Oolite Bulletins

Someone here, on another thread, had the idea about paying to have your ships engines fine-tuned so that they were capable of slightly higher tops speed. This would come at the cost of reliability, i.e. if you were close to max speed for too long then your chances of a engine stall would increase.

Ships should remain balanced since the tunings probably wouldn't be indefinite, at some point you would loose the extra performance. Maneuverability could also be tuned, and all of these delicate tunings could be destroyed during combat.

Also dare I say it.. laser coolant. I know, I know... this is an issue where people have come down very cearly. But what about a pylon-mounted very expensive module which doubles the cooling time of a laser? Is that too much? As well as being subject to combat-induced collant leaks, it could be *handwavium* so as only to be sold to those with Clean status - to prevent too many pirates using it against the honest people of the Ooniverse.

*Ducks for cover*

Poro wrote:

Also dare I say it.. laser coolant. I know, I know... this is an issue where people have come down very cearly. But what about a pylon-mounted very expensive module which doubles the cooling time of a laser? Is that too much? As well as being subject to combat-induced collant leaks, it could be *handwavium* so as only to be sold to those with Clean status - to prevent too many pirates using it against the honest people of the Ooniverse.

This is one laser cooler idea I can get aboard on, because it has some limitations.
- Mounts on a pylon, so that's one less missile/mine/battledrone you can use.
- Because it's on a pylon, it's a one-shot device.
- Because it's pylon carried, must be selected, armed, and triggered, same as a mine.
As a further limitation, have it only cool off the laser you have the view of, ie foreward view = fore laser cooled when the device is triggered.

Sure, it insta-chills a hot mil laser, but at the price of being such a PITA that it's hardly worth the trouble.

Poro wrote:

Also dare I say it.. laser coolant. I know, I know... this is an issue where people have come down very cearly. But what about a pylon-mounted very expensive module which doubles the cooling time of a laser? Is that too much? As well as being subject to combat-induced collant leaks, it could be *handwavium* so as only to be sold to those with Clean status - to prevent too many pirates using it against the honest people of the Ooniverse.

*Ducks for cover*

Hi Poro, I think you mean HALVES the time to cool the lasers. But I don't think it will ever happen. Part of the skill of the game is 'rationing' the lasers to avoid un-necessary overheating, and switching between back and front lasers should be enough...the front has cooled by the time the rear one is getting hot.
Having said that there might be some merit in your suggestion, but I think the only thing that might be acceptable is a 'One Shot' system that dumps the coolant from the lasers and replaces it with a fresh charge. This process could take about 10 seconds, and can be done only once. Considering also that 'Lasercoolium' is ultra-expensive this system would be really pricey, and therefore probably not worth installing.

Cmdr Wyvern wrote:

- Because it's on a pylon, it's a one-shot device.

Depends how it's written. Both the missile racks and the missile machine in Armoury are pylon-mounted multiple-use items.

I doubt, however, that in the heat of the battle you would find time to select and fire the item anyway. It would take more steps than simply turning your ship around and fire with another laser.

And it would take a lot of effort to code, which seems like a waste of resources for an item which is so impractical to use.

I wouldn't say, when turning to use other lasers you often have to give up good position.

@Smivs: Yes indeed, halving the cooling time would be rather more effective.

Commander McLane wrote:

It would take more steps than simply turning your ship around and fire with another laser.

Seriously? Are you playing with a joystick, with view changes mapped to some of the stick controls? If I was fighting something and suspected that my laser would overheat, I would already have the pylon coolant armed and ready to use. A press of a button is all it would take.

Anyhoo, I was aware of the good reasons why some don't want to tamper with laser cooling before I made the suggestion, but then I've never made a quasi-obligatory "Where's all the laser coolant!?" suggestion post

Poro wrote:

Seriously? Are you playing with a joystick, with view changes mapped to some of the stick controls?

I do that, on a gamepads right analogue stick, horizontal movement is yaw, and vertical movement is front and rear view.

In the beginning it was a b**** control scheme to learn; during in-fights I would suddenly look out the rear window.

Maybe it is also because of being on a gamepad, that I find all pylon-based weapons too slow to choose from and such.

snork wrote:

Maybe it is also because of being on a gamepad, that I find all pylon-based weapons too slow to choose from and such.

Hmm, I never considered something like that. I'm so used to just webbing my fingers across the keyboard when I need to target/select/deploy pylon equipment.

Poro wrote:

@Smivs: Yes indeed, halving the cooling time would be rather more effective.

Commander McLane wrote:

It would take more steps than simply turning your ship around and fire with another laser.

Seriously? Are you playing with a joystick, with view changes mapped to some of the stick controls? If I was fighting something and suspected that my laser would overheat, I would already have the pylon coolant armed and ready to use. A press of a button is all it would take.

If you are willing to forfeit the possibility to use your missiles, that is.

I am also playing with keyboard only, and a laser cooling device would probably not be the thing mounted on my first pylon. Thus, assuming that I am actually using my targetting device, I would have to de-select my current target ('U'), cycle through my missile slots until I stop at the correct one (an undefined amount of 'Y'), arm the device ('T') and fire it ('M'). And if I have pressed the wrong amount of 'Y' and ended up on a missile, nothing will happen, because I have no target selected. So I'd have to repeat the whole procedure.

I honestly think that during the time I would have wasted for this complicated procedure I simply could have yawed (',' or '.' on my keyboard) or climbed ('UP ARROW' or 'DOWN ARROW'), aimed and fired my opposite laser ('A') and vaporized my target. For a non- or slow-moving target I would even use my side lasers in conjunction with yaw.

Therefore personally I wouldn't bother with laser coolers.

Commander McLane wrote:

Therefore personally I wouldn't bother with laser coolers.

I actually would consider it. I hardly ever use missiles (unless there are too many enemies and I'm in really bad shape I use them to distract an enemy).

Fighting against very maneuverable ships I don't use the other lasers enough to cool down the front laser so coolant would be welcome.

Fighting e.g. against a Thargoid carrier I use all four lasers and after I've gone full circle the first laser is still heated between 1/3 and 1/2. So in that case I would welcome laser coolant, too.

Ideally, it would recharge though

Anyone think the engine tuning idea has merit? I don't want to go on about it, since it was someone else on the forum who mentioned it. I can't remember who though.

Poro wrote:

Anyone think the engine tuning idea has merit? I don't want to go on about it, since it was someone else on the forum who mentioned it. I can't remember who though.

I don't think that ship stats can (currently) be modified in-game ... but if I'm wrong (or if that changes) then I think it could be a good idea, depending on how it's done. A lot would depend on how hard such tune-ups were to come by. If they're quite common, then they would need to be fairly temporary (maybe wearing off by the next servicing). If, however, they're hard to come by – by which I mean, either as a reward for a mission, or just uncommon and hard to find (maybe only available from a very out-of-the-way Rock Hermit somewhere in the back end of nowhere) – then they could be long-lasting or even permanent. I don't think we could rely on simple cost to reduce the availability, though.

It would definitely add to the feeling that your ship is something unique and personal to you. I wouldn't want to see something that adds much more than (say) 0.2 to your top speed, though.

Disembodied wrote:

Poro wrote:

Anyone think the engine tuning idea has merit? I don't want to go on about it, since it was someone else on the forum who mentioned it. I can't remember who though.

I don't think that ship stats can (currently) be modified in-game ... but if I'm wrong (or if that changes) then I think it could be a good idea, depending on how it's done. A lot would depend on how hard such tune-ups were to come by. If they're quite common, then they would need to be fairly temporary (maybe wearing off by the next servicing). If, however, they're hard to come by – by which I mean, either as a reward for a mission, or just uncommon and hard to find (maybe only available from a very out-of-the-way Rock Hermit somewhere in the back end of nowhere) – then they could be long-lasting or even permanent. I don't think we could rely on simple cost to reduce the availability, though.

It would definitely add to the feeling that your ship is something unique and personal to you. I wouldn't want to see something that adds much more than (say) 0.2 to your top speed, though.

I think I suggested something similar sometime ago - with regards Thargoid's excellent Fuel Station oxp. Brand some of the stations and offer performance fuel (possibly mandatory for these tuned up ships) - I think the best we got was scripted fuel efficiency savings - i.e. slowly top up the fuel tank to mimic better fuel consumption figures - so in combat you'd go for longer on injectors.