Oolite Bulletins

Dear all

How about making it an offence (in Galcop's eyes) to fire on *any* ship - except perhaps a 'fugitive' - within the safety zone? Also, for lesser offences, or for attacks that could be seen as accidents, how about warnings from the police? (I know there are warnings already; but they are not really warnings - for they are, I think, just chat while the police attack or move to attack you.)

These things might be tricky to script, and could throw up the occasional awkward moment, e.g. if you fire on a ship that's inside the station aegis while you yourself are outside ... GalCop law is pretty basic, and I'm not sure they're up to coping with much subtlety!

The accidental/friendly fire thing is an issue. I don't know if there's a good and easy way to solve it: maybe set some minimum threshold of damage done before hostilities are triggered? So a stray glancing shot could result in shouted remonstrations and aspersions cast upon your eyesight and mental acuity, rather than an all-out fight to the death. Maybe from a game point of view the threshold would be set per system, so you could get away with one mistake; but making the same mistake twice in the same system would tip you over the edge into criminal behaviour. Docking or witchspace jumping would reset the threshold.

Of course, with the developers working towards a next stable release, it's unlikely that new tweaks to gameplay will be a priority!

But if an offender attacks the player withing the station's aegis, then you could not shoot them back without becoming offender yourself ?

Disembodied wrote:

These things might be tricky to script, and could throw up the occasional awkward moment, e.g. if you fire on a ship that's inside the station aegis while you yourself are outside ... GalCop law is pretty basic, and I'm not sure they're up to coping with much subtlety!

The accidental/friendly fire thing is an issue. I don't know if there's a good and easy way to solve it: maybe set some minimum threshold of damage done before hostilities are triggered? So a stray glancing shot could result in shouted remonstrations and aspersions cast upon your eyesight and mental acuity, rather than an all-out fight to the death. Maybe from a game point of view the threshold would be set per system, so you could get away with one mistake; but making the same mistake twice in the same system would tip you over the edge into criminal behaviour. Docking or witchspace jumping would reset the threshold.

Of course, with the developers working towards a next stable release, it's unlikely that new tweaks to gameplay will be a priority!

In a proper mass free-for-all fire fight - I'd like to see stray blue-on-blue incidents have a percentage chance of detection and identification based on the number of ships in the fight, because it should be quite hard (unless its a head on shot from a ship directly in front) to tell which ship has shot at you (which it is) and the reciprocal that another ship should not be able to automagically tell if you "accidentally" hit it should also be true...

we could reconfigure the (TAB?) key to broadcast a "sorry, that was an accident, honest!!" message just in case you hit a cop in a firefight. first time you use it there's a 100% chance you won't get Offendered, the next time it's 50% or less, etc.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

In a proper mass free-for-all fire fight - I'd like to see stray blue-on-blue incidents have a percentage chance of detection and identification based on the number of ships in the fight, because it should be quite hard (unless its a head on shot from a ship directly in front) to tell which ship has shot at you (which it is) and the reciprocal that another ship should not be able to automagically tell if you "accidentally" hit it should also be true...

At a massive free-for-all at one of the Random Hits space bars, I managed to collide with one of the defenders, as we were both going after the same target. It was only a glancing blow, but it immediately made me an offender!

Subsequently it got me killed lol!

I've also seen the hunters get fugitive tags (and hefty bounties) during these battles, presumably due to friendly fire. Still got a tagged myself when I shot them mind.

(1) I thought Random Hits already had an accidental fire detection system, or something. Perhaps I misremember.

(2) As to someone in the safety zone been shot by someone outside it, etc.: why not just have it so it is a crime to shoot any craft (or non-fugitive craft) when it is inside the zone (irrespective of the *shooter's* location). That way, if a ship attacks you when you are in the safety zone, and it is not, you can shoot it back.

Finally: I suspect that these sorts of gameplay changes might disproportionately improve the feel of the game.

It does, in the sense that the hunters don't (shouldn't) return fire against another hunter who hits them. Shooting a clean ship is still a crime in Oolite's eyes though and so they can get an offender / fugitive tag for it, even though other hunter ship 'forgives' the error. I had to cheat a bit by switching all hunters back to clean with their script whenever they get shot, which in turn should causes the attacking hunter to break off. Hunters may well fire at each other, but (shoudn't) kill each other, as they (should) switch into the randomhitsbreakoffAI when they notice their target is on the 'friendlies' list of ship roles.

Aha. Thanks for the information!

Thanks Littlebear, nice to know I can still believe the evidence of my own eyes.

UK_Eliter wrote:

As to someone in the safety zone been shot by someone outside it, etc.: why not just have it so it is a crime to shoot any craft (or non-fugitive craft) when it is inside the zone (irrespective of the *shooter's* location). That way, if a ship attacks you when you are in the safety zone, and it is not, you can shoot it back.

I think this is unnecessary complication, myself. Are Vipers allowed to shoot at Offenders inside the station aegis? A very minor Offender status can get you sentenced to death everywhere else; it would seem odd to me if that all got changed just because you were within a certain distance from the station. And let's say a ship attacks you when you're within the zone, allowing you to attack it; but by the time you've got it in your sights, it's moved inside the zone too. If you return fire, will you become a criminal?

One of the features of Co-operative law is that it's brutally simple and straightforward. This sort of rather fiddly detail strikes me as rather unlikely, to be honest.

UK_Eliter wrote:

Finally: I suspect that these sorts of gameplay changes might disproportionately improve the feel of the game.

I'm not sure about changing the law concerning the station aegis, but I think something to "solve" the issue of friendly fire would be an improvement to the game. It's not something that happens to me, or even that I see happening, that often; mind you, when it does happen, it's a real bugger! But I suspect – although I don't know – that this kind of change to combat AI could be very complicated, and would require quite a lot of testing to make sure nothing else got broken. And I also suspect that the silence on this issue from the devs is not entirely coincidental ...