Oolite Bulletins

Some thoughts about trunk…

… it looks really good, the docking and witchspace tunnels are great, as are the added nav features and chart backgrounds. It ‘lights’ the Griff ships in the demo, select commander and shipyard screens much better. Lots of tweaks that improve the game experience, and I'm sure I haven’t found many of them yet. I’m really looking forward to 1.74 emerging… very well done, devs.

However, on the equipment pages (F5) in trunk, the kit order has been altered, so the lasers are now top of the list on the first page… may I ask why? AFAIK, lasers cannot be damaged, so they should be at the end of the list on the second page, not taking up space on the first page. During a serious firefight, there are important items to check for damage on F5 and having two pages is bad enough, without four mil lasers sitting there at the top of page one, always undamaged, followed by ‘large cargo bay’.

Is the order of listing arbitrary? If so, then it shouldn’t be… the most important pieces of kit, i.e. energy unit, shield boosters, cloaking device, injectors, escape pod, ecm etc, should be top of the list on page one. Items of kit that aren’t crucial in combat, like large cargo bay, advanced navigational array, fuel scoops etc should be way down the list on the second page, along with the lasers.

Just the opinion of an old codger and veteran combateer, of course.

El Viejo wrote:

However, on the equipment pages (F5) in trunk, the kit order has been altered, so the lasers are now top of the list on the first page… may I ask why? AFAIK, lasers cannot be damaged, so they should be at the end of the list on the second page, not taking up space on the first page. During a serious firefight, there are important items to check for damage on F5 and having two pages is bad enough, without four mil lasers sitting there at the top of page one, always undamaged, followed by ‘large cargo bay’.

Is the order of listing arbitrary? If so, then it shouldn’t be… the most important pieces of kit, i.e. energy unit, shield boosters, cloaking device, injectors, escape pod, ecm etc, should be top of the list on page one. Items of kit that aren’t crucial in combat, like large cargo bay, advanced navigational array, fuel scoops etc should be way down the list on the second page, along with the lasers.

Just the opinion of an old codger and veteran combateer, of course.

Agree. I appreciate that space is at a premium, but if there was some way of getting the whole list on one page, that would be great, too.
Perhaps use two columns for the system, condition, rating etc section at the top?

Lasers are now back at the bottom of the equipment list. As for the rest, well, we had everything in one page in the past and things were too crowded in the status screen, so they were split into pages. This is the best solution, because pages can be added for as long as equipment will be invented. Any other solution will be only temporary and it will be a matter of time before the amount of OXP equipment will once again overflow the main screen.

another_commander wrote:

Lasers are now back at the bottom of the equipment list.

Thank you a_c, this is really good. The lasers were my major gripe... the rest is fine.

Regards

Hmmmm....maybe the lasers SHOULD be damageable? they're an (arguably) delicate piece of equipment and susceptible to impact damage, as well as energy feed probs. maybe they should become say 50% intermittent as a damage feature?

Lasers are built out of laserproof lazerprufium in order to avoid wear and tear. For some reason, no-one has thought of building ship hulls out of the same material, although it’s often used in the construction of space stations. ;-)

Or better still, make ships out of mirrors. The lasers would just reflect away. Indeed with some crafty design, ships could be coated in tiny concave mirrors so that the laser is reflected back from whence it came. HeHe

Smivs wrote:

Or better still, make ships out of mirrors. The lasers would just reflect away.

As the Birdy One will happily point out at length: nope.

Smivs wrote:

Indeed with some crafty design, ships could be coated in tiny concave mirrors so that the laser is reflected back from whence it came. HeHe :lol:

For that, you’d want an appropriate arrangement of perfectly flat mirrors. A pattern of corner reflectors, in fact. (Not entirely unlike the nav buoy.)

Ahruman wrote:

Smivs wrote:

Or better still, make ships out of mirrors. The lasers would just reflect away.

As the Birdy One will happily point out at length: nope.

Smivs wrote:

Indeed with some crafty design, ships could be coated in tiny concave mirrors so that the laser is reflected back from whence it came. HeHe

For that, you’d want an appropriate arrangement of perfectly flat mirrors. A pattern of corner reflectors, in fact. (Not entirely unlike the nav buoy.)

I prefer prisms



Always knew that Dark Side of the Moon album cover would come in handy one day.

Ahruman wrote:

For that, you’d want an appropriate arrangement of perfectly flat mirrors. A pattern of corner reflectors, in fact. (Not entirely unlike the nav buoy.)

See also the standard yacht's radar reflector..

Diziet Sma wrote:

Ahruman wrote:

For that, you’d want an appropriate arrangement of perfectly flat mirrors. A pattern of corner reflectors, in fact. (Not entirely unlike the nav buoy.)

See also the standard yacht's radar reflector..

Or the back of a car, if you want to get all real-worldy.

Anyway, back to making lasers breakable: their unbreakability is canon, which may or may not be up for discussion, but only after a stable version materialises from myth status...