Oolite Bulletins

I seem to have been quite literally hit by a plague of suicide FdLs tonight. Did the usual when jumped by about 5 pirates and injected the hell out of Dodge and was followed by some enterprising souls who had witchfuel injectors themselves. Nothing unusual so far, and indeed quite advantageous, divide and blow into tiny pieces of dust and all that.

Imagine my surprise on killing the injectors, flipping over to start shooting and taking a Griff FdL straight in the chops, clearly still injecting like a mentalist.

This was a first for me, but it then happened *another 3 times*, twice with FdLs and the last time with an Asp I think. One time even when I wised up and ducked the first pass he continued with an extremely fast loop and rammed me the second time up.

I must have done something to really upset them

Yeah, there’s something about FdLs… one did it to me last night.
When I get rammed like that, I’ve always wondered, as I’m about to ‘press space’… does the culprit survive?

and what about the mentalists getting around in Kraits?? who seem so enthusiastic escaping q-mines only to crash into you at full pelt a.s.a.p.

This is not un-common! There are a couple of things you can do. Try to stop, to reduce the impact speed. If your sheilds are intact you may well survive...shield boosters and Military shield enhancement are both useful here.
Alternatively try to target all your assailants with missiles. You'll need a multi-targeting system and the memory enhancement to do this. If one starts a ramming run, hit it with a missile. Use hardheads in case they have ECM.
As an aside, the other day I launched from a station and turned round to see what else was launching. As I watched a Cobra and an Asp launched, turned round and flew straight back into the station. Not the docking port, mind, they just crashed into it. Weird!

This only happens when I'm flying my Caduceus.

The suicidal behavior has been fixed (or at least is in much better shape) for 1.74 by increasing the distance at which the NPC decides to break off the run towards the player.

just last night I had a head-on with an Asp - we were scoring hits on each other as we simultaneously arrived at the point of impact, and I obviously depleted his shields and energy enough so that when the inevitable happened he just disintegrated against my shields. Ka-boom! I could clearly see the plasma globules splashing over the cockpit. Tres cool in a non-Press Space Commander sort of way.

another_commander wrote:

The suicidal behavior has been fixed (or at least is in much better shape) for 1.74 by increasing the distance at which the NPC decides to break off the run towards the player.

However, if you're running away on injectors from an NPC on injectors, and then stop, chances are that he is still on collision course.

The reason is that you usually can kill your speed much faster than an NPC. Even if he disengages his injectors he will only slow down very gradually. So when he reaches your position he still has a lot of speed, perhaps too much for his climb rate.

Commander McLane wrote:

another_commander wrote:

The suicidal behavior has been fixed (or at least is in much better shape) for 1.74 by increasing the distance at which the NPC decides to break off the run towards the player.

However, if you're running away on injectors from an NPC on injectors, and then stop, chances are that he is still on collision course.

The reason is that you usually can kill your speed much faster than an NPC. Even if he disengages his injectors he will only slow down very gradually. So when he reaches your position he still has a lot of speed, perhaps too much for his climb rate.

Yes, Oolite is cheating. It secretly multiplies the players thrust with 5, so even when the shipdata for player and npc are the same, they aren't (I assume it wouldn't be fun playing otherwise)

However, as A_C wrote is the chance of a npc ramming you reduced in 1.74. Not because of a faster break off, but because npc will have a faster slowdown from injector speed. This results in more time for the npc to deviate from a ramming course.

It's annoying as hell when some idiot with injectors on kills you.

Don't tell me you were flying a Cadeucus! I traded a perfectly good Rigel Tactical Bomber for a Cadeucus Alpha and regretted it because suddeny everyone wants to crash right into you, invariably fatally. Even pranging a buoy will destroy you, and don't even try to dock with a Feudal Hunting Lodge. Get a B-Wing instead, they rule!

Phantom Hoover wrote:

It's annoying as hell when some idiot with injectors on kills you.

death is often annoying..
but once the culprit ships' flying patterns were recognised I appreciated the laser precision they taught me .. .. very handy in Assassins missions, to be sure

Hehe glad it's not just me though. FWIW I'm still in my Cobra MKIII, nothing so fancy as a Caduceus

Happened again last night, did the honourable thing and ran from an extremely large group of pirates (three separate groups each of 5-6 ships!) but got chased by two. Dodged the FdL misguided missile and was busy feeling smug when the second ship rammed me from the side seconds later without me even seeing him

I don't mind it actually. The more ways there are to die makes it all the more interesting. Witchfuel injectors have made what used to be instadeath from pirate megafleets a whole lot easier to get around, one can travel to Anarchy systems with impunity really so long as you are well schooled in the art of running away. This adds a little edge to it

Well-schooled in th art of running away and possessing of plenty of fuel.

Indeed, almost an oxymoron - don't jump to an Anarchy 6.9 light years away unless you have a titanium ass