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Post by ross128 on Oct 7, 2016 5:08:26 GMT
The effect seems to be fairly reproducible, though with some difficulty. If the nuke is too big compared to the cap, it doesn't happen. If the missile wobbles right before impact and hits sideways, nothing (well, other than a normal nuke blast). If the nuke goes off too far away, doesn't happen. If the nuke actually impacts the hull, obviously it doesn't even explode then (though the missile is so heavy that even a collision will damage non-fortress targets, just a lot less so than a detonation).
When the missile hits just right though, damn.
I suppose it's not surprising that an EFP formed by a point-blank nuclear blast would be strong though. I'm just surprised it formed at all.
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Post by Drahkan on Oct 13, 2016 0:29:20 GMT
I was just searching the board for an answer to this very question, although in my case it hasn't provided a resolution: when creating a methane-burning ship with both main engines (at the bottom of the stack) and resistojet's - either gimballed OR non-gimballed resisto's - the delta-v drops way off, and in combat the ship seems to use the what-should-be-RCS-thruster resisto's as main engines while not even bothering with the main engines sometimes. (Or so it seems; it's hard to tell sometimes as there's so much jet wash everywhere with them all firing made worse by general combat-FPS-drop.) Even with a single resistojet mounted anywhere on the ship, the delta-v is way less than it should be...but remove that last one and it's back to full. What makes this even stranger is that, with the resistojet's firing, it seems like the enemy AI ignores the primary engines - instead they start targeting my heaviest weapon turrets, as if the main engines have already been destroyed. I've been fudging with the blueprints all afternoon to see if I can resolve it, but as far as I can tell nope, doesn't happen. Seems that the bottom-stack engine answer isn't the case for me.
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Post by ross128 on Oct 13, 2016 0:46:26 GMT
I haven't had much luck incorporating RCS thrusters into designs in general. The game likes to wrap them in armor, which plays havoc with your cross-section and total mass. You can get around this by setting the "end" value on your armor to a bit less than 100% so it counts as "partial armor", and then it'll put RCS thrusters on the outside. That comes with its own problems, they're easy to shoot off, though that risk can be reduced by using really small low-profile thrusters.
But then there's an additional problem where in combat, the nav computer likes to fire ALL the RCS thrusters nearly continuously whenever it makes a maneuver, likely related to its tendency to oversteer. This obviously consumes fuel at a terrifying rate while achieving very little, since most of the fuel is spent oversteering, correcting, and then correcting the oversteered correction.
It seems that in general, RCS thrusters could use a bit of work to get them to play nice with the rest of the game.
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Post by Drahkan on Oct 13, 2016 6:33:40 GMT
I haven't had much luck incorporating RCS thrusters into designs in general. The game likes to wrap them in armor, which plays havoc with your cross-section and total mass. You can get around this by setting the "end" value on your armor to a bit less than 100% so it counts as "partial armor", and then it'll put RCS thrusters on the outside. That comes with its own problems, they're easy to shoot off, though that risk can be reduced by using really small low-profile thrusters. But then there's an additional problem where in combat, the nav computer likes to fire ALL the RCS thrusters nearly continuously whenever it makes a maneuver, likely related to its tendency to oversteer. This obviously consumes fuel at a terrifying rate while achieving very little, since most of the fuel is spent oversteering, correcting, and then correcting the oversteered correction. It seems that in general, RCS thrusters could use a bit of work to get them to play nice with the rest of the game. Agreed on all accounts, and something I'm spending way too long attempting to circumvent in some way/shape/form as the idea of "realistic space-warships" makes no sense to me without an effective RCS system, *especially* since "Dodge" is a toggle-able setting by default. And even with dodge turned off, I've seen the same thing as you - all the RCS thrusters fire even though they appear to be doing nothing more than keeping my ship facing the same direction it would be facing even if they were all off. I've wondered whether or not the game is actually just giving a "false reading" of delta-v, as in it's reducing all delta-v spent during movement (non-battle or in-battle) proportional to the amount of delta-v shown in the GUI (I hope that makes sense), but I haven't had a chance to test it since reading this thread and discovering that the RCS thrusters are to blame. My next test, I think, is going to be to "install" each and every engine as a single unit, all on the "back" of a ship, as a min-max Sentinel layout of sorts. I'm thinking with 5 layers of armor - all 5 in the middle of the ship, and fading out as they extend towards the tips - and a symmetrical layout of fuel tank groupings and other "shape-forming" modules to keep the center thick and both ends thinner, I might still get what I am essentially trying to accomplish in the first place, but I'm already expecting radiation to be a serious issue with side-facing full-sized engines, an issue I'm not even sure can be fixed given the current ship design system...
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 13, 2016 18:47:54 GMT
I think we can all agree there is a serious bottom-of-the-stack gimbaled NTR bias in this game, no doubt related to Qswitched's dubious background politics and funding he got from certain large nuclear and aerospace conglomerates. I think the only option is to band together and form an RCS thruster party with one main goal: to form a successful opposition to this "main thruster only" agenda, and fully represent the people interested in a winning, working formula for RCS be it resistojet, nuclear or otherwise.
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Post by Drahkan on Oct 13, 2016 23:05:36 GMT
I concur, and nominate you as candidate for head chair of the RCSFTP! (That's "RCS for the People Party," BTW.) Chant it with me, everyone: "We've got attitude, yes it's factual! We've got attitude: our rotation is fixed axial!"
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 14, 2016 1:51:40 GMT
I fully accept. Attachment DeletedThe RCSFTP Is a for the people, by the people coalition for better integrated movement on our space crafts! Our motto: "SIX DEGREES IS WHAT WE NEED!" Says it all, pitch, yaw, roll,vertical,horizontal AND Frontal movement! How can we as fully sentient human beings fully and competently slaughter(or just move around in) Ships limited to thrust from a singular, albeit gimbaled engine? Yes it might be the most powerful but can the dang thing move backwards without flipping the ship(and all fragile spaghetti based meals contained there in) around? The answer is a simple NO! And so i believe, truly! That an optimised integrated system that allows us to manually designate RCS and Main reaction engines, assign them WERE-EVER-WE-LIKE! on our ships, and not, for ONCE have to worry about losing our hard earned propellant to antiquated(engines) and systems of thought. Secondly i advocate a slightly more robust order system were in ships could more rapidly i have prepared a robust prototype example: Attachment Deleted
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Post by Drahkan on Oct 14, 2016 21:14:52 GMT
The problem with manual control is that, for me at least, battles are so full of dropped FPS and/or complete momentary freeze-ups - and I have a decent gaming rig, and am not even running max settings - that I see very few instances where it would be beneficial to me. If some sort of RCS-related manual control was implemented, I think I'd prefer it to be a matter of specifying what direction you want "broadside" to be for your ships by default (i.e. assuming that they haven't suffered damage yet), and specifying RCS engines versus primary drive engines so that automatic/AI controls would make correct use of them when dodging (which right now seems to cause more issues than it solves, at least with capital ships), reorienting guns, etc etc etc. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your in-depth diagram, and that is already basically what you're trying to accomplish with your various manual controls? As in, "pre-program" unique commands on a per-ship basis, "recording" them real-time as part of a new step to the ship design process..? Or to put it another way, you could create "order macros"? If so that makes sense and would definitely be cool.
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 14, 2016 21:47:45 GMT
Oops let me clarify a bit: Attachment DeletedThe brown sections are the actual "manual" control, in order to use them you must have your ship, and then that order selected, from there you hit the hotkey and away you go. You will also have to manually correct though, so while direct it has downsides. The pink sections are the programmable specific rcs inputs, presumably at the beginning of the battle when it is paused(or in the middle if you are fast enough), you can set up to six consecutive specific rcs inputs, three rolls, three strafes. Any more in either and one of those would cancel each other(if you are already going left, a right input cancels it out). This is carried out even when you are out of the ship command, say if you are targeting enemy vessels or selecting sub systems on another friendly ship it should also be able to auto correct and stop the strafe or roll after the specific action is completed, unless of course the continuous roll or continuous strafe box is checked
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Post by Drahkan on Oct 14, 2016 22:37:03 GMT
Ah okay, so you're basically going with the "give as many options as possible, both ahead of time as well as real-time" methodology. Like I said I personally wouldn't even attempt to do anything real-time once the battle has started due to lag and such, with the exception of changing over to a different custom order...but I do really like the idea of being able to set up a "chain" of inputs so to speak, since that would go along with the game's idea that "computers control most aspects, but it's still ultimately in the hands of humans" - when a battle lasts less than a minute you're going to have to have "play books" just like (American) football, I'd think, which is essentially what you're proposing...(I think? Heh/Sigh)
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 14, 2016 23:53:55 GMT
Yeah pretty much, so it is a specific enough to set one ideal order per ship in regards to rolling and strafing without going into micro management, while still allowing for a nice emergency hard to port should the ship need it.
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Post by Drahkan on Oct 15, 2016 23:24:09 GMT
Okay, so back to the issue at hand: vanishing delta-v. So qswitched says this: ...so as a reasonable test I could think of for this, I made a ship with main drive gimballed methane engines in the usual place (which I assume is "bottom of the rocket stack"), methane tanks above them (just pointing that out in case it matters for a bugfix), then at the "top" of the spacecraft I slapped 20 100kg water tanks. I then took non-gimballed water resistojets and put them on the "back" of the ship: 3 at the top of the rocket (1 facing straight back and the other two about 20 degrees rearward from the ship's left/right centerline), and 2 a little ways above the methane engines towards the "bottom" of the rocket. Methane rockets have both higher thrust and exhaust velocity, so they should win there as well. With that setup, my delta-v was listed at around 66% of my total fuel's delta-v. As soon as I did any maneuvering that dropped quickly, and then suddenly the delta-v switched over to almost the full methane delta-v. Sure enough, I zoom in on my ship and it's totally out of water, having burned that before the main engines. So then I restart the battle, disable the water engines, do some stuff...and discover that THE ENGINES FIRED ANYWAY. Zoom back in at a later time and sure enough, water is drained, engines are dead. So even disabling the things doesn't stop them from firing! If that's not a bug I don't know what is... Could someone confirm?
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 16, 2016 3:01:44 GMT
I have had similar strange occurrences on my laser destroyers, it does not happen too frequently, but my ships spontaneously spin( in a matter identical to if they fired their respective spin rcs thrusters for several minutes) and pancake their crew, even if i have the RCS turned off.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 16, 2016 4:08:34 GMT
Yeah same here. Sometimes my ships will for no reason at all start spinning at stupid RPM. Sometimes they weren't even being fired at or anything So be it this is always in combat just engaging enemies from outside of their weapon ranges.
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Post by Drahkan on Oct 16, 2016 19:00:39 GMT
That would make sense given my experiences, as a "bug" not an "undocumented feature". I was doing Vesta Overkill last night and noticed that the Cutter(? the one with 8 lasers) only has 1 main engine and a bunch of RCS, and although it was on the enemy team - so I couldn't see delta-v usage - the moment we got into combat and it started firing its thrusters, sure enough, gas goes spewing in every direction and the thing starts rolling like crazy. In its case that is a good idea, really, since it can't fire all of those lasers simultaneously and rolling the armor constantly definitely helped keep it alive way longer than it should have (It survived for so long that I almost flew past the thing, despite being in a custom 11t battleship). But that should be an AI and/or "Dodge" Command feature, not "my navigation officer won't stop stop shouting 'engaging artificial gravity generator, sir!' and wasting all of our monopropelant".
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