

hmm depends how small you want to go, you could go rocket or bolter.

This description is taken from 40K although the scifi principle of bolt guns runs right back to 1980 and Laserburn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laserburn

"As the bolt round is fired and leaves the barrel, the bolt's tiny rocket is ignited, which carries the warhead forward and imparts a stabilising spin. In a conventional firearm, the projectile begins to lose velocity as soon as it leaves the barrel. A bolt, however, continues to accelerate throughout its trajectory due to the additional thrust."

Basically it's a M.S.P.P. (Micro Self Propelled Projectile) you've got a trade off between rate of fire and calibre. So bigger rounds = less ammo but = more damage per round hit. It still leaves a lot of c**p floating around space.

Maybe variations on the dual plasma gun could be engineered? Some with higher rates of fire but smaller damage others that fire slow but damage BIG.

So, any thoughts on damage, speed, price, and number of weapons per purchase?

Dumbfire missile bundles would be slightly more expensive than a regular missile, with about a third of the damage. They would also be significantly faster.

Torpedoes would be sold individually. They would do significantly more damage than your regular missile, but have no guidance system and would probably cost somewhere around 400 to 600 Cr each.

Scatterpack pods would probably have the same price as a torpedo, with other characteristics being similar to the Dumbfire missile.

Mass drivers I'm not sure about. Does any one have any thoughts on these?

Since all of these have no guidance system, they would be impervious to ECM.

ECM in the oolite world is not an attack on the navigation systems, but is rather some kind of energy pulse. There are ECM hardened missiles, but these are not 100% safe.

You can make your missiles immune (easily, its a change in AI) but you might want to think up a better in-game reasoning.

I always supposed that the ECM was an attack on the navigation system, fooling the missile into detonating prematurely.

However, if it is an energy pulse, it could still be justified by them lacking the sophisticated electronics of guided weapons.

If someone has a better excuse, let me know.