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Post by the_Demongod on Aug 12, 2017 10:43:58 GMT
Similar to xenophon13 , I've been dabbling with some renderings too. 3D modeling CoaDE ships is surprisingly easy because they're made out of such simple shapes, and then you can always go add more detail later. Here are a couple of my Hornet MLMS (multiple launch missile system) which is a siloship for my nuclear-tipped KKV missiles. I'd call these about 70% complete, I still have some details to add and materials to tweak (non-metal materials like that Silica Aerogel are hard to get to look right) so consider these semi-WIP. I also have some animations of it firing its missiles but they're not complete enough to show yet. Someday though
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Post by the_Demongod on Aug 8, 2017 20:53:47 GMT
Look at the list on the left to see where your efficiency is lacking. The lowest category should be "pumping," (mine usually are in the realm of 5% iirc), with the rest being above 80% ideally. Those categories tell you what to fix, e.g. "cavity shape", etc.
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Post by the_Demongod on Aug 8, 2017 19:52:57 GMT
I had the same idea when I first discovered the issue and it seems like a design that would be implemented in real life for added precision while maintaining the defensive bonus of an internal mount.
I still think it's reasonable to expect my original request to be implemented though, spinal weapon mounts are something that are talked about all over Atomic Rockets and is a no-brainer method of adding significant protection to your weapons. All it would take on QSwitched's end would be to take the logic gimballed weapons use to orient themselves, and allow the vessels themselves to use it. I'm a programmer so I know such a task is not necessarily trivial, but shouldn't be too difficult to implement.
While it's difficult to aim an object as large as a capital ship accurately, the large inertia makes the relatively weak RCS thrusters highly precise (especially thrusters with as easily variable throttle as a resistojet) so I'm sure the ship could handle aiming itself accurately just fine.
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Post by the_Demongod on Aug 7, 2017 23:17:04 GMT
Definitely a good idea, I was thinking of this exact thing earlier when testing a capital ship with a large spinal cannon that used resistojet RCS for precise aiming. I prefer to use those when only in broadside mode for fine control (since they're RP-1 fueled and I only care a small amount since my main fuel is Methane), and shut them off the rest of the time. I would be perfectly fine with an embedded script interpreter but then again I code and I know not everyone will be interested in that. I'd like to be able to use it for things like the aforementioned logic gates or to create macro buttons and assign them to higher level controls, so that I can have a button to switch from one combat mode (say, enable lasers and shutdown railguns) to another (the opposite), or to change maneuver modes (such as the ones I described earlier). At some point it would indeed be great to have a system like KSP where we can modify the game to our hearts' content.
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Post by the_Demongod on Aug 7, 2017 20:38:02 GMT
In addition to the above, nose forwards commands barely help either. I'm guessing this is because the point of aim is off the target if they're moving at all, where aiming directly at the target is only going to have your rounds land where the target was x minutes ago (where x is projectile flight time to target), so the gun just doesn't fire since it doesn't have a valid firing solution. I can verify that this happens. It looks like spinal mounted weapons don't take relative velocity of the firing ship properly into account. If tangential velocity is 0, they do hit pretty well. I was shooting a station with very very low relative tangential velocity and it was still struggling to hit. It would stay on target for a few seconds and then slowly deviate until the rounds started missing, then it would stop, readjust, and try again. This is only at 700 or so kilometers where the turret-mounted variant of the gun will be incredibly accurate and powerful against targets as small as drones.
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Post by the_Demongod on Aug 7, 2017 18:49:28 GMT
I'm going to resurrect this thread because the issue is still there. As far as I can tell, the issue stems from a problem with the broadside command.
Essentially, broadside is trying to put the ship into a fixed orientation which allows the weapons to aim at their targets. This is great for gimballed/turreted weapons because this minimizes the footwork the targeting systems have to do in terms of calculating a firing solution, especially with a moving target. However, this is extremely suboptimal for fixed mount weapons for anything but a perfectly fixed target. The ship aims the gun at the target and begins to fire, but as soon as the target moves out of the acceptable error range of the solution, the ship has to recalculate and reorient, and stops firing during this process. Once it has aimed back towards the target, it fires again, and the cycle repeats. The higher the angular velocity of the target, the less time it will spend in the acceptable firing solution before our ship has to reorient.
This contrasts sharply with the turrets, which move smoothly while firing, enabling fire as accurate as the weapon will allow. While an accelerating target does confuse turrets sometimes, they can handle non-accelerating moving targets just fine, but spinal weapons can't. I couldn't even hit a space station with low relative velocity with my gun, despite having a ring of 2MN RP-1 resistojet RCS thrusters for aiming, with considerable control authority (at least considerable for a capital ship as large as mine). I suspect that drones aren't as hindered by this problem because their weapons are far less accurate, engage at much closer ranges, and have very high directional authority and can turn fast enough to negate this problem.
As far as I can tell, the best solution is simply for the broadside algorithm to detect the presence of spinal or fixed-mount weapons and employ a targeting routine more similar to the turrets (where the entire ship will maintain a calculated rotational motion to continuously track the target) instead of the regular broadside (which kills rotation once aligned).
I hope this can be fixed at some point, it cripples ships that use internal mounts to protect their weapons; they are already penalized by being limited by the large rotational inertia of capital vessels and the added mass required to effectively aim such a large ship.
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Post by the_Demongod on May 10, 2017 7:34:52 GMT
I suppose, although it shouldn't be too hard to get something simple working. The current AI would do most of the work, and I would start with pretty simple logic. This would be a fairly long term project so I'm not too concerned about how long it'll take.
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Post by the_Demongod on May 9, 2017 17:28:33 GMT
But the real pain is the math. You must use math to calculate every single thing, dynamically. That sounds pretty hard. Agreed, but I consider that to be something that's just a matter of time. In programming the stuff like resource processing/limitations it's plausible that I'll come up against something that's impossible (I don't know how easy this game is to mod). With the actual logic it'll take forever to be sure but I don't expect to come up against as many impassable roadblocks.
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Post by the_Demongod on May 9, 2017 5:22:44 GMT
Hey all, I was playing some Falcon BMS and it got me thinking: this game could benefit astronomically (heh) from some sort of dynamic scenario generator or campaign. I know a thing or two about programming (Java, C++, Python) so I'm considering writing one myself. This is very theoretical right now; I'm not sure whether it's within my abilities or even doable at the level I'm imagining it. I'm currently brainstorming to try and figure out how much work it would be, and I'm interested in hearing the ideas and feedback from others here. Here are some of the core features I feel are required for such a campaign to exist, please feel free to suggest your own: 1. Some sort of resource/credits limit is obviously critical. We need to force players to work within limits. 2. Some sort of resource gathering system is required if the above is to be implemented. Maybe we can fake it by saying if you've parked a certain vessel in a low orbit around a planet, it's considered "colonized" and you can mine it for metals. 3. The requirement to construct all vessels in orbital shipyards (which would themselves have to be constructed in the orbit of a captured planet). 4. The ability to "capture" planets, moons, and systems to provide objectives for both teams. I really want to be able to do some orbital bombardment, it's an itch that I haven't been able to scratch with this game yet. 5. An internal system that can give the hostile AI simple commands to cause them to attack the player and perform other actions you'd expect during an interplanetary war. Ideally this would exist in a sort of persistent mission. Hostile AI would try to capture planets and disrupt the player's attempts to do the same, and it would be up to the player to obtain resources, construct fleets, and fend off/attack the AI. I imagine supply chains being required to ship propellants and metals around the solar system, making escorts and interdictions a key element of war. The lack of saving could complicate things, although I imagine it's possible to somehow write the positions of everything in the mission into a file and then read that file to pick up where you left off. The major barriers I foresee are figuring out how to limit resources in the editor and making AI behave properly. I'm not even sure if the game will be able to handle 30+ fleets spread out over the solar system in one mission. I should run some experiments... Let me know if anyone has any more ideas.
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Post by the_Demongod on May 6, 2017 0:44:27 GMT
What sort of a poster?
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Music
Mar 4, 2017 1:47:52 GMT
Post by the_Demongod on Mar 4, 2017 1:47:52 GMT
I would only be ok with the prospect of new music if there was an option to keep it exactly the way it is now... by now I'm conditioned to associate it with the excitement and wonder of playing the game and I definitely don't want it changed, personally. Those first few notes heard upon launching the game to the main menu send shivers of anticipation down my spine.
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Post by the_Demongod on Mar 3, 2017 21:31:11 GMT
I highly recommend Three Body trilogy by Liu Cinxin. Across the three books, Three Body, Dark Forest, and Deaths end, Liu tells a story with unparalleled scale and depth. Although I do speak some Chinese, the book is far too complicated for my pre-school level Chinese. The english translation does not feel translated. I listened to the book as an audio book. The style and pacing of the book is unique. I would describe it as slow, methodical, highly technical, and extremely detailed but somehow it is always gripping and keeps you on the edge of your seat. It has lot of hard science fiction. Personally it has made most other Sci-Fi seem a little trivial due to the depth, scale, and implication of the events and story. If you love Children of a Dead Earth, I highly recommend this series. Surprised this wasn't mentioned earlier. I'm only halfway through the first book and the depth is indeed unparalleled in my experience. The english audiobook narrator is extremely good, perfect for the pace of the story, and really brings it to life. Because the book was originally written in Chinese, it has a unique style, unlike anything I've ever read in english. I too highly recommend it, and encourage you to get the audiobook if possible; it turns it from a book to a story almost as vivid as an actual, visual movie. The book is very scientifically accurate and the author clearly has a highly technical background.
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Post by the_Demongod on Feb 26, 2017 6:45:36 GMT
If any of you have played Falcon 4 BMS, that's the kind of campaign I wish was in the game. Imagine a solar system scale dynamic campaign where you could control fleets all over the solar system, capture planets and build orbital bases around them, build ISRU (mining) stations on the planets to gain materials (just by constructing the right orbital base and it'd happen automatically), bombard enemy surface structures from orbit, escort supply transports to and from various planets, construct all your vessels in orbital shipyards purely out of materials you must obtain before using, and only as much as you have collected. The enemy team (AI) would do the same and you could control any of the vessels on the battlefield to attack them or defend from them. Fleets would act on their own but you could create them and take control of them manually if you wish.
It's not going to happen because it took collaboration with the US Air Force to design Falcon 4's dynamic campaign as a training tool, but I can dream.
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Post by the_Demongod on Feb 2, 2017 5:46:35 GMT
Why do you have 5 different engines, I have 2 missiles and three drones that use the same motor. I have plenty of drones and missiles that use the same motor too, but it's not always worth it to sacrifice optimization for convenience so that only works sometimes. My comment applies more to things like spacers and fuel tanks and ammunition magazines but should be applied to everything else if it were to be implemented.
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Post by the_Demongod on Jan 31, 2017 23:50:58 GMT
I just think it would be ideal if we didn't have to go create a new standalone module for each vessel. Yeah it's nice to be able to save a good general purpose engine for my capships, but if I have 5 different types of drones and missiles of similar mass and fuel type, I end up with 5 different engines with the same exhaust velocity ±0.1 km/s, the same thrust ±200kN, and the same materials, all of which serve their purpose well but won't necessarily work on anything else. It's especially bad when I have a good engine that I use in a cluster of 3 for one vessel, but need to duplicate it just to slap a gimbal on it to use it singularly. Don't get me started about fuel tanks...
I'm basically saying I just wish the system was a little more conducive to purpose-built modules without creating absurd amounts of redundant clutter in the modules list. Maybe if there was an option to hide a given module from the list as long as it was used on a vessel? We could have a separate tab in the modules screen to reveal them on a ship by ship basis. It would reduce clutter tenfold (for me at least) and still allow modules to be built as standalone parts like they are currently.
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