Oolite Bulletins

The first time I encountered this type of weapon was in the old DOS game Star Crusader. Essentially it was a cannon which did very little physical damage, if any, but spun your craft around into random directions, and may have also affected your speed.

It was great because as well as being an 'exotic' weapon which added a bit more variety to your ship's possible load-out, it acted as a 'chaining' weapon: that is, you hit enemies with the vector cannon to prepare them for something else - adding to the weapon uses that were already in the game.

It was also infuriating when the enemy hit you with one of them. Many times I shouted at the monitor after I had patiently brought down the shields of an agile enemy, lined up perfectly to torpedo them, and then one of their wingmates hits me with a vector strike. The whole process had to begin again.

Would this be too disruptive (gameplay or AI) to add to Oolite?

As a gun:

• This would provide an alternative for people who always put their military laser at the front. Skillful pilots could prefer to mess up the flight of their enemies (perhaps letting the police, bounty hunters, traders get a few shots in?- and then dispatch them with another mounted laser.
  
  Also, this could have a small percentage chance of stopping the ECM from taking down missiles, again adding to the usage of the gun.
  
  Another reason may be that the enemy is keeping its weakened shield hemisphere from you, in which case hitting them with a vector cannon and than bathing them with laser fire will help go through those shields.
  
  The AI being equipped with these may also help them deal with players who find it easy to use hard missiles to coast through ECM. Just as being hit impairs your ECM slightly, it also messes with your missile control computer - temporarily preventing you from firing any of your own missiles. Needless to say, groups of pirates would become a lot more troubling... if a couple have vectors... and the others have missiles.
  
  The placement option may also allow players to express their preference for having a vector cannon pointing aft, to keep any pursuers occupied, whilst giving them the 'safe' option of the military laser up front.
  
  Fights within asteroid fields, or nearby any other obstacle, would be more... fun.

As a missile:

• As a vector torpedo (or aft-deployed bomb) you would maintain the clean 'lasers and missiles only' feel of Oolite, whilst expanding what we can do. Perhaps the missile is a lot faster than most, but more susceptible to ECM: so that if the enemy ECM's it, the missile will area-effect the player instead? I'm assuming that the missile variant would be easier to implement, and require less from the AI?
  
  Smaller pirate ships which the player is used to mopping up can now mount these vector torpedos as a last ditch means of escaping on injectors. Imagine if your bounty target sends your Iron Ass reeling away in a spin, and uses those few seconds to blast out of laser range - the chase is on.
  
  Fights within asteroid fields, or nearby any other obstacle, would be more... fun.

P.S. Please note that the laser replacement idea is not to be taken to mean that I want Oolite to turn into Every Other Space Sim(tm). As I said, I like the minimalist lasers and missile approach, but I think this vector 'weapon' will actually expand the uses for pre-existing weapons, rather than just add +1 to available weaponry.

Nice idea here. Keep'em coming!

Making a ship roll randomly is possible, and is one of the things that can happen to you in an encounter with the Flying Dutchman. Changing its speed is a little more tricky for NPCs, and impossible for the player ship. But there is a workaround to this, to which I'll come below.

The lasers-and-missiles-approach of Oolite/Elite means that it is not possible to create "alternative" lasers via a script/OXP. The pre-existing ones are non-modifiable. Which leaves the option of a missile, of which we already have a fairly big variety. By the way, are you aware of the AS-7 Violet Flax Electronic Override Missile from Missiles&Bombs.oxp? Parts of its effects may be fairly similar to what you suggest.

Anyway, back to the workaround. It is possible to change direction and speed of any object by colliding with it. You may have done some asteroid-bashing yourself, or tried to push around the Sentinel satellites from a Space Bar. So a missile which directly hits its target (literally collides with it) could have the power to change its speed and direction by transferring its own momentum on it (it should also explode during the process). The trick would be a double one: (1) give the missile a sufficient density to make up for its small size, compared to its target, because otherwise its momentum would be negligable compared to the target's momentum; and (2) make sure that it actually collides with its target (unlike normal missiles, which simply go off once they have reached a certain pre-set distance to their target). The second one could be a little fiddly, but should be achievable. And the density would have to be chosen in a way that the impact would probably kill the smallest of ships, barely shake an Anaconda, and leave a Behemoth completely unimpressed.

In my opinion, an actual projectile style weapon would make for a nice variation in the mix, and as far as I know there doesn't exist any yet (apart from some funny attempts to use cargo containers as projectiles by pushing them into the right direction).

Wasn't this random rolling the premise for the "Death Blossom" in "The Last Starfighter"?

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Wasn't this random rolling the premise for the "Death Blossom" in "The Last Starfighter"?

Oh yes, I see what you mean.

(Also, notice that with shaders Oolite looks better than those movie production values)

@Commander McLane:
I wasn't aware of that OXP, thanks. I only suggested the beam version of the vectoer weapon because i) I would prefer it, and ii) I wan't sure if this forum was just for OXP's or hard coding ideas.

I suppose there are already plenty of missile people can choose from (although I would like one that acts as a 'trick' in that it is activated if the target ECM's it, at which point it fires off a single high-powered laser at the target - giving reason to having a good missile mix), which I why I would love it to be a new weapon. Hey ho, I can only hope.

Just a minor comment / opinion / suggestion; which can be ignored or considered. Suggest that it be called "Kinetic Missile",

or (gun);

"Kinetic Pulse", "Kinetic Charge", "Kinetic Cannon", ... "Kinetic (whatever)"

Poro wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Wasn't this random rolling the premise for the "Death Blossom" in "The Last Starfighter"?

Oh yes, I see what you mean.

(Also, notice that with shaders Oolite looks better than those movie production values)

I've got the numbers for the Starfighter somewhere - there's a lot of polygons in that model and it definitely wasn't rendered in RT!

If I find them - I'll post them.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I've got the numbers for the Starfighter somewhere - there's a lot of polygons in that model

I was under the impression it was CSG, like the Tron vehicles, but looking at it it looks more like cubics. I believe there’s some information about it in Foley et al, but I can’t find my copy. Calamity!