[Script] Litcube's Bounce V1.7: Player Owned Autopilot Fix

[Requiemfang]

Good news, it works perfectly, got 30 Jaguar Raiders Swarming around a Dreadnought (yeah I have XTC installed) I chose a massive complex target to test this with and haven't lost one of them yet, the evade usually lasts between a few seconds to 5 seconds to at least 10 seconds. This is vs an unarmed target, I'm gonna do a test between a fleet of some larger but fast vessels against a larger target.

Just a small question though is that... would this also work say with a fighter group accidentally crashing into each other during a fight?

[Litcube]

Good news, it works perfectly, got 30 Jaguar Raiders Swarming around a Dreadnought (yeah I have XTC installed) I chose a massive complex target to test this with and haven't lost one of them yet.

Sweet!

Just a small question though is that... would this also work say with a fighter group accidentally crashing into each other during a fight?

Not yet. Right now, I'm keeping it small. Just to see if I can get away with this working right vs. enemy objects.

If this works as I think it will, I'll expand it to see what we can do with player vs. player collisions. It's not hard to modify it to do that, it's just the performance I'm worried about.

[Requiemfang]

Hmmm... just noticed something else that might be bugged, when I spawn an enemy with weapons, it spawns with no shields and just sits there not firing back at the mass of fighters attacking it.

[Litcube]

Hmmm... just noticed something else that might be bugged, when I spawn an enemy with weapons, it spawns with no shields and just sits there not firing back at the mass of fighters attacking it.

Be back in 5.

[Litcube]

Update!

0.12a:
CSG only: Enemy weapon spawn option wasn't working right.

[Requiemfang]

Right, I'll give it a go again

[Litcube]

Right, I'll give it a go again

I appreciate your patience, man.

[Requiemfang]

that's something I have a lot of.

Results so far with 30 Asp Vanguards, their fitted with the basic pulsed beam emitter, rather weak weapon to use vs frigates and carriers and destroyers.

After 10 minutes of fighting a Xenon K it's shields got into the low 60% area while the Asp Vanguards lost around 7 to 8 ships at that time. If the Asps were fitted with some of the more damaging weapons that XTC provides for the S class cargo I'm sure the shields of that K after 10 minutes would have been a lot lower.

As far as I can tell from the testing I've done so far with Bounce on is that no fighters were lost from collisions when the enemy had no weapons. With weapons on the enemy + bounce on with around 30 fighters they take a nice chunk of shield out and this is from a group of 30 m4's, also losing around 7 to 8 ships. I chose some of the fastest M4's for this test run of course just to see what would happen.

Result is no death's occurred due to colliding with the targeted enemy ship and so far no collisions between friendly ships during attack runs.

[Litcube]

Yeah, Bounce doesn't behave any differently with enemies equipped with weapons. The reason I included it in the CSG is so that people can see that your ships aren't invincible. I can see some people claiming that the ships have collisions turned off for too long, but this part is to prove that notion wrong.

Thing is, when a ship is too close to another, turret tracking is going to fall off pretty quick anyway. As an Asp passes through or near a Titan, for example, any direction its going is going to pass out of the camera dummy arc within milliseconds, and once the asp continues on through it's Evade script, it will have returned to normal operation (read vulnerable) by the time turrets start to track it again.

Even if that weren't the case, ships that are invulnerable (the "!!!!!!!!!!" ships) can't fire back during that time anyway, as during that time, all turrets are locked.

[Requiemfang]

Which actually sounds very realistic. Would the crew of a ship risk a mistake or sudden mishap during a evasive maneuver just to get another shot off or do they actually want to avoid crashing into the large vessel they are attacking?

The way this is set up seems extremely realistic in that with some of the other games I've played, RTS for example with fleet battles is that smaller ships not of the capital or super capital class are suppose to charge at their target for an attack run, once they do their attack run they break off and get away to a safe distance before turning around for another attack run.

This is verses larger targets of course, if it was fighter verses fighter the whole fight dynamics change right there because dog fights between fighters is a giant furball.

[BlackRain]

Is this working with every ship? Or is it just a test now and only works when you run the test script?

[Requiemfang]

BlackRain, this is a test atm to see if there are any bugs and kinks for Litcube to iron out before he does anymore with it so it can only be run via the script editor.

When you go into a sector... any sector the script destroys everything so the sector is clear. Then the testing of the script commences and you sit back and watch and then here you report the results.

The basic results Lit was looking for was whether the script would run okay and work fine as opposed to having bounce off which leaves the auto-collision detection on for ships. With auto-collision on ships tend to ram into the target they are attacking, BOUNCE turns that off and allows ships to go into a avoidance routine (evasion)

[Killjaeden]

This model is transparent so the player can't see it. But because it's there, and it's large, the idea is that ships will avoid sooner, thus avoiding the embarrassing collisions. Some mods in this forum include them (SRM, XTC

Just to clarify things:
XTC doesnt use transparent models. The boxes are not there physically. In fact, if you open them in gmax you wont see anything.
They use the "proper" way of making collision avoidance like ES did it.
XTC models don't suffer from the missile-thingy As long as the missile has proper values. Too fast and it will never hit. Because there is no additional invisible physical volume like with the other methods the missile will target the physical &visible volume of the ship. If it doesnt hit then its the missile stats that are not good.

Same with too fast ships-> too fast and they will always crash into the obstacle. That's why M5 usually crash against capitals (not sure who sends m5 against capitals anyway)

I tested the collisions for the new capital ships in XTC (vanilla are still vanilla) with fast m4 and m3 because thats the minimal class to do damage anyway. For really big m2 only m3 where used.

[Litcube]

XTC models don't suffer from the missile-thingy As long as the missile has proper values.

I tested this extensively with XTC vs. Vanilla, and I come to a different conclusion. XTC versus vanilla, XTC will miss with missiles on the same ship. Sometimes it's not noticeable if the collision box is lined up with the model properly in XTC, but if the trajectory takes the missile on a course where the collision box extends beyond the hull, which happens on most XTC ships, the missile will miss on its first pass. It will then circle around, and come back for a second attempt. On some cases, the missile will circle until it expires.

A one off test might not show you right away that this problem persists in XTC. You'd have to fire a volley of mosquitoes, for example, at different angles until you see the result. Preferably at a large ship (Titan).

[Killjaeden]

the Titan was not changed in XTC ...

You can easily tell if a ship model uses custom avoidance by looking into the scene. If you see an entry with "...XTC\props\col\..." then it uses new avoidance. If not then it does not use new.

[Katorone]

Test 1:
100 Mamba Vanguard against 10 unarmed Boreas' : 0 Losses. (~60km view distance in sector)
Lots of low shields though, presumaly friendly fire. :-/

Test 2:
100 Mamba against 10 armed Brigantines : 7 losses. (~100km vieuw distance in sector + rock debris in the area)

Test 3:
Same as test 2, now without bounce.

This last fight lasted a bit longer, also a lot more casualties. About 60 Mamba's were left.

Didn't notice much difference in framerate.


Edit: test performed in XTC.

[Litcube]

@Katorone: Nice test! Sincerely, thank you for making a contribution! Every test helps.

[Katorone]

Thank you for giving me an easy opportunity to find out if fighters are actually worth it against destroyers.
In the 5+ years I'm playing X2,3R,3TC I've NEVER used capital ships besides an M2 now and then. Never did a patrol or sector defense...
I was actually surprised how strength in numbers can take down a cap ship that fast.

Oh, btw... I had MARS enabled on all cap ships. (so the 7 losses really are very low)

[Ikaruga]

I did 3 scenarii, all of them at SETA 900 and unarmed enemies

Scenario 1 : Aero Fighters

Enemy : 1 Leviathan

Ally : 30 Barracuda

No bounce
4 losses

Bounce
0 losses


Scenario 2 : Bad dudes VS Dragon Ninja

Enemy : Aquilo

Allies : 4 Split Dragons (M6)

No bounce :

1 of them lightly damaged due to collisions
Another one with low shields

Bounce :

Nothing !

I watched the different fights and apparently, the ships bounce correctly off the enemy and don't fire and are immune to collisions during a short time.

Also, I didn't experience lag or freezes at any time.

Conclusion :
Needless to say, your script is really useful and makes life much easier ! Great work so far, can't wait for a playable version of this !

[Litcube]

I was actually surprised how strength in numbers can take down a cap ship that fast.

One of my favourite things to do is take out capitals in Revelation with fighters. If you have some good macro management scripts, it's a dream, and so much cheaper.

I watched the different fights and apparently, the ships bounce correctly off the enemy and don't fire and are immune to collisions during a short time.

Also, I didn't experience lag or freezes at any time.

Good eye.

Conclusion :
Needless to say, your script is really useful and makes life much easier ! Great work so far, can't wait for a playable version of this !

Me too. There's one final issue that needs to be sorted. Something Jack08 brought up offline, but it should be easy to remedy. It involves a PLAYER M2 versus ENEMY fighters.