Oolite Bulletins

Possible OXP suggestion.

Why not different types of main guns.

You have pulse/ beam/ military. Really all they are is small medium and large lasers.

Heres some suggestions:

The QFB: Quirium Fuelled Blaster cannon.

The ultimate in Killy-kill weaponry, fires a wide beam blast of focused ionised quirium a bit like a ship mounted shot gun. Can kill most starfighters in 1-2 hits and large ships 3-5 hits.
because it uses your quirium reserves it doesnt drain the energy banks.
Disadvantages: Better have enough reserve quirium in your tanks. Short range only. Make damn sure no ally is in the way of the blast when you fire this thing because they wont be an ally (or anything for that matter) for long!

Particle Lance:
Fires rapid pulses of ionised particles. Although low in power the Lance has the advantageous affect of 70%-90% of its energy passing through an enemy ships shields.

Electro Magnetic Blaster.

A simple blaster that uses focused electro-magnetic waves to not only deal damage but to fry ship systems even with the shields up. It will cause standard beam laser damage.
Disadvantages: All that electrical feedback can cause a massive overload in the target ships engines causing a reactor breach in 1-2% of cases. RUN.

Shield effect: Why not a simple shield effect like the wormhole sphere around a ship. Blue/green is healthy, yellow not so good, and red shields are about to collapse. Also damage effect. When a ship takes hull damage and starts to spark it also loses alloy panels too? As if the ship is breaking up. obviously in the menu have the option to turn much of these things off for low end computers.

Mmmm, interesting ideas, but personally I think we should just stick to lasers. Even these new-fangled plasma turrets are pushing the boundaries in my mind.
How about a low-tech approach...re-inforced hulls so you can just ram the buggers into non-existance

OK maybe not for the standard game but certainly gun ideas for OXP's and mods.

The shield idea could be a nice bit o eye candy for the main game though!

I asked about coloured shield spheres - a loooooong time ago.

I think Thargoid even tried to implement it! but the engine just wasn't up to it...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I asked about coloured shield spheres - a loooooong time ago.

I think Thargoid even tried to implement it! but the engine just wasn't up to it...

Not yet...

Yeah, stick with the simplicity of lasers for now: it's that very simplicity that forces you to think of new ways to approach the enemy. I've got a couple of my own ideas for weapons, but if I ever make them it'll be a long time from now, and I think OXPs really are the place for that sort of thing.

In my view, plasma turrets are just right. They are weak enough, and slow enough, that putting one on a ship doesn't affect gameplay balance. In fact, even the Griff Boa can be taken down fairly easily, and that has about 4 plasma turrets. You need so many plasma turrets on a ship that they would fire a 'cloud' of plasma before they posed a serious threat. In that way the game remains balanced, and we still have variety.

I've also been thinking about a weapon that bypasses shields - but that is going to have to be massively draining/expensive to keep firing, due to it's unbalancing affect on the game. I mean, all I have on my combat craft is a military laser on fore and aft - and it takes a lot to cause me any trouble. If I had a shield bypassing weapon I would tear through the game.

Anyhoo, didn't mean to be too negative about your ideas Rusti - you should definitely think of making them into OXPs.

P.S. I actually quite like the fact that we have no enemy shield readout - it makes it more tense and rewarding as you wait for that tell-tale plasma venting.

If you are close enough, you can estimate enemy shield strength by their engine flicker soon before plasma leaks.

As for my weapon ideas: Electromagnetically propelled kinetic gun (railgun/coilgun/whatever). Ye olde cannon. Quite high damage, low energy requirements and long range, but difficult to aim because of projectile speed. Limited ammo, but possible to carry replacements in hold.

Plasma Spread gun: anyone remembers spreadfire cannon from Descent?

Its a matter of opinion, but for me the weapon suggestions are a bit too arcade-game and not really oolite. If anything Id prefer to move to a more modular lasers with varying damage, range and colour, but even that is quite a touchy subject. Im sure this has come up before.

There is also a practical consideration that the lasers are horribly entangled in the code, and changing them would not be my idea of a fun weekend.

Cmdr James wrote:

If anything Id prefer to move to a more modular lasers with varying damage, range and colour, but even that is quite a touchy subject.

I like this idea. More skilled combat pilots could elect to sacrifice immediate power to increase the range of their laser - allowing a good aim to keep his or her distance from the enemy.. although never doing as much damage (before over-heating) as a shorter range laser.

As for colour - since visible light lasers are significantly weaker than non-visible lasers, I always assumed that the colour was just tracer light added in to the laser for the pilot's convenience. I normally change the colour every now and then in my shipdata file.

Poro wrote:

P.S. I actually quite like the fact that we have no enemy shield readout - it makes it more tense and rewarding as you wait for that tell-tale plasma venting.

SAME!

It's already rather easy to tap-tap an enemy with military laser hits to provoke them to bail out. I can get quite a few derelict Pythons and Cobra 3's to salvage (using Dredgers OXP) as-is. Having an enemy shield readout would make what's already easy enough...a complete joke.

Well i just made the suggestion, i hope no one thinks any less of me for suggesting it i detect an air of 'i shouldnt have said that' in some peoples responces.

RustiSwordz wrote:

Well i just made the suggestion, i hope no one thinks any less of me for suggesting it i detect an air of 'i shouldnt have said that' in some peoples responces.

It's fine - and even if it did come out/became viable - it'd be an oxp and therefore not mandatory - so those who think it would make it a joke wouldn't install it, and those who think "cool" - would.

Simples.

<offers calming feather preening to anybody who is interested>

RustiSwordz wrote:

Well i just made the suggestion, i hope no one thinks any less of me for suggesting it i detect an air of 'i shouldnt have said that' in some peoples responces.

That's what I was worried about, hence my

Poro wrote:

Anyhoo, didn't mean to be too negative about your ideas Rusti - you should definitely think of making them into OXPs

Don't ever let the ideas stop!

Do note that shield percentage would not help as much as absolute values.
My Cobra 3's shield can be at 10% and still be about as tough as a starting player's Cobra 3 at 40% shields...because I have Shield boosters and Military Shields.