Docking with planets/Planets in general.

[OMG_theGreenRanger]

Okay, I've been trying to play this game for the past couple of hours. Everyone sounds like they love it, and it's got a great look and feel.

Except, the majority of those couple of hours are spent trying to get around/on to planets. I haven't actually achieved anything because I'm too busy moving at a speed of 400 with 5600 kilometres between me and the planet. It takes upwards of five minutes of my sitting there helpless to get close enough to dock.

Is this normal? What am I doing wrong? Nobody else seems to be complaining, so I assume I'm missing something here.

The same problem is happening whenever I'm SPEC-flying past a planet. I understand the gravity well, but if I get anywhere within about 5000 kilometres of the planet, I have to sit and wait again in order to leave. It's testing my patience but I keep trying because the game looks great.

Someone help!

[loki1950]

First off welcome to the forum OMG_theGreenRanger have you tried using flight mode as apposed to combat mode toggle the "y" key to switch between them the flight mode has no velocity cap so that 400 meters/sec goes away also using your overdrive if you have one gives you about a 10% velocity boost.As for the second problem use the auto pilot it is programed to avoid gravity wells but if it is unavoidable to get you through it as quickly as possible this is also handy right after leaving a planet so so just select your next destination and hit "a" it may appear at first that you not going in the right direction but it is getting you out of that well first before ramping up SPEC to full speed leave it on till it switches off it will usually leave you within about a few hundred km of the docking distance for a planet as bases and jump points that distance is 2500 m one complication is mass of your cargo if you have a fully loaded ship the auto pilot drops out further away to give you time to maneuver especially when your destination is a base where you don't what to be going too as it is easy to rub or bump it.pissing off the inhabitants to the point that they may blow you out of the ether There is a pdf manual in the documentation folder with a table of all the key bindings on it's last pages this is also on our wiki.Have fun.

Enjoy the Choice

[Thorsten]

With a cargo of 4000% mass in the Llama or Plowshare (40 times the nominal mass of the ship, e.g. the hold full of metals) getting close enough to a planet to dock may indeed take five or more minutes of sitting helpless. The autopilot takes one out of SPEC early, and even hitting 'y' to go to travel mode and accelerate onward doesn't help much as the effective acceleration is something like 0.2 g.

There are two solutions:

* get a lighter cargo (the cargo mass counts)
* get a better cargo hauler (the Mule for example isn't that affected by hauling heavy masses)

Sometimes you can get stuck in the gravity well - I had one pirate sitting 3500 km distant deep in the gravity well so I couldn't SPEC there. The solution is obvious - hit 'y' to get in travel mode, point towards the target, accelerate to the halfway point, turn the ship around and decelerate again. Even with a mere 5 g acceleration, that gets you there quickly, within say 5 minutes or so (although fuel consumption becomes noticeable).

After all - real space travel is mostly cruising on a preset trajectory and doing precisley nothing. Vega Strike pretty much minimizes this aspect. Even in a good flight simulator of a fighter jet, most of the time you fly straight and do nothing. Realistically, flying around in air is boring most of the time, flying around in space even more so.

[OMG_theGreenRanger]

Thanks for the welcome and the heads up! I will try flight mode, I may have hit the key by accident.

I do appreciate the realism of the game, and I'm sure it's awesome later on, although as a beginner to Vega Strike it is rather off-putting to know that until I can make enough money to buy a new ship, the one I'm given to start has no Jump Drive nor is it capable enough to make playing anything less than a multi-hour endeavour. I threw a couple of frustrated words at the screen last night while trying to get around a planet for twenty-five minutes to a mining station because I passed by too close.

[OMG_theGreenRanger]

Looks like I did have "flight mode" off. The "Y" key definite speeds things up!

Thanks, Loki, that did the trick. I'll keep the suggestions that Thorsten made in mind as the game progresses.

Added:, Now, when I end up docking on Oceania, the hangar shows up but there are no options to go anywhere... is that a bug?

[Jno]

Hi OMG... I can call you OMG, right?
Loki's advice is good: the 'y' key is the boy for this job.
Here's what I find works for me: Launch, and hold your heading while giving it a bit of full throttle. This will get you clear of a base without unpleasant collisions, and does no harm leaving a planet. Use the 'n' key to identify your target, and when you've got it press 'a'. The autopilot takes over, and will slew the heading to climb out of the well first, then gradually come round to a heading onto your target as you accelerate. During this time, the view out of the rear window (press '4') is often more exciting than the one out the front, as you climb away from whatever is holding you. (Press '1' to restore the forward view).

When you get to your target (closer if you're light, farther if you're laden), the autopilot will first drop you out of SPEC (allowing your shields to come back up, incidentally) and then drop the automatic heading control. If you're going to dock with a base, press 'y' until the left VDU says MANEUVER. Then hit the 'Home' key. This will match your velocity to your target.

Now, there's a confusing thing going on, and I think I've got it figured, but somebody can correct me if not. At this point, you may see your target receding (i.e. the range figure in the right VDU is increasing), but your velocity is dropping. I *think* this is because the velocity readout is unsigned: it shows 250 if the target is getting closer by 250 m/s, or receding by 250 m/s.

Anyway, when your velocity reaches 0, the Home key has done its job, and your relative velocity is nothing. Push the throttles forward, and it will start increasing again and you will approach the target. Your throttle range in MANEUVER gives you speeds between 0 and 300ish m/s, so you have fine control of your speed, and can approach the trickier targets slowly. ',' and '.' (that's comma and period) will move you up and down, and '<' and '>' will move you left and right (respectively) for fine tuning approaches. Try it out with the internal bays at the blunt end of a Relay, but maybe not when you're fully laden, 'cos the inertia is modelled properly.

I do it differently if I'm doing an autopilot rendezvous with a jump point. During SPEC, I select TRAVEL with the 'y' key, and as soon as I have control I open the throttles to full and intercept the jump point ASAP. In TRAVEL mode your speed is uncapped (actually it maxes out at a value that looks a lot like 0.1 c but I haven't counted the digits: anyway it's big).

I know the manual says to enter the jumpoint through the middle for best results, but I've hit them from all angles, and I can't see any difference

You have enough credits at the beginning to buy a Jump Drive for your Llama straight away. I think it's a good investment; YMMV.

Sorry, that went on for a long time, but I hope it's useful. Stick with it, it's fun!

Jonathan

[Jno]

Sorry, I forgot something
It will indeed take many hours to get the hundreds of thousands of credits you need for a new ship. If you're impatient, though, you can just edit your bank balance in the saved game file. I haven't done this (yet!) but the saved game file is plain text, so it's just a matter of using Notepad or your favourite editor. Instructions from loki backalong in this forum:

Welcome drago954 as Genghis Prawn said it's easer to just hack the cash and buy the ship you what.I have lost count of how many times I've mentioned how to do it so here goes again Open your save game with a text editor(Note Pad)the bank balance is the big number between carets "^" i find it easiest to just move the decimal point. Now an other thing you can not sell your beginning ship it is hard coded into the C++ so just buy other ships they are added to your Fleet accessible at any base's ship dealer screen so you change ships in-game.The big capital ships are not fun to fly some of those suckers are kilometres long and handle like a brick in molasses.

Enjoy the Choice

[loki1950]

And if you do get impatient there several hacks that you can apply all the config and definition files are text files of one kind or another Just look around the forum and you will find them.

Edit:I see the Jno beat to the punch with my own words no less

Enjoy the Choice

[OMG_theGreenRanger]

Oh, it's less the making money, it's more the doing something that is driving me up the wall... I finally got onto Oceania, but overshot it and had to come back around the dark side. Now that I've loaded full of Seafood to sell, it's taking me an hour to get away from the planet far enough to turn on SPEC, but pointing myself at Serenity isn't turning SPEC on. I'm light minutes away from literally everything in the system, but unless I'm looking directly away from anything, I can't go faster than normal throttle.

I'm thoroughly confused.

[Thorsten]

It will indeed take many hours to get the hundreds of thousands of credits you need for a new ship.

Something like six or so... I made it to the Clydesdale (which is 300.000.000) within 12 hours playing time - so there really isn't any need for hacking, you can get there without cheat quickly enough.

Now that I've loaded full of Seafood to sell, it's taking me an hour to get away from the planet far enough to turn on SPEC, but pointing myself at Serenity isn't turning SPEC on.

That's definitely *not* normal - even with a full hold of metals (which is the densest cargo I could get) the Llama should need no more than 5 minutes to climb out from Atlantis and ramp up into SPEC. Is the ship okay and accelerating nominally?

The Llama has nominally something like 7 g, so when empty it should increase velocity by 70 m/s every second and thus ramp up to its maneuver setting of 300 within less than five seconds. The HUD readout gives the current mass percentage - if it's 400%, multiply the five seconds by four, if 4000% multiply by 40, i.e. going to full speed should take 200 sec or a bit more than three minutes. On outbound journeys, SPEC should kick in a bit earlier, I never ramped up to full speed when flying the Llama with high cargo mass.

Check these numbers - and try flying empty for a test.

[OMG_theGreenRanger]

Here's what I figured out: When travelling in one direction (say, at a 90 degree tangent from your destination), you have to wait until your momentum reduces to 0 before you can hit SPEC... this seems to be the case?

Plus, you only have a certain limit to the amount of turning you can do while in SPEC, I guess that's also a momentum thing.

Tough part is waiting for the slow. I also did figure out the speed you're travelling is multiplied by the SPEC speed... going to improve on that.

I'm finding the game a bit more playable, but still very time consuming. Pretty, though! If I made suggest anything to the developers, it's giving up a bit more info on the HUD to let us know when we can hit SPEC, and other gauges to make beginners like me settle in easier.

Oh, also: My autopilot doesn't seem to want to engage, nor can I figure out my tractor beam. Autopilot is Shift+a correct? What is tractor beam? I saw a bunch of salvage floating around and really wanted to grab some of it. :-S Instead I destroyed it.

[loki1950]

The auto pilot is "a" shift "a" is manual SPEC which was the default in previous versions as the then auto pilot was very primitive so of course it wasn't engaging
As for tractor beams do you have one first you have to upgrade the mount so it can take a tractor beam then buy the beam it's self also auto-tracking on the mount helps also make sure you have room in your hold for what every you try to tractor in.
We are trying to figure out some HUD element to show momentum more exactly your direction vector as SPEC should be engaged when when the vector is all in the direction of the destination but we humans find vector math non-intuitive so it's a tricky thing to implement as what is useful to the math initiates will baffle the new player with limited math exposure.
If you are using the mouse for steering the mouse cursor changes shape dependent on your momentum being a perfect circle when the vector is all forward but if you use the keyboard or a joystick there is no cursor this was and is just a quick hack so there is something just not very satisfactory ATM.

Edit: Just having a look at the who is online and i noticed that you are running Ubuntu how did you install vegastrike if from the Ubuntu repo you have the older version 0.4.3 not the current one apparently our data set is now to large for both Debian and Ubuntu so a lot of what has been posted in this thread just does not apply to your version so if you want the latest get the game from our download page or if you are feeling adventurous check-out the svn version and compile your own binaies.

Enjoy the Choice

[MC707]

If you want to play VS a lot more time before you get bored, instead of hacking the save file you could search the Gameplay Tactics subforum to find ways to make big bux legit.

[Thorsten]

We are trying to figure out some HUD element to show momentum more exactly your direction vector as SPEC should be engaged when when the vector is all in the direction of the destination but we humans find vector math non-intuitive so it's a tricky thing to implement as what is useful to the math initiates will baffle the new player with limited math exposure.

Well, any modern fighter jet HUD has a dot indicating the axis of the plane (where the nose is pointing) and the flight path marker (where the velocity vector is pointing) and if you fly high AOA or high g maneuvers, you immediately get a picture of the current aerodynamics - what's the trouble with doing the same? It's nothing like advanced math.

[loki1950]

Good idea Thorsten i have "Lock On -modern air combat and the AR-33 has that style HUD and it is fun to do those maneuvers especially in an engagement with some bad boys Don't know how much work it would be to implement with the current engines OpenGL calls but something like a true heading indicator could be done as a sprite that we do currently support most of the coding for such is data side except the data collection from the engine which would need to be in C++ i believe.

But all this is academic babble to the OP who is flying with the 5 year old 0.4.3 version. Sorry OMG_theGreenRanger that i did not catch the clues earlier So it's decision time stay with 0.4.3 if your system spec are kinda low as mine are ATM though i can run the svn version fine Linux side i can't windows side oh well(there's a new box on the horizon) if so you will need the patch in the attachment on this post so that the tractor beam works
If you decide to upgrade to the current engine you have two choices the stable 0.5 version from here i would recommend the RAR archive as you can unpack it with the file archiver that is part of your Gnome desktop's utilities the other option is the svn or development version which has had addition to both the engine and the data set such most of those gorgeous ships that Fendorin has been producing with such regularity a tutorial on how to fly your ship on your first launch from Atlantis from Oswald and voices coming from your speakers all the comm chatter directed to you that is and there is more traffic in the systems now as well not all factions have voices yet but one of the nice thing about running the svn version is you get all the new stuff as some as it is committed to the repository Going this route is not that technical as MC707 has written an good copy/paste how to here and if you run into any problems with any of these options just post

EDIT: look like i can't attach the patch it's bigger than 2 Mb i will see if i can find an other copy of it as a link.

Enjoy the Choice

[OMG_theGreenRanger]

I went poking around for the version number, as there doesn't seem to be an easy way to find it... Synaptic doesn't list Vegastrike anywhere, and you're right, I added it directly from the repos. However, when I launch my ship and get the Shift-M computer, it does list it as Vega Strike 0.5.

Nonetheless, I will grab the updated and use that. I do remember that getdeb.net has it, but I may just go with the Sourceforge download.

Thanks for your help, guys! I played for a couple of hours last night - the initial learning curve is steep, but it evens out the more you go.

[MC707]

Why don't you try the SVN version? It is improved in many ways, including but not limited to prettier HUD, voice acting, and much much more.

[loki1950]

Well they are using the 0.5 binary but the 0.4.3 data they are using the binary because the 0.4.3 code had a sub-system who's license had changed so that it was not acceptable to Debian's legal team we rewrote that section of code to a system that is acceptable and it has improved the game so i also think that they compiled it with the use data dir option and i think they may also have tweaked the source so it would work with the 0.4.3 data set as if i remember the old data set was not usable with the vanilla 0.5 executable.But as i said it's your call on which option you take.

Enjoy the Choice

[OMG_theGreenRanger]

... wow. So apparently I was using 0.4.3.

I grabbed the 0.5.0 one off of Getdeb.net, and wouldn't you know it, I was totally smitten with how it looks. It's beautiful. Unfortunately it didn't save any of my game from yesterday, but no worries, this is so much better!

Well done, guys, and thanks for all your help!

[loki1950]

Unfortunately it didn't save any of my game from yesterday,

The save game format changed anyway so they would not be transferable Glad you like the new look and as i said earlier is you have questions just post i'm usually about deleting bots if nothing else

Enjoy the Choice

[MC707]

... wow. So apparently I was using 0.4.3.

I grabbed the 0.5.0 one off of Getdeb.net, and wouldn't you know it, I was totally smitten with how it looks. It's beautiful. Unfortunately it didn't save any of my game from yesterday, but no worries, this is so much better!

Well done, guys, and thanks for all your help!

Hehehe thats exactly what happened to me the first time. I got VS for the first time from the Ubuntu repositories, v0.4.3. Then I got 0.5 with binaries included, and the change was outstanding. Then I upgraded to SVN, and I was wordless

[loki1950]

Then I upgraded to SVN, and I was wordless

Not quite you did write the Ubuntu How to for the wiki
Had a look at GetDeb games page almost a thousand downloads I wonder if we should have a link to that page in a sticky at the top of this forum?

Enjoy the Choice

[MC707]

Not quite you did write the Ubuntu How to for the wiki

Well SVN is still lovely despite the HowTo that was before mine xD

Had a look at GetDeb games page almost a thousand downloads I wonder if we should have a link to that page in a sticky at the top of this forum?

Hmm well if you link it, make sure it is this url <http://www.getdeb.net/app/Vegastrike>, as there are various versions (32/64 bits).

[loki1950]

Actually to the games category might be better just in case the site gets redesigned and we get a broken link Thou an update of the download page mentioning it might reach more people but that is not something that i have the permissions to do but a sticky here on the forum is easy.

Enjoy the Choice

[MC707]

Well I was just saying cuz the link you gave shows the games section but VS is nowhere to be found