markb50k

Ok, I have pretty much finished the engine code, and am now working on the GUI code. Since it is such a huge change, I will probably do a DB reset, and clear out all ships and derelicts and start clean with the new code. I will let you know when that is going to happen.

The Fleet stuff is coming along, but its a bear. Just wanted to let you know that i am still on the case.

just email me at markb50k at gmail dot com

Looks like things are back up. Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

Looks like the nickersonm.com server is down, and as a result I cant run a turn. Will contact Nickerson and hopefully get things back up. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Deathwatch: no you dont have to reissue the order, just "clear the current target". its an option when you are viewing the order on the orders list oh yeah, one change to your order strategy set these first: BREAK FUEL (10%) BREAK NO WARHEADS BREAK HULL DAMAGE (25%) then put these on REPEAT DOCK REARM/REFUEL REPAIR ESCORT the mothership DEFEND (30km) (by having the escort above this, the 'defend point' will always be the escort position, wherever you have set it. if you DONT have the ESCORT order first, then PRO: your fighters wont burn fuel while there is no enemy but CON: when they do detect enemy and start their defend order, their defense position will be the point in space that was originally assigned.. its not a perfect setup yet until i create an order that allow ships to run operations off of a ship, which I am planning to add, but it will work for now. Plus the fuel burn rate will only be like .2 a cycle while they are just escorting with no enemy

lol, i love how you have described it. Will take a look. Thanks.

the behavior of them going against random stuff is a bug IF you had the priority target set correctly. Like i told Kobra, the moment that happens show me the ship they are going against and show me their current priority target list. I dont see me setting up that hard-coded relationship between fighters and a home base. Just not something I like. The order list Idle Scholar listed above (or a simplified SORTIE order) would do the same thing and could be cancelled. I like making things easier on people but I dont want to take all the responsibility into the codes hands. Just a philosophy of mine. the fighter leaving its fleet once it lands is a bug and I am fixing it with this whole fleet order thing

yes, those orders would do that, as long as the orders are set on repeat 'Y'

yup, im adding an out of warheads break and i will look into adding a SORTIE order, after I get the fleet order stuff down.

thanks, ill check it out when i start working on the GUI changes for fleets.

I also am concerned that I dont understand the 'tedious' nature of the fuel limits. if you can upon creation, simply add a set of orders to your fighters that you never have to edit, that puts them on constant sortie, harsh fuel limits or not, its no-maintenance on your part, isnt it? i can lower fuel usage for full engage status from 0.5 to 0.4 i guess, that would give you 20% more mission time before it needs to refuel. also with the fleet thing it will go a little easier to with mission management i think

I could prevent ships from exchanging UPWARD in missile potency, meaning CM couldnt go to PT OR I could make switching to PT reduce the magazine capacity to half or something thoughts?

do a database refresh, (delete your U#.ini file and your U# directory), then login and see if it pops up. if it doesnt it was a DB write error and I'll have to reset those ships.

Actually, a 'flak factor' for ships based on the types and numbers of weapons on it has been an idea of mine for a while, and it might be implementable pretty quickly (after i figure out this fleet stuff). In the meantime, I was thinking of bringing the range of PT down to say 7000 or something like that.

what does everyone think about a better range for the PT. I agree that with the current engine and immediate hits, 10km is a big advantage over interceptors.

I have started trying to code some of the initial pieces necessary for this and it is a hundred times more complicated than I foresaw, so I am not sure what result will come out of this. Even a simple jump order for a fleet, how does it determine what status it is in as different ships are all calculating to get into jump position, or what if someone adds another ship in just as the ships are about to enter hyperspace. Sure, I can talk and say "its over when this or this" but code wise it is a nightmare. I am definitely going to have to simplify all of this and as a result it is not going to be as cool as some of you want. I'll try but changing an entire foundation paradigm on how the game was created is not a simple task.

New Engine Update. No download necessary. - upped PT damage to 300 - changed PT ROF to 1 shot every 5 cycles - changed CM ROF to 1 shot every 3 cycles

yeah it would affect cap ships as well, but i think it would be realistic to have a ROF slowdown for missiles. as for the damage increase I am thinking of raising the PT to 300.

i think you mean a fighter with 2 tubes can fire off 20 a turn (2 x 10 cycles) right? Yeah, we can change the ROF for different missiles, which are all set at 1, we can set CM to like 3 and PT to like 5 or something. Any opinions?

Welp, like i imagined, when i started getting into a change, i REALLY get into it, so I am planning on a complete overhaul of how the game manages units and orders. Here is what will happen. And it will be a little while before this is implemented. 1. only FLEETS can be given orders 2. ships in the unassigned buckets will have very limited behavior, you cant give them orders, but they can detect, fire weapons, and probably just sit there and rotate to engage enemies. Maybe i give them rudimentary movement ability like an attack order, but it will be just simple behavior. You have to move them to a fleet or create a fleet on them to give them orders. 3. fleets will move from order to order just like units do now, but wont be able to move on to the next order until all ships directly under the fleet are done with that order. But on the other hand, a sub fleet within that fleet will have some flexibility on how it acts and wont necessarily be tied to the finishing of the parent fleet. Thats hard to explain but I know what I mean, LOL. 4. fleets will be considered into two classes, free fleets and sub fleets. free fleets can be given all orders. sub fleets can be given DEFEND ORDERS, PROTECT orders, basically orders that depend on the presence of a parent fleet. 5. priority targets can be given at every level of heirarchy, and will rule over everything below it unless superceded by priority targets given at a lower level. That is the basic summary of what I will be attempting.

I'm liking some of the ideas, but i am going to try to not make things too radically different from where we are right now. I have enough info to start formulating how I could give players this ease of managing their stuff without making it a nightmare for me to code.

as of right now, no. if i create a new priority target type called BREAK, then they would.

i have been thinking and I am coming up with some good ideas first, i would propose that there not be FLEETs and SQDRNs, just fleets. so any ship will be in one of two modes. An individual ship, under unassigned, or in a FLEET second, a FLEET be given a "movement class", i.e. a virtual notation of how fast it moves, etc. third, a FLEET, when created, would require a POSITION to be noted as its starting location. Then any orders its given it would then move from that location using its movement class parameters. Docking: FLEET would just stay in docking until all ships are docked. I could write code to do that and could probably write code to have it cycle ships through docking and such. i got more ideas, but what I will probably do is first implement the FLEET formation code, since it is so similar to ESCORT i got some more thoughts but I'll listen for some feedback.

the current escort order, as Kobra pointed out, just sets up a position for the ship to stay at. It will engage enemies as normal, and not specifically ones that target the flagship. It was a limitation that I decided would be good enough, but as with everything I periodically reconsider it.