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[mauridadde]

- It seems like the AI acts this way: 3 missiles incoming, 3 PD missiles sent. I destroyed those 3 as soon as possible, he had a lot of time to send 3 more but didn't. By the way, could you add a way to auto target enemy PD missiles ? Mostly in the menus of "1st Role" and "2nd Role".

Rereading this i understand what you meant. You have destroyed the PD missiles but he did not send any more PD missiles. He was supposed to launch new missiles, there must be a bug somewhere.

[rex4]

I don't think it is usually necessary to shoot them but i may add the option when i improve the tactical window.

I realize that in the case of big/slow ships, against a close enemy, rockets are not even avoidable anymore so in that case PD is really needed. Lot more reports/questions tomorrow.

[rex4]

Health of components are like "8/8 (7.2)", what does the last number mean ?

What are range limits of cameras, thermal sensors, radars, warp sensors (is it normal that those also detect close ships not in warp ?), and distance of visibility without any sensor if any, like a big ship just in front the cockpit ?

What is the range of warp disruptor ?

I saw a strange behaviour, an ennemy that fled with warp after he had no weapons, did circles with warp around me, even when I disabled my warp. He did that for like 1 minute, giving me time to cool and recharge batteries.
Later I was about to reach him but he turned suddenly and my ship continued to go forward while stopping and rewarping to him fixed that.

About what I said about trade being the only useful function: there is "warp to" too but you can see only one of those so when too far maybe a right click should warp to it.

It may be hard but any way to see the system in 3d in sandbox mode, even just with blue/red glasses, would help a lot, or at least something that shows how far each ships are from the POV, like with smaller squares maybe or like in eve online with ortogonale(well that's the word in french and italian, the irony is I didn't find in english) lines showing how higher or lower they are. In the mean time when I warp I move a lot the mouse just to keep an idea of where each ennemies are on the 3 axes to make sure no one gets bellow 50g.

What's the point of the pirate station since it doesn't attack ? Do pirates try to flee there to repair ? I also saw it spawning harder ennemies with time, I don't know if this happen at the same time weaker ennemies flee, probably to it, nor if destroying it stop the spawnings (it sounds like incredibly hard but since it doesn't attack maybe not).

Please fix that I have to set left click to right click each time I restart the game.

Missiles probably correct their trajectory way too much, you see them using all their thrusters all the time, wasting fuel. It may just be that when one thruster fix trajectory, the other one slow it down but slightly too much thus the other one slow too but slightly too much and thus they keep fixing the mistake of the other.

[mauridadde]

In hull editor, what is "radiator" ? Saw only components with "ld radiator".

LD Radiators are liquid droplet radiators. Radiators are standard radiators and are not yet implemented.

Changing the hull thickness is not shown on the model, it doesn't matter much but with a slightly larger ship there is slightly more chances to receive bullets, here not. It may be tricky to change though, unless you can just scale up the model. The slider to change the hull thickness lack of precision also, simply allow to type directly any number to fix that.

The dimension increase is very little compared to the ship dimension and it can be ignored.

"Trade" is the only thing to do with stations and it's done often, maybe remove the menu and a single right click on them does trade, with a message appearing as usual if the ship is going too fast or is too far.

But then how are accessed the other options?

Health of components are like "8/8 (7.2)", what does the last number mean ?

Is the minimum hitpoints required to function.

[rex4]

But then how are accessed the other options?

Only other option that may be useful is to set as a reference, it can be done with navigation interface. If one wants to have fun by attacking it, it can be done with the weapons interface.

[mauridadde]

What are range limits of cameras, thermal sensors, radars, warp sensors (is it normal that those also detect close ships not in warp ?), and distance of visibility without any sensor if any, like a big ship just in front the cockpit ?

Camera max range is 35Km, Radar 1000Km. Thermal Sensors and Warp Sensors range is unlimited. Warp Sensors also detects ships that are using Warp Disruptors. Objects are always detected when closer than 500m.
Warp Disruptor range is 10^9 m.

I saw a strange behaviour, an ennemy that fled with warp after he had no weapons, did circles with warp around me, even when I disabled my warp. He did that for like 1 minute, giving me time to cool and recharge batteries.
Later I was about to reach him but he turned suddenly and my ship continued to go forward while stopping and rewarping to him fixed that.

Once he has no weapons should just run away, I don't know why he circled around.

What's the point of the pirate station since it doesn't attack ? Do pirates try to flee there to repair ? I also saw it spawning harder ennemies with time, I don't know if this happen at the same time weaker ennemies flee, probably to it, nor if destroying it stop the spawnings (it sounds like incredibly hard but since it doesn't attack maybe not).

The pirate station doesn't move but attack if you warp there. Pirate ships go there for repairs and refuel. Each time a ship is destroyed a new one is spawned at pirate station, unless the station is destroyed.

Please fix that I have to set left click to right click each time I restart the game.

Is already fixed for the next version.

Missiles probably correct their trajectory way too much, you see them using all their thrusters all the time, wasting fuel. It may just be that when one thruster fix trajectory, the other one slow it down but slightly too much thus the other one slow too but slightly too much and thus they keep fixing the mistake of the other.

Is a problem as old as the game itself. The thruster control is very precise. If you take control of a missile and use stop rotation the missile is stopped immediatly. The problem is that the direction that the missile require is constantly changing and it tries to be always perfectly aligned. I could made so that it is slower to correct direction but then it may miss the target. The last time i tried to solve this problem for ships(not missiles) using thrusters i didn't manage to solve it.

But then how are accessed the other options?

Only other option that may be useful is to set as a reference, it can be done with navigation interface. If one wants to have fun by attacking it, it can be done with the weapons interface.

The game is very complex. I prefer to have a exhaustive interface even if it is slower for a more experienced player.

[rex4]

Warp Disruptor range is 10^9 m.

You mean 1000000km ? Mine seems to be like 30km And I guess it's not the same for bigger disruptors.

[Mattk50]

ill have to try this later, looks quite good.

[rex4]

The game is very complex. I prefer to have a exhaustive interface even if it is slower for a more experienced player.

Maybe add this as an option then, unchecked by default.

[mauridadde]

What are range limits of cameras, thermal sensors, radars, warp sensors (is it normal that those also detect close ships not in warp ?), and distance of visibility without any sensor if any, like a big ship just in front the cockpit ?

Camera max range is 35Km, Radar 1000Km. Thermal Sensors and Warp Sensors range is unlimited. Warp Sensors also detects ships that are using Warp Disruptors. Objects are always detected when closer than 500m.
Warp Disruptor range is 10^9 m.

Warp Disruptor range is 10^9 m.

You mean 1000000km ? Mine seems to be like 30km And I guess it's not the same for bigger disruptors.

For Every sensor and disruptor these are the max ranges. The detection distance depend on the power of the sensor, the target attributes and the sensing direction.
For camera and thermal sensor it depends on thermal emissions. To check the emission of your ship type in console .ship.thermal_signature_side

For radar depends on radar signature, .ship.radar_signature

Warp sensors depends on mass and speed of the target if warping, or strength of warp disruptor.

The distance you can escape from a warp disruptor depends on the strength of disruptor and your warp engines.

[rex4]

Random battle mode gives me really low fps if I look the enemies. Any ways to make the game looks worst so I get higher fps ? Maybe it's not the gpu but cpu that reach its max though.

About PD targeting missile batteries: even worst, usually the warhead will be damaged first anyway since it's above the battery: if it's destroyed while the battery is still intact, instead of targeting another missile the PD will continue to attack this missile until its battery is destroyed. Anyway, in real life, the warhead should explode when damaged right ?

I wondered if lasers could overkill missiles, that is, if 4 lasers were pointing the same missile with autofire and fire at the same time while only 1 laser was needed, if the 3 other would fire it anyway or shoot another missile: it seems like they don't overkill but I'm not sure, maybe sometime there is 1 or 2 laser hit too much or maybe those were needed. Did you code something to prevent overkill or with perfect symmetry etc they would theoretically overkill ?

When lh2 is empty, in stats window you can see instead like "lox: 97% lox: 97%", no problem, but sometime this appears while I still have some lh2 left.

That may be your planet avoidance system but: in random battle mode, at the end I could warp to the last enemy but my ship went the opposite way first.
And if fact after its 180° it did another one: straight to the planet it tried to avoid while the enemy moved on the left anyway.

Do dead ships with warp disruptor intact (dead because no weapon/thrusters) still prevent warps ?

When game is paused there is no way to know if it will start to warp when the game is unpaused, if you forgot a command you gave etc.

I may have found a way to defeat "easily" the pirate station (which indeed does attack, I may have messed up things with "take control"), well not easily at all so don't fix it, at least for now: a speeder moved just bellow it can't be shot except by missiles that lasers may be able to destroy. With current interface it's very hard to do unless I missed something. What surprised me is the fact that despite the 2 warp disruptors I could warp as close as I wanted. The quite absurd thing is that the turret at the bottom does see half the ship, but since it aims the powerplant which is in the hidden half it doesn't even try to destroy the 2 weapons it could attack.
More important, it does mean that the same is true for speeder vs speeder: with autofire, if the ship is tilted enough that a weapon can't fire the powerplant while it could fire something else of the ship it won't, which may be good to get more money once the ship is disabled but bad otherwise.
Otherwise there is a truly easy way to destroy the pirate station but that is most likely not intended at all: a kamikaze ship with game slowed down a lot, with warp both ships explode.

I want to make sure: there is no way to manually control a turret rotation ?

Sometime leaving Solar view to C view leaves the circles of planets.

Now, something more about the core gameplay of the game: with speeder vs speeder I always use 6/7 lasers and 1/2 missile pods, I never use bullets weapons because on fast/small/far targets they do next to nothing, they are probably way more interesting with big ships battle though (like "katarelva vs katarelva" which crash when you launch it by the way but I guess it's quite the same as spawning them with debug window). Bullets weapons may be useful by getting closer but thus enemy bullets wouldn't be avoidable anymore too. So my strategy is always the same: destroy all weapons, destroy PD missile pods, launch missiles. What annoys me is how seemingly random it is to destroy some weapons, basically weapons are either damaged on first hit or after like 1 minute. Reasons to this:
- sometime the weapon is simply behind the enemy ship, but it's actually rare
- weapon is too far, but usually not because other weapons of the same ship can be destroyed easily, thus I guess it's mainly this 3rd reason:
- angle, with an angle not ortogonale enough it only generate heat and maybe damaged the hull slightly, but I guess you agree that observing the enemy ship often and checking all the time when one weapon is inclined enough so it can be damaged, is quite annoying, and it's even worst with multiple enemy ships like in random battle mode.
So instead of something quite complex to code which would be about that the game keep checking the angle of all enemy weapons and fire the best one, I think there is something simple to do: custom autofire. If I could customize autofire, instead of priority of something like "powerplant, battery..." I would put "lasers, railgun, "etc from fastest to slowest, and if first hit doesn't change a weapon from green to another color, it skips it, once it destroyed/skipped all weapons it does the same for the next ship in the list if there is one (unless specified that it attacks lasers of all ships, then railguns of all ships etc) and once it's at the bottom of the list it restart from the beginning.

When is next update coming, what can we expect inside ? By the way please allow to make custom list of what's in navigation/weapons list, mainly to remove dead ships and dead missiles when "missiles" is checked.

[rex4]

I looked your old website, what is the "tempest class" and what happened between 11 06 2011 and 16 06 2013 were you didn't update the game it seems ? Maybe it's your personal life and I don't have to know, I just wonder if this could happen again. Kickstarter/indiegogo people would also like to be sure that this doesn't happen again, some people take the money and later no one hear about them forever, this was close from true for http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hotairraccoongames/endless-migration-2/posts for example.

Can you add a "borderless windowed" mode ? It shouldn't be hard at all because I'm very close to this using WindowedBorderlessGaming tool on windowed 1920x1080 resolution, only problem is that turrets squares become wrong and the cursor can't go very close to the borders of the screen. I want that to be able to have a movie in a corner on top of the game. It annoys me one bit that the gpu work for nothing to generate game images bellow it but that would be too much asked I guess.

[rex4]

About the lack of precision the slider to change the hull thickness: same for the armor simulator, rate of fire in components window etc.

"It is possible to set the dimension of the hit area on the target." "Smaller is more penetrating but also less damaging.", this is true for the hull but not the component right ? If set to the minimum it will do only a small hole in the hull but the component will be damaged as much as possible right ? "pulses left" have to be as high as possible to do the most damage to the component right ? If so, I'd like an option or something that by default all lasers have the minimum spot diameter. "pulses left" doesn't go higher than 99 because it's a percentage ? If so, first I'd like it to be more precise like "99,932" (same in navigation 2 window about the direction, for special goals 10 numbers after the comma may be useful), then I'd like to understand: let's say, 2000J with 50 pulses left does as much damage to the component than 10000J with 10 pulses left ?

Sometime some turrets "shake", you can see it slightly by looking at them and a lot by watching with their camera, does it use more energy or is it just a unimportant graphic bug ? Anyway it's not because of aiming adjustment, the target doesn't move and other turrets on the speeder don't shake.

[mauridadde]

Random battle mode gives me really low fps if I look the enemies. Any ways to make the game looks worst so I get higher fps ? Maybe it's not the gpu but cpu that reach its max though.

If you look back at your ship the fps return normals? You can check if the problem is graphic or physic by pressing twice ctrl+f. In the right part of the performance window there is the time occupation of the physic and rendering thread.

About PD targeting missile batteries: even worst, usually the warhead will be damaged first anyway since it's above the battery: if it's destroyed while the battery is still intact, instead of targeting another missile the PD will continue to attack this missile until its battery is destroyed. Anyway, in real life, the warhead should explode when damaged right ?

If there are too many missiles and the risk of one of them exploding on the ship then it is not a good behavior. But usually is correct because the missile could still deliver impact damage simply because of mass and velocity.
Military explosives are very stable but i don't know if a laser can make them explode.

I wondered if lasers could overkill missiles, that is, if 4 lasers were pointing the same missile with autofire and fire at the same time while only 1 laser was needed, if the 3 other would fire it anyway or shoot another missile: it seems like they don't overkill but I'm not sure, maybe sometime there is 1 or 2 laser hit too much or maybe those were needed. Did you code something to prevent overkill or with perfect symmetry etc they would theoretically overkill ?

It is possible to have laser overkill but for it to happen the turrets should align with the target in the same physic step and have the laser ready to fire. There is no need for special code.

That may be your planet avoidance system but: in random battle mode, at the end I could warp to the last enemy but my ship went the opposite way first.
And if fact after its 180° it did another one: straight to the planet it tried to avoid while the enemy moved on the left anyway.

It is probably the planet avoidance.

Do dead ships with warp disruptor intact (dead because no weapon/thrusters) still prevent warps ?

Yes. Being dead is just an AI opinion of when a ship can be ignored but whatever is not damaged, on the dead ship, continue to work as usual.

I may have found a way to defeat "easily" the pirate station (which indeed does attack, I may have messed up things with "take control"), well not easily at all so don't fix it, at least for now: a speeder moved just bellow it can't be shot except by missiles that lasers may be able to destroy. With current interface it's very hard to do unless I missed something. What surprised me is the fact that despite the 2 warp disruptors I could warp as close as I wanted.

You managed to sneak below the station because station AI forgot to actually enable warp disruptors. You used dev mode to reduce simulation speed and manually pilot the ship to itercept while warping but this way of playing is not supported by the physic engine. For performance reasons the disruptors are only checked when a ship try to enter warp but once in warp disruptors are ignored. When you use the "warp to" function there is special code to handle the encounter with the destination.

[mauridadde]

The quite absurd thing is that the turret at the bottom does see half the ship, but since it aims the powerplant which is in the hidden half it doesn't even try to destroy the 2 weapons it could attack.
More important, it does mean that the same is true for speeder vs speeder: with autofire, if the ship is tilted enough that a weapon can't fire the powerplant while it could fire something else of the ship it won't, which may be good to get more money once the ship is disabled but bad otherwise.

In normal gameplay this situation never happens as the distances are so big compared to the ship dimension that a weapon can either completely see the enemy ship or not at all.

I want to make sure: there is no way to manually control a turret rotation ?

Yes there is. Make sure to disable AI and to have cameras on the turret. Press F2 until you are in the turret you want to control and then press o to take control of the turret.

Now, something more about the core gameplay of the game: with speeder vs speeder I always use 6/7 lasers and 1/2 missile pods, I never use bullets weapons because on fast/small/far targets they do next to nothing, they are probably way more interesting with big ships battle though (like "katarelva vs katarelva" which crash when you launch it by the way but I guess it's quite the same as spawning them with debug window). Bullets weapons may be useful by getting closer but thus enemy bullets wouldn't be avoidable anymore too. So my strategy is always the same: destroy all weapons, destroy PD missile pods, launch missiles.

This laser only ship work because most of the ship designs are not optimal. A real opponent is a speeder T10, and with 70mm steel turrets is very resistant to size3 laser turrets at 25 Km.  AI does not yet know how to use shields, but soon it will. If you encounter a speeder T11 that has shield generators you would be in trouble because lasers are weak against shields.

So instead of something quite complex to code which would be about that the game keep checking the angle of all enemy weapons and fire the best one, I think there is something simple to do: custom autofire. If I could customize autofire, instead of priority of something like "powerplant, battery..." I would put "lasers, railgun, "etc from fastest to slowest, and if first hit doesn't change a weapon from green to another color, it skips it, once it destroyed/skipped all weapons it does the same for the next ship in the list if there is one (unless specified that it attacks lasers of all ships, then railguns of all ships etc) and once it's at the bottom of the list it restart from the beginning.

When i'll add a scripting language i will allow custom autofire scripts.

When is next update coming, what can we expect inside ?

I release a new version when there are enough improvements to have a meaningful update. Next update is bugfixing and implementation of suggestions in this thread.