Oolite Bulletins

This is an old thread. The current version of this OXP is discussed here.

Following several discussions on the BB it has become clear that many Commanders feel that the Player has an unfair advantage in terms of both speed and equipment levels. Whilst a good thing for the novice, many experienced commanders were finding things a little bit too easy, and felt that a bit more balance in the game was desirable.
Little can be done to make the 'baddies' more aggressive, or aim better, but in an attempt to redress the balance a bit, I have developed 'ToughGuys', a small, simple OXP which makes some of the Baddies, well, badder. This is NOT an OXP for Newbies!

'ToughGuys' makes the following changes:-
Adversaries get a weapons upgrade - if they previously had a Pulse laser they get a Beam laser, and if they previously had a Beam laser, they get Military lasers. Those with aft mounts available also get a rear Beam laser.
There is also a greatly increased chance of them having extra defensive equipment, such as shield boosters, military shield enhancement and ECM. Many will have fuel injectors and some will have the equivalent of an Extra Energy Unit, Also the NPC Mk III Cobra now has the same top speed as the player version.
The net result of these changes is that most (but not all) of the pirates you come across will be harder to kill, and will hurt you much more when they hit you. These changes only apply to 'core' NPCs which have the role 'Pirate', and I have been mindful to only give ships equipment they could/should have fitted.

I have been testing this for a few weeks now, and think I've got a good balance, but would still like some feedback. If you think it's too tough, tell me, and if you think the 'Baddies' are still too weedy, tell me that as well. You will be able to identify the ToughGuys as they have * (stars) either side of their name on the scanner, so a "Mk III Cobra" becomes a "*Mk III Cobra*".

Compatibility:-
ToughGuys OXP has been tested on Oolite v1.74.2 but should work on all versions. It uses a shipdata_overrides.plist to override some data in standard Oolite and other OXPs. It has been tested with standard Oolite and many other OXPs including Smivs'Shipset, but may be incompatible with OXPs using on-board override.plists. If any incompatibilities are found, please report these on the Bulletin Board.
EDIT:-
I have just uploaded v1.1 which includes code to allow this to function with Griff's Normal-mapped Ships. Thanks for the help, Griff. NB This has not actually been tested yet, so feedback is again very welcome.

You can download ToughGuys OXP here

Quick question: if AI ships have rear (or any other placement aside from front) lasers fitted, do they actually use them? I'm assuming so, but I've never really bothered to visually verify this.

I find myself running away a fair bit and so having a rear laser is actually quite handy for firing off a few "don't-mess-with-me" shots (even though I'm running away, I'm still doing it in a scary, tough-guy way).

Yep, rear lasers on NPCs
The ships in question are
Asp
Cobra Mk III
Cobra Mk I
Ferdelance
Moray Starboat
Python Blackdog

so be careful when you're chasing them.

i'm w/ DarkBee here, i'm racking my brains and i can honestly say i've never seen an NPC using a rear weapon. if i come up behind and fire, we start a twist dogfight, i've never had one fire at me w/ a rear gun. is there some AI condition that determines what they use and when?

Killer Wolf wrote:

i'm w/ DarkBee here, i'm racking my brains and i can honestly say i've never seen an NPC using a rear weapon. if i come up behind and fire, we start a twist dogfight, i've never had one fire at me w/ a rear gun. is there some AI condition that determines what they use and when?

I've had a few NPCs use their aft lasers on me, but I think they were all from Random Hits.

maik wrote:

Killer Wolf wrote:

i'm w/ DarkBee here, i'm racking my brains and i can honestly say i've never seen an NPC using a rear weapon. if i come up behind and fire, we start a twist dogfight, i've never had one fire at me w/ a rear gun. is there some AI condition that determines what they use and when?

I've had a few NPCs use their aft lasers on me, but I think they were all from Random Hits.

That you don't see rear lasers in use often is because none of oolites own ships has them and only very few oxp ships. They are mainly found in mission oxps like Random Hits and others. (said the pilot, who was just blown up by a q-mine that was ejected by an ups target )

How uncommon should these ‘tough guys’ be, Smivs? I’ve been crawling all over a feudal and an anarchy, and a couple of other systems, for the past couple of hours, found plenty of bandits of the right variety, some of them quite tough, but none that have been ‘asterisked’.

The Constrictor has a rear laser, doesn't it?

El Viejo wrote:

How uncommon should these ‘tough guys’ be, Smivs? I’ve been crawling all over a feudal and an anarchy, and a couple of other systems, for the past couple of hours, found plenty of bandits of the right variety, some of them quite tough, but none that have been ‘asterisked’.

That's odd. In a sense they should ALL be ToughGuys. The weapons upgrades are universal, and the other equipment is given to ships by a chance factor. It is this I have increased, so a Cobby 3 which would normally have a 0.25 chance of having Shield Boosters now has a 0.75 chance etc. Equipment which some ships could have but didn't has also been added again using a chance factor. A Krait for example can have Military Shield Enhancers but never does in the standard game. A ToughGuy Krait, though, has a 0.25 chance of getting one.
You might want to check your log to see if there's been a problem loading the OXP...don't forget to hold down 'Shift' when you start for the first time.

El Viejo wrote:

The Constrictor has a rear laser, doesn't it?

No. In theory it can have all four weapons facings, but the game only specifies a forward Military laser. ToughGuys does not affect the Constrictor.

Maybe I’m just not seeing the asterisks… the general feeling of that two hour session was that the bandits were tougher, but I could just be having a bad day (I’ve certainly been in a few serious firefights). No problems in the log. I’ll run the oxp some more tonight… I like the idea.

I think Griff’s Constrictor packs a rear mil laser… I’m sure that it’s used it on me.

The asterisks are quite small, I suppose, and only Role Pirate ships are affected.
I just had a quick test and was attacked by a group comprising a Python Blackdog and Moray Starboat which are ToughGuys, and a couple of Mamba Escorts which aren't (the standard (pirate) Mamba is).

It may well be my poor old eyes then… I’ll take Rolling Thunder out again, and have another look.
What about npc on npc combat… when not making my life more difficult, are these tough guys wreaking havoc on innocent traders?

El Viejo wrote:

… when not making my life more difficult, are these tough guys wreaking havoc on innocent traders?

Yes, they probably are, so all the more reason to hunt them down

On a serious note, while they are tougher, I haven't populated the Ooniverse with wall-to-wall Iron-Ass pirates. Yes they do all have a weapons upgrade, but other than that, some (many?) will still be as before, quite a few will perhaps have an extra one or two bits of kit. Once in a long while you might just come across a true Iron-Ass.
This OXP started as a bit of fun for me - I beefed-up some of the NPCs in the shipdata.plist of Smivs'Shipset to see what would happen. Over many weeks I've been tweaking it (making them tougher, mostly ) and fine-tuning it to what I thought the Commander of a good Iron-Ass (i.e. Me) deserves. I suppose releasing it as a working OXP was almost an afterthought.
To get back on subject, I really haven't noticed any obvious change in the number of Traders, or anything else, come to that. If anything I just got the impression there are more baddies than usual but there is no reason for this connected to the OXP as far as I know. It's probably just the habit I've got into of hanging around Low-Tech Anarchies and Feudal systems.

Killer Wolf wrote:

i'm w/ DarkBee here, i'm racking my brains and i can honestly say i've never seen an NPC using a rear weapon. if i come up behind and fire, we start a twist dogfight, i've never had one fire at me w/ a rear gun. is there some AI condition that determines what they use and when?

They are used in BEHAVIOUR_RUNNING_DEFENSE. Most personalities-ships feature rear lasers, for instance.

That's a relief... it wasn't my eyes. Smivs, as soon as I removed Griff's shipset, 'asterisked' bandits were all over the place.
Haven't had a really good firefight yet, to judge how tough they are. Griff's shipset must be suppressing the tough guys.

Ah, just saw your edit in the first post... re-downloading.