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What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2011 8:20 pm
by unavailableartist
Looking through the upgrades I noticed some upgrades that I question the use of...
What's the ECM good for?
What's the passenger quarter mods for?
And What's the use of Spec Capacitors?

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 3:45 pm
by klauss
ECM interferes with hostile targetting systems, essentially protecting you from incoming missiles.

Spec Capacitors let you use Spec and jump engines. Without enough of them, you won't jump, and your Spec engine will perform poorly or not at all.

Not sure about passanger quarters. Supposedly, they enable special mission types (passanger transport).

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 4:44 pm
by TBeholder
ECM makes any missile targetting the equipped ship to lose the target - each tick, with probability proportional to ECM level.
I.e. even ECM-1 have a fair chance of neutralizing missiles fired from 70 km away before they hit.
On the other eyestalk, suppose a missile was lobbed point-blank (or is a dumbfire)? Even if ECM did successfully jam it at the first try, this does... nothing: the missile would need to know its target for aiming maneuvers, but this doesn't affect its imminent collision with your ship, at which point it goes boom just fine.

What's point of having SPEC caps > 1 is a mystery. I see only one possible use: having enough energy for 2 jumps allows you to flee by immediately jumping back in case your ship appeared in the middle of swarming enemies or something. Beyond two jumps worth of ready warp energy - probably no point at all.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:04 pm
by travists
klauss wrote:Not sure about passanger quarters. Supposedly, they enable special mission types (passanger transport).
I think this bears looking into. One would think they are needed to hull people. If the code exists to check for particular upgrades for the success/failure of missions, it opens up science missions through labs, custom sensors, etc.

I think the SPEC capacitors at one time where needed to run SPEC as the draw from the drive was usually more than your reactor could produce.

If I may add one item: what is the repair droid good for at the moment, does it actually fix anything?

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:51 pm
by klauss
travists wrote:If I may add one item: what is the repair droid good for at the moment, does it actually fix anything?
It does, it repairs damaged systems.
It takes its time, but it does repair them. Give it a try.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:59 pm
by travists
I always buy them, but usually if I take damage I go BOOM! before taking systems damage.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 10:28 pm
by unavailableartist
Yea... game has some balance issues with that Spec capacitor. I just now getting the gist of what every part does... there's still some of the spec terms I don't quite understand like (targeting cones, like missle cones/gun cone with sensors)... what makes the Skyscanner much less than the much more expensive Confed version of sensors? Thanks guys... I tried looking up the thing about the Passenger quarters, and could find anything useful about what they're good for.

I think the only mayor flaw with this game that I see is the balance issues with some of the parts, some parts shouldn't be worth as much as they do, and some should be worth a little more.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 10:38 pm
by klauss
travists wrote:I always buy them, but usually if I take damage I go BOOM! before taking systems damage.
Well, with any luck, the criticals system will help a bit there.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:05 pm
by pheonixstorm
klauss wrote:Not sure about passanger quarters. Supposedly, they enable special mission types (passanger transport).
According to the VS holy scroll they were going to be used to transport the dead guys relatives to the funeral or some such while you catch missions inbetween on your travel to Ktah (sp?) which in turn would push you into one of several campaign arcs. Or so that about how it looked. JackS did some amazing work on creating the whole universe and story/timeline. There's a lot that has been left out but I think that is just from lack of time or still being in the process of writing it.. think I will email him and see if he has time to update it. Given enough information maybe I can even write a VS book lol I know that big ol pdf gave me a lot of game ideas for 4X, RTS, FPS, etc.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:31 am
by TBeholder
travists wrote:If I may add one item: what is the repair droid good for at the moment, does it actually fix anything?
It fixes upgrades. But not armor and hull. The level is its "hit points" - how many times the repairbot can suffer a critical hit before it stops repairing anything. So level 2 is just-in-case and normally there's no point to have more as the ship is unlikely to survive until the third critical hit specifically on repairbot - unless it's a capship that can take a lot of hits even without armor.
unavailableartist wrote: terms I don't quite understand like (targeting cones, like missle cones/gun cone with sensors)... what makes the Skyscanner much less than the much more expensive Confed version of sensors?
The width (from the main axis) of cones in which missiles can lock and in which ITTS (Autotracker is also slaved to it) produces predictions.
Also, there's friend-or-foe color coded thingy.
unavailableartist wrote:I think the only mayor flaw with this game that I see is the balance issues with some of the parts, some parts shouldn't be worth as much as they do, and some should be worth a little more.
Well, sometimes, yeah. Though with weapons usually there are redeeming features or even an immense advantage not obvious unless you know how it works (laser beams are relatively weak... right? :twisted: ) or requiring proper use (Ktek gun).
The worst are things that should depend on the hull (shield, armor, engine tweaks), but so far don't.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 4:05 pm
by klauss
TBeholder wrote:
travists wrote:If I may add one item: what is the repair droid good for at the moment, does it actually fix anything?
It fixes upgrades. But not armor and hull. The level is its "hit points" - how many times the repairbot can suffer a critical hit before it stops repairing anything. So level 2 is just-in-case and normally there's no point to have more as the ship is unlikely to survive until the third critical hit specifically on repairbot - unless it's a capship that can take a lot of hits even without armor.
:?:
I don't remember it like that. From what I remember, the level is the speed at which it does repairs.
We'll have to check the source to resolve this ;)

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 5:53 pm
by TBeholder
klauss wrote:I don't remember it like that. From what I remember, the level is the speed at which it does repairs.
We'll have to check the source to resolve this ;)
Maybe it was, but there were changes... like with ECM? In the current trunk,
repair time = (physics/RepairDroidTime) x (lost portion of functionality)
I.e. default 3 minutes for anything fully broken and repairable. See vegastrike/src/cmd/unit_generic.cpp: level decrease on critical hit - in Unit::DamageRandSys, line #4714; checks and timers for repair - in Unit::Repair, #9203.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 6:03 pm
by klauss
You're right. I don't think the "new" way is right.
I'll have to look into the issue.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 6:31 pm
by klauss
Interesting.

The commit in revision 10268 removed continuous repair functionality, and with it the difference between repair bots.

Will have to fix this.

Re: What to do with some upgrades...

Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:48 am
by unavailableartist
The width (from the main axis) of cones in which missiles can lock and in which ITTS (Autotracker is also slaved to it) produces predictions.
Also, there's friend-or-foe color coded thingy.
Actually if you look closely, starcanner is cheaper than all the confed... that lack the friend/foe- threat identifier thingy Starcan IV or confed IV offer, and like a 1/8th the price of the confed version that offer the same features. Then only different is the missle lock cone and weapons cone.