Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebalance

Development directions, tasks, and features being actively implemented or pursued by the development team.
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klauss
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:
klauss wrote:
safemode wrote:this patch isn't in mainline.. that's what i meant by in sync. I want the py3 branch to have the current re-balance and unit mods that are being done in this thread.
Well... it will be in sync by the time I'm finished merging, that's what I meant. I'm having trouble getting the PyInit_VS thing fixed, I think I have merged all revisions related to that, and I still get the error.

I'm not sure why the merging is a problem. Just overwrite the trunk branch with all the changes since py3 was split and you'll be good.
I thought about doing that... I'd have to re-write the "configurable python" fixes (mainly some boost stuff that was missing when building in my system, and some py2 compatibility stuff), but it's no longer needed, since I managed to iron out the wrinkles at the last minute (before I decided to nuke trunk).

Merging the rest (cleanup) will come tomorrow probably, and data changes last.

You'll ask... why retain compatibility with py2? As we talked, if we did retain it at the source level (engine only), mods won't be forced to migrate to 3 rightaway. I think that's valuable, and it wasn't hard supporting both.

Furthermore, I managed to make all the python tools in objconv work on both versions with some __future__ magic. So... who knows... maybe we can support both everywhere. Not holding much hope in that though... no point in doing that in fact.

But it was important to make all the blender scripts in objconv work with py2, because we don't really control which version of python Blender uses.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by safemode »

just as long as you dont miss things in the py3 branch that ends up taking up more time. I would think it would have been easier to nuke trunk with py3 and then the _very few_ commits made to trunk in the mean-time can simply be re-applied since it's unlikely to conflict.

Side not related to physics. Why the hell is speed not in meters / sec ? if i set my ship to 150 ...I expect to see distance dropping by that rate ...which i assume is in meters per second. It is incredibly annoying that there is no unit for speed and it's not the same as the units for distance that is displayed.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:Side not related to physics. Why the hell is speed not in meters / sec ? if i set my ship to 150 ...I expect to see distance dropping by that rate ...which i assume is in meters per second. It is incredibly annoying that there is no unit for speed and it's not the same as the units for distance that is displayed.
It should be the same after the latest patch by deus...
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote: I had a plan to have two sets of stats in the code, the blank stats, sans-upgrades, and the upgraded one. Units.csv would then only have the blank stats, and everything would work wonderfully. When you change the upgrades list, the upgraded stats would be re-computed (this includes damaged upgrades), and we'd have no bugs.

I never got around to doing it though.
Perhaps this should go on the tracker and roadmap?
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

Oh, yes, I forgot (that's why it has to be there).

Feel free to add it for 0.5.3
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote: Feel free to add it for 0.5.3
Hmm, the feature tracker doesn't have any milestones set and it looks like I don't have the permissions to create new milestones on there.

Also, I'd set the Player Fleet as Escorts ticket I added yesterday to the 0.5.3 milestone but I don't have the permissions for editing a ticket either, even though I created it.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

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I just created the milestones. I don't think there's a way to allow editing of just the milestones.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

Posted to tracker and roadmap.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by charlieg »

klauss wrote:You'll ask... why retain compatibility with py2? As we talked, if we did retain it at the source level (engine only), mods won't be forced to migrate to 3 rightaway. I think that's valuable, and it wasn't hard supporting both.
Not sure it is as valuable as you might think.

It means that they can potentially upgrade their copy of the VS engine without upgrading to Python 3 - but there may be other engine changes that break anyway. So an update will require some form of effort, and why upgrading to Python 3 isn't part of that effort is probably a fairly small consideration. (I don't imagine updating your Python to make it 3-compliant is as big a deal as working out other differences in VS.)
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

Many modders have very limited python coding skills. For them, upgrading to py3 could be a very huge task.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote:Many modders have very limited python coding skills. For them, upgrading to py3 could be a very huge task.
Maybe not too huge.

Plus understanding of Python is a requirement for any serious modification of VS. And nearly all VS mods are dead at this point, so now could be a good time to switch.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

2to3 is only a very small part of the job. 2to3 can't perform some tasks that need the power of a human intelect behind. Like deciding if, in context, a call to the range iterator, rather than list, is appropriate. Or, for instance, whether this particular division really has to be an integer division (truncate result), or a float one (fractional result).

In fact, ask safemode, we've had to fix quite a couple of those in the py3 branch.

Luckily, VS trunk is now source-compatible with py3, so a modder doesn't have to think about it. We made it work right both ways. That's valuable.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by TBeholder »

klauss wrote:Quickest mod that would ease your burden, would be to automatically insert the upgrade into the cargo list.
Then perhaps it should be marked as "installed". Via an extra parameter at the end of column (so it backwards compatible)? Just like with mounts' "banked" value.

BTW, why not to add one to upgrades column too?
Sometimes upgrades built into something should inherit functionality rate. E.g. in cases when one device has mult properties in addition to add or set properties. As seen e.g. in thrusters thread, sticking a "mult" upgrade onto things allows trivial workarounds for several unrelated headaches that otherwise could require thorough overhauls of data format.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

Latest balance patch. Includes the physics changes and removes deprecated milspec, rgspec, civvie, escort and stock ship presets and splits units.csv and master_part_list.csv into separate files for v0.5.2.
balance_13-5-13.zip
The next version of this patch will improve weapon availability in preparation for overhauling weapon balancing.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

Final version of the balance patch for upcoming v0.5.2, which includes enhanced weapon availability.
balance_13-5-17.zip
Klauss, this is the version to commit, I should not make any further changes to it (until after 0.5.2).
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

Cool. I'll try to this weekend.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

Well I lied, I made further changes and a new balance patch:
balance_13-6-27.zip
Change Log:
  • SPEC velocity cap lifted from 97C to 970C; in general the SPEC multiplier now maxes out at one meter per second of normal velocity equaling the speed of light.
  • SPEC interdiction reduced to 10% what it was; you will spend less time approaching and leaving stations and planets.
  • Linear speed governor for cargo shuttles doubled and increased for other ship types to varying extents.
  • Over steer standardized for most ships types; shuttles have 1 second, fighters 2 seconds, bombers 3 and capitals 4 (lower values make turning easier but slower).
Klauss why don't you test this when you get the chance to see if travel is fast enough now for inclusion in v0.5.2.

In the mean time I want to see if I can't fix ship to ship SPEC interdiction so that it is possible again for the first time since v0.4.3. I think that by setting it per unit, to high for combat oriented craft, to moderate for civilian craft and not at all for stations and planets, travel won't be obstructed and you will be able to intercept fleeing bounties.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:In the mean time I want to see if I can't fix ship to ship SPEC interdiction so that it is possible again for the first time since v0.4.3. I think that by setting it per unit, to high for combat oriented craft, to moderate for civilian craft and not at all for stations and planets, travel won't be obstructed and you will be able to intercept fleeing bounties.
If you disable it for stations and planets, people will collide with them on approach (or more likely overshoot and end up inside).

I'd rather approach this as an always-on Autopilot aid: SPEC multiplier throttles down when you approach your currently selected target. That needs code changes.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote: If you disable it for stations and planets, people will collide with them on approach (or more likely overshoot and end up inside).
Sorry I misspoke. What I meant was, interdiction gets set to a tenth its current value in vegastrike.config, which affects all units equally, but then low mass combat craft like interceptors get their interdiction value set to fifty times at the per unit level in units.CSV for a net gain of five times the interdiction effect (for that type of vessel only). So while you can SPEC much closer to destinations like stations and planets, you can also pull an enemy out of SPEC from 5 times the distance in your little 60 ton interceptor.
I'd rather approach this as an always-on Autopilot aid: SPEC multiplier throttles down when you approach your currently selected target. That needs code changes.
That won't help you with interdiction though, you need to stop your enemy from escaping by reducing the multiplier of his SPEC drive. I think we might be able to do that much with only content changes.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:
I'd rather approach this as an always-on Autopilot aid: SPEC multiplier throttles down when you approach your currently selected target. That needs code changes.
That won't help you with interdiction though, you need to stop your enemy from escaping by reducing the multiplier of his SPEC drive. I think we might be able to do that much with only content changes.
Maybe, but I keep proposing it because, I wonder, whether the algorithm's proportionality to distance would create a feedback loop that would make you match the target's SPEC multiplier. I think so. You'd pursue-in-SPEC, which sounds cool. It would be worth a try.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote:
Deus Siddis wrote:
I'd rather approach this as an always-on Autopilot aid: SPEC multiplier throttles down when you approach your currently selected target. That needs code changes.
That won't help you with interdiction though, you need to stop your enemy from escaping by reducing the multiplier of his SPEC drive. I think we might be able to do that much with only content changes.
Maybe, but I keep proposing it because, I wonder, whether the algorithm's proportionality to distance would create a feedback loop that would make you match the target's SPEC multiplier. I think so. You'd pursue-in-SPEC, which sounds cool. It would be worth a try.
So you are saying that you could be chasing and shooting at an enemy a few kilometers ahead of yourself, while both of you are flying through space at faster than light speeds because your autopilot has "synced" with the velocity of your opponent?

If so then I agree it is an idea worth testing. But a content side quick fix to interdiction might solve the problem well enough in the interim, until this "SPEC Pursuits" feature is implemented.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:So you are saying that you could be chasing and shooting at an enemy a few kilometers ahead of yourself, while both of you are flying through space at faster than light speeds because your autopilot has "synced" with the velocity of your opponent?
Indeed that's what I'm saying. Albeit I think only beam weapons would be usable in SPEC.
Deus Siddis wrote:If so then I agree it is an idea worth testing. But a content side quick fix to interdiction might solve the problem well enough in the interim, until this "SPEC Pursuits" feature is implemented.
Indeed, go ahead with your changes.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by IansterGuy »

Last time I checked, chasing a ship in SPEC causes the pursuer to move forward and back like a slide whistle and sometimes crash into it. Both better interdiction and a better chase algorithm would fix this I would think.

Also when the AI chases the player moving quickly in real space, they buzz around like a simulated wasp with choppy internet lag as they spam on and off the SPEC drive, and they become near impossible to shoot. This should be more stable and I think proportionally accelerated gradual velocity matching while in SPEC would allow a ship to just leave SPEC on to match velocity.

In short I like both ideas plus some automatic velocity matching to nullify relative motion for reliable approaches and no need nor ability to spam SPEC.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by TBeholder »

Warm RampUp / RampDown parameters really need to be fixed.
In addition to autopilot capable of prediction and starting to decrease effective velocity (ramp down SPEC) before it would buzz by the destination.
The less messy and most useful (it would allow an universal approach to handling shield power, etc without "special cases" squirreled everywhere) way to do it would be via giving upgrades SetFunctionality field.
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Re: Acceleration, physics, and other ship enhancements/rebal

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote: Indeed, go ahead with your changes.
Done.

Combat ships now have full interdiction, stations have 60% (down from 75%) and everything else has the new default of 0.1%. Landing on planets seems to be a bit less time consuming and flying through civilian traffic as well. Unfortunately wormholes don't seem to be affected by interdiction settings so SPEC still drops out at 10 km away from them.
balance_13-6-29.zip
Should be ready to commit.
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