weird SPEC?

lee · Post by **lee** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 3:00 am

Set the speed mode to TRAVEL, set a speed of about 2000 and travel across a few systems (like when having a cargo mission), using the autopilot.

Watch the SPEC and speed display while the autopilot is flying the ship, there seems to be something weird going on like the SPEC factor sometimes not kicking in to increase the speed before the ship has slowed down to its default max speed.

BTW, in travel mode, the speed setting is increased a bit too fast. If I hit the key as fast/short as I can, it jumps right up to 3500 or so.

bgaskey · Post by **bgaskey** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 5:54 pm

the jumps in the governor setting are based on percentages of the max speed, otherwise, travel mode becomes rather useless.

I con't understand what you are saying about Spec not kicking in correctly, could you clarify. I would test it out, but I seem to have had a catastrophic hard drive failure

Post by **loki1950** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 9:32 pm

would test it out, but I seem to have had a catastrophic hard drive failure Wink Confused Sad

Ouch! had that happen a few years ago to me and i recreantly had a BIOS fault during a reboot into a new kernel that borked the boot sector of my XP drive still haven't fixed it (it is fixable)

Enjoy the Choice

lee · Post by **lee** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:09 pm

bgaskey wrote: I con't understand what you are saying about Spec not kicking in correctly, could you clarify.

I'm not sure what's going on. It happens only sometimes, for a short time. The autopilot always uses the default max speed of the ship. Once you turn the AP on, it always turns on SPEC. But it seems that even with SPEC turned on and a SPEC factor >1, the ship doesn't go faster from SPEC before it's "real" speed isn't greater than the default max speed. What you would see is a ship speed displayed together with a SPEC factor, but the speed displayed is lower than it would if the SPEC factor would actually be factored in.

I can try to take a screenshot ...

I would test it out, but I seem to have had a catastrophic hard drive failure

Uh, I hope you got backups!

the jumps in the governor setting are based on percentages of the max speed, otherwise, travel mode becomes rather useless.

Like in percentages of 300?

A long time ago I mentioned here that the speed setting goes up and down too slow. That has been fixed, but now it's going too fast

I mean, try to set it to maybe 1500: You have to fumble with increasing and decreasing it to get it close to what you want.

My suggestion was to make it so that you could just enter the speed you want: Press a key to shift to "input mode", enter the numbers and press enter to set it. It's very much like the chat key --- maybe the chat can be used for that. You would enter "/1500" or "/trvl 1500" in the chat to set the speed to 1500.

Maybe it can be done in custom.py, like the inflight saving and loading?

bgaskey · Post by **bgaskey** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:05 am

Maybe its because the SPEC only accelerates your motion in the direction your ship is pointing, and if the Autopilot has just turned, it takes a second for your regular thrusters to build up a vector parallel to your ship for the spec to act on.

lee · Post by **lee** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:39 am

That would be a good explanation!

Here's what I mean: With SPEC enabled, the HUD-speed is 536, SPEC factor is about 1.8 million. With SPEC disabled, HUD-speed is about the same (556).

That means that SPEC is enabled but "doesn't work". And it's directional.

bgaskey · Post by **bgaskey** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:46 pm

Ya that would be the exact effect if you were drifting backwards or just turning sharply when the spec was activated.

Post by **safemode** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 8:59 pm

also, you have to realize that spec and autopilot are two _different_ things.

in the second image, you have autopilot enabled, not just spec, so SPEC isn't going to behave the way it did in 0.4.x. To enable _just_ SPEC, you have to do shift + a i believe. Check your config file if that's wrong.

Autopilot will not allow you to steer while engaged and functional. It will only spec in the direction that it believes will result in the fastest transit time to your target.

In any case, you want a low regular velocity to minimize the overshoot caused by course corrections while in spec.

lee · Post by **lee** » Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:44 am

Yes, in one of the pictures autopilot and spec are turned off to show the "real" speed.

Meanwhile, I found the autopilot in the source. I made it so that the autopilot doesn't accelerate the ship to a higher speed than the set speed.

It makes flying with the autopilot slower if you set the speed lower than the max speed of the vessel, but it helps with the problem of overshooting the target.

What I haven't found out is how to make the autopilot use a higher speed than the max speed of the vessel if the player sets it (in travel mode).

I'm still trying to get a good idea what to do about the turning off early ...