Oolite 2: ship balance, starting conditions and death knells

[Zireael]

as another aspect of ship trading, i think it might be cool to sometimes force a trade on the player. it seems "unrealistic" to get the living sht kicked out of your ship on a regular basis, by combat or stuffing your docking procedure, and simply replace or repair stuff w/ a simple click on the F3 screen. i'd like a ship's integrity to be stored, say a simple 0~100 value that increases depending how much damage you take over a certain limit. it might start affecting ship attributes like speed or roll/pitch rates. there would come a time when you'd have to sell up and get a new one - too much damage and you get a shtty trade-in price of course.

Another great idea!

[dilky]

Hi, I've been playing EliteAGB on the DS which starts you in an Adder, so I thought I'd stick my oar in

In EliteAGB, you start off with an Adder with 8 cargo tonnes, but you have enough cash to get a beam laser as well as some cargo. There are no injectors and travelling outside of the witch point to station space lane doesn't reduce encounters, so things are really tough. Also, each piece of equipment takes up one cargo space, so you are forced into making choices. It's very low resolution, there are no nav bouys and you need frameskip to slow the game to a decent speed making docking a lot harder. Add all this up and you have one tough game!

Compared to this, I think Oolite is probably made a bit too easy by starting in the Cobra.

Ease players in gently, (optional) Lave Academy to start, maybe with some sort of prize at the end, followed by a scripted (optional) contract for a few freighter escort convoy missions so the little adder won't be all alone. They could ECM for you, you could scoop any pirate booty, the trader could give you advice. Would need to have some sort of group Jump Drive option though to stop it being a bit slow.

There is a huge gulf between the prices of the ships. Maybe it would help if the part exchange values were more generous or the ships were squashed in price a bit more. It would be a lot of runs to get the 100k for a Cobra Mk1. Maybe nerf the Moray a bit to make an easier halfway house?

[Zireael]

What's Elite AGB?

[Smivs]

Hi dilky, and welcome to the friendliest Board this side of Riedquat.
Good first post, and some interesting observations there. The Cobra 3 is a hangover from the 'original' Elite as you might be aware, and this fact is much debated as you might have noticed.
In a sense this is one of the most significant elements that might change with Oo2...a big departure from the games' 'roots' but a way to make it more coherant within itself.

[Switeck]

In the interest of ship balance, how about:
1.Reducing the Boa 1's cost to 300k (from 450k)? It's supposed to be the Python's replacement.
2.Giving the Fer de Lance almost every optional piece of equipment pre-installed to explain its ludicrously high cost?

[Commander McLane]

2.Giving the Fer de Lance almost every optional piece of equipment pre-installed to explain its ludicrously high cost?

However, the ludicrously high cost is not because of equipment, but because of the brand name, and the exquisite walnut dash and luxurious bathroom facilities.

[Cody]

and luxurious bathroom facilities.

Oh yes, a quality wet-room is vital on those long, sun-skimming, cross-chart runs.

[Smivs]

and the exquisite walnut dash and luxurious bathroom facilities.

The FerDeLance's zero-G Bidet is second to none!

[aegidian]

With starting conditions one approach might be to go back to Elite's origins in the Traveller TTRPG.

There one generated a character (through a series of die rolls) determining the character's immediate past and origins - Oolite's scripting system could do a similar job generating a random backstory for each new player character (could be pseudo-random based on the character's name and species, etc.) (oh yes, I for one would like to start as something other than human!)

That would allow for a variety of starting points, amounts of cash, equipment or cargo.

Where one character might start by inheriting a bare-bone Cobra 3 and 100 credits, another might be the recipient of a pile of gold, or have bid on an ex-pirate's craft (complete with 'some' equipment) at a Gal-Cop auction. It wouldn't take much to produce a screen full of backstory and a nice variety of random (but balanced and openly extendable) starting scenarios.

[Killer Wolf]

that's a damn good idea.

[Zireael]

that's a damn good idea.

Seconded!!!

[dilky]

What's Elite AGB?

It's a port of Elite A for the Gameboy Advance, later ported to the DS

Hi dilky, and welcome to the friendliest Board this side of Riedquat.

Cheers

[Staer9]

I have just had the most brilliant idea!:
a purchasable turret as equipment, the player then hires a crew member who is paid per jump, this turret auto aims and fires, different crew members (who cost different amounts) have more/less chance of hitting the enemy, the turret is a subentity so can be shot off (killing the unfortunate crew member) then you have to pay his funeral bill and purchase another turret.

what do you think?

[Thargoid]

It's not possible to add sub-entities, including turrets, to existing ships in-game. You can only do it by hacking the shipdata.plist entry to add them that way.

It's not exactly a new idea

[Cmdr James]

Ive always thought the key thing is allowing a different AI, or at least a different target per turret.