Plan for movement?

lee · Post by **lee** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 3:37 am

Hi,

whatÂ´s the current plan to doing something about the movement? SPEC isnÂ´t the solution, and with the new loads of traffic, even targeting (a particular object) has become troublesome.

ollobrains · Post by **ollobrains** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 4:31 am

perhaps a slightly re jigged version of Spec

Paslowo · Post by **Paslowo** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:01 am

Mabie like this.

But it shoulden't be the same as SPEC.

Or like Freelancr with warping through trade lanes but without them in Vegastrike.

lee · Post by **lee** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 2:42 pm

What is it? It only says Â´unable to proceedÂ´.

SPEC might become useful as intended if there were an autopilot making use of it. With that, you could only run from combat either with a ship that has better acceleration than the one trying to intercept you, or eventually by making skillful use of the autopilot to somehow trick [1] the interceptor --- unless there were autopilots of different qualities that could be bought as upgrades.

ItÂ´s on the whishlist, but didnÂ´t make it into the roadmap ...

[1]:

like luring him into reinforcements or making him run out of fuel

Besides, if objects that are out of range wonÂ´t be visible on the radar and thus not selectable as targets --- except for objects with persistent and known locations --- things could become more interesting.

mortaneous · Post by **mortaneous** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:51 pm

That video looks a lot like how Spec acts already, but perhaps it also changes your velocity vector faster than normal too... I hate warping past and then having to drop out of spec while turning around to avoid ending up in the interstellar void.

Aside from that, I only see a few things:
1. added sound-effects (which are nice)
2. badly-done warp lines (which already look better in VS)
3. alerts about why you're slowing down (could be good, could get tedious)
4. smoother acceleration/deceleration (Spec multiplier is damned jumpy, so this would be nice)

Post by **jackS** » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:33 am

We made some code modifications today to smooth out the SPEC multiplier. It turns out there was a bug we added back in August that was making things even jumpier than they needed to be.

The primary usage of SPEC is intended to be with an autopilot, but we don't have a friendly functioning autopilot at the moment.

Currently we have the gloriously brain-dead ASAP - which is good enough to prevent fly-pasts, but unfortunately doesn't turn off (so, collision avoidance is still very much a manual thing).

The next likely step will be to upgrade ASAP to a sort of linear segment autopilot like the AIs use - that is, it'll point you straight at something, fly towards it (with some heuristic for going into/out of SPEC) and attempt to stop somewhere in the vicinity. However, obstacle and non-targeted collision avoidance is not likely to be included in the next revision of ASAP.

Racecarlock · Post by **Racecarlock** » Fri Nov 24, 2006 3:43 pm

What about spec capacitor upgrades? Like a capacitor with a faster recharge?

Silverain · Post by **Silverain** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:35 am

jackS wrote:We made some code modifications today to smooth out the SPEC multiplier. It turns out there was a bug we added back in August that was making things even jumpier than they needed to be.

The primary usage of SPEC is intended to be with an autopilot, but we don't have a friendly functioning autopilot at the moment.

Currently we have the gloriously brain-dead ASAP - which is good enough to prevent fly-pasts, but unfortunately doesn't turn off (so, collision avoidance is still very much a manual thing).

The next likely step will be to upgrade ASAP to a sort of linear segment autopilot like the AIs use - that is, it'll point you straight at something, fly towards it (with some heuristic for going into/out of SPEC) and attempt to stop somewhere in the vicinity. However, obstacle and non-targeted collision avoidance is not likely to be included in the next revision of ASAP.

Hey, and there we have the germ of an idea for autopilot upgrades!

Basic autopilot, ASAP as it is now... all ships have it.
Upgrade 1: what JackS proposes here.
Upgrade 2: something a bit more capable again
Upgrade 3: and so on...

Don't throw out the code, use it for viable, and defined autopilot upgrades!

jere19 · Post by **jere19** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 1:57 am

Cracken and I are currently working on a autopilot to replace the ASAP.
It's still on paper for now, I think we can make something usefull.
Stay tunned for news

Vector_Matt · Post by **Vector_Matt** » Sat Dec 16, 2006 5:00 am

lee wrote:Besides, if objects that are out of range wonÂ´t be visible on the radar and thus not selectable as targets --- except for objects with persistent and known locations --- things could become more interesting.

This would be a great solution to the "Way too much traffic to select anything" bug. Devs, if it's not way too hard, please try to implement this.

providence2010 · Post by **providence2010** » Sun Dec 31, 2006 2:35 am

What about a sort of trade route system, where the auto-pilot can only follow specific paths between certain planets/space stations/warp points? The only difficulty I think you'd run into with this is finding a way to make vega strike automatically come up with these routes.

With Spec, you'd just limit its speed somewhat outside of the trade routes. You could also make autopilot able to activate as long as you have the trade route within line of site.

You could also make the routes visible on radar (which should probably be revamped a bit if you're going to use this system) or through the hud or both. Then, make the AI strongly prefer to travel along them, which would make pirating and being a mercenary a lot cooler, and make smuggling a lot more interesting since you could also have realistic checkpoints for the authorities to make.

You'd probably have to make it so that everyone in the trade lanes travelled the exact same speed though, so that you wouldn't have to stop every time you caught up to or were caught up to by someone.