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How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 5:43 am
by dcarr
Excuse me, but does anyone know how to rescue ejected escape pods for the rescue missions? Because When I try, they die before I can finish bringing them in.
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 3:30 pm
by loki1950
So do you have a tractor beam installed,as that is the first thing you need
Not sure what the time limit is on bringing them in alive is.
Enjoy the Choice
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 3:40 pm
by klauss
dcarr wrote:Excuse me, but does anyone know how to rescue ejected escape pods for the rescue missions? Because When I try, they die before I can finish bringing them in.
Well, first thing as loki said, get a tractor beam.
Second and important thing: distract the attackers. Otherwise they'll kill the rescue pod almost instantly. I've been thinking about making them less aggressive towards the rescue pod, at least most of the time. But as of now, the only way is to make sure they don't attack the pod.
Next, hurry up. The guy has limited air. You have quite a while, but that time flies if you engage the enemies, so make sure to make the pod your top priority.
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 7:56 pm
by dcarr
Thanks for the tip, but I have a tractor beam [a light one] and I have a Sickle for my ship, but I either can't seem to pull him in far enough, lock onto him in order to pull him in, or both. The enemy ship/s so far don't seem to be a problem because if they go after anybody its me, and I can withstand a few hits. I mean can you not use a hunter, or are there any special requirements such as a passengers quarters, or extra cargo room?
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:17 pm
by klauss
dcarr wrote:Thanks for the tip, but I have a tractor beam [a light one] and I have a Sickle for my ship, but I either can't seem to pull him in far enough, lock onto him in order to pull him in, or both. The enemy ship/s so far don't seem to be a problem because if they go after anybody its me, and I can withstand a few hits. I mean can you not use a hunter, or are there any special requirements such as a passengers quarters, or extra cargo room?
Well, you must have the cargo room, though I don't think it's much. I don't remember how much cargo space the sickle has, it could be that you're out of it.
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:36 am
by pheonixstorm
Also trying to tractor anything in can be tricky (or has that been fixed up a bit?).
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2012 3:43 am
by klauss
That can be fixed really easy by setting tractor.scoop_angle in the physics section. It makes the tractor area a cone, rather than a beam. Much easier to use.
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2013 4:17 pm
by Tattorack
klauss wrote:dcarr wrote:Excuse me, but does anyone know how to rescue ejected escape pods for the rescue missions? Because When I try, they die before I can finish bringing them in.
Well, first thing as loki said, get a tractor beam.
Second and important thing: distract the attackers. Otherwise they'll kill the rescue pod almost instantly. I've been thinking about making them less aggressive towards the rescue pod, at least most of the time. But as of now, the only way is to make sure they don't attack the pod.
Next, hurry up. The guy has limited air. You have quite a while, but that time flies if you engage the enemies, so make sure to make the pod your top priority.
Have you considered making them a lot less accurate towards escape pods instead of reducing their aggressiveness?
Would be somewhat more realistic since the escape pod is this little buggery small thingummy, so it would naturally harder to hit.
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Sat Jul 06, 2013 5:56 pm
by klauss
That's a good point in general.
AI already has precision settings, but somehow they're a little over precise. I guess it should be a small matter of tweaking some numbers.
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 2:09 pm
by Tattorack
klauss wrote:That's a good point in general.
AI already has precision settings, but somehow they're a little over precise. I guess it should be a small matter of tweaking some numbers.
Wish I could help with that, it'll have to wait till the end of August...
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:26 pm
by VGSailor
klauss wrote:That can be fixed really easy by setting tractor.scoop_angle in the physics section. It makes the tractor area a cone, rather than a beam. Much easier to use.
Okay, I give up. I have been playing with
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<var name="tractor.scoop" value="true" />
in both the "graphics" and "physics" sections, as well as with
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<var name="tractor.scoop_angle" value="true" />
in the physics section. I have used both a light tractor beam and a heavy tractor beam. I have autotracking on my tractor beam's mount point. And still, the tractor beam doesn't do jack s**t! It seems like the only way that I can trap cargo or a pilot is to happen to ram into it while my tractor beam is active. The beam doesn't do anything to actually pull an object into my ship.
99% of the time, the beam does literally nothing. I can sit there - with the object target-locked, less than 4000 meters away, with no relative motion between the object and myself, with the object sitting dead-center in my crosshairs and with my auto-tracking tractor beam active - and watch as the object also just sits there, the exact same distance from me as it was when I brought my ship to zero velocity.
The other 1% of the time, the distance between my ship and the object does decrease, but when it reaches zero and I am anticipating the little beep that tells me I have successfully captured the object, all of a sudden the object is 20 kilometers away from me and is not in my cargo hold! To quote my students, WTF?!
I enjoy playing the game, and would probably be quite happy to just disavow the existence of the worthless tractor beam and put another microwave laser there instead, but since the tractor beam is there, it would be nice if it was actually useful for the purposes for which it was intended.
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 8:50 pm
by TBeholder
dcarr wrote:Thanks for the tip, but I have a tractor beam [a light one] and I have a Sickle for my ship, but I either can't seem to pull him in far enough, lock onto him in order to pull him in, or both. The enemy ship/s so far don't seem to be a problem because if they go after anybody its me, and I can withstand a few hits.
All you need to actually scoop a pod or container is to collide (at any angle) with it while tractor is active and you have enough of cargo space. If tractor beam is on, velocity doesn't matter much, if it's off, you have a crashing collision.
Now, tractoring in stuff is good, but actually hitting anything small with Tractor Beam is likely only if you set reference to the target and have a lot of time to dance (not the case in rescue missions), or simply have autotracking on that mount and the target is locked (that's automatic hit on anything within cone). Either way, tractors propagate very slowly and if you pick up something far away, it either barely moves or accelerates a lot and slings by you. Since in a rescue mission you don't have time for chasing the pod - don't even bother with heavy tractors, just fly toward it and fire tractor before collision.
Yup, it's all a little whacked currently. But it's not impossible.
VGSailor wrote:I enjoy playing the game, and would probably be quite happy to just disavow the existence of the worthless tractor beam and put another microwave laser there instead
Uh, why put something like this into Heavy hardpoint? "Special" fits into ANY mount after a little upgrade (Tractor Capability).
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Mon Sep 09, 2013 7:04 pm
by klauss
VGSailor wrote:
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<var name="tractor.scoop_angle" value="true" />
AFAIR, that ought to be a number (angle in radians?)
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2013 1:59 pm
by VGSailor
klauss wrote:VGSailor wrote:
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<var name="tractor.scoop_angle" value="true" />
AFAIR, that ought to be a number (angle in radians?)
Okay, I'll try that. And tractor.scoop just stays "true?"
Re: How Can I Fulfill Rescue Missions
Posted: Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:33 pm
by TBeholder
Yup,
search "scoop" in the variables list. There's has a lot, both in graphics/ and physics/ since cone scoop is all hardcoded rather than being a standard beam with square cross-section, divergence angle and custom "pulse" sprite.