[Mod] Formation Collision Fix (FCF) v0.2.1a (9-10-09) Slight M4 Adjustment

[Alkeena]

If you limit it to "fast ships", then what happens to all the "slow ships" given a supertune ?

It should be assumed that potentially any ship could be travelling towards the 1000 mark. (After that, the pilot is suicidal anyway, so it doesnt matter !)

For example, all my AMS ships are sped to 500 or thereabouts. That includes the capital ships.

When attacking, one doesnt really want ships to slow down near the target. That just makes them vulnerable to PD.

Better than splattered on the side of the ship, no?

Same result isnt it ? Still a dead ship. If dead ship by PD is acceptable, why bother going to all the trouble, when its still a dead ship colliding ?



Put it another way, I want LIVE ships. I give them speed to make them safer. I dont expect them to slow down to 0ms near the target so they can execute a docking turn before powering away. Makes them dead meat.

It's not like they stop, they just slow to ~50% speed. This happens in vanilla too btw. I also agree that it's an issue and I'll address it. I want it to happen instead of an accident, now it's happening far too soon though when the ship wouldn't have otherwise crashed and burned. I'll just have to play with the large ship exclusion zones so that it doesn't happen too early.

I suspect that the final solution will consist of a minimal formation holding exclusion zone coupled with a forward probe. Either way it will have to wait for a bit given it's almost 2 am here and I need to get to sleep

[apricotslice]

2am ? Thats still another 2 hours of useful coding time !

[Gazz]

1 & 2 can be resolved with some thought and experimentation. 3, is the really tough one given the number of formations and possible positions within those formations.

I would expect that this would pose fewer problems for formations because ships weren't as fat - only "longer", detecting possible collisions sooner.

And when a fighter approaches a capital ship, the cap ship should not be made artificially fatter than it already is. It should be sufficient if the fighter "probes ahead".
Making cap ships fatter will just lead to problems with fighters who (with their short range lasers) can't attack cap ships at all.
Has been that way in Reunion. The bounding sphere has been reduced in TC so fighters are better at hurting cap ships but worse at avoiding the collision. =)
Also, by making (cap) ships fatter, you give up a degree of control. If ships (fighters) only have feelers, the length of the feelers can be adjusted to the ship's speed while the size of the target doesn't actually matter.
Besides, it's a lot less work and easier to manage that way. =)

But the length of such probes is obviously a matter of experimentation.
Noone has tried that before. =)


What speed a fighter uses on it's attack run is controlled by the fight script and dependant on the ships fight skill value.
This mod would only alter when a certain speed is used.

[someone else]

I ran some quick tests:

10 discos vs station: they did not die and this is very good news. M5 splat everywhere in Vanilla stations. Problem is that they couldn't damage it. I'm not expecting them to be able to actually destroy it, but their attack runs were too short-lived to reach the weapon's range.

20 fully tuned Mambas Vs station: no dead. but anything with less range than HEPT could not actually reach the "station center".

20 fully tuned Mambas Vs Akuma, various weapon configurations: 5 deaths by PD (how strange). here they performed pretty well. No Kamikazes and no stupid rammings. The Mamba I was seeing with external view almost got pasted by a Argon One charge while sitting in space, but reacted quickly enough to save himself.

4 M6 (fully tuned), Dragon a Hydra a Centaur and a Nemesis Vs Invincible station: No collisions with the station in 10 minutes (while in Vanilla I lose the Dragon in the first 2-3 minutes and another random M6 after 5-6)

I noticed that low-ranged weapons (PBG and PBE) are a lot less powerful against Capitals, due to the fact that the fighters shoot less before avoiding. imho this is good. On M6 this is less visible, but yeah.

I'm pretty disappointed by the station attack... the station is gargantuan but they attack only a tiny tube that connects the station to the docking calmps (the "station center"). That's just stupid. But is a Vanilla behaviour.

[Alkeena]

Alright, I'm back.

Here's the problem, if we make them turn away too late they splat into the side of whatever their shooting. Turn away too soon and they can't get off enough shots to be effective.

There are a number of different avenues to address this issue:

1) Lower speeds--if they aren't moving as fast they don't have to turn away as soon and can get longer time on target. Generally I'm opposed to this option.

2) Decrease the size of the exclusion zones and better sculpt them to more closely follow the contours of the ship. This will increase the ramming occurance but does serve as a decent middle ground. Make ramming less likely (not impossible) in return for better attack runs. This must be done to an extent because some exclusion zones are simply too big at this point, it's just a matter of how much tuning should be pursued.

3) Increase laser range enough to account for the bigger bounding boxes. I like this option because it actually keeps collisions from occuring while still helping with the attack issue. Are there any attack script issues that I should be aware of before investigating this?

[someone else]

I prefer 3) more than others.

I know that attack scripts won't open fire before the ship is 3 Km from the target, regradless of weapon range.

a bit more tuning on the cameradummies position can be useful too. there were only a few hundred meters to let the M3's guns reach the station. I'd disregard IREs due to its uselsessnes in Station-busting.

that would keep PBG and PBE ships from dealing ANY dmage to stations... a script might change those ship's orders to "ship killing".

[Alkeena]

I would expect that this would pose fewer problems for formations because ships weren't as fat - only "longer", detecting possible collisions sooner.

You're forgetting one critical component, a big part of why formations are successful now is because they've been spread out. They will enter collision avoidance mode and start buzzing about and I guarantee you that when they're right next to each other that will lead to collisions. Spreading them out ensures this doesn't happen as it gives them room to wig out at full speed. Furthermore it actually causes them to wig out significantly less often. I'm not saying the surrounding path elements can't or shouldn't be tweaked, but removing them altogether really doesn't help.

And when a fighter approaches a capital ship, the cap ship should not be made artificially fatter than it already is. It should be sufficient if the fighter "probes ahead".
Making cap ships fatter will just lead to problems with fighters who (with their short range lasers) can't attack cap ships at all.
Has been that way in Reunion. The bounding sphere has been reduced in TC so fighters are better at hurting cap ships but worse at avoiding the collision. =)
Also, by making (cap) ships fatter, you give up a degree of control. If ships (fighters) only have feelers, the length of the feelers can be adjusted to the ship's speed while the size of the target doesn't actually matter.
Besides, it's a lot less work and easier to manage that way. =)

You're repeating a point I acknowledged and tested last night. I agree, the devil is in the details though and I'm looking at it.

But the length of such probes is obviously a matter of experimentation.
Noone has tried that before. =)

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not tbh >.> . If someone has tried it I'd love to see their results.

What speed a fighter uses on it's attack run is controlled by the fight script and dependant on the ships fight skill value.
This mod would only alter when a certain speed is used.

And I can control that when. In fact that's the whole point of the mod, because it controls hardcoded responses that user space scripts cant touch. It's just a matter of tuning.

[Gazz]

I'm pretty disappointed by the station attack... the station is gargantuan but they attack only a tiny tube that connects the station to the docking calmps (the "station center"). That's just stupid. But is a Vanilla behaviour.

I was musing about that. With ships, auto-aim definitely aims at turrets and/or cameras so what if that worked for stations, too?
They may not be able to use turrets but what could be the harm in having unused camera dummies?

@ Alkeena
Man, you're starting to sound as irritated as me when people keep making inane suggestions. =P

[Alkeena]

I ran some quick tests:

10 discos vs station: they did not die and this is very good news. M5 splat everywhere in Vanilla stations. Problem is that they couldn't damage it. I'm not expecting them to be able to actually destroy it, but their attack runs were too short-lived to reach the weapon's range.

20 fully tuned Mambas Vs station: no dead. but anything with less range than HEPT could not actually reach the "station center".

20 fully tuned Mambas Vs Akuma, various weapon configurations: 5 deaths by PD (how strange). here they performed pretty well. No Kamikazes and no stupid rammings. The Mamba I was seeing with external view almost got pasted by a Argon One charge while sitting in space, but reacted quickly enough to save himself.

4 M6 (fully tuned), Dragon a Hydra a Centaur and a Nemesis Vs Invincible station: No collisions with the station in 10 minutes (while in Vanilla I lose the Dragon in the first 2-3 minutes and another random M6 after 5-6)

I noticed that low-ranged weapons (PBG and PBE) are a lot less powerful against Capitals, due to the fact that the fighters shoot less before avoiding. imho this is good. On M6 this is less visible, but yeah.

I'm pretty disappointed by the station attack... the station is gargantuan but they attack only a tiny tube that connects the station to the docking calmps (the "station center"). That's just stupid. But is a Vanilla behaviour.

Thanks for the help! There actually are no exclusion zones on stations, so it's only the extra bounding box around the attacking ships themselves which is actually relatively small on fighters. I'm not sure if there's much I can do to address it beyond increasing weapons ranges as it's clear the stations are just too big. I also cant do a whole lot about the aim target on the station itself--that's wholly beyond the scope of this mod, sorry. :-\

[Alkeena]

I'm pretty disappointed by the station attack... the station is gargantuan but they attack only a tiny tube that connects the station to the docking calmps (the "station center"). That's just stupid. But is a Vanilla behaviour.

I was musing about that. With ships, auto-aim definitely aims at turrets and/or cameras so what if that worked for stations, too?
They may not be able to use turrets but what could be the harm in having unused camera dummies?

@ Alkeena
Man, you're starting to sound as irritated as me when people keep making inane suggestions. =P

I'm just not sure of your tone really =)

You're fairly well respected in the community and I just keep imagining you sitting back berating the stupid new kid.

Anyway, have you actually seen them shooting camera dummies? I've not observed that, it looks like they're going for turrets only to me. The camera dummies are REALLY far away from some ships and if they were shooting them they'd quite clearly be shooting at nothing in space--not just grazing by the hull, but about a full shiplength away.

[Gazz]

Sometimes turrets seem to shoot straight past ships.
With moving targets that could still be the lead prediction acting up but could also be your turret firing at a camera.

This is typically noticable when attacking a TL or other huge ship without top/bottom turrets.
An M2 would have the closest turret on "your" side so there would be no need to shoot the one "outside" of the ship.
Now when attacking a TL from mostly above, a side turret can indeed be the closest target.
Only then can you see that effect.

Been a while since I toyed with that so I'm not positive on the exact workings, either...

I'm just not sure of your tone really =)

I just keep imagining you sitting back berating the stupid new kid.

No worries. I'll let you know when I'm starting to throw insults!

Just bouncing a few ideas offa your head. It's your mod so you don't have to justify yourself to anyone.
Your mod, your rules. It's really as simple as that.
So if anyone makes completely whacky suggestions like here, just tellem to go to hell or do it better.

Oh, and if in doubt, read it literally. Those who were trying to convey cleverly hidden insults get annoyed to no end which is a bonus.

[Alkeena]

Just bouncing a few ideas offa your head. It's your mod so you don't have to justify yourself to anyone.
Your mod, your rules. It's really as simple as that.
So if anyone makes completely whacky suggestions like here, just tellem to go to hell or do it better.

I like ideas, ideas are good, keep them coming. I also like to explain myself because if my line of reasoning is flawed then people can pick it out and say "no, that really doesn't work that way." If that happens soon enough I can save a lot of time and effort on a failed idea. Conversely if something is suboptimal in some way but still necessary for some reason at least the user can understand why it's there and not berate me constantly about it. =)

Edit: Update, I'm still playing around with what was to be 0.2a, removing exclusion zones from big ships and fine tuning probes. If I haven't gotten something reasonable in a few hours I'll give up and start refining exclusion zones on big ships and messing around with TBullets to adjust weapons ranges.

[Gazz]

You have to do something about your modesty problem.

The modder is always right. =P

[MegaJohnny]

This sounds very good. I had a Sabre following my ship (a Xenon L) at one point and it thought it would be hilarious to fly into me while doing a poor job of trying to stay in formation. If this helps with that I'll download it in a hot second when it gets to a higher version number.

I wonder why AI patrol fighters are always so happy to stay in a neat X around a Tyr in Asteroid Belt, but yet I saw a video of someone telling Rapiers to protect his corvette, and every single one smashed itself on him.

[someone else]

Thanks for the help! There actually are no exclusion zones on stations, so it's only the extra bounding box around the attacking ships themselves which is actually relatively small on fighters. I'm not sure if there's much I can do to address it beyond increasing weapons ranges as it's clear the stations are just too big. I also cant do a whole lot about the aim target on the station itself--that's wholly beyond the scope of this mod, sorry. :-\

Well, the cameradummies on the fighters do their job admirably. No collisions with anything and I had 10 discos and 20 Mambas (all fully tuned) flying about. Even when I added the M6 noone got hurt. That is something quite strange to see really.

mmmh... I have a idea about the stations.... if you open up the station's scene and move the station + all other rubbish with it to have the center of the station (the center of the scene) in a more suitable point (for example where there are structures, not just a tiny tube) the problem wil be alleviated a lot. Fighters will still shoot on a thing that is out of their range but their shots will hit other structures on thier way.

Anyways, apart the station issue (not really an issue) I don't see any problems here. A Capital is still a target for a fighter's anti-capital guns (if you attack it with IREs they land on targed but... yeah) and small fighters don't smash everywhere. Just PBE and PBG are a bit hampered in fighter-vs-capital. But they are not meant to be Capital Busters, even if in Vanilla they do just that. No need imho to change the guns.

I'll run some more tests with other fast M3 and maybe one with slower M3. What you prefer exactly as "battleground" to test? a capital vs fighters? or a furious dogfight between fighters? Anyways no more station bombings for now.

[Alkeena]

Alright, I think I have a pretty good prototype running right now. I'll take it full scale and upload it as 0.2a and let you guys rip it apart.

Basically:

Code: Select all

-Removed exclusion zones from M7/7M/2/1 & TL
-Kept base exclusion zone around M8/6/5/4/3 TS/P/M
	M5/4/3		20,000 
	M8			30,000 
	M6 TS/P/M	50,000 
-Added Forward Probe to M8/6/5/4/3
	M8/4/3		50,000
	M6			60,000
	M5			120,000
-Increased ALL weapon ranges by 300m (not the frags from things like cluster flak though--flak bullet range increased, AOE once it explodes was not touched). This was done by increasing bullet lifetime, not speed.
	

This seems to be pretty stable. Formations work, no collisions, no slow down on attack runs, and attack runs generally work. At least with my testing so far. It will take me at least an hour or two to take this full scale and post it but if anyone anticipates any problems from the above changes let me know so I can address them before uploading 0.2a.

My only concern is the bullet lifetime fix. This has the potential to add (only slightly) to the overhead to run the game since more bullets will be in the air at any given time. I didn't want to change bullet speeds though because then I have to do a bunch of rebalancing that CMOD has already done...In fact I suggest using CMOD as it works quite well, the bullet fix is just for those that won't be using CMOD.

[StarbuckAK]

lol cant wait to try it. just sent a wing of fighters off to dispatch a thug on a mission and after they deployed... they swarmed around the carrier... and wham! WHAM! lost 2 fighters right off the bat. pitiful. so F'ing pitiful, egosoft.

[Xplodzion]

Wow, left the thread question I posted for a few days and come back to find its 3 pages long and then a seperate thread with a mod that tries to fix the problem and is also 3 pages long, thanks alot for working together in trying to fix it!

Looking forward to 0.2a

[StarbuckAK]

it's the customer service that egosoft doesn't provide!

[LV]

I'd offer 2 suggestions

1. When i worked on CD with tikaki for TR the biggest problem with increasing it was that fighters bugged out before firing on cap/big ships.

Without knowing what you have done have you tested this? (if you have and it works fine still, have a shiny Imperial badge )

2. Alkeena & Gazz

I like banter but if you two keep "loving" each other up, i'll have to get you a room. (with 2 spikes outside the door which i'll place your heads on as an example to other forum users )