Killing cap ship by shooting antenna

B-O'F · Post by **B-O'F** » Wed, 14. Mar 07, 20:46

Sorry Endremion,

3.4GHz is the clock speed of a CPU, not operations per second.

Most operations take 2 cycles upwards - I do not know the current high - with 3 or 5 cycles being quite common.

A faster clock will make the CPU do more in a certain time, but if the CPU is badly planned or implemented, there will be more wasted cycles... so an 'efficient' lower speed CPU can be better than an 'inefficient' high speed one. That is partly why they have stopped citing CPU speed as the main selling point.

Boron - Ol Fh'art

LynkDead · Post by **LynkDead** » Wed, 14. Mar 07, 20:50

Endremion wrote:Reading an article doesn't make you a genius, or a computer scientist; I know I'm not one, and I also know that Wikipedia, while interesting and occaisionally informative, is a free encyclopedia, and can be accessed and edited as such. Who wrote that anyway? Who edited it afterwords? Did they know what they were talking about beyond the relation of what who said at what press conferance to get how much financing or improve investor confidence and get there stock price to go up.

I hate how much flak Wikipedia gets. Sure, anyone can edit anything, but they DO still need to cite where they got the information. And any reader of Wikipedia is free to follow those citations and see just how credible or accurate those sources are as well.

If something isn't cited, it let's everyone know in big, obtrusive lettering.

I have nothing to say regarding the discussion of processor speed, but I don't like all the bagging everyone does on Wikipedia.

xTemon · Post by **xTemon** » Wed, 14. Mar 07, 22:59

I'm not really bagging Wikipedia, it's actually quite a useful site; I just think people should keep the old addage in mind, "Don't believe everything you here," when referring to information that doesn't come directly from a reliable well informed source that has plenty of knowledge and experiance in the area in question.

The rest is purely semantics

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Wed, 14. Mar 07, 23:08

B-O'F wrote: Most operations take 2 cycles upwards - I do not know the current high - with 3 or 5 cycles being quite common.

Actually, both you and Endremion are incorrect--him for assuming that clock speed is directly related to instructions per second, and you for assuming that it generally takes more than 1 clock cycle per instruction. Modern CPUs are specifically designed to process MORE than one instruction per clock cycle where possible; the last time an x86 processor never did more than one per cycle was back in the days of the 486.

As an example, I just found a website listing a Dhrystone benchmark for a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 as 4871 MIPS--in other words, the CPU was executing an average of 1.92 instructions per clock cycle during that benchmark. Obviously a simple benchmark like this isn't a perfect guide to how well the processor performs in the real world, but it gives you an idea.

B-O'F · Post by **B-O'F** » Wed, 14. Mar 07, 23:42

Hi pjk,

You and I are both right... the CPU is operating parallel pipelines - so it does multiple operations in parallel, but a single operation can take more than one clock cycle.

This is part of what I meant by 'efficient' design. Which is why some processors provide a better throughput at the same clock speed.

O.K., I admit that my initial electronics education was back in the 1960's, but I still read current information....

Boron - Ol Fh'art

Kazuma · Post by **Kazuma** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 01:22

Computer science and electrical engineering are so apart from each other its not even funny... unless I tell a little joke completely unrelated...

Two Leutinants (pilots) where walking out from the lounge argueing... one pilot says to the other... sex is 80 percent pleasure and 20 percent work; the other says... no no, its 20 percent pleasure and 80 percent work; eventually they get to the airplane and ask the old wrenchturner who has overheard this conversation... "which is it old man, 20 percent pleasure and 80 percent work, or 80 percent work and 20 percent pleasure?"; The old man puts down his wrench, laughs to himself, then looks right at the two officers, "Sirs, your both wrong, its all pleasure... because if there was any work involved, you would have me doing it!"

To make some kinda point... its all a matter of perspective, and or how the information relates back to what you do/want to do with it... a good bit of snot nose jet jocks can fly the wings off a plane, but couldnt tell you much of anything when it comes to keeping it in the air functioning like the day it rolled off an assembly line... theres some programmers out there who will write code like Betoven tapped out the 5th, but know nothing of how those little electrons went from powerplant to keyboard and back; or how much tension is on a piano string for that matter.

Ultimately its not important to what it is they do... its only important that it works; unless your on the engineering side... and even then, what it says on the paper/blueprint is rarely how it plays out in the world.

Wiki- Cant really hate on it... no more then I can hate on most the rubbish on the internet... as long as one keeps the perspective that 'anyone who REALLY knows what the ell' is going on, probably dosnt spend much time typing rubbish out on the internet'. (theres caveots to this of course, but as far as the 'public domain' of it all, its mostly rubbish). -ever notice most devs dont troll forums? Clever observation, or ill'informed co'inky'dink.

College- Like most educational systems, again; the people that are the 'Experts'; work in industry (unless retired and bored); they want a real paycheck... they make real stuff, they dont babysit undergraduate classes. (again, caveots; like anything else; blanket statements are dangerous... but so is a 30% completion rate for graduation in the US). Like alot of degree's and certifications, its a license to learn, not an open invitation to the magi's inner sanctum.

Machines today... wow, in my mind; border on magic... hard working people banging down big money, with degrees instead of wall paper adorn the halls... programming techniques on the other hand... kinda shoddy... more an art then a science really; and like alot of art, is very subjective. Then again, I can count on a single hand how many PHD programmers I have met... got a black book filled with PHD engineers... go figure.

I guess some people are allergic to poverty (art).

Sadly, programming (especially in games), is underpaid and overworked; geneous often goes unrecognized, while the engineering counterpart building the very machines the software will run are have deep pockets, R&D; paid golf trips... exc.

An age of horsepower to cover up inefficient code has begun! Rejoice and lay low your petty squabble! As Sirs, its all pleasure; cus' if there was any work involved, you would have me doing it.

aka1nas · Post by **aka1nas** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 02:44

pjknibbs wrote:
B-O'F wrote: Most operations take 2 cycles upwards - I do not know the current high - with 3 or 5 cycles being quite common.
Actually, both you and Endremion are incorrect--him for assuming that clock speed is directly related to instructions per second, and you for assuming that it generally takes more than 1 clock cycle per instruction. Modern CPUs are specifically designed to process MORE than one instruction per clock cycle where possible; the last time an x86 processor never did more than one per cycle was back in the days of the 486.

As an example, I just found a website listing a Dhrystone benchmark for a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 as 4871 MIPS--in other words, the CPU was executing an average of 1.92 instructions per clock cycle during that benchmark. Obviously a simple benchmark like this isn't a perfect guide to how well the processor performs in the real world, but it gives you an idea.

Most instructions do take multiple clock cycles to execute. Modern pipelined CPUs have many operations in various stages of execution at any one time. What you are referring to is how many operations can be retired at once. You are correct in that modern processors can retire sometimes up to 4+ instructions during each clock cycle on best case situations.

anneonemous · Post by **anneonemous** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 03:36

Damage models would be a great addition, but not at the price of any slow-down in large battles, or upon entering a busy sector.

Any statement involving CPU speeds is meaningless unless you can provide an outline of the load caused by the code that will be run, along with the simultaneous loading caused by all the other current sim / game tasks.

Oh, and while I'm ranting- for your own good; please learn to spell. Regardless of your level of intellect or achievement, your written language will always be critically viewed by potential or current employers and your peers. It's beyond ironic that authors post criticizing academics and encyclopaediae while making basic errors in grammar and language.

AoN.

Kazuma · Post by **Kazuma** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 04:52

Damage models would be a great addition, but not at the price of any slow-down in large battles, or upon entering a busy sector.

Which do you think would make for the better game/solution, mesh rework, or a system centric design with the models layered over the basic ship? Pure curiosity...

Oh, and while I'm ranting- for your own good; please learn to spell. Regardless of your level of intellect or achievement, your written language will always be critically viewed by potential or current employers and your peers. It's beyond ironic that authors post criticizing academics and encyclopaediae while making basic errors in grammar and language.

Ranting is a good thing! Especially if it can effect a change in someones perspective or even your own, so long as the goal is to get to some sorta... tru'thish like thing.

This post is a wonderful example, Runner; upset with how a little metal stick, contributes to the structural constitution of a warship... ranted; no harm no foul, as many have subsequently agreed that a damage model is/could be a good thing! Success! It's been said before, sure it will be said again

...no one important reads this thread... account... dev net... rules

Colorful colloquialisms make for a fun, energetic, friendly atmosphere... I would like to think as fans of this series/genre of game, we could all be atleast... friendly in speech and spelling. Sadly I possess only a rudamentary knowledge of english... (you should see some of my post on a few japanese sites <laf, or this one, this very one even!>... now that I think about it.. they probably keep meh account(s) around for gigles); No offense is intentionally offered by much of anything I dribble out onto the keyboard, especially forums.

Why this thread was not split back on page 2.5/3 continues to illude me.

tallguy68 · Post by **tallguy68** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 04:58

ooookkkkkk

back on topic (sort of)

those antenna might not be antenna at all, maybe there heat dissapation coils for the reactor so hitting it overheats the reactor and blows the ship up. or they could hold the cargo compression in place so blowing it away decompresses the cargo hold causing the ships cargo hold to expand explosively.

Incubi · Post by **Incubi** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 07:30

Yes modular cap ships would be great, but do not stop there, I think cap ships should also be of a more tactical battle. Fighting in a cap ship with the same controls as a fighter.. just does not work.

Advantages of modular, we target parts of a cap ship. Engines, weapons, etc... to disable it. A great example of what piloting a tactical cap ship would be similar to what you got when playing nexus. I doubt the cpu hit of this would be anything more than minor, and face it X4 is not going to have the same min req as x3 anyway.

The m6 would be interesting, not sure which way that would go if they implement tactical cap ship gameplay. Perhaps a small mix of cap and fighter style.
The whole modular system would also work very well with the capping system. Some limits will have to be planted in the game to prevent exploitation however.

If you want a even more realistic X game.. and I think living out our space fantasies is what X does best... then this really is the way to go.

In fact having entirely diffrerant and appropriate play styles based on the ship you are in, just imagine how fun that would be. This is one the top of my X4 wish list to be honest.

Raj_Athen · Post by **Raj_Athen** » Thu, 15. Mar 07, 18:17

I think its amazing all the stuff we are doing with computing technolgy. Just think... We plug in our machine, turn it on, and do all sorts of cool stuff that was impossible years a go and it keeps getting better all the time.

Moore said something along the lines of every 2 years the amount of transistors in integrated circuits will double (Moore's Law) and that theory hasn't been exact, but it has been pretty close. The only thing holding us back right now is size and I'm sure there will be a beakthrough soon enough. So 10GHz processors are really not that far off in the future.

I remember in my teens when I first had the interest and accesability to a PC, the speed barrier for the processors of that time were 66MHz. After it was broken it just started to sky rocket from there and I'm only 26.

The data definition is also rising as well. We live in an analog world (infinitely variable) and are replicating things digitally with only 1, 0, true, false, yes, no etc... (finate). The processors of today now process 64 bits at a time, where as the older ones are 32 bit. We now have doubled our resolution.

Think of a curve... In the analog world if you zoom in it's still a curve. In digital you can not make a curve only straight lines, but we can try. Zoom in and it will look like a series of stairs, but now that we doubled the resolution, the series of stairs are now smaller and tightly packed together giving the illusion of a curve (less jaggies).

So I guess what I'm trying to say is don't set your expectations to low.

BTW Hz is a full cycle (on/off) with respect to time. So 1Hz is one cycle per second, and 1GHz is 1 billion cycles per second or 1 cycle every 0.00000001 seconds.

Kazuma · Post by **Kazuma** » Fri, 16. Mar 07, 03:44

Yes modular cap ships would be great, but do not stop there, I think cap ships should also be of a more tactical battle. Fighting in a cap ship with the same controls as a fighter.. just does not work.

Absolutely! If we talk cap ships, lets talk cap ships as a crux of the sell! (and we are indeed, selling the idea to move away from arcade maxims). In a previous post I had mentioned an indie game starshatter; which for all its flaws did have some intersting utility... its cap ships for example mapped a 2 plane compass rose around the ship; and inputs you made, only affected the rose; the ship would then attempt to get your 'radian' back to 0; neat because you set your intention, and slowly the ship responds... then notifies when 'order complete'. This is just an example of something novel, sorta borrowed from a couple navy games; but as proof of concept, wow! Meh Like-ie!

The m6 would be interesting, not sure which way that would go if they implement tactical cap ship gameplay. Perhaps a small mix of cap and fighter style.
The whole modular system would also work very well with the capping system. Some limits will have to be planted in the game to prevent exploitation however.

Good call! Something that may ease this could possible be a revisit to the ship and its classes by function and size. The scout, the entry level civi fighter, the military grade fighter, the vette, the carrier/destroyer... Sound enough, but why stop there- why even call it what it is, as an m5 while fast; has no real survellance ability (in many cases as it stands) then a duplex scanner, automated it finds hidden lewt fine... but to say it was much more then an afterthought, eh?

I am going to go wayyy out on a limb here and say; sectors... bah, star systems; scaled way up, in a big; ugly, processor hog like way. Now from grand to tiny... capitol ships, beit a civilian pleasure cruiser or a ship of the line; solid, good speed performance, once upto speed... you could hold the yaw thruster down from here to kingdom come to get it to budge; what does it do... carries 10,000 passangers, hauls starter colonies... man, this thing is a monster in size! (skip a couple ships down); vettes and its big brother the frigate; be it a gun platform, a missile/torpedo machine, solid performance; FTL capable, maybe even a small carrier bay (with modular equipment, its a matter of just dropping it on), the workhorse, border control; ability to stay 'out to sea' for long periods... now down to the fighters, fast, lethal, limited range; FTL no way; strategic... the scalpel of the fleet.

The toughest sell of them all, a fighter; unless packing a radiological, cannot effectively engage something 2 tiers or higher then itself in a 1 on 1 and hope to do anything more then cause some crippling damage. It simply cannot get around the shields and armor plating to any real effect. It can, however, put a torpedo on a vector with a cap ship and cause it some real trouble. (as its target... would take a least, minutes to even think about avoiding it).

Whats missing now is the 'awe' factor with cap ships... just not impressed with the capitol ship weapons in X, more often then not its favorable to go with the (anti) fighter weapons... as fighters, are; well... centric, to combat. A destroyer... wow, a beam weapon that emminates from its core, cutting chunks out of a cruiser... "did you see that? the beam is wider then my..." -adlib that one

A pen n' paper rpg company by the name of Palladium addresses this with the concept of 'SDC' vs. 'MDC', or structural damage capacity vs. mega damage capacity. Very useful if you wanted to do something like player: "I wanna shoot the tank with my .45", dm: "you hit, you do 6 sdc", player: "awesome!" dm: "thats 0 MDC, the tank turret begins to turn your direction". They used 100 sdc = 1 mdc of damage; this is arbitrary, but illustrates that you 'could' do damage to a mega structure with a baseball bat, just nothing significant.

In a way this also addresses this threads original spirit... 'why is my low rent civi ver. fighter laying low a cap ship... via antenna hit?', ultimately... cus GoD created boron, and ahept made them equal?

For a balance to be reached, an imbalance must be in place, or even a need for "we need BIGGER guns!"; sure you put the pain on a rivals trade network (with your stolen military grade fighter)... but now its time to ruin him for good, bring on the vettes! - paid for by your rivals generous donations

If you want a even more realistic X game.. and I think living out our space fantasies is what X does best... then this really is the way to go.

... the lightest touch, as always, commands obediance;

I want to start in my Xverse as a bum... a run down wreck of a fighter/U-Haul, peddle my services and wares while learning about my randomly generated universe (complete with AI vs. AI randomness and political strife), (heck, let the boron totally over run the split next random game!)claw my way up, win the vote of presidential election on LV-426 via use of my orbital mass driver persuasion device... watch my 3d galaxy map change 'aura' as sectors swap sides and wars break out... all the while my influence grows... only to watch it come crashing down because due to being argon, paranid deplore "the priest duke demands tribute"; while smuggling arms from split territory to boron colonies on the fringe... you get the idea.

Heck, why we are into it... lemme pop off some kids, die of old age, and continue my saga as my own offspring. Why do factories need to compute ware manufacture in real time anyway? Gimme a 'day' report, show my stock price, and call it soup. Once I have a couple traders, let me group them in a useful meaningful 'package'... (if only the dead could speak... and tell us how incredibly dangerous it would be to take coffee from tobago to the caimens by yourself in the 15th century). Give me a tech tree thats unlocked over time, let the races unlock the tree at different rates... let me unlock them and sell back my IP at massive criminal prices.

I could ramble all night! Too much coffee!

Raj_Athen - the whole thing!

Fantastic post!

-Space is provided below, complete with submit button for rebuttle!-

Raj_Athen · Post by **Raj_Athen** » Fri, 16. Mar 07, 14:44

Thank you Kazuma

OmegaKnight · Post by **OmegaKnight** » Sat, 17. Mar 07, 00:18

Anybody played Klingon Academy back about 7 years ago,
It had some nice things about it:
Crew % alive ~ effecting damage repair time.
Targetable subsystems ~ Warp, impulse, weapons, sensors, ect.
Areas of shields ~ fore, aft, dorsal, ventral, port and starboard.
Marines ~ beam them across to cap ships,
Tractor beam ~ Grab smaller ships and hold them still till you've finished pummelling them & Ram similar sized ships into things, like rocks

(haven't tried this in X3)
And Hull damage

~ the satisfying ability to blow chunks out of your foe.

examples, remember this is an old game
http://www.gamershell.com/screenpop.php?id=55232
http://www.gamershell.com/screenpop.php?id=55235
http://www.gamershell.com/screenpop.php?id=55229

Had some other things I liked too,
I mean X3 gives us solar systems but doesn't let us play with any of the things in them, where as in KA you could hide in the atmosphere of a gas giant, travel through the coronasphere of a star, the atmosphere of a solid planet or a planetary ring.
Made fighting larger ships more tactical, as well as normal fights more than just flying in circles shooting at each other. Dive into some spacial phenomena where your shields don't work, your sensors are blind and your targeting computer becomes cross eyed, suddenly makes your little more manoeuvrable ship have a greater chance of hurting your enemy enough to make them think twice or elude them.

Personally I'd like some of these to be added to the capital ship battles of X4 or X5

Kazuma · Post by **Kazuma** » Sat, 17. Mar 07, 01:04

Anybody played Klingon Academy back about 7 years ago,
It had some nice things about it:

Ohh yeah, KA was a great little game for the time!

One cant but feel like with high end graphics we have lost gameplay... shame really.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/crash.html

This one should solicite some laughs!

OmegaKnight · Post by **OmegaKnight** » Sat, 17. Mar 07, 02:04

Kazuma wrote:One cant but feel like with high end graphics we have lost gameplay... shame really.

And how games have become shorter too...

Kazuma · Post by **Kazuma** » Sat, 17. Mar 07, 02:49

And how games have become shorter too...

Tell me about it... I think Gears of War... took about 5 hours to walk through. Even at that though; I felt I had pretty much 'seen' everything there was to see in the game after the first 30 mins. Glad I am not the only one who feels this way!

Ohh and heres another one; the gamers manifesto, cant believe I didnt put this with the last one.

http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/gam ... festo.html

VioletRapture · Post by **VioletRapture** » Sat, 17. Mar 07, 06:07

Gotcha! wrote:@Kipper: I find his question not so strange, you seem a bit rude.

It should be easy enough to make antennas no-clipping or something. It doesn't have to involve complicated stuff. It's kinda strange to blow apart a destroyer by melting an antenna.
I'm not bothered by it though. Never noticed it either.

In the future games will probably have a system like this; Repeated fire into a specific area to shut down specific systems and stuff like that. Or blowing away parts of ships. But let's all wait 'till we can buy a 10ghz.

This was done in Freespace and Freespace 2, games made back in the late 90's. I see no reason why X3 can't have a system like that.

Pooeypants · Post by **Pooeypants** » Sun, 6. May 07, 18:50

I was wondering, why do people think that we need far superior processing technology for capital ship models with targetable subsystems? Does anyone have the basic maths for it or are we just looking at conjecture?

Personally, I'd like to see Nexus: TJI's entire ship system in X3 and forego the fighter combat. I mean, when a capital ship blew up in Nexus you'll definitely know about (especially if you're too close). Not only that, but a missile/torpedo hit looked proper as well, the firestorm or other super missile hitting a target in X3 just made them vanish completely....no animation what so ever (I mean, sure you could make it an option you can turn off for performance purposes). Oops, digressing too much.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Killing cap ship by shooting antenna