markb50k

Holy crap, looking at the maelstrom that is happening in the warzone. I see a couple of AFRGs, an EIDLN, a BELRUS, CC9600, and many gunships duking it out with tons of fighters around. Seems a bunch of ARC170s are sitting ducks with no orders and are being chewed up by TDs. Looking good, folks. Way to slug it out!

That functionality is the next enhancement I will put in the game. Right now i am doing some behind the scenes server stuff that will allow me to run the game permanently from my home PC and be able to do code swaps from my laptop quickly if there is an error. I am almost finished with that, so I'll be able to change the ESCORT order soon after.

I have seen it in action. every cycle, i.e. 10 times a turns, any ship that has WEAPONS on it will use some of that to fill up its magazines, 0.1 weapon per warhead. Any fighters docked on a ship that has WEAPONS in its cargo hold (not in its Magazine) will fill from the mothership at the same rate mentioned above.

ESCORT in my opinion is not a mission that is very useful for fighters. Instead you should just dock your fighters and put them on ATTACK orders. As long as no enemy are detected in sector, they will just sit there onboard. The moment an enemy is detected they will launch and attack the target. Having fighters on ESCORT is really only a "looks cool" thing. Now, as Deathwatch says, perhaps I could look at a new order, like CAP that will be like an attack order but with a specified range they react within. I'll start looking at that.

ok ill check it out when i get a chance. just realize its purely a visual error with the code and the real arcs calculate correctly in combat. Thanks for the info!

ok, i can look at that. good thing that the calc times should be long enough to dock all of them. but another strategy could be to give them... DOCK order WAIT (30 or long enough for the ship to go into Hyper and get there) ESCORT or DOCK ATTACK (once an enemy ship is sighted they will launch and go after the bad guy)

NEW VERSION up at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/ship_statistics.xls

after I posted that I was ratcheting down the damage speed, i dropped it from 0.5 to 0.1, meaning battles and deaths would take 5 times longer. I am not sure if the battles you are talking about were under the old 'faster' battle or the new code. also, as for fighters sitting there, IF you see a good indication that your ships did not react to enemy, AND they were in ATTACK, PATROL, or DEFEND order, then let me know. That should not be happening anymore, not since over a day ago when I fixed that code. If they are in ESCORT mode or no orders, they will just sit there and only fire if their weapons arcs just happen to be facing the enemy.

there is a DUMP GOODS order, which will allow you to just dump the cargo you dont want overboard. It creates a derelict little unit which could then be salvaged by another ship. or you could transfer cargo to another ship if you are close enough to them. There is a TRANSFER GOODS order there currently isnt any way of salvaging a particular type of cargo.

let me know what you do to make this happen, like key strokes, what do you click on, etc, so I can reproduce it. otherwise its hard for me to fix it. Thanks.

FYI: Engine went down last night because of a weird bug that put some of Kobras TDs in a super long jump. Took me a while to figure what it was, but I fixed it, and restarted stuff. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I actually already have that. sometimes when i update the zip it is a cosmetic fix that you dont necessarily need to download, but when its one that i want everyone to upgrade to, i change a file on the server, and that will prevent ppl from logging in until they get the new version. ive done it a couple of times already but since i alert you guys of the change, most of you are good enough to download the new one before logging in so you never get the error msg.

i could really ratchet down the speed of combat with a single edit in my config. ill bring it down a little more and see if stuff is dying too slow (doubtful).

I have raised each users spending limit to 250000 pts

Sorry, I meant SteveFin's ships

ok, I have been doing more tweaking to the hit calculations for combat. Here are how the rules are being implemented // using accuracy of weapon figure real shot double accuracy = weapon_spec.accuracy * SimConstants.ACCURACY_MODIFIER; //adjust accuracy by agility and speed of target ship double dodge_factor = ttspec.horizontal_turn_rate / 25.0 * tt.speed / 250.0 * ((Math.random() * 0.5) + 0.5); //adjust accuracy by agility and speed of firing ship SimObjectSpec spec = getSpec(o.type); double anti_dodge_factor = spec.horizontal_turn_rate / 25.0 * o.speed / 250.0 * Math.random(); if(SimConstants.getMissileWeapons().contains(weapon_spec.id)) dodge_factor = dodge_factor * ((Double)SimConstants.getMissileDodgePenalties().get(weapon_spec.id)).doubleValue(); accuracy = accuracy + Math.max(0, dodge_factor - anti_dodge_factor); what this does is gives fighters an advantage against fighters since the fighters high turn rates and speed counterract some of the dodge ability of the target ship. Randomness is thrown in, but the dodge factor of the target is only cut up to 50%, while the dodge factor of the attacker could be randomized down near to zero. As for Strykers jumped ships, I will try to pull them out of hyperspace, which brings up a question. In EvR and now in Galsim, once you jump you cant change the order. Do we still want that? Canon aside, its something that is real annoying and I would like your thoughts.

Well, unresponsive ships in ATTACK mode was the result of a coding bug I had in there after I put in the "attack any of the 5 closest enemies that fit the criteria" change over the weekend. I have fixed that. Not sure if the undead ships still on your radars is still a problem...

problems with 'undead' ship that YOU own are alot more troublesome, so has that happened recently since switching servers (meaning that you were still seeing YOUR ships that had been dead for a while)? Others are seeing 'undead' ENEMY ships that havent cleared, which is what I am trying to look at. So could you clarify what you were seeing and when? Thanks.

Fixed the LCs not firing.. As for the problems seeing dead ships after they are dead, I still need to do more testing. The next time Turg, Bas, or Kobra logs in, contact me and I want to test out some things with you.

ok, it seems there may be some issues with destroyed ships not clearing off your scopes. I will look into that. what is SUPPOSED to happen is when you login your user file gets updated with detections that it can see and not see. if it cannot see the ship, the file should get deleted out of your DB. As I am writing this I am realizing what might be causing the problem, so I will probably put out a new galsim zip very soon if that is indeed the issue. As for the LCs only firing once every two cycles, I cant see how that is happening, but I will look into it as well.

File is hosted at http://galsim.nickersonm.com/ship_statistics.xls

i can see the usefulness of being able to just type in a coord, but I am not sure I see how often that functionality is really needed. If you are meeting up with an unseen ally, im guessing they have written to you with the coords, well, it seems somewhat easy to just find the general area. its not like you need to be at that exact location down to the meter. and if you are, you can get down to that detail as well. Adding typing to the process just seems to be asking for typo errors especially with jumps. one character off and you are in hyperspace forever. Good suggestion, but I will have to think about that one.

if you want you can send it to me and i can host it on the nickersonm site

i think i can put in your user report if someone is requesting you to be an ally so I will look at that. i dont want to let you know if someone sets you to hostile until they fire on you. mini empire is like a faction and I want to stay away from factions for the time being.

Turg: good analysis, at the minimum I can look to have the absorption only work on hull damage. The other stuff I will have to go over in more detail. UPDATE This is a change to the engine code so you dont have to re-download the zip New Feature: For Attack, Defend, Patrol, and Bombard orders, it will choose between the five closest enemies that fulfill all the other restrictions that it currently uses to determine the target it maneuvers on. This is only if it does NOT already have a target it is maneuvering on.