Massive discrepancy for IS vs OOS damage by torpedoes

[Falcrack]

I have a vanilla save to demonstrate this issue. Long story short, fighter launched torpedoes do NO damage to the Xenon K when observed OOS, while in sector, they annihilate it quickly. Here is a link to the save file so you can see the issue for yourself, and hopefully find a solution.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Atd3uAJ_kttOiQJOmrx ... G?e=XICdVc

I have a squadron of 15 Ares (Torpedo) in Trinity Sanctum III. There is some fighter cover present to keep some of the Xenon fighters off their back (fleet is called "Fighter cover"). I order the Ares Torpedo fleet to attack the nearby Xenon K. When observed OOS, the Ares torpedo bombers use up most their torpedoes within a minute, and do no damage whatsoever to the K, and have launched almost all torpedoes by 2 minutes. It is like the torpedoes do no damage at all, after 300 torpedoes launched, the shield has only dropped from 100% to 98%. But when observed in sector, these same bombers easily kill the K in under a minute using 34 torpedoes by my count.

This is a long standing issue that Egosoft has been presented with but not addressed as far as I know because there wasn't a vanilla save demonstrating the issue. Well, here is the save file. Please fix, hopefully before 6.0!

On another note, I tested 15 plasma equipped Ares OOS against the Xenon K. They killed it in 2 min 30 sec after they started firing OOS. When tested in sector, they killed it in 6 min 30 sec, so OOS gave better results, probably because OOS can't properly simulate the wonky flying that IS simulates. But this discrepancy is a lot more tolerable than the discrepancy seen with torpedoes, which really feels like a bug rather than intended balance.

[Buzz2005]

why post here and not under Technical Support? missiles OOS always had problems,hope this report fixes some of it

[Ragnos28]

Reported the issue some time ago: viewtopic.php?f=180&t=449519

I can only hope it will be included in the bug fixes.

[Alan Phipps]

The devs are aware and some improvements are already planned for a future build while further investigations will continue. Thanks for the reports and saves.

[Falcrack]

I did a further test, using fighter equipped only with light smart missiles vs other fighters. When tested OOS, they actually did do damage and end up destroying the other fighters. IS testing also worked, although with an enormous number of wasted missiles. Whether it was worth it for the cost is a different issue. So the issue I pointed out at the beginning might be specific to torpedoes.

I have a few points regarding missiles and torpedoes that I would personally want to see changed:

1. Increase range, speed and explosive power for missiles. The super short range, combined with their seeming inability to hit maneuvering targets, makes them explode way too early. If we are throwing money at the problem, it would be nice if it was a lot better than using guns.
2. Better target tracking. Specifically, for smart missiles, they should use a lead pursuit model, where the missile flies towards where the target will be at point of impact based on target and missile speed and target direction of travel. Modern missiles use this tracking method, it cuts down on flight time, and is not really particularly computationally expensive.
3. Make number of missiles per ship dependent on number of launchers. For example, each missile launcher might be able to hold 8 (Mk1 launcher) or 10 (Mk2 launcher) missiles, or each torpedo launcher might be able to hold 4 (Mk1 launcher) or 5 (Mk2 launcher) torpedoes. It doesn't really make sense to me that a ship equipped with only 1 torpedo launcher can hold the same amount of torpedoes as a ship with 4 torpedo launchers.
4. Perhaps make some weapons slots available for missile or torpedo launchers only. If I have to choose between a gun that kills the target for free, and a missile in which every shot costs money and on top of that is less efficient at killing stuff than a missile, I'll choose the gun every time, especially if point 1 is not addressed.

[CBJ]

It really isn't helpful to conflate requests for changes to the balancing with reports discussing possible difference between low and high attention simulations.

[Submarine]

I agree it doesnt help to widen the topic when this specific issue needs attention.

Focussing on the IS / OOS discrepancy for torpedos, I have seen that problem too and reported this in the linked thread dated Sept 22 because it is in the bug report section, to corroborate the observations of the OP, which did include a save.

My observation was, torpedos did no damage at all OOS.

I wonder how this can be addressed though since there has been only discussion of a new content update and no plans for bug fixing or qol updates have been announced ?

[CBJ]

I wonder how this can be addressed though since there has been only discussion of a new content update and no plans for bug fixing or qol updates have been announced ?

That's not true. If you read the Survey sticky thread at the top of the forum, you will see that it mentions the 6.00 update, which will include various fixes and improvements that we've already made since 5.10. There is still some potential for more of that work to be done, subject to the usual constraints of time, feasibility, and sufficient information being available for us to work with.

[Raptor34]

Have they ever announced bug fixing or qol updates?

[Submarine]

I wonder how this can be addressed though since there has been only discussion of a new content update and no plans for bug fixing or qol updates have been announced ?

That's not true. If you read the Survey sticky thread at the top of the forum, you will see that it mentions the 6.00 update, which will include various fixes and improvements that we've already made since 5.10. There is still some potential for more of that work to be done, subject to the usual constraints of time, feasibility, and sufficient information being available for us to work with.

Thanks for explaining, that is good to know, I will take a look. I guess we had better get any bugs reported!

[Shepp]

Thanks for explaining, that is good to know, I will take a look. I guess we had better get any bugs reported!

There have been bugs reported...lots of them. From what I can tell from the Tech Support and Public beta forums Egosoft has fixed many if not all of them. The problem is that this has been going on since May/June. There are bug fixes that have been sitting around since June with no release in site. If Egosoft's history is any indication of the future, even if they announced whatever they are working on today, it wouldn't be released until around March. If whatever they are working on that is new takes that long, whatever. Development takes as long as it takes. I just find it frustrating that these bug fixes are held in limbo until that unannounced release date, probably sometime next year.

[Submarine]

Thanks for explaining, that is good to know, I will take a look. I guess we had better get any bugs reported!

There have been bugs reported...lots of them. From what I can tell from the Tech Support and Public beta forums Egosoft has fixed many if not all of them. The problem is that this has been going on since May/June. There are bug fixes that have been sitting around since June with no release in site. If Egosoft's history is any indication of the future, even if they announced whatever they are working on today, it wouldn't be released until around March. If whatever they are working on that is new takes that long, whatever. Development takes as long as it takes. I just find it frustrating that these bug fixes are held in limbo until that unannounced release date, probably sometime next year.

It does not seem very practical to leave players contending with major bugs for months on end, just because it does not fit the schedule.

Strikes me the schedule deserves adjusting, surely?