Oolite Bulletins

Even with target sensitive gunsight add-on, it can be difficult to get a good
bead on enemy ships from a distance (I know lasers break up etc) but, it
would be good to be able to have a gunsight feature that allows a zoom in.

This way a space-faring marksman can handplace his shots onto farway
enemies, instead of waiting for point-blank shots and dangerous missile
attention at short range. Not sure if this suggestion do-able...?

Just floating an idea...

I don't think it can be done.

In the meantime, you should train your aiming skills. It is not too hard to hit and kill a normal sized enemy ship from 20-25 km away. You just have to practice.

What McLane says… and sound is a good clue. The laser sound alters when you’re scoring hits. There used to be a visible ‘strike splash’ effect, that was useful at long range, but it got lost in witchspace.

There's also the Military HUD, which makes long-range aiming vastly easier, since it has an aiming pip and targets turn red on the targeting enhancement thing when you're aiming very close to them.

El Viejo wrote:

What McLane says… and sound is a good clue. The laser sound alters when you’re scoring hits. There used to be a visible ‘strike splash’ effect, that was useful at long range, but it got lost in witchspace.

The 'splash' sound is in BGS. When you hit something you can hear it.

pagroove wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

What McLane says… and sound is a good clue. The laser sound alters when you’re scoring hits. There used to be a visible ‘strike splash’ effect, that was useful at long range, but it got lost in witchspace.

The 'splash' sound is in BGS. When you hit something you can hear it.

It's also in vanilla Oolite, only perhaps the difference is more subtle.

Thanks, guys!
Just sounding out the possibilities.

No worries, my marksman skills are OK, also the red-gunsight mod is not always 100% dead-on.
I use the Oolite sounds 1 mod, and it has a good "crunch" noise when a hit is made.

PS
Will check out the Mili-HUD, though!

A tip: sometimes, you have to aim slightly below (or above) the target… something to do with the laser position, I think.

curtsibling wrote:

also the red-gunsight mod is not always 100% dead-on.

It will be in version 1.75. If you run that version and you see it red, it hits, no questions asked.

Good timing, a_c... I'd just downloaded trunk and am about to take it out.

Thanks for the answers, chaps! Looking forward to 1.7.5 version of Oolite.

Been practicing my long range gunnery, getting good at hits at the 19km range or over.
Useful when the dastardly enemies are packing Q-bombs as a 'going away present'...

I think some of it would depend on how you view your computer screen within the context of the game. If you think of it as basically a windshield or porthole, then any sort of zoom function would be unlikely unless there was maybe a separate display or scanner used for targeting. If you think of it as a display screen relaying a picture from some sort of cameras mounted on the hull, then it'd be sensible to think that a zoom function should be likely. Many computer applications and digital cameras had zoom or magnify functions fairly early in their history.

As I understand the matter, though, it'd be a real headache to manage with the game engine. It might be possible to do something via the camera position used for external views, but I'm not sure.

My personal solution was to get a magnifier for my monitor screen. That helps a bit and also feels better for immersion on both Oolite and flight sims. I've even toyed with the idea of getting a much smaller magnifier and mounting it on some sort of arm that could be pulled down in battle situations to add an additional degree of magnification. I figure the resolution would be less than spiffy, but when you're lining up a long-distance shot, you really aren't sight-seeing at that moment anyway.

Personally I'm not too keen on the idea as with a military laser you can take out most ships with one salvo. With four military lasers you could take out a whole armada before they could even get a glimpse of you if you are super accurate. So for me it adds a real sense of battle when they get up close and (almost) personal.

If you can aim that accurately and pay for 4 military lasers, you really deserve to be able to take out large numbers of ships quickly.

Phantom Hoover wrote:

If you can aim that accurately and pay for 4 military lasers, you really deserve to be able to take out large numbers of ships quickly.

4 military lasers are not that expensive. They cost only half as much as a military shield enhancement.

And aiming is, as already mentioned, only a question of practice. You may want to take a lesson in [wiki]laser tactics[/wiki]. On top of the useful advice you find when following the link, you should also be aware of [wp]parallax[/wp] compensation (or the lack thereof). In almost all ships your viewpoint is some meters above the laser mount. That's why your laser seems to originate from the bottom of your screen. Both your view and the laser go directly to the front, and the HUD crosshairs are centered for your viewpoint. This means that you should aim just a few meters above your target in order to make you laser hit. For distant targets these few meters may result in only one or two pixels on your screen, but these are crucial for accurate aiming. As a rule of thumb, always have your target one or two pixels below the center of your crosshairs. Then you'll hit it dead center.