argument to remove need for spec

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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by log0 »

Thanks for the clarification klauss. I assume the testing will happen with Deus patch + adjusted spec?
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by log0 »

From what I see Cephid_17 has got:
6 jump points
1 fighter barracks
1 mining base
1 relay

There is really not much going on. I think it needs some more units. POI will be Atlantis I guess?
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by klauss »

Yes, deus's patch for sure.
log0 wrote:From what I see Cephid_17 has got:
6 jump points
1 fighter barracks
1 mining base
1 relay

There is really not much going on. I think it needs some more units. POI will be Atlantis I guess?
I was also thinking atlantis, at dockable range (but not too close). It's the first system a player will see, so we have to show off ;)

We may have to move the starting point off to Serenity, though, if we make landing/takeoff as expensive as we've talked about somewhere else.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

I dont like using planets as bases at all. It takes WAY too long to get into docking range and I dont think there can be a practical extension of that docking range that is workable and the only alternative is to allow spec to bring you closer which is dumb.

Planets need to be thought of as places that exist, but aren't places you go. Instead, since it's unlikely your ships are atmo compatible nor would they have the energy to leave atmo unless we're rocking some kind of magnetic UFO tech instead of thrusters and such ... I think we should keep everything as space stations. To get freight to and from the planets to these bases would utilize purpose built ships and rockets and whatever else methods we want to say.

Getting planets out of the picture as dockable units solves the docking problem completely. And just so they are still interactive, I propose we make getting close to planets cause damage to the ship until you get close enough that he atmo just burns the ship up and you die.

Keeping everything the player interacts with and docks as space vessels means a much quicker docking. It also removes the really unrealistic notion that a planet would only have 1 base. If it's inhabitable, it should have many dozens if not more. We dont want that. Space stations are 1 base, and that makes sense. So instead of docking at atlantis, there would be a space station above atlantis that you dock with that represents the planet below. There could be a few space stations above atlantis to represent other cultures on the planet.


The phases that were mentioned are good. But i think we need to get rid of docking at planets and move all the jump points in cephid_17 to one area near atlantis and bring the other stations in too. If we get rid of planets as significant units then the AI likely wont ever navigate to them, so we should see without any re-programming, the AI be auto-inserted near significant units not just in random empty spots of the system, this should then automatically put them all around the bases that are now all around atlantis and thus near the player and the jump points. Thus with minimal recoding, we should get a fairly accurate portrayal of how the game would operate in a spec-less environment assuming the vsrandom routines inserts units only around significant units and not just at total random. But in the latter, the units would just spec to the only locations they can select, which would be where we wanted them to be in the first place.

I think that simplifies things and gets rid of some annoying problems as well.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:I dont like using planets as bases at all. It takes WAY too long to get into docking range and I dont think there can be a practical extension of that docking range that is workable and the only alternative is to allow spec to bring you closer which is dumb.

Planets need to be thought of as places that exist, but aren't places you go. Instead, since it's unlikely your ships are atmo compatible nor would they have the energy to leave atmo unless we're rocking some kind of magnetic UFO tech instead of thrusters and such ... I think we should keep everything as space stations. To get freight to and from the planets to these bases would utilize purpose built ships and rockets and whatever else methods we want to say.

Getting planets out of the picture as dockable units solves the docking problem completely. And just so they are still interactive, I propose we make getting close to planets cause damage to the ship until you get close enough that he atmo just burns the ship up and you die.
FTR, I do agree. But, FTR, I think this removal must be done after including planets in other roles (atmospheric friction, gravity, shuttles, docking through space elevators, whatever), or it will feel as a feature loss.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

it's not a feature when it sucks. Nobody enjoys staring at a planet for 5 minutes while they try to get into docking range. Nobody. Removing planets from being units that can be docked at altogether wont be missed by anyone. Except for maybe masochists.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by loki1950 »

5 minutes never took me that long closer to 2 minutes but even that is tedious.

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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:it's not a feature when it sucks. Nobody enjoys staring at a planet for 5 minutes while they try to get into docking range. Nobody. Removing planets from being units that can be docked at altogether wont be missed by anyone. Except for maybe masochists.
You didn't get my point. Currently, if they're not dockable, they're just eye candy and contribute nothing to gameplay.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

klauss wrote:
safemode wrote:it's not a feature when it sucks. Nobody enjoys staring at a planet for 5 minutes while they try to get into docking range. Nobody. Removing planets from being units that can be docked at altogether wont be missed by anyone. Except for maybe masochists.
You didn't get my point. Currently, if they're not dockable, they're just eye candy and contribute nothing to gameplay.
That's correct. They will be eye candy (just as they are now). Their contribution is to the story. We need a reason for a base to exist and that reason is because it's the space nexus for a colony or colonies on the surface of the planet. We need a reason why a certain base may specialize in certain things and it's proximity to a given planet can explain that. We need a reason why a certain planet may only have 1 base and that's because space stations are expensive and efficient.

You aren't contributing to gameplay by creating a base that takes an obscene amount of time to dock at. You're creating a nuisance. The same can be accomplished by making a normal base (space station) well above the planet. Furthermore, the idea that planets only have one base doesn't make sense. Yet that's what you have to accept currently. Also, the idea that you would always have a ship that can fly in atmo and out is also stretching the imagination. It's better to avoid creating these logical holes than to shoehorn ever weaker reasons to explain them away.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:
klauss wrote:
safemode wrote:it's not a feature when it sucks. Nobody enjoys staring at a planet for 5 minutes while they try to get into docking range. Nobody. Removing planets from being units that can be docked at altogether wont be missed by anyone. Except for maybe masochists.
You didn't get my point. Currently, if they're not dockable, they're just eye candy and contribute nothing to gameplay.
That's correct. They will be eye candy (just as they are now). Their contribution is to the story. We need a reason for a base to exist and that reason is because it's the space nexus for a colony or colonies on the surface of the planet. We need a reason why a certain base may specialize in certain things and it's proximity to a given planet can explain that. We need a reason why a certain planet may only have 1 base and that's because space stations are expensive and efficient.
But that won't happen so quickly. Until that, my point was, keep planets reachable. In fact, if and when we make approaching planets back a feasible option for whatever reason, system layouts will support it (if we try to make docking with planets, while not quick, feasible).
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

I'm not saying we re-code what a planet is.

I'm saying I add a conditional to advanceSignificant units functions to ignore planets and create new bases that will take their place but in space.
That should be all you need for ai and players to not have planets be a destination.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by IansterGuy »

The solution is to put the jump hubs in either low orbit around the planet in proximity to a large 'planetary cargo lift, transport terminal' or in geosynchronous orbit 'Space elevator, transport terminal'. This way ships can quickly reach a 'terminal' and in the case of low orbit 'cargo lifts' ships are reasonably in range to land when there is a reason to. In other cases the ship could SPEC, ferry, or valid jump method to either get to the surface directly or simply in range to land.

Transport terminals have been discussed all over the forum already. Search for "space elevator" and you get:
http://forums.vega-strike.org/viewtopic ... or#p130702
http://forums.vega-strike.org/viewtopic ... or#p127641
http://forums.vega-strike.org/viewtopic ... or#p120721

Type "Space Elevator" (with capitals) and you get even older mentions and work done for it.
Most of these links seem somewhat related most of the things discussed now because they have to do with station locations, transportation methods, landing on planets and such things.

There are lots of space station models at solcommand.com here that could be turned into what we would need to make it look right.

Here was some talk about how the elevator car would work as"Space Elevator Car - First Draft" though I think that space elevators should be reserved for only safe systems where their is low risk of the elevator cable of being attacked, because 35,786 kilometres would be to long of area to defend heavily. Additionally the elevator trip should be fast from the players perspective. The elevator would accelerate extremely greater than ten earth gravities due to high quality and high power inertial negation/mitigation but the time spent in it for single player would be skipped.
Last edited by IansterGuy on Mon Mar 04, 2013 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

i really dont get why anyone would spend time trying to get planets to work when it's much more logical to remove them from the equation.

lets get this out of the way.
people dont want to play the truck drivers of the galaxy. It's not fun, it's not active, it's not a game. Did nobody see the episode of the simspons where truck drivers were simply on autopilot the whole time? That's not a joke. Nobody wants to spend their time transporting things and nothing is going on. Trying to remove the negatives of being a truck driver isn't what we should be focussing on. Base the game around activities that keep people interactive, not around those that make people fall asleep.

action action action.. If the #1 danger related to people with the job in question is falling asleep then rethink the intended activity. Dont waste time trying to make it something it's not.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by IansterGuy »

safemode wrote:I really don't get why anyone would spend time trying to get planets to work when it's much more logical to remove them from the equation. [...] action action action.. If the #1 danger related to people with the job in question is falling asleep then rethink the intended activity. Don't waste time trying to make it something it's not.
Actuality I thought this process was avoiding a lot of work as it was previously discussed. Docking with planets is a visible sore now. A complete graphical solution would be to simulate the entire process of landing with planetary flight atmosphere, train physical bases and all. At minimum the only thing a 'planetary transport terminal' would require is likely just a simple link inside the base to the planet, assuming that ship goes with the player. If not if would still just include some way to exclude some or all ships appearing on the planet dock and upgrade centre. The player would then not realize the that landing sequence is not finished until latter in the game if they try to land the old fashioned way.

This leaves every possibility for further development of planets still open, no matter how much action is prioritized around the rest of the game. Creating missions, engaging stories, and tweaking combat strategies is how to create action in my opinion. The rest is just a background for it but it is hard to commit to a story if the cannon keeps on changing. So it is worth getting cannon right the first time. This means to me being "generic", as the project goal states. I think this goal is right because if a feature does not bar out another feature, it may not be right necessary but at least there are no huge consequences of being wrong. So I think what has been discussed here is perfect because it leaves almost every possible effective goal still open. I'm not talking about the details but rather the effect of what people want.

Creating action in a 3d space shooter\space simulator should be a priority but no need for unnecessary casualties of the process. If one decided to not be generic Vega Strike would end up just like every other of the dozens of space games out there. It would have less specific appeal if it abandoned the philosophy that had gotten it success previously which is the dream of making custom modifications of anything a person wants. To revive it's success I think it needs this combined solution as it has been discussed here so to reaffirm and modernise the way it plans to be generic. This means saying "Yes... but it must mesh" Then moders can continue to easily make the game their own because most of the common components they would need are already build and running for them in the main. It's the dream that Vega Strike can be anything people want that makes it great, if that is taken away or let continue to deteriorate Vega Strike would not have that appeal any more.

So onward and upward and maybe sideways but not too far back down. Not much regression is necessary to move forward the way I see it and not really any more complication either.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:i really dont get why anyone would spend time trying to get planets to work when it's much more logical to remove them from the equation.

lets get this out of the way.
people dont want to play the truck drivers of the galaxy. It's not fun, it's not active, it's not a game. Did nobody see the episode of the simspons where truck drivers were simply on autopilot the whole time? That's not a joke. Nobody wants to spend their time transporting things and nothing is going on. Trying to remove the negatives of being a truck driver isn't what we should be focussing on. Base the game around activities that keep people interactive, not around those that make people fall asleep.

action action action.. If the #1 danger related to people with the job in question is falling asleep then rethink the intended activity. Dont waste time trying to make it something it's not.
You seem to assume there are no reasons to land on a planet other than delivering cargo. There very well might be one, although I'd expect it to be part of a campaign.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

how would any reason at all you can think of change anything that i said above? There is no gameplay difference between a base that is a planet and one that is a space vessel except maybe how much damage it can take before destruction and the ability to defend itself. None. A base is a base.

What you're trying to do is argue some kind of in-game canon reason why we should spend time trying to fix a problem we dont even need to have. It doesn't even make sense from an in-game perspective to dock at planets.

How about this:
We remove the ability to dock at planets, they are downgraded to insignificant units like the suns are. Now, every "base" we need to dock at can be treated realistically and players dont have to jam a fork in their thigh to keep themselves conscious.
On bases that are above or in the vicinity of a habitable planet (planet that has habitation on it, not necessarily breathable atmo) we add rooms to the base that correspond to intra-planetary transport. Many destinations on the planet's surface (corresponding to bases or cities) can be represented by "shuttle busses" in this room. The whole process of picking a location, and shuttle buss and then getting to that location on the planet's surface happens in the base. We can have a little video cutscene for landing / taking off and getting back to base even. The surface location is all done in base ...so no additional coding needs to be done. These are all just "rooms" in the base that are linked together.

So you get to goto the planet's surface. You dont have to deal with docking with planets. You dont have to explain how your ship survived entry and liftoff. You dont have to explain why there is only 1 destination on an entire planet's surface. And we dont have to add any additional code or mechanisms to the game to do it.

PLUS: in addition to that awesome solution. We can charge round-trip fares to users to make it interesting. You pay at the space base for round trip fare to a particular destination on the planet and certain fixers or opportunities can be put there. We can even put certain rare items or awesome deals or what not at expensive "exclusive locations" like resorts or corporate locations.. etc. The possibilities are great and it should be fairly easy to add to the dynamic generator
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by Deus Siddis »

The main problem with planets is that they are such an underdeveloped feature. If there were for example, atmospheric physics and gravity or other ships flying around in the atmosphere having battles there, or bases on the surface to land at, etc... then planets become an interesting environment to give you a break from empty space.

The problem with them now is that they are nothing more than a SPEC obstacle and cargo destination. You don't interact with them in any other way.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

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safemode wrote:How about this: [...] On bases that are above or in the vicinity of a habitable planet (planet that has habitation on it, not necessarily breathable atmo) we add rooms to the base that correspond to intra-planetary transport. Many destinations on the planet's surface (corresponding to bases or cities) can be represented by "shuttle busses" in this room. The whole process of picking a location, and shuttle buss and then getting to that location on the planet's surface happens in the base. We can have a little video cutscene for landing / taking off and getting back to base even. The surface location is all done in base ...so no additional coding needs to be done. These are all just "rooms" in the base that are linked together.
Agree.
safemode wrote:So you get to goto the planet's surface. You dont have to deal with docking with planets. You dont have to explain how your ship survived entry and liftoff. You dont have to explain why there is only 1 destination on an entire planet's surface. And we dont have to add any additional code or mechanisms to the game to do it.
Yup! Don't have to, but someone could if it is in their motivation to make it.
safemode wrote:PLUS: in addition to that awesome solution. We can charge round-trip fares to users to make it interesting. You pay at the space base for round trip fare to a particular destination on the planet and certain fixers or opportunities can be put there. We can even put certain rare items or awesome deals or what not at expensive "exclusive locations" like resorts or corporate locations.. etc. The possibilities are great and it should be fairly easy to add to the dynamic generator
This sounds good. Agree, lot's a possibilities. This is the key to make those partially isolated areas around the solar system work. Everything would have a small fee, relatively cheap compared to the fuel it takes to get there, let alone the cost of a FTL 'transport drive'. So the most common services in the transport terminal would likely be 'Warp Ferries' or 'Jump Ferries' depending on the details. For some relatively high population planets in safe systems there could be one or more gigantic space elevators that would be cheap to ride.

Good place maybe to list mini campaigns that take you on a exhibition ride away from the freedom of the hubs for a while. This way non hub missions don't get mixed with bar missions in case the bar gets overcrowded. This makes unnecessary the pay per use 'Jump Gates', 'Warp Gates' 'In-system Jump Nodes' and varying 'jump sweet spots' I was suggesting to either get to planet ship hangers or points in space. Though if desired some could still add variety where justified. Thinking about this I will probably adjust my position on how useful SPEC is for long distance travel. But I still think it should simply run out of fuel before it runs out of acceleration so that any long distance travel deterrent would not be the time by rather the money.
Deus Siddis wrote:The main problem with planets is that they are such an underdeveloped feature. If there were for example, atmospheric physics and gravity or other ships flying around in the atmosphere having battles there, or bases on the surface to land at, etc... then planets become an interesting environment to give you a break from empty space.

The problem with them now is that they are nothing more than a SPEC obstacle and cargo destination. You don't interact with them in any other way.
Until that is developed the solution here I think works great even side by side. The only significant thing I disagree right now with safemode is weather to remove the current way to land. I would prefer to leave it there because what happen when a player eventual tries to land for fun? Would they just crash into the planet? That makes no more sense then letting them land if they want to. They would have spent the fuel required to get to the planets already.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

they would crash due to the ship not being fit for dealing with the atmospheric drag and conditions.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:how would any reason at all you can think of change anything that i said above? There is no gameplay difference between a base that is a planet and one that is a space vessel except maybe how much damage it can take before destruction and the ability to defend itself. None. A base is a base.
It makes a big difference in the storytelling sense, and it's the only place where I'm advocating going to planets.

I agree, Planet landing's problem, now, is that it's a very under-developed feature. This is why leaving planets at reachable distance from some (not all) hot spots is a winning proposition. We can discourage going there (especially if we place stations around them), and we can, slowly and as time permits, develop the possibilities.

And even the simple proposition of having space elevators in place, where you dock with them in space, and have the possibility of "taking the elevator" down to the planet, while technically simple, would provide an IMHO convincing way of accessing planets' surfaces.

Which brings me back to what we talked about some time ago, about randomly generated bases. Planets are so big, that we can't create enough content for them as it is right now. But if we had a way of dynamically and randomly generating "base rooms", we could have infinitely big "bases". Thing is, that's actually easier with 3D bases than it is with 2D.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by Deus Siddis »

safemode wrote:they would crash due to the ship not being fit for dealing with the atmospheric drag and conditions.
The opposite is true. The design of most all craft in the game goes out of its way to try to look aerodynamic. The enormous acceleration rates of craft and the enormous amount of time they can be sustained give them more than enough capability to make a fully powered, controlled landing. Which means no need for heat shields or parachutes or wings (even if they seem to have them anyway).
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by loki1950 »

Not all of those ships could do a tail landing on their engines :wink: though and their landing carriage's might not take the bounce.So an other column in units.csv would be needed to distinguish planetary landing ability and I think the benefit of doing so would be marginal at best.

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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by safemode »

under-developed is what you call the explosion or wormhole animation or performance of our rather good shaders or damage or painted look to the backgrounds that seem totally out of place next to seeing what the shaders can do with planet textures ... Planet docking is _not_ developed. It's simply fly for an obscene amount of time to get near to a planet and then zap you're on a base and there is absolutely no chance that that is going to change anytime soon. And indeed, i believe if it was it would only damage klauss' other argument against unit consolidation hurting exploration. If planets were explorable via a type of seamless flight setup, it would take hours to even get around a fraction of a single planet. And if we sprinkled interesting things on numerous planets, how is the player going to get anywhere? They'll be inclined to spend an extreme amount of time within planets and the prospect of traversing multiple systems each with planets or more to need to enter and explore or at least to just reach a base means extreme amount of time needed. Seamless planetary flight sounds like you're looking to combine the most boring aspects of space exploration with the most boring genre of games Flight simulators. There's a reason why they invented autopilot systems that can take off and land a plane...because routine flying is long and boring and what kind of magical flying tech will we have to create to deal with the fact that our base destination is 9000 miles away from where we entered the planet ?

From my point of view, whether it's spec taking forever or planets that you have to dock with to reach a base you need to get to taking forever or the hypothetical planet exploration ...all they are are tar pits that slow the player down with no gainful purpose.

seamless planetary flight == MS flight sim and no.. just no. That's not a game. That's a training tool. There is no practical way you can make that entertaining. Regardless of all the necessary suspension of disbelief involved with taking various shaped craft down that dont even have wings nor hull shielding and ignoring the speed issues once in atmo.

Planetary docking... simply not needed. You dont need to fly at a planet until it fills your screen to experience the pretty planets. Bases can be plenty close without increasing docking time at all. There's nothing you can't do at a space station base that you can do at a planetary base. And i even mentioned a workaround that would put you down on a given "base" on the planet...you just dont do it in your ship.

Spec. Not needed. We dont need to spread our finite resources thin for no real reason and then be forced to create another even less plausible FTL mechanism that doesn't offer anything towards gameplay for the player and needlessly complicates physics simulating and game mechanics.

Everyone wants to keep VS from just being another space combat game, well it is. It's the least exciting space combat game. for 1.4GB of ram usage and plenty of cpu you can be rewarded with lengthy periods of sitting back and doing nothing in between seeing maybe 3-4 ships on screen around some bases and if you do get lucky enough to get into a dog fight with another player, you'll be aiming at a tiny dot on the screen because the other ship is usually over a kilometer away and close combat is nearly impossible because the game has to have ships capable of extreme speeds because the distances everything you need to go to are too great to have realistic speeds, so you spend the entire time spinning around and around trying to find the AI ship that is simply zipping by you back and forth or racing away to 6000 meters before making another pass or even better, hitting spec and suddenly being a thousand km's away with no chance of catching. awesome.

I dont think anyone thinks that's what players want. These aren't simply tweaks or minor issues that need to be fixed here and there, they're fundamental problems involved with the basic layout and implementation of VS and it's been this way for years. It's not a matter of something being poorly implemented (although it doesn't help that there are no central campaigns that even try to make it all work as currently implemented), it's obvious from years of the same features that they can't or wont be implemented in any functional way. I'm inclined to believe that a feature that's been broken / partially implemented for years to the detriment of gameplay isn't a feature that is just waiting to simply be fixed but is rather a feature that should never have been implemented in the first place.

Every system (or nearly) that the player jumps into should be bustling with activity as soon as they enter it. Units should be contacting them and dockable ships should be well within a short flight while the player gets their bearings. The systems should look alive and things should be busy near the only gateways in and out of the system. We dont need to simulate 20,000 units to do this. Patrols that scan you for contraband would now make sense. Bases can be full of characters and the mission computer can be full of various things people need to get done rather than a meager handful of things. All of that makes sense when you bring everything in towards the wormhole and make it the crossroads for the entire system. Each system would then have an intrinsic identity that the player will notice rather than every system being identified simply by their background texture.

Obviously that doesn't mean you couldn't point your ship into empty space in a system and fly and fly and eventually reach distant planets or moons etc. But you wouldn't. it's not fun. It's not fun now and it's not going to be fun then.

All of that is almost entirely doable without implementing new features. That means it's got a good chance of being something we can actually accomplish in terms of fully implementing it.

And that's not to say that after all of that is done we can't give capships a functional purpose for certain missions the player can participate in. I'm not sure if we would still use 'spec' as a transport mechanism but we could dock with a capship and be taken to a distant in-system destination and do something and return and be taken back to the wormhole area. Best of all, since we're docked, we dont have to worry about dealing with unit to unit interaction while moving at FTL speeds. just dock, do stuff on the station, after some amount of time we are notified that the ship is at it's destination, and we can depart ... simple, will take the user to remote parts of a system, and since it's a special scripted case, wont be left to the uncertainties of randomness which will tend to make going through all that usually anti-climatic.


Basically, what my personal plan is that i'm going to continue cleaning the source and removing as many warnings that can be as complained by gcc 4.7 and then fixing any bugs that are exposed by that cleaning (both c++ and python). Then I'm going to remove planets from being significant units while at the same time making all current planetary bases into space stations near their planet (for hard-coded systems, and editing the dynamic generator to not consider planets for base creation). This should keep units traveling around or to bases. Then phase 2 if people are pleased with phase 1 will be to move the bases in towards wormholes. If that meets positive consensus then phase 3 can be implemented, which is the first phase that may require a new feature. Either phase 3 requires tunable wormholes or it requires that wormholes all exist in the same general area. There is an argument that can be made that either method is equally feasible according to canon. I dont really care which. Obviously the latter is easier to do. By completing phase 3, we end the distribution of bases to each of the locations that wormholes were at to 1 location where all the wormhole(s) are at. Phase 3 is basically the point in the game where I believe new players will start having a totally different and positive experience with playing VS. It's also the only phase where we can then disable SPEC for all non-capship units. That's my personal roadmap and I would say by phase 3 we would be nearing the 0.6 release.

I'm intending on getting some actual coding done. i really hope there are others who want to turn out an exciting 0.6. Even if it's nothing like what i just described. Code is worth a million times forum threads. If your goal is to fix spec and planet docking, then do it. If it's to fix dogfighting and unit balancing, then do it. Now is the time. for any drastic changes. Once 0.6 drops it's small things until enough big things that we feel need to get done need to get done...then it's off to 0.7.
put the code out and lets get it in. If it can't be something that is going to be practical for players anytime soon then it's not a feature that should be active in 0.6. Partially implemented features are worse than not having it. ... I'd say a good timeframe for getting ready for 0.6 is about a month. That's a wild guess but i'm basing it on how long i feel it would take me to get to phase 3 ... obviously i dont think only the things i mentioned are going to get done for 0.6 and indeed, other people's work may end up being way more important than anything i mentioned. But I would say shoot for 1 month and what can be completed by then.

The discussion of SPEC is going to end up being decided by what gets better implemented. Or implemented at all.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by klauss »

safemode wrote:The discussion of SPEC is going to end up being decided by what gets better implemented. Or implemented at all.
Lol... true.

So, I don't particularly disagree with anything you said. Except, perhaps, that you may be underestimating the breakage that would result if you make planets non-significant units. I think there is lots of code that relies on them being significant (in the engine's sense of the word).

I'd expect it to be far less troublesome if you specifically coded the "significant && !planet" condition wherever necessary.
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Re: argument to remove need for spec

Post by Shark »

tl;dr most of this thread

A couple of comments:

1. I would like to see SPEC stay. Though I would like to see it mostly limited to (but not forcibly limited to) 'trade routes' that generally follow the shortest/best route between two (or more) locations. Alternately, we could limit SPEC drives to large ships such as huge inter-system ferries that carry players' ships between systems. You would then simply 'dock' with the ferry, and watch as the ferry transports you between systems.
2. I agree that 'docking' with planets currently is a bit weird. Maybe replace it with space elevators and ferries as long as it is visible to players? I.e. you dock with a station, the station puts you on the elevator/ferry, and the elevator/ferry takes you to the surface. And you see it all happening. Time compression of course would speed things up for the player as per usual. I.e. if you really want to get to a planet's surface you can, but it's going to cost you money and time.
3. I think atmospheric damage is a good idea, except for ships specifically designed for atmospheric flight. But planetary flight is not currently implemented and probably never will be so the point is moot.
4. I'm not a big fan of wormholes. I think they are kind of cheesy. But I am not totally against them if they are popular with a huge number of people and I can choose not to use them. They were OK in Deep Space 9 because they were exceedingly rare. Making them more common is suckage IMO.
5. I'm trying to think of other games that had 'trade lanes'. IWar2 had fast travel, but it was between Lagrange points, and I think it was linear. (Optionally, you could also go into FTL in an arbitrary direction.) Earth & Beyond had fast travel between nodes, but you traveled between nodes linearly, and the nodes were distributed around the system at the level designer's whim. FreeLancer had fast travel 'tubes', but I can't remember if they were linear or if they curved around planets and stuff.

In general I would like to see more infrastructure in space above and beyond the solitary space stations floating around planetary systems.
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