Oolite Bulletins

I've been playing V1.49 all day. The NPC combat accuraccy is so precise I never have a chance to blow them up myself. I have three suggestions that could fix this:

1. Create an upgrade, the Radar Jammer, that would temporarily cause the player to disappear from all other ships radars. It would cost 950cr., tech level 5.

2. Create an upgrade, the Photon Scrambler, that would fool with all other ships view cameras. It works like the Radar Jammer, but it's 6000cr., tech level 11.

3. Tweak the NPC AI to account for navigational errors caused by frequent combat.

What do ya think?

Mirad Grameron wrote:

I've been playing V1.49 all day. The NPC combat accuraccy is so precise I never have a chance to blow them up myself. I have three suggestions that could fix this:

How about a menu option: difficulty level?

Some pirates actually shot my ship up today. Sadly, they only managed this because one of their friends rammed me; I had survived that (barely) because of my shield booster. As such, the four of them didn't need to hit too many times to off me - and I *still* took two (more) of them out before biting it. Given the initial collision, I was tempted to not mark the end of the 'death by ramming' streak. But, no, the streak is over. Not sure how many it was, however; I lost count.

Alternatively, might I suggest a strategy item - when they start shooting you, break off (potentially with injectors), and let them get behind you a bit, loose some of their formation, and order. A tail gunner, to eliminate the first one you pass, could be useful here.

A difficulty level rating? Hmmm... I don't know. So far Oolite has managed an excellent job to keep you feeling like your in the game. If you used an upgrade, than the game would seem more real. Changing the difficulty rating jerks you out of the game world.

Mirad Grameron wrote:

A difficulty level rating? Hmmm... I don't know. So far Oolite has managed an excellent job to keep you feeling like your in the game. If you used an upgrade, than the game would seem more real. Changing the difficulty rating jerks you out of the game world.

Ok, how about an alternate idea - scaled difficulty per galaxy.

Everyone knows the real Elite iron asses hang out in galaxy 8, after all.

Brilliant! It could be used in conjunction with my 2nd and 3rd suggestions.

Oolite gives you too many ways to attack and not enough to defend.

Mirad Grameron wrote:

Brilliant! It could be used in conjunction with my 2nd and 3rd suggestions.

Oolite gives you too many ways to attack and not enough to defend.

Oh, btw, there is a cloaking device, which is to be awarded for completing a to be written mission; this has the effect of breaking missile locks. There is a chance you can find a ship equipped with one.

Radar jammer... that reminds me... *controversy follows*

The ECM upgrade sucks. Or rather, it doesn't suck sufficiently. It makes missiles almost pointless.

It'd be better (albeit presumably much less Elite-like) to have the ECM reduce the quality of missile tracking. This of course opens the possibility of having an Advanced ECM, Military ECM etc. The current behaviour could be available in a hard-to-get EMP unit.

This would make missiles a useful weapon, and missile boats a viable enemy, providing more variation.

The EMC system does make it too easy to avoid missiles. It should a lot more expensive. I like your idea about reducing the accuracy of the missiles.

There should be more ways to defend yourself against lasers though. Maybe a speical shield that can actually reflect the lasers back at the attacker. Or maybe an energy absorber that can take the power from attackers laser and add them to your shields, engines, etc. Be careful not to overload though.

There should be some waepons that can disable engines, lasers, shields and things like that.

My take on the missile controversy is that they are only one of a kind...

They`re ridiculously cheap for their precision/successrate, I initially thought... But then again, ECM makes mincemeat of them w/o a sweat, so that might explain the cheapo factor...

Maybe missile Mk II, III IV... Each one more expensive, harder to 'ecm' (taking more drain from your energybanks...)

Shouldn't be that hard to code? (ideal 3rd party adition..)

Mirad Grameron wrote:

There should be some waepons that can disable engines, lasers, shields and things like that.

Lasers work pretty well to take down your shields

But You have a point, I sometimes catch myself mumbling 'rechannel engine power to shields'

Of course, the further this goes the further Oolite deviates from Elite,

Rxke wrote:

Of course, the further this goes the further Oolite deviates from Elite,

Hi Rxke,

Well you have Oolite Strict for the purposes of dogma...

I think Oolite has well flown the coop (or at least the corolis ) I love all the new additions to Oolite, the only change I would not welcome would be the introduction of the lame duck Frontier flight engine.

When I have finished my exams I may even look into the world of the oxp myself.

"Of course, the further this goes the further Oolite deviates from Elite,"

Why not put it in the form of an addon? That way some people who are loyal to Elite don't download it and those all for innovation do download it.

.oxps rock because you decide whether you want them or not.

Mirad Grameron wrote:

The EMC system does make it too easy to avoid missiles.

A lot of that is the AI. The AI should recognize when the target ship has an ECM, or there's a ship that has a penchant for activating an ECM on any missile. Under this situation, it would not launch a missile until it had gotten close enough to the target that the ECM might not work in time - of course, how successfully it did that would depend upon the skill level of the AI pilot. If it's a relative novice, it'd possibly behave as now. A competent AI would make an attempt to time the missile correctly, but could very easily launch too soon by a couple seconds or launch too late and either get caught in the resulting missile explosion or overshoot the missile. An --ELITE-- AI would generally time it just right so that if you hit the ECM as soon as you received notice of the missile launch, you'd successfully ECM the missile - at point blank, such that you still take pretty much maximum damage.

However, I don't understand the AI code well enough to even consider writing such a patch. (I would probably test my competence first with an advanced docking computer - this would be a more expensive, "unwarrantied", illegal version of the standard docking computer, which would, among other things, make use of hyperspeed or injectors during docking. By illegal, I mean most uses of it at main stations would raise your legal status by 1. Unless, of course, someone beats me to that as well.)

Missiles still have their worth... I usually use them to take out the pitiful little minions (sidewinders, mambas, morays etc.) whom I know usually do not have ECMs (that is, if I'm overwhelmed with ships). Having said that, for the first time the other day, I am pretty sure that I successfully employed the tactic of draining a pirate ship's energy banks sufficiently that upon activating its ECM (my having fired a missle on it) it promptly destroyed itself.

I think that the problem is not the ECM but the missle. Perhaps I am just crap at the game, but I would consider myself pretty much a dead man if I had a missile fired upon myself and was without an ECM. Perhaps if missiles were not quite so fatal and ECMs were not, statistically speaking, quite so successful then it might open things up a bit. Having different grades of missiles is certainly something that might help; cheaper missile could be prone to premature detonation (no, viagra wouldn't help) or latching on to the wrong target (that would be a complete biyatch!). Naturally, I'm obliged to make reference to Frontier's naval grade ECM and missiles. Additionaly, I'm also obligued to speculate that less effective missiles implies ship damage rather than ship anihilation.

On the subject of missiles; (sorry to the original author, I know that wasn't the topic of conversation) can you out-run a missile, assuming that you have one of the fastest ships with fuel injectors fitted, would anyone happen to know?

Yeah, you probably can outrun missiles if you're really fast. However, they're very persistent. Another possibility for multiple levels of missiles would be that the cheap ones run out of fuel relatively soon, and thus lose their ability to maneuver. They might also have sensors limited to a cone in front of them, so they lose track of targets when they overshoot. (Consider sidewinders in a flight sim...)