Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebalance

[klauss]

That's why MS sucks.

What if I split imports from the main units.csv?

Split csv files are really a necessity for ease of modding. I've been wanting to do it for a long while now.

[Deus Siddis]

That's why MS sucks.

So then is open Calc or libre Calc the way to go?

What if I split imports from the main units.csv?

Split csv files are really a necessity for ease of modding. I've been wanting to do it for a long while now.

I agree.

Even without the export issues I have to do a load of scrolling to find the correct column for the correct name. There are too many rows and columns and especially the columns are horribly organized. For example, mass and moment of inertia are greatly separated from the various force and torque columns by a bunch of completely unrelated rows like armor and shield stuff. That makes precisely adjusting craft movement a pain. And then all the art stuff takes up the prime real estate of the left most columns that are close to the name, even though these will usually only need to be adjusted once or twice, while the game balance related stats need to be accessed dozens of times more often.

So better organization of units would be much better. And breaking it up into separate files based on logical categories would be better still.

Unfortunately the truncation issue cannot be avoided in this way since units also can have a very long list of weapon mounts or installed weapon systems.

[loki1950]

So then is open Calc or libre Calc the way to go?

It would seem so I have not had any issues with ether there is also csveditor2 in the tools sub-forum if it's no longer hosted I have a few copies on my HD.

Enjoy the Choice

[Deus Siddis]

I don't like to use in house editors, they are nearly always buggy and unmaintained.

[loki1950]

Your right about it not being maintained but it does work quite well written in pascal and both win and *nix versions in the same archive.

Enjoy the Choice

[Deus Siddis]

So for future edits I will use something other than excel, but what about the existing patch, can it be salvaged?

[log0]

I think it could be fixed with a simple python(or whatever other script language one prefers) script. It is just about adding double quotes to entries that are not TRUE, FALSE or nummeric, right?

[klauss]

I think it could be fixed with a simple python(or whatever other script language one prefers) script. It is just about adding double quotes to entries that are not TRUE, FALSE or nummeric, right?

Maybe, if I set the dialect explicitly (because auto-detection is broken when the first few rows contain no quoting).

Though I'd rather take an xlsx, and export with LibreOffice.

[Deus Siddis]

Though I'd rather take an xlsx, and export with LibreOffice.

Can it import .xls?

Also would you recommend LibreOffice for editing .csv files for VS?

[klauss]

Yes, and yes.

[Deus Siddis]

Looks like someone disabled post attachments on this sub forum. Anyway here's the .xls version of the units patch:

Downloading LibreOffice...

[klauss]

Looks like someone disabled post attachments on this sub forum. Anyway here's the .xls version of the units patch:

Downloading LibreOffice...

Maybe I did it by mistake...

Can you attach now?

[Deus Siddis]

No.

[klauss]

Now?

[Deus Siddis]

Attachments are working now.

I'm using Calc on the patch and it is almost formatted correctly except that with the "quoted fields as text" feature checked it is also quoting boolean values "TRUE" and "FALSE". Will this make units.csv invalid? If so then is there a solution within Calc?

[klauss]

LibreOffice's calc quotes the right way. In any case, the only problem with calc is that it will create spurious diffs. But it'll work fine.

[Deus Siddis]

Alright then, here's the reformated patch. Lemme know if it is good to go.

[safemode]

I have added this to the py3 branch which will become 0.6. I think it will lend itself very well to the type of gameplay you will find when you dont have to travel extreme distances to reach units.

[klauss]

I was going to commit it for trunk too, as long as I fixed the particle bug (which somehow I noticed getting worse with the patch).

[safemode]

the particle problem happens whenever it's visible to the player, and the patch just makes that happen more often than without it.

This patch is however, extremely annoying in games where you have to catch ships from decent distances.

[klauss]

Yes, I wanted to gather all that feedback before merging in trunk. I noticed it makes travel slower too. I haven't tried heavily laden cargo ships yet.

[Deus Siddis]

Things are slower than I meant them to be because the shit with the config file was making linear speed governors faster than they actually were. Now that that is cleared up, it might be helpful to raise the linear speed governors. Unfortunately that will make ships become less visible and less frequently encountered at close range. Plus the player can easily override the governor anyway by using travel mode or turning off the fly by wire computer.

So we might look at increasing the linear governors on some categories of ship but not others, like maybe shuttles need more speed while interceptors are fine where they are or vice versa.

Long distance travel is definitely too slow now though and the best way to handle that is for SPEC to be made faster.

[Hicks]

Long distance travel is definitely too slow now though and the best way to handle that is for SPEC to be made faster.

I still think the easiest way to fix SPEC speeds at the moment is to make the speed upgradeable

[Deus Siddis]

So Klauss, what is the next step for this?

Should I increase linear speed governors or is increasing the SPEC multiplier enough on its own? Or do you want the patch to stay as it is?

[klauss]

I was testing it as is (I ran out of time these few days, but I'll be back on testing in a while).

However, if you feel you need to increase linear speed governors, be my guest. I wouldn't touch SPEC yet, since we have so many other plans for it.