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Turgidson

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  1. 1°/ Dogfighting is not the only use of a fighter. The Techno Union fighter might be "average" for intercepting, say, a flight of bombers. Or perhaps for acting as cannon fooder/shield while more valuable units scramble around. 2°/ It might be interesting to test this fighter vs. closer (though still superior) units. With a smaller gap, results might be less outrageous. In the current case, it'd be like comparing a F-22 vs. a F-86... there's little doubt the F-22 would score massive kills, even though the production cost of the F-86 is not as "zero-ish".
  2. The "interesting" fact is that in 3D, the TD doesn't have a small section (depending on the angle, the panels can prove quite large and blocking), and the XJ doesn't have such a big one... but in 2D, things are quite different esp. with the XJ's "nose".
  3. From my point of view: If combat is relatively fast (a matter of a few turns; max 5-10 turns - less than half a human day) and you can influence it, you have to be lucky/be in the right timezone so you're online when it happens. Or be an insomniac geek. Not good for a 24/24h game... If we wish to be fair with the timezones, battles have to be fairly long, so that loging in 10-15 turns after your opponent doesn't put to to an extreme disadvantage. I've got the feeling this would mean battles lasting a good 50 turns at least (or ~30 turns, considering mechanisms that'd force a slower approach phase - e.g. INTs, though their current range seems low - and "relatively fast" combat behaviour once engaged). And with player's activity having relatively few immediate effects on the battle (otherwise, you'd need to be continuously online...). Then... the battles timescale starts to mess with the strategic timescale - something that's been in case in most RTS but distracts from "realism" (if we wanted this a "simulation"). The other solution would consist in giving players a way to be effective while away. This means: scripts!
  4. IMHO, hyperspace should not be modifiable on the fly - this makes proper planning more important. The annoyance only comes when the jumping destination was mistakenly entered (HMI / interface mistake) - nowadays, though, you can still cancel while the units calculate the jump, and one can always check his orders on the map. If the jump was properly entered, and people change their mind afterwards... then, well, that's THEIR own fault (strategic mistake). It's a good thing that hyperjumps have their tradeoffs; people can decide whether they prefer shorter jumps that'll be more flexible, or longer jumps that'll eat less calc time. If we simplify things too much, if we make this too forgiving, we'll deprive this game of some of its depth. In case people would wish to have modifiable jump orders, I'd suggest to put a hefty penalty on it - like 50 turns before the unit reacts, maybe even much more (one day ~20 turns or slightly more, so a 50 turns penalty isn't that huge - perhaps 100 turns would be better).
  5. Dunno if that's so much a coincidence, ancient weapons are one of the naming series I've previously used, for some of my ships, and that I quite like (Pike, Spear, Sword, Sabre, Dagger, Axe, Arbalest, Bow, Javelin...).
  6. One TD, that refused to take "jump" orders (or, any other orders...) and stayed in its zone for quite a long time. Clearing the Ux folder and Ux.ini solved the issue: the unit just disappeared. Note that, a long time ago, I had started with slightly more TDs, and a few went missing for no reason during the Tripod times (I had huge difficulties uploading the orders, it repeatedly gave a "retry" error message). If I remember correctly, the bug appeared back then, with this "stubborn" TD refusing to take orders. It got carried on until recently, when after my fleet died, and that stupid unit still stood there, I cleansed my files. I've seen nothing wrong recently, though (I seem to remember seeing a few other TDs disappearing after I cleansed, but this might have been due to them being killed following an End-of-turn - not really sure, this was quite some time ago already).
  7. I've actually noticed some "unresponsive" units belonging to me... various saves didn't remove the issue, until I cleared the Ux folder and Ux.ini file - which promptly removed these "undead" units. So I guess that during earlier times (Tripod's nasty server ? Some other bugs ?), something got corrupted on the player's side... The MNFRG Pike is (alas) pretty dead since long ago.
  8. However, if units have already engaged a target, I'd suppose they should continue - at least as long as it is in range. If units keep switching back and forth on "closest" unit, this might become quite inefficient at the end...
  9. It shows the angles, but not on the tactical map... (and ranges aren't there). By the way: would be great if we could assign different weapons to different types of targets. For instance: if my ship has both HTLBs and LCs, I'd wish the HTLBs to target enemy capships, while the LCs target the fighters. It's more code, for sure, but if the option were there that'd be great. And about armour: if I understand the formula correctly, it currently applies a modifier that is uniform to all weapons (i.e. all weapons will get the same reduction, depending on the unit). In a way, the same effect would have been achieved by tweaking the shield and hull hitpoints values... My idea was more to make the penetration vary with the type of weapon (the higher its damage, the higher the relative penetration). The formula could be like: total absorbed damage = SQUARE (armour rate) * SQUARE_ROOT (bullet damage) * arbitrary factor relative absorbed damage = SQUARE (armour rate) / SQUARE_ROOT (bullet damage) * arbitrary factor This way: - the higher the bullet damage, the less relative damage is dealt; the decrease slows down. - and the higher the armour class, the higher the absorption; the increase speeds up. The calculated value could be matched against a max, so that a minimal percentage would still get through. Also, it'd be possible to propose that absorption works for hulls only, and not for shields (or, computes differently for shields, e.g. different factor, or a "shield rate" computed much more conservatively).
  10. It would be IMHO even better to be able to "save" our formations, and have semi-automated scripts assigning units to the different formation slots. Yes, but... you currently have much less flexibility when giving orders to groups, than to single units: you can add orders to the stack, but you cannot manage that stack (apart cancelling everything). Of course, there would be many instances where you simply cannot manage one such common stack, because units of that same group got different orders... but maybe detecting similar orders could be possible ? Currently, if I mess something with my fighters wing, I have to cancel the whole stack... As for formations: I agree that using escorts would work, but it's quite a burden. Suppose I want to keep a group of similar ships in a specific formation: I have to specify a "root" unit, from which I'll set all the escorts. If this "root" unit dies, I'll have to set everything anew. Formations are not a top priority, IMHO, but they'd be an useful addition if they get coded. What's more needed, at least for me, would be a "mouse drag and zoom" functionality. Currently, dragging the mouse would select the friendly units, not zoom the map... having the two behaviours accessible would be useful (e.g. drag for zooming, and CTRL+drag for selection, or use a hotkey to switch between the two modes).
  11. IMHO, HTLBs and even TLBs should have a very low chance of hitting fighters. Even at point blank, as their mechanics aren't visibly fast enough to properly track fighters. Watching the movies, heavy gunnery seems rather inefficient at getting fighters down... as should be the case.
  12. The randomizing would be fairer, but, still... half the fighters just wouldn't have a chance to hit anything by engine design. As for turn rates, TD and ACTIS have the same one if I'm not wrong... Regarding the microjump: this does show that someone being active/online has an advantage over someone who isn't...
  13. Hadn't seen the later logs... wow, seems the ACTISes haven't scored a single hit since. I'm quite surprised by this: their turn rate is similar, and other differences don't seem sufficient to explain why the ACTISes wouldn't even have been able to line their weapons once. So, my question is: how is movement computed, and especially targeting ? In case the units move one by one, sequentially and before the "firing" calcs are done... then if the ACTISes are unlucky to start first, they'd line the TDs properly, then the TDs would move, disalign themselves from the ACTISes' gunsight, while getting a nice spot on them... that'd explain these results, and also how TFs were able to defend pretty well against TDs (CJ's experience, IIRC). Dunno if my guess is right... the result of the last two turns seems just "too big to be believable". In case my guess is right: I'd suppose we'd have to use a 'trajectory prediction" by saving the last speed vector(s), have each unit target this predicted spot, then do the movements. That way, unit's movement is fully independent of the processing sequence. If that's already how it happened, I really wonder how the ACTISes got slaughtered in the last turns...
  14. Considering the relatively small size of the target, and this maximum distance, 50-75% accuracy is quite in the high zone IMHO. Considering what I understood of your hit model (random angle offset depending on accuracy - note: the BIG difference to HW2 being there's no minimum), a 20% hit average against a small target might still mean a very high rate (100% ?) against a larger one - assuming linear distribution of the offset, it'd mean a 5 times larger target would be hit 100% of the time. When I saw the TD's firepower rate, I couldn't resist buying myself quite a lot of them. ;D However, it still seems that for many of the frigates, the balance between firepower and healthpoints is pretty much shifted towards the earlier, so that even these won't take very long to destroy their opponents. For larger capships, the balance moves more towards the healthpoints (even though the durations aren't that long...), at least relatively... They aren't bad, but the question is: wouldn't a LFRG be much better ? I agree that LFRGs are slower, and that since there's no/little warheads in use the interception of bomber runs hasn't really occurred yet. The tactical jumps still allow the LFRGs some speed compensation (despite higher jump calc time)... and anyway, with jumping fighters and bombers, how can an interception attempt even occur ? The bombers will be instantly in range, at any case way before fighters (or any other unit...) get the opportunity to shoot at them... and for a close range "air" superiority/control, fighter's patrol speed advantage over a capship is negligible. Edit: OK, with interdictors this will change quite a lot. Thing is, still... we haven't seen that many interdictors in the movies, and even a certain amount of EU battles didn't explicitly involve interdictors... so battles still occur without them, and people don't jump out immediately. Maybe it takes a lot of time to ready a capship to jump, maybe they're much more sensitive to line of sight, gravity environment, whatever... Or maybe it'll just be impossible to jump when too close to a planet, which is perhaps the way things should/did happen. No problem.
  15. Reading from the logs, I got a few kills from the Corellian Hammerhead; and I guess my fighters didn't start on the best spot. I even wonder if the ACTISes didn't perform some jump to start in the better position - the TDs had the ACTISes as priority targets, and were there for a few cycles already... so if both groups had been closing by patrol they'd both have gotten kills in first pass. Note: as I had to go to sleep and the turns were put to a temporary halt, I had to queue orders and couldn't tell them "jump XX distance YY direction from last observed position of unit something". Giving "relative" orders would be interesting, but not necessarily easy to describe. That would go into the direction of scripting, something that I think would be useful to this game, especially if some of such "behaviours" could be saved and reassigned. My own feeling is that tactical jumps are a huge advantage, and you'd better be online while your opponent is not so you can ensure your units starts in the better position. I've been on both sides of this, actually. With different time zones, it's going to be hard to avoid this fact... There aren't many solutions that I can see: make battles so long that both people will get the chance to be online while the other guy is not (but who strikes first...); make tactical jumps harder/less easy so that fleets have to close in patrol and these tactical jumps will be less devastating; allow more extensive scripting so that players can "code" a kind of "AI" that would react closer to what they'd do in the same situation... Ah... and since we can't always be online, having the previous turns "saved" on the server could allow people who went to sleep, to see what's been going on previously. Better for the analysis, than logging in and seeing lots of events have happened but not knowing exactly what...

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