Oolite Bulletins

Following one thread about the player ship, I did realise that having the player as the fastest ship in the Ooniverse is 'a bit' unrealistic. In RL there's always someone faster than you.

If we were to just alter the base ship speeds that's likely to just trigger a race to get faster player ships, etc...
One thing that can be done, however, is to get a percentage of enemy ships to be faster than the current pilot max speed, no matter how ridiculously fast the player's ship might or might not be.

We could, for example, randomly make half of the asps in a system to be 10% faster than the player, and 2/3 of Thargons to be 20% faster than the player too...

It's probably a MNSR thing, but I do like the idea myself...

What do you guys think?

I'm not so sure.

There's some native pirate and police ships that are faster than the player Cobby. The Constrictor is the fastest native ship. And more than a few oxp ships outrun the Cobby.

Thargons being faster or not is pretty much a nonissue; Splash the Thargoid main combat ship and the drones go dormant anyway.

True, I suppose this idea would mainly apply to people flying ultra fast oxp ships: if you can easily outrun everything else, things might well become a bit too easy/boring after a while...

Just a quick mention that I've started a Poll regarding this subject here, relating to the imminent release of Version 2 of Smivs' Shipset.

You would have to restrict any speed boost to hostile ships only, otherwise you're going to get players stuck in traffic. Either that, or do a major rewrite and give the NPCs torus jumpdrives. The fastest ship I have in my ooniverse is the Fer-de-lance NG (substantially faster than my own Wolf II SE). At first I was encountering lots of trader FDL NGs, and – because I don't shoot peopl who aren't shooting at me – I kept having to go off-lane to overtake them with the torus drive. I ended up editing the OXP to make it an (almost) exclusively pirate or bounty-hunter ship: the pirates I could blow up, the bounty hunters are heading out to the witchpoint as I'm flying inwards and I don't get stuck behind them.

Kaks wrote:

Following one thread about the player ship, I did realise that having the player as the fastest ship in the Ooniverse is 'a bit' unrealistic. In RL there's always someone faster than you.

When I first started playing oolite, I thirsted for speed, and was always on the lookout for a faster ship. I eventually worked one commander all the way up to an Interstellar Explorer, but soon sold it in favor of something a bit more, um, capable.

These days, my first impulse when entering combat is to throttle down, not up, often all the way to zero. I use injectors to change position. When I'm planning to "clear the lane", I set my throttle to about 50%, which is usable for combat and just right for scooping afterward. Extra speed comes in handy only when I'm trying to outrun or catch somebody who is also on injectors, which thankfully happens rarely. (Yes, the above describes "ideal" conditions. But even in less than ideal conditions, a few extra tenths of an LM don't usually make much difference.)

For me nowadays, a faster ship is not a better ship. When I first started designing OXP ships, I was always trying to edge their speed higher, limited only by Lestradae's "realistic" pricing formula. Now, I look at other aspects like maneuverability, recharge rate, and missile slots.

So if you guarantee that some ships are faster than mine at all times, I doubt I'd notice. Just one predator's opinion.

In the midst of a close quarters dogfight with multiple bandits, it’s skill, maneuverability and durability that count.
Overall top speed counts for nothing in that situation (which is where I find myself, mostly).

I'm also of the cut the throttle when attacked school.

Pirates tend to charge straight at you when on the attack, and only break and run when damaged or chased by a missile. I cut throttle and lasersnipe them as they're coming in, and only apply some thrust when close-range dogfighting.

Speed only counts when chasing the punks trying to run away, or dodging injectorheads trying to ram you.

For fighting, I am also of the school of slowing down to anything from half to dead stop for dog-fighting. From a purely practical point of view, it helps for keeping most of your opponents within scanner range. If you go off chasing one of them down, you can lose several while you're bagging the one.

If a pirate or whatever decides to turn tail and run after they get their nose bloodied, I usually just let them. They'll either be back or they won't, and it's a case of the AI actually doing what a player might do.

If there are no ships in the Ooniverse that the player's Cobra MKIII couldn't outrun, then there's never a time when the player *has* to turn and make a stand when the odds are against him/her. Outflying and outfighting the opponents is part of what makes the player actually feel like an experienced combateer engaging in epic heroic fights.

Fighting against faster ships takes a bit of different strategy than a "fair fight". If they're coming head on you want to target, give them a burst, then jink and hit the injectors for a second or two, target them again and give them another burst and so on. Or if you can peel to one side and come up in their 6 and stay there long enough to salt their tail good. Sure, they may be pulling away from you, but you've got a while before they'll manage to get out of range and there your marksmanship will pay off.

To be honest, I hadn't noted any lack of fast opponents. I'm pretty sure I recall plenty of cases where they at least were fast enough I couldn't gain on them in a chase when we were both on injectors. Though if we're talking about when the opponent has the same model of ship, yeah, I've sometimes wondered if they were nerfed down a bit.

Basically we seem to agree that speed is not really relevant in a fight, only for traffic jams and chases.

I suppose I was really trying to find out if anyone would be really bothered by not having the fastest-est ship ever: always having someone faster than you - by design - would probably help tone down this side of - uberosity, was it? - and make the rich tapestry of Oolite richer (or tapestrier, I'm not fussed!).

In any case it's something I might remember about after we finally have the mythical next stable release out of the mythical door!

I wouldn't say that it's not relevant so much as it is only one possible advantage. A faster roll, pitch or yaw also are also advantages. More weapons mounts are an advantage, as are energy enhancements, shield enhancements and all of it. Cargo space is an advantage for trade, obviously.

Where things become unrealistic is if a ship is made or modded so that it has all the advantages. If a ship has a lot of cargo space (we'll assume the space isn't just empty) then it's going to maneuver about like a bathtub in molasses. It's a matter of mass and inertia. It could still get up to a good speed with a big enough engine, but a small ship that's practically all engine should be able to fly circles around it.

For example, I could take my Cobra MK III and hack it to have a more aggressive roll, pitch and yaw. Sometimes in a fight I do wish it would turn faster.. But then it wouldn't feel as "realistic" from a player POV. It wouldn't feel like a hunk of metal over 130 meters across and 65 meters long. Personally, I think that having the cargo bay extension should cut speed down from maybe 350 to 330 or so. At least a little bit of a dink to make up for the additional mass. For that matter, having enhanced shields should cut into how long the lasers can fire since any such enhancement would take some of the available energy and also need some of the cooling.

In some places in the game, we already see this sort of balance. Having passenger berths cuts into cargo space, for example.

I don't feel the player ship should be automatically faster, but I'm not sure as the NPC ships should be either. Logically, top of the line gear is available to anyone with the cr to afford it and who knows where to buy it. Sure there will always likely be some ships out there faster than the player. But a Cobra MK III in good condition should be the same top speed whether it's player or NPC. An exception to that might be to come up with some upgrades that add little bits, maybe 5 or 10 LM per upgrade. They could be expensive and only available at maybe very few places in all the 8 galaxies. Like to get a 360 LM Cobra MK II, maybe you have to go to a speed shop in an anarchy system in galaxy 7 and it's going to cost a lot and may not be available all the time.

Allow that a certain percentage of NPC ships might have one or more such upgrades as well, and then you'd have ships faster than the player ship, but for a reason and that reason would lead into some gameplay mission because the player wants it too!

Logically there has to be a balance to that advantage, so maybe make any such "soup up" items only add to speed beyond the point where the speed indicator goes into the red. Then make running your ship in the red result in more maintenance needs, maybe only possible at stations above a certain tech level or a "speed shop" somewhere in the anarchies. That concept is at least mentioned in some of the fiction. Maybe make some of the upgrades "illegal", so if you use them when GalCop is within scanner range it'll up the offender rating a bit.

Some of those after market modifications could also be less than 100% reliable. Like a tachyonic turbocharger could blow out in the middle of a fight or chase when the ship is at top speed and leave the ship sitting dead in space for 30 or 45 seconds while the systems were re-routed so the standard engines could come back online (at the old non hotrodded speed). If that could happen to the NPC as well as the player, it could add an interesting element to gameplay.

I agree that there can and should be fast NPC ships, but I think it could be better gameplay if the player can be just as fast if they spend enough money and trouble (and are willing to take the same risks) to match them.

Ganelon wrote:

I wouldn't say that it's not relevant so much as it is only one possible advantage. A faster roll, pitch or yaw also are also advantages.

I think that faster turnrates are actually a disadvantage, because at least at lower framerates they make aiming much more difficult. In the past I have found myself tuning down the turn rates of my ship, in order to make it better.

Now that's an interesting point, Commander McLane. While faster turn rate might not be an advantage to all players, I think it *would* be a distinct advantage to all NPCs. I don't think the AI isn't going to have difficulty aiming, you'll be in their sights as soon as they can bring the ship around unless you're using a good bit of evasion tactics.

Methinks faster speed and also faster turn rates are not helpful in a fight in the first case and actually a problem in the second case for the reasons Cmdr McLane says.

The "Interstellar Explorer" was a one-shot idea about a ship consisting of nothing but engines. It could mount quite some missiles, but had only one laser and very slow turn rates plus a single energy bank.

And in combat situations, it was extremely not good. You could run away anytime - but trying to fight in a thing that overshoots every time and turns slowly? That's a bad idea.

I think player and NPC ships should have the same options except for the energy bomb (which would be just frustrating if the NPCs had that fully).

But then it has been said about me that as a former hardcore C64 player I like my challenges a bit too much. Still my 0.2 Cr.

L

Am I right in thinking that npc's don't have 'yaw'?