NEWS: Screenshots of the Week - [no new Screenshots]

[AngryBear]

Are we missing 4 weeks worth of screenshots or is it just me?

14-05.. its now 14-06 =/

Let me direct you to this post. Read the last paragraph:

I'm really to sad and I'm sorry about it to announce this. But this week it was the last new screenshot so far and for the next weeks you will have to forgo upon new pictures. I'm aware about the expectations that have been made here in the last months towards this thread and the new picture for the following week. But it was me that decided to make a cut here and give Egosoft the opportunity to make new screenshots in a better quality to show the actual development progress of X Rebirth.

Aha i see.. well lets hope they got something new to show really soon.

[Mountain_Puncher]

Wow I hadn't checked back here in awhile since nothing was being said about the game by anyone in the know as it were. I saw the discontinuation of the screenshots, though I thought it would have been only an intermittent week or two with no picture.

It's very odd that no screenshots of "better" quality could have been made in the length of time that has transpired thus far. If I was in charge of this I would set graphics to highest and hit f12 a few times while the latest version of X:R was running.

[wwdragon]

I'm unsurprised they took a break from it, with a few people complaining about the screenshots, rather foolishly.
That lead to a go watch the trailer video thread btw. Video

[Huillam]

That's so... I mean... I want... It's...
I think I just fall in love.

[handzon]

back on the drones for a min ; deployment in highways and at the exits just wondering , got to love a good traffic jam

[ragamer]

In space? With minimal obstacles?

Get the vector from the host ship to its attacking ship, trace a line 100m out from the host ship along that vector, get the XYZ coords of the point at the end of the line, tell the drone to move to that point. Update as necessary.

It is essentially the code for flak cannons only instead of exploding at the max distance, you give a move order to a drone.

Not even close... If you program anything like that... You can be sure Shield Screen Drones will be useless.

Attack angle is not the same as attack vector... Because a vector applies to a single hostile... The attack angle is were you need to face the shield to intercept most of the damage of the entire enemy fleet you are facing (Deflection Angle may be a better translation to an english term?).

A drone programmed your way will be systematically killed by 2 hostiles attacking from different vectors which is what normally happens... As a player will not relay on it if it was engaged on a 1v1. To be usefull each drone should have to scan the entire array of enemy ships in range to face itself to soak as much damage as possible.

That's why I see them usefull when they have their back against cover (of a Cap ship, Station or even the player ship if they are affected by the "surface gravity" they are hinting on some of the comments) because you don't need to do this kind of complex calculations... It just needs to follow the normal of the surface it is attached to (You may have still issues close to the edges, ofc... But for as long as the player control placing they will be usefull to reinforce certain facings).

[NLS]

Just curious, where do you get all this?

Vivid imagination?
Or you have inside info?
Or you just "wish" things?

For the latter I suggest you do it less. If features expected get too wild, I suspect crash on hard surface.

[ConCorDian]

Attack angle is not the same as attack vector... Because a vector applies to a single hostile...

honestly? standard grade maths tells you otherwise. Vectors does not have to apply to a single ship, thats why you work out RESULTANT Vectors... which is the overall result of multiple individual vectors... an "Attack Angle" only gives you part of the information required... and an Angle is representative of only a stationary object not a moving one. the reason the miltary works out the "Angle OF Attack" is so they can work out what VECTOR to have their vessels/fighters/missiles take.

also working out the Resultant Vector for attacks may not be the best thing, the way the sheild drones look like they work is that it creates a single "wall" of sheilding, if you have say 30 fighters attacking from one direction and 5 attacking from a different one, depending how far appart they are that sheild wall could intercept none of them as it could leave a gap at either side for fire to get through. not only that but the Resultant Vector could result in the sheild drone traveling away from the fire, if more ships are moving away from the ship in a certain direction and fewer ships are moving in.

[wwdragon]

Maybe they'll just work to intercept the single, highest threat of the moment... such as a torpedo missile, when swarmed with m4's.

[Vayde]

Maybe they just fly to a damaged area of your shield grid, hunker down and throw up a temp shield bubble util you can get the damaged bit on line again.

[Sibilantae]

the reason the miltary works out the "Angle OF Attack" is so they can work out what VECTOR to have their vessels/fighters/missiles take.

Angle of attack in its usual sense doesn't mean angle of approach to a target - it refers to the angle between a body's chord line and the oncoming flow in a fluid system (e.g. the angle between a wing's chord line and the freestream velocity vector). Unless you meant "angle of attack" as "attack angle", in which case, define exactly what you mean =P

I think you're also confusing what is meant by "vector" - it does not automatically imply speed with direction. I believe the original sense was a displacement vector measured between the player ship and some target vessel.

Use of combined centre-of-mass displacement vectors (which you term resultant vectors) probably seems unreliable from a point-defense standpoint, even by your own reasoning?

[ConCorDian]

the reason the miltary works out the "Angle OF Attack" is so they can work out what VECTOR to have their vessels/fighters/missiles take.

Angle of attack in its usual sense doesn't mean angle of approach to a target - it refers to the angle between a body's chord line and the oncoming flow in a fluid system (e.g. the angle between a wing's chord line and the freestream velocity vector). Unless you meant "angle of attack" as "attack angle", in which case, define exactly what you mean =P

I think you're also confusing what is meant by "vector" - it does not automatically imply speed with direction. I believe the original sense was a displacement vector measured between the player ship and some target vessel.

Use of combined centre-of-mass displacement vectors (which you term resultant vectors) probably seems unreliable from a point-defense standpoint, even by your own reasoning?

okay

1. by all CORRECT definitions of the term Vector, it is something that has both MASS and DIRECTION... so for all it does not automatically imply that SPEED has to be the quality of the MASS is does have to have some sort of MASS moving in a direction.

2. Centre of Mass Displacement Vectors is not the same as Resultant Vectors, not the way i was taught with my engineering mathematics. Centre of Mass Displacement Vectors takes into accounts the total mass of an object, and where it is proportionally represented... in terms of mechanical engineering it can be used to discover the balance point (most will know as Levers Theory) whereas Resultant Vectors can take into account any number of vectors, moving in any number of directions with various amounts of mass... on topic here, any numbers of ships moving in different directions at different speeds... and discovers the resultant vector, which is the single vector that best represents all of the other vectors... a bit like how a "line of best fit" can be the line that represents all the data in a scatter graph.

3. what your talking about is fluid dynamics within aeronautics. Angle of Attack can be used in different ways

• 1. whats your angle of attack?: whats your plan of attack?: whats your angle? as a question, its more of a colloquialism but it is used.
  2. as what you are suggesting within Fluid Dynamics.
  3. an angle of approach: such as troops moving in on a complex using an angle of attack that will help them remain undetected.
  4. what im suggesting, as a predetermined objective.... such as if you wanted to take down a building in the middle of a crowded city with an implosive device launched from a fighter. you would discover where the best resting place is for the warhead, and then how to get it into that position without impacting surrounding buildings. that would then give attack planners the ability to resolve various vector calculations in order to achieve that angle of attack such as velocity of warhead, wind sheer deflection. as well as possibly passing through materials... all whilst giving the fighter the time to retain an escape vector after launch,

now none of the above can apply to a game exactly, not without taking into account percentage representation of ships, allowing for some of the statistical outlying ships being negated... basically saying something like it would take into account the largest cluster of vessels within a 5km range or something. but that then means the AI would need to make potentially hundreds of calculations just to determine which "cluster" that is. and then it would need to find the resultant vector. whereas what Chris0132 had said with:
"Get the vector from the host ship to its attacking ship, trace a line 100m out from the host ship along that vector, get the XYZ coords of the point at the end of the line, tell the drone to move to that point. Update as necessary.

It is essentially the code for flak cannons only instead of exploding at the max distance, you give a move order to a drone."
would be probably far more realistic for a programmer to achieve. or more importantly most consumers PC's to achieve... because for all most of the calculations are relativly simple for a computer... what happens when you have 10's of sheild drones all number crunching and having to come up with a result all whilst applying damage calculations as well as the computer still rying to keep track and make decisions on where your ships as well as the NPC ships are moving to without killing themselves!!

[Sibilantae]

by all CORRECT definitions of the term Vector, it is something that has both MASS and DIRECTION... so for all it does not automatically imply that SPEED has to be the quality of the MASS is does have to have some sort of MASS moving in a direction.

This is what I was trying to say, so I guess we're violently agreeing here =P

2. Centre of Mass Displacement Vectors is not the same as Resultant Vectors, not the way i was taught with my engineering mathematics. Centre of Mass Displacement Vectors takes into accounts the total mass of an object, and where it is proportionally represented... in terms of mechanical engineering it can be used to discover the balance point (most will know as Levers Theory) whereas Resultant Vectors can take into account any number of vectors, moving in any number of directions with various amounts of mass... on topic here, any numbers of ships moving in different directions at different speeds... and discovers the resultant vector, which is the single vector that best represents all of the other vectors... a bit like how a "line of best fit" can be the line that represents all the data in a scatter graph.

Ok cool, I agree with this too (as I had the same education). I think the problem (as much mine as anyone else's) is misinterpreting the terminology, which I guess can (and obviously does) vary slightly. I also didn't quite understand what you meant by how you would deploy the shield drones according to the (as-defined) resultant vector, but you've cleared that up~

Thanks for clarifying your use of AoA~

[ConCorDian]

cool glad we agree

[Chris0132]

A drone programmed your way will be systematically killed by 2 hostiles attacking from different vectors which is what normally happens... As a player will not relay on it if it was engaged on a 1v1. To be usefull each drone should have to scan the entire array of enemy ships in range to face itself to soak as much damage as possible.

Or alternatively, give each drone the same logic as I suggested, and insert a line saying 'if this hostile is already being targetted by the drone AI, select another target'

Once a target has been selected, you don't have to re-select another until that target is destroyed or disengages. It's fairly obvious that one shield drone would not be able to protect against multiple attackers, why would it? The point of drones is you can buy lots of them, so buy lots of them and have them all pick a target to block.

You don't want a ship to become invincible from using shield drones, so having them be unable to protect themselves from attack is a fairly sensible option, it gives enemies a way to potentially beat your wall of drones, and you a way to attack enemies protected by drones, possibly by sending out your own drones to take out their drones from angles they aren't protected from, or send your own drones to overwhelm the number of shields.

It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be useful, and as long as it blocks some fire, it's useful, adjust the cost to fit its utility in testing.

[theeclownbroze]

back on topic i just want to add something ive noticed about the last images, in this one http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/6145/rebirthv.png


as you can see I think I see the scale of these "collector drones" when compared to what seems to be like "merchant ships" is around two to three times them in size so yeah pretty wicked as far as egosoft has gone with sheer size of the x universe!

img-Tags removed - Iifrit Tambuur-san

[theeclownbroze]

that said, what stops the torpedo drone or (if there is one) missile drone or plasma collector being very large?

[BigBANGtheory]

so yeah pretty wicked as far as egosoft has gone with sheer size of the x universe!

yes I certainly agree what has been shown so far is caused for some excitement, looking forward to well frankly anything not X3 now.

[ConCorDian]

back on topic i just want to add something ive noticed about the last images, in this one http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/6145/rebirthv.png


as you can see I think I see the scale of these "collector drones" when compared to what seems to be like "merchant ships" is around two to three times them in size so yeah pretty wicked as far as egosoft has gone with sheer size of the x universe!

are you sure thats a collector drone? the centre of the ship looks quite narrow compaired to the drones overall look... but yeh i agree, things like the Torpeado drone looks more to me like something "M6" in size, the plasma collector, someone pointed out small square light boxes that could be windows, and if they are id say that would make it closer in size to a "TL" than a standard transport vessel... then again the "Lost Colony" image make that Split ship look like its been scaled up somewhat as well

thing is its hard to tell scale from those images i think, because we dont know what kind of depth is involved in the veiw, so ships could be precieved bigger or smaller than they actually are... because stations and asteroids have all got new scales and we dont know exactly what extent that is to make a size comparison... we know they are a lot bigger looking than before but other than that, no

[Len5]

It does look a bit like a collector drone with a container underneath it. If so, if it is the same type of container the freight ships are hauling, you can estimate its size.