Oolite Bulletins

Hi,

weapons like lasers do consume energy with each shot. However, ship turrets do not.

At least for player ships with many turrets I do believe that this should be changed.

I've done some modifications to my local copy of the source, it's only requiring two lines and now the turrets do consume energy with each shot. I really prefer it that way. However, that 2-liner is currently both applied for NPC and player alike. I'm not sure I want it that way.

Furthermore, I do wonder what values would be good. Lasers do use 1 energy per shot. I've currently set turret energy usage to 2 - thus a Caduceus is notably draining it's energy banks while using it's turrets, but I still think it should be a bit higher. Fighting ships like an Asp, the energy build up to full again while I move to target the next ship...

How do you think about such a change? Would you like it? Has anyone suggestions on how to do it better (e.g. use the turrets subentity energy and recharge, thus turrets could be drained, forcing the player to roll around in order to keep firing, but not drain ships energy)?

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Would it be possible to implement a sort of halfway house?

Turrets charge large capacitors when ship is producing more power than it needs, which, when used in a fight, gives you say three "free" shots per turret, but then the capacitor must be recharged before it can fire again - if the turret continues to fire then it basically drains from the main ship energy at its own recharge rate and immediately fires again if it is requested to do so (and thus when used continuously there are no more free energy shots). However, once over that initial "charge as fast as you can" to fire the next shot which it takes directly and as quickly as possible from the main ships energy (i.e. it must be ready to fire atleast one shot as quickly as possible) then the drain on the main ship energy is reduced to half original rate for the second "free" shot and to a third for the final "free" shot and which point a steady state is reached and energy drain/top-up of the plasma turret capacitor becomes a negligible trickle charge...

I still think that turrets for player ships are an abomination in the first place. You simply shouldn't be able to have them.

That said, and painfully aware that whatever is out of Pandora's box won't go inside again, I agree that at the very least they should consume a considerable amount of energy, thereby leveling out the huge advantage of having your ship do on its own what should be your work.

I also agree that turrets on NPC should continue to not consume energy.

I think that if turrets consume the ship's energy, some more work needs to be done. You will have to have a Turrets On/Off key, otherwise you will find that you are losing energy fast whenever you approach a hostile target, simply because the turret decided it is time to start firing. The player should not be penalized like this just for having turrets on the ship. You can of course switch target or deactivate the targetting, but then you lose a target that you may want to keep available for reasons of your own.

another_commander wrote:

I think that if turrets consume the ship's energy, some more work needs to be done. You will have to have a Turrets On/Off key, otherwise you will find that you are losing energy fast whenever you approach a hostile target, simply because the turret decided it is time to start firing. The player should not be penalized like this just for having turrets on the ship. You can of course switch target or deactivate the targetting, but then you lose a target that you may want to keep available for reasons of your own.

Isn't that effect just a balancing out of what is a "Pandora Box" weapon as McLane would describe it - it's achilles heel...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Isn't that effect just a balancing out of what is a "Pandora Box" weapon as McLane would describe it - it's achilles heel...

It might very well be, but I'm still of the opinion that a Turrets On/Off is required in this case. Oh, and NPCs should also have energy limitations like the player. The turrets were given to the player ships to balance out the fact that NPCs had them in the first place, so it is only fair that whatever happens to the player as a result of turrets usage happens to them, too.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Isn't that effect just a balancing out of what is a "Pandora Box" weapon as McLane would describe it - it's achilles heel...

For the Caduceus it's not that bad: Turrets fire up/downwards and to the sides. Thus the player really has to do some flying to keep the enemy in position where the turrets can fire - and the ships also have a tendency to run out of the small turret range.

For ships with different turret setup it might not be that simple...but the GriffBoa, for example, is similar: turrets only where there are no lasers and furthermore, it's only using one turret per ship side, thus it's usually very little happening.

However, I also like the idea for a turret switch. It's more fun and it also would prevent accidental "fugitive" flags when the turrets cause friendly fire while defending a station or fighting with the navy.

Another idea would be to allow an item (or modify the ships in question accordingly) that doubles the maximum storable energy amount, without affecting the recharge rate (or in terms of Caduceus: reduce the recharge rate). That way there's a larger buffer, but with exzessive use, it will run empty. I really like that idea...and several NPC ships (at least with OSE) are into that direction anyway, just without EQ

I consider a high recharge rate much worse than a high energy buffer...and I'd really like to see some energy usage on my ship. With most "good" rechargers there's almost never something to be seen. One of my early trade ships (was it a python?) often did not have enough energy to fire my lasers after I had to use the ECM!

A larger energy buffer also won't help much in terms of survivability, as a ship typically takes horrible equipment damage when the shields are gone.

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Not having played with any ship with turrets, this is new area for me and I don't know if the below has already been implemented as balancing factors.

- Why not have the turret functionality limited by the number of crew members you have / your ship has? You could also have expert Navy shooters who cost you an arm and leg in wages and - at the other end of the spectrum - elderly grandmas trying to earn enough money to pay for a bed in an elderly care centre. (Crew member limitations should also be in place to fly some of the biggest ships in the first place. A mere pilot should not be enough.)

Uh, had more ideas, but the one-year-old co-pilot needs attention...

Player Turrents Using Energy: GOOD
NPC Turrent Using Energy: BAD
Turret Fire Mode: Auto vs. Manual. Auto is current behavior. Manual = On/Off Switch.

Add to that:
Allow turrets to have targets OTHER than main weapon target.
JS Method to assign this target.
JS Method to trigger turrets to fire.

Well, the bigger it gets, the more MNSRy it starts to sound...

Kaks wrote:

Well, the bigger it gets, the more MNSRy it starts to sound...

I'm not too sure anyway how feasible it would be to allow different targets for turrets.

What I could imagine easier with manual turret on/off: the ability to fire on ships without requiring them to be hostile (a player issue only).

I currently switched to an energy usage of 3 per shot. I think that goes also in accordance with the dual plasma cannon which uses 6 per shot (although I'm not sure if it would use 12 for the dual shot )

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Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

Player Turrents Using Energy: GOOD
NPC Turrent Using Energy: BAD

Seconded.

I actually think turrets using up energy would be a good, balancing, and also ingame-logical idea.

I would not do this (energy usage) to NPCs, though - not unfair imo, just that NPCs don't have any shields already in vanilla Oolite, and this would be making them even more vulnerable to players (who are also, on top of having shields, much faster than anyone else, in vanilla Oolite).

Also, player turrets would have to have an on/off switch, then. Obviously.

At least these would be my 0.2Cr (which, as we found out already, actually are about 200$ or 150€!)

Cheers

L

The problem as far as an artistic layman such as myself would see it is:

A) Enabling on/off for player turrets so they don't use up all their energy shooting off rounds, like some strange huge plasma space wanking machine.

B) Stopping NPS from firing off all their energy as plasma bolts. Making huge ships easy pickings to your average player.

I kind of feel as an advocate of turrets, that these ideas can be implicated within the bounds of the existing ships datalist. My ship is the bombarder beetle in an ooniverse of machine animals. If you implicate this then I will do all in my power to sernomnavigate it. Such is the superiority of the bio-ship.

Of course I will have a chat about the kirin with it's co-owner and see if we can't come to some agreeable arrangement regarding this questionable endeavor.

ClymAngus wrote:

B) Stopping NPS from firing off all their energy as plasma bolts. Making huge ships easy pickings to your average player.

Not all - I've had juggernauts and such (with OSE) where the recharge rate was high enough to render lasers useless. I speak of using all four lasers by rotating the ship - and not getting ANY effect (seen with shift-h in the log).

Those could easily spend some energy on turrets without becoming weak

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