Random missiles and fighters, please help!

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18 years 7 months ago #15135 by MajorTom
The unmodded MP game does not and never did include the comsec. Starting with F14.6 you have the Cutter and the Police Interceptor in addition to the other ship types you mentioned.

btw. We are using the different T-types more by coincedince for a rather simple reason. We wanted the HUD to show the right names for the star wars ships. Thats possible by assigning a different text to the hud.csv, for example: hud_type_tug,"B-WNG" (hud_type_tug corresponds T_Tug).

Here is something more that possibly tangents your tag theory: Although I have never been able to put my finger on it (and I know it sounds silly), I always felt (talk about gut feeling) that the (stock EOC) ships with different T-types have slightly different handeling charachteristics (even if you mod the heck out of the preformance parameters).

Until we started the star wars mod we always used the standard set up scenes for the different T-types. Therefore one explanation for different handling would be the mass of each different ship type, but it might have something to do with the position of the null for the engines too? Are the thrusters actually mounted on those nulls for the purpose of the simulation?
I know flux is extremely accurate so vectors of thrust and the position of the thrusters in reference to the center of gravity on the ship could theoretically explain different handeling. What do you think?

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18 years 7 months ago #15139 by Shane

Originally posted by Major TomAlthough I have never been able to put my finger on it (and I know it sounds silly), I always felt (talk about gut feeling) that the (stock EOC) ships with different T-types have slightly different handeling charachteristics (even if you mod the heck out of the preformance parameters).

Did you duplicate the Dimension values? Check out this bit from the fast_attack.ini:


<font color="navy"><font face="Courier New">
; Dimensions (bit bigger than the bounds to make the ship heavier)
width=50
height=30
length=100
</font id="Courier New"></font id="navy">

The engine must use the dimension values to perform a rough caculation of ship mass. There is probably a set value (which acts as the universal mass/cubic foot ratio) located within the engine. (I've search flux.ini and the resource ini's before but have never found it, and so must assume it's hardcoded in the engine somewhere.)

Thruster nulls aren't actually parented to anything but the avatar root, and do not seem to use a standard naming convention across the models. Thus, I don't think Flux is looking for it. Typically, any null which the engine is required to notice is named <insert_name_and_values>.

Given the abscence of naming-convention and Flux engine tags, my personal feeling is that this would be possible, but not probable. It would cause serious balancing issues for the designer, while not appreciably modifying what the standard player will see (Thrusters not placed on the axis of center mass (such as the carrier) would spin the craft. :D).

And, just last week, I accidentally placed all my thrusters and subsystem nulls for the eDrone rotated 180 degrees on Heading (I'd forgotten my root avatar null is rotated). The thrusters ended up being about 20 meters at the front of the craft. Me not being one to waste a trip in-game, I set up a combat simulation to test balance with other eDrones. I saw no difference in the handling of the craft.

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18 years 7 months ago #15143 by MajorTom
Yes, we did use the original dimensions.

I'm fully agreeable and fully convinced that flux uses the dimensions to calculate mass since I made the "Disruptor Gun Mod".
I did lots of testing back then because the mod uses a second ship docked to the player ship to enable the disruptor functionality. The problem was to compensate for the change in handeling charachteristics due to the increased mass of the attached (invisible ;)) second ship. That mod also includes some dynamic mass manipulation via pog.

Ref. handeling of the different T-Types: thanks for sharing your experience with the misplaced engine nulls. My observations could well have to do with the rotational parameters. Maybe it's just my fantasy playing tricks on me but I thought it seemed to have something to do with the Center of Gravity on each ship.



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18 years 6 months ago #15157 by gwzero
You know I think you guys are looking into this a little too much. There is only 1 thing that I am sure of and that is that this is a simple glitch with a simple fix somewhere. I have been comparing the data from each player ship and from my ship with different kinds of setups and I have come up with some really strange results. My results show the problem doesn't seem to lie in the programming or the ship type, but with the ship's setup. And the glitch with the cutters seems to be with their sensors, cause if you follow them the always lead you to a nearby police base and then they proceed to attack it. And if the problem was in the programing then it would effect all of the AI and player ships, which it doesn't. Anyway here are the general results that I got while testing my megafreighter.

1. With 12 nps turrets, 15 pylon canon mounts, 6 nps fighter bays, and 3 countermeasure mounts. The results I got would be a random selection of between 30 and 130 missiles that would be unaccessable to the player and would be automatically deployed apon activation of the auto pilot. But this would only occur after the player jumps to or remote links to another ship.

2. With the same setup excluding the fighters, would result in the same problem except that only the selected missile type will be fired. And if a gun is selected then all missile types will be fired.

3. when the nps turrets are replaced with pylon cannon mounts, then all the problems disappear. At this point the ship's setup more closely resembles that of the other player ships, except for that it has more systems mounted on it.

4. When I replaced the nps turrets with docking auto turret mount. I would again start to have problems. This time I would lose a random bank of missiles. By that I mean that out of the three edges on the megafreighter with 5 missiles and 5 turret mount points in each row, I would be unable to use all the missiles in 1 or 2 of these rows.

Also with each error there is a 50% change of being unable to use the different firing modes of chain and salvo. I'm starting to believe that the use of any nps systems, improperly aligned weapons, and/or preset weapons can result in this glitch. I've also been wondering (since most of the time the error shows up when a turret is present)if the fire_position_translation and fire_position_rotation variables might effect this?

Originally posted by Major Tom
Why only dogfighter missiles?(and not guns or other missiles)

Dogfighting missiles are not the only missiles that are effected. Any icSimTrackingMissile type is effected by this. I dont know if the ldsi missiles are effected as well but it should be using a similar kind of tracking system, I'll have to test that.

<hr noshade size="1">Smith - "12 docking turrets, 15 quadpack launchers, 6 antimatter pbc's, and 2 turret fighters, all mounted on a megafreighter."

Cal - "Ya think that'll be enough? I mean we're just going to the store."

Smith - "You know you're right, I'd better mount on some antimatter streams."

<hr noshade size="1">Smith - "12 docking turrets, 15 quadpack launchers, 6 antimatter pbc's, and 2 turret fighters, all mounted on a megafreighter."

Cal - "Ya think that'll be enough? I mean we're just going to the store."

Smith - "You know you're right, I'd better mount on some antimatter streams."

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18 years 6 months ago #15186 by gwzero
Ok guys, I think I might have stumbled across a path to the solution (but dont quote me). I went and added some pylon/turret fighter mounts to the side of the command secton of the ship (I thinks thats what you could call it) and named their null-points the same as what they are on the H-Corvette. Then I put quadpacks on them and set the rest up like #4 above. I repeated the error I found that everything happened like before except that the pylon mounts were uneffected. I can get some screenshots if anyone needs some.

Now I'm wondering is it that the pylon_cannon_mount is meant to be attached to a pylon_mount or is it that they need to be properly named or listed somewhere that might be contributing to this?

I need to do some more testing with things like alignment and mountpoint types. However I dont know much C++ (only the basics) and I've never worked with POG so I can't really check out the naming, but at least this is a ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.

<hr noshade size="1">Smith - "12 docking turrets, 15 quadpack launchers, 6 antimatter pbc's, and 2 turret fighters, all mounted on a megafreighter."

Cal - "Ya think that'll be enough? I mean we're just going to the store."

Smith - "You know you're right, I'd better mount on some antimatter streams."

<hr noshade size="1">Smith - "12 docking turrets, 15 quadpack launchers, 6 antimatter pbc's, and 2 turret fighters, all mounted on a megafreighter."

Cal - "Ya think that'll be enough? I mean we're just going to the store."

Smith - "You know you're right, I'd better mount on some antimatter streams."

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18 years 5 months ago #15235 by XTrade
just a thought but have you tried destroying the actual ship, and then re-loading it into the game.. (using pog scripts obviously) and copying all of the name/other info across to the new copy.. and never install an AI pilot in the first place..
just an idea probably won't work

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