SPEC drive changes

[Silverain]

of course, a beam weapon breaking the compressed space field that SPEC forms would cause a catastrophic breakdown of the space-time continuum, and form a singularity at that point with the compressed material of your ship and suck the whole system in upon it's self causing a reverse of the big bang, thus ending the whole VS universe.... Man, that would suck....

Ouch! I don't know about anyone else, but it frightens me that we can come up with these scary situations

... and, yes, it WOULD suck!

[novalogic]

Ouch! I don't know about anyone else, but it frightens me that we can come up with these scary situations

... and, yes, it WOULD suck!

I've had my share of telling stories

If you ever want to know the worse that could happen with something, be sure to ask, I'm always here

[hellcatv]

so are you guys not happy that we disabled weapons in spec...
some people thoguht of clever strategies to boost accelerations by matching speed with spec on and so forth

without weapons it's rather moot

[Silverain]

so are you guys not happy that we disabled weapons in spec...
some people thoguht of clever strategies to boost accelerations by matching speed with spec on and so forth

without weapons it's rather moot

I AM happy with disabling weapons in SPEC - it defines SPEC as a way to fast transit from one point to another, requiring normal flight to actually fight.

Of course, we do have current AI using SPEC as a battle strategy, but there's nothing wrong with that.

[Nevita]

so are you guys not happy that we disabled weapons in spec...

Wasn't the problem that the enemy ships fought (i.e fired weapons) while using SPEC, giving them a huge advantage? I'm rather pleased that weapons are disabled while SPEC is engaged.

It might also make sense that the gravitational distortions around the ship due to SPEC mess up targetting. In which case, you probably wouldn't want to be able to fire if you were in a SPEC dogfight.

[novalogic]

so are you guys not happy that we disabled weapons in spec...
some people thoguht of clever strategies to boost accelerations by matching speed with spec on and so forth

without weapons it's rather moot

No, I like it... IMHO, Disable everything but Life Support and Cloaking while in SPEC, I'd even disable radar, as you can't send out radar or active sensors while in SPEC, I would think.

Ofcourse, also blind NPCs in SPEC. But thats just me.

SPEC alters space around you, and makes you go faster then light, you should be blind to all but what you can see, since everything else would be "Warped"

[Silverain]

Disabling the radar is an interesting idea. I'd also consider disabling it for Cloaking (since its supposed to be no active sensor emissions). You still have visual (looking out to space) either way since thats passive detection which can remain.

[novalogic]

Disabling the radar is an interesting idea. I'd also consider disabling it for Cloaking (since its supposed to be no active sensor emissions). You still have visual (looking out to space) either way since thats passive detection which can remain.

Disabling cloaking is interesting, but we have to look at how cloaking works...

Cloaking generates a magnetic field around the ship bending light and sensor reflections around the ship to hide it...

Now, the question lies within here...

IS the cloaking field layered above, or below the SPEC field?

The generator makes enough power for both, so that’s a non-issue, but where dose the "Cloak" occur?

Will the generation of a SPEC field disrupt a cloaking field?

It could, or maybe not...that’s something that hellcatv and crew would have to figure out, I don't know enough about how the VS universe works in relation to cloaking.

[Ygarl]

Ahhhh- I like that. Cloak, radar and shields (over time) not working seems a much better way of handling SPEC.
Maybe that'll stop the computer Matrix effect - though lately the CVS version seems somehow less objectionable than earlier versions...
Maybe it's just me though...

Ta

[Shark]

Here are the suggestions I would add to the SPEC system:

1) Also, some kind of visual effect when SPEC engages would be nice. If you could get the view of space ahead to ripple, that would be spectacular.

Please don't over-do it, though.

2) SPEC should only engage when it can help you get where you want to go faster. Not when I'm going backwards. So you could bring SPEC to "standby mode" and it would not fully engage until two conditions are met:

a) your throttle controls are set to FULL SPEED FORWARD.
b) your ACTUAL VELOCITY VECTOR is at least 75% of your ship's maximum speed, and is oriented within 5 degrees (or whatever) of your ship's absolute orientation (as indicated by your crosshair). If your thrusters are damaged, better hope you have an afterburner.

How about if the game checks if these conditions are met FIRST, and, if not, automatically meets them before engaging the SPEC drive. This would kind of be like auto-docking.

Once you're in full-blown SPEC, the following things happen:

5) your maximum turn rate is significantly reduced, and to some extent, your angular acceleration is as well...

How about if steering were disengaged completely? You wouldn't want to get whiplash!

6) Your forward acceleration increases somewhat...

Forward ACCELERATION could increase, and then decrease below zero as one approaches one's destination.

[hellcatv]

people already complain about the lack of steering rate in spec
making it less comfortable means fewer happy users

[Shark]

Now that we have SPEC, how about if you add SPEC highways (like in E&B). The benifit would be that you get an additional boost to speed (on top of what SPEC already provides), and route-planning is handled for you.
I was also thinking that, normally, maybe the shields could drain over prolonged use of the SPEC drive, due to collisions with many tiny particles at the high rate of speed. The selling point of SPEC highways could be that they guarantee a near-vacuum space to travel through, even in nebulae and other "dense" areas.
This would make space seem more populated, and give pirates a place to focus their fire.
Comments?

[jackS]

Now that we have SPEC, how about if you add SPEC highways (like in E&B). The benifit would be that you get an additional boost to speed (on top of what SPEC already provides), and route-planning is handled for you.
I was also thinking that, normally, maybe the shields could drain over prolonged use of the SPEC drive, due to collisions with many tiny particles at the high rate of speed. The selling point of SPEC highways could be that they guarantee a near-vacuum space to travel through, even in nebulae and other "dense" areas.
This would make space seem more populated, and give pirates a place to focus their fire.
Comments?

The SPEC --> shield drainage explanation relies on incompatibilities between the various space-warping technologies. Speed is not an interesting metric for causing drainage, as the question remains "relative to what"

I am thoroughly opposed to any "highways" as such - planets move relative to each other... I'm getting bad flashbacks of Freelancer here...

The trade routes of interest (with pirate interference) should likely be geared at passage through uninhabited/underinhabited systems frequented by pirates, not the variable paths between planets in the same system - besides, if pirates were in the same place all the time, they'd be easy to find too Much more fun to have them move into position in the middle of nowhere to interpose themselves (yes, this does mean SPEC interdiction devices) between where a jump point and a planet happen to be at some given time and then chase down any shipping that happens to come along before moving on to some other nameless point.

[fizze]

I knew I had seen a thread on changing SPEC earlier

well, to make the ship more stirdy seems like a good idea.
I dont think that its a good idea to limit the SPEC drive to a (to some extent) matching motion and velocity vector.
It just requires skill to use it. period.

I'd like however like to see some sort of capacitor that needs to be set up. It seems highly unlikely that accelerating to insane speeds takes NO energy.
Also, Id like to see the SPEC intertia changed. I can spec to a multiplier of 3000 and disengange SPEC and am literally standing. when I hit A again the multiplier still is set at like 2000, but decreasing.

I'd like to see like 2 spec modes. the first, manual spec mode behaves like it is now, in 0.4.2. a lil weird and takes some getting used to, but its feasable.

A more sophisticated mode would be "AutoSPEC Mode" (or w/e ).
Lets say you want to travel to a distant planet at 0.8ls. you target it, lock it, and hit the autoSPEC key (shift A prolly), and what the system does is following: The course is locked at the center of the targetted object, you cannot steer.
the spec drive and conventional drives are both set to a optimal velocity that minimizes the trip-time. SPEC drive is then disenganged when you are approaching the target, and Inertia is being obeyed in the calculations too.
When the target is a planet, it could even automatically dock.

the autoSPEC mode cannot be disengaged at once, you have to wait for the speed to decline first.

This would be nice to travel to some objects like this. Maybe make it WingCommander like and let autoSPEc only engage when there are no hostiles present. But this was I could actually autoSPEC to a planet and go for a drink or whatnot meanwhile, whilst now having the fear that bogeys down me, or I rush by the object at insane high speeds and find myself several light minutes away from civilization.

criticism welcome

[jackS]

I'd like however like to see some sort of capacitor that needs to be set up. It seems highly unlikely that accelerating to insane speeds takes NO energy.

SPEC does take energy, it's just set to a _very_ low number right now because I didn't have the time to balance it properly, and I didn't want 100s of reports of "I ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere" so I just set the energy requirements to be very minimal. This will be fixed eventually it's just a data side issue.

[fizze]

hehe, it's cool, I just wanted to make sure it gets fixed.

besides, my goddard has MAAAAAAAssive amounts of energy, so I didnt expect to notice any drop, anyway.

are those spec parameters set in an XML file, or hard-coded ?
maybe I wanna fiddle with it some myself

[JungleJim]

Trust me, it's no fun to run out of energy using SPEC drive. In my latest game, I started off with the base Llama and no reactor upgrades. It took >3 full charges of my capacitor to get ANYWHERE with the SPEC drive, UGH!

Of course after the reactor upgrade everything was fine but still it was a very annoying epoch of game play!

BTW, I think the "Flight" drive works more like how you want. It builds up inertia as you wish and can sometimes take ages to decellerate if you've been building up a lot of speed.

Be seeing you,

[fizze]

nah, the flight drive might behave "physically" more correct, but its a pain in the butt to get anywhere. plus its not possible because its too slow with most ships.

ever tried to catch up to a planet with time compression and MAXIMUM velocity in flight ?

anyway, the reason why I think a navigational LOCK would come in handy is that if you are steering with mouse, its kinda hard (well, depending on the ship) to make it fly straight ahead. even a small offset makes your course deviating at this high speed.

plus, you could actually use the map with the mouse and avoid the offset when switching back

[pincushionman at work]

By "flight" mode he's referring to "noncombat" mode, in which there is no speed cap.

-pincushionman

[fizze]

uhm yes. i am aware of that.
measure the time it takes with a goddard or mule to get to a significant velocity. (>100000) and then it takes like the same time to come to a full stop again. not very handy.

to my mind the noncombat mode isnt very useful. its nice to get extra speed out of your vessel for combat purposes, but going faster than like 10.000 isnt useful at all.

hence the SPEC is nice, no need to argue there.

yet the idea of SPEC as it is implemented in 0.4.2 makes the physicist in my cry. it "jumps" from 0 to 31 instantly, plus there is claimed that its slower the closer you get to a gravity source. well then why is there the offset of 31 ?
well it might be due to the fact that it would take ages again even with SPEC to get far enough away from the planet to be ableto enage it again.
This kind of stuff needs some more fiddling, imho.

and like I suggested earlier, there should definetly be some sort of capacitance prior to reactivate it. Capships like to jump away from torpedoes and fighters like to jump away from missiles that way.

I definetely think it would be good to deactivate sensors during spec, any probably add some fancy vision effect too. hey, we're faster than light possibly, so it should look weird, defenitely. maybe one is able to see gravity sources only, as suggested earlier elsewhere here.

Maybe it would even be good to disable weapons for a few seconds after disengaging SPEC drive. This would allow Pirates and other baddies to use "Interdicter-style" ships to get NICE bounty.

Whats the state of SPEC in 0.4.3 or current CVS btw ?

[jackS]

Some changes have been made to SPEC in CVS if anyone wants to check them out.

Some new config variables for controlling SPEC behavior (available in new builds [11/13/2004 or later] only):

<var name="warprampuptime" value="10"/> <!-- in seconds -->
<var name="warprampdowntime" value="0.5"/> <!-- seconds -->
<var name="warpcruisemult" value="5000"/>
<var name="warpregion0" value="5000"/> <!-- deadzone modifier meters -->
<var name="warpMaxEfVel" value="2960881320"/>
<var name="warpregion1" value="5000000"/> <!-- curve fit parameter for warpcruisemult, in meters -->
<var name="warpMultiplierMax" value="300000000"/>
<var name="warpMultiplierMin" value="9.86960440109"/>

[Space Pirate]

Trust me, it's no fun to run out of energy using SPEC drive. In my latest game, I started off with the base Llama and no reactor upgrades. It took >3 full charges of my capacitor to get ANYWHERE with the SPEC drive, UGH!

Well, if you make your speed 2000 and then engage SPEC I can get around on a single charge of the capacitor. Except when flying near the sun (to get to a ship for a cargo mission or something). I pretty much like the SPEC system right now, for me it's pretty easy (except when flying near a sun) Also, when you are flying in SPEC your ship gets longer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the ship get shorter because of relativity?

[Stregone]

Once we get an autopilot that can use normal thrusters plus spec to its full potential i think it will be perfect.

[fizze]

Also, when you are flying in SPEC your ship gets longer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the ship get shorter because of relativity?

true. Lorentz contraction should render your ship shorter to an observer. but as the observer moves at the same speed, it should not change.
its just a spiffy effect, and not based upon physics

[jackS]

The stretchy effect was developed as a feature to help support the Star Trek mod. As I don't tend to be using 3rd person views in open space (more interesting for tests of docking, collisions, etc.) I hadn't even noticed that was active