Vega Strike Forums

Hello,

I found the hard way that loading your ship with heavy cargo is not fun at all, so i wanted to add mass carrying info to the cargo mall, that looks like easy task for a newcomer (and more useful than compiler warning cleanup), but I want to know what should be a reasonable load for a ship i.e. not sensibly impairing its maneuvrability.

Does someone know a formula or something else to alert innocent buyers, that their containerful of uranium is goig to be a pain in his ship's ass ? Maybe even something that can be scaled to green/yellow/red text color to help with GUI feedback...

It looks like there's already a mass %age calculated and displayed on the HUD, so there must already be something.

I attached my very RFC-esque patch adding this info to basecomputer... I'll enhance following review feedback.

Why not to drop it into "http://sourceforge.net/p/vegastrike/patches/"?
As to the way you do this, it would be better to show the same "% mass (base)" as VDU shows (see GameCockpit::DrawGauges in cockpit.cpp) than just total mass. Or, even better, in "M/M0" format.

I'll drop it into sf when it will be more like a final version, that was just to show what i wanted to do, if my textual description wasn't sufficiently understandable...

Wrt the choice to display "Total mass: xxx metric tons", that was only to display something relevant to the cargo choice we have in front of us which talks in metric tons...

I'm not sure everyone will understand what "Mass: 146% (base)" will mean. But whatever, I think the important part will be the green/yellow/red color of that text conveying more meaning than the actual value.

So back to my question: what are the levels at which that overweight will 1) start to become noticeable 2) start to become annoying.

And I don't grok your "M/M0 format", care to elaborate a bit ?

BTW thanks for the mentoring, this is really appreciable...

For the record I lost some time in data/base/computer_lib.py @ get_manifest_text() before I understood I was at the wrong place.

Here is a patch adding "Mass: 113% (base)", as you hinted.
It is much simpler, touching only basecomputer.cpp
Should I put that one in SF patch tracker ?

vincele wrote:So back to my question: what are the levels at which that overweight will 1) start to become noticeable 2) start to become annoying.

Purely subjective. I'm fine with lugging metal from a base to a planet at 3000% overload - it's not really much worse than it would be anyway. With something like overdrive-5 to ensure getting to warp-able distance doesn't take ages, but why not...

vincele wrote:I'm not sure everyone will understand what "Mass: 146% (base)" will mean. But whatever, I think the important part will be the green/yellow/red color of that text conveying more meaning than the actual value.

Well, it's the same what the gauge shows, and basics are rather obvious: if the ship is twice its nominal mass, it accelerates twice slower.

vincele wrote:Wrt the choice to display "Total mass: xxx metric tons", that was only to display something relevant to the cargo choice we have in front of us which talks in metric tons...

vincele wrote:And I don't grok your "M/M0 format", care to elaborate a bit ?

What is directly related to cargo is, as you noticed, straightforward mass tons. What is directly related to the maneuverability is how much more massive the ship got than it's supposed to be. Hence, showing "Mass/basemass" may be preferrable, as it gives both at once. Just like with "volumeLeft/emptyVolume". Not refined, but at this point you don't need fine differences between 1.6 and 1.5, telling estimated 5x overload from 10x is enough. Of course, since "just sell it back" is an option, "% (base)" showing when to back off is sufficient.

TBeholder wrote:

vincele wrote:So back to my question: what are the levels at which that overweight will 1) start to become noticeable 2) start to become annoying.

Purely subjective. I'm fine with lugging metal from a base to a planet at 3000% overload - it's not really much worse than it would be anyway. With something like overdrive-5 to ensure getting to warp-able distance doesn't take ages, but why not...

It is subjective, different ships may handle that more gracefully, a better pilot (which I am not) too... And the real problem is not acceleration, it's deceleration and docking that become hard.

It's completely a newbie enhancement, a seasoned player will know what he can handle. But still it's small playability enhancements that attract new gamers, and hook them... Whatever, the current patch seems a good first step in that direction.

TBeholder wrote:

vincele wrote:I'm not sure everyone will understand what "Mass: 146% (base)" will mean. But whatever, I think the important part will be the green/yellow/red color of that text conveying more meaning than the actual value.

Well, it's the same what the gauge shows, and basics are rather obvious: if the ship is twice its nominal mass, it accelerates twice slower.

Agreed with the "same as the HUD gauge" argument, consistency is a good thing. I can understand the physics background explaining the fact, but a newcomer to the game will certainly get caught, so something should explain that to him. Maybe just a line in the manual telling what purpose serves that mass %age gauge...

TBeholder wrote:Of course, since "just sell it back" is an option, "% (base)" showing when to back off is sufficient.

Yeah, agreed, the interface consistency wins... And that should be sufficient.

BTW I have problems with my SF account, I cannot put my patche there, nor create bug reports, so I'll use the forums in the mean time...

Thanks

SF is now back to usable state for me, so you have it there:
https://sourceforge.net/p/vegastrike/patches/57/