Flight Performance

Originally posted by Tarcoon

Hi Gents,

nice to meet you here in this hidden forum. Well hidden, as long as you don’t logon to the site:))
I visit this board at least 4 to 5 times a week, but do more reading than writing.
Logon is minor necessary for me because a short answer is well done without it. And – cookies are disabled for standard.

Now one more thing to mention: thanks for beeing invited to this forum. I did appreciate the warm welcome a few months ago and I like the kind atmosphere on this board. Thanks to SoupDragon for the board and all you cool guys for the great mods I did enjoy playing EoC. I feel a bit like a candle between the flood lights.

Observations? MT is a great modder but a lousy pilot – it takes him 8 to 10 minutes to kill a TieFighter:))

Ok – I think all these little Fighters are hard to hit. First they seem to be much too small. In EoC you’re able to see your opponent (even in a small fighter) within a certain distance. A TIE or an A-wing seem to hide behind the target symbol of your HUD no matter how far they are away.

The weapons are not very effective as long as the foes stay in motion (bots and human). Hits seem to be lucky shots. I do agree with MT concerning the A-wing. This ship seems to be unbeatable, much too fast and manouverable. This should be changed or the weaponary should be weakened.

What do you think about a kind of point system for fighters?
At least five categories: speed, hull, shields, manouverability and weapons.
Every fighter may get 15 points all over and in every category up to five points.

Fighter 1 for example is slow (speed 2 points) but has a resistant hull (hull 4 points), maybe small shields (shields 1 point) and fair manouverable (3 points) – there are five points left for a big punch weapon.
(maybe NO shields and 5 Points for the hull?)

Fighter 2 is fast (4 p), low hull (2 p), fair shields (3 p), good manouverability (4 p) but only light weapons (2 p)

Guess you’ve got what I mean. Autorepair should be slow for all.
This would serve a ship for all kinds of flight- and fightstyle.
Rebels with shields and Imps with resistant hull?

There is no safe distance

Hmm, interesting idea about the points for ships. I like it, but I also think it would serve better as a starting point, rather than a solution. We must be able to allow for genuinely superior ships occasionally. But it’s an excellent place to start. It standardizes performance characteristics, and gives us a base to work from.

One thing I’ve found to be not-very-fun in EoC is the extreme speeds. I know it’s more realistic, but it’s not very fun for me. In fact, I’ve spent countless hours tweaking a ship and systems performance mod for myself that cuts speed and turning ability for all sims to 1/4 of original (among other things). And replaces all original ship weapons with custom turret versions of the same guns, to simulate a crew. I’ve found it to be very effective in enjoying even the campaign game a lot more. Now, the huge ships in EoC move and act like huge ships, and you are forced to plan your movements more like a sea-going ship captain.

As for the ship sizes, I’ve always found even the large ships to be hard to see when moving so fast. And what’s sad is that EoC has such beautifully detailed ships, it’s a shame to miss them. This, combined with my feelings that the ships and stations did not appear as large as I knew they were, gave me the idea to adjust the internal camera FOV to about 35 – 40 degrees. This provides a much more realistic view of the environment. And with the slower speeds of the ships, allows me those extra few precious seconds to really admire all the beautiful craftsmanship of ships of all sizes. Plus, now when a large ship is moving to intercept you, it looks like someone has thrown a building at you! Which, ironically enough, is actually correct for EoC ships.

Now I’m not proposing that you get as radical as I did, but a slight speed adjustment and a little camera tweaking could go a long way here. It could allow the players to handle the ships more easily, and that equals more fun (and they can spend more time admiring my handiwork :D).

Oh yeah, one more thing. Slower ships mean increased travel time back to the base for repairs, another incentive to repair in the field.

Originally posted by MajorTom

I would be for slower ships too but what about the Star wars inertia-lessness ;). What should we do about that?

The only reason the ships in StarWarsA1 are so fast is because we are trying to overcome the inertia. That, together with the very tiny ships (by I-War standards) is what makes them so hard to hit.
The bots apparently have a better “connection” to the targeting systems and therefore hit better. 😉

Originally posted by MajorTom

[quote]Originally posted by MajorTom

I would be for slower ships too but what about the Star wars inertia-lessness ;). What should we do about that?

I think we have a solution to our problem. (in fact I’m so excited about it I can hardly sit still and write) :p

I’ve discovered how to remove the hud “speed lines” (reference grid) without effecting the other Hud display elements.

That means we can make the ships significantly slower.
Since you don’t see the lines on the hud moving you don’t “feel” the inertia effects. This is especially when you are turning and the hud lines are no longer moveing diagonaly across your screen.
The inertia effects are still there, but they are just not as noticable.

The first tests I’ve made are very very promising. [^]
I reduced the linear speed vectors (x and y) by over 30% and reduced the Z- speed by around 10%. I also reduced the linear acceleration vector of all the ships by at least 30% in all directions

The result is: You can now feel very confident in a X-Wing up against a Tie Fighter. (it don’t take this lousy pilot 8 minutes any more to kill one)

I used the tunnel maze on the Search and Destroy map as a “practice trench” to see the inertia effects. They are not bothersome at all and hardly noticable. In fact, you really get the kind of swooping feeling like in the movies

This is because the angular acceleration values are still rather high (about 30% higher than a Stormpetrel in the SP game). But, they are no longer so high that niether the server app nor a human pilot can keep up with whats going on.

I think, now that we have repeatable hit ratios, we are ready to do some serious weapons tweaking. 😉

I’ll try making them even slower, just to see how far down we can go without the inertia effects becoming too predominate. Because, every bit we take off the speed increases the hit ratio significantly.[/quote]You might also want to play with the…

[iiThrusterSim]
min_xy_lateral_acceleration_ratio = 0.2
min_xy_lateral_velocity_ratio = 0.2

…values in flux.ini. They reduce the actual lateral acceleration and velocity values to 20% of what’s listed in the ships INI files. Changing these has a dramatic effect on the flight characteristics of everything.

I’ve set both of mine to 1 (which means, whatever is in the ship INI is what you get in-game), and I find that it is now almost impossible to get stuck in a jousting fight, as the ships lateral movement never allows it to come to a stop when turning around. In other words; you know how when you make a hard maximum turn at high speed, you turn faster than the ships lateral thrusters can compensate for and end up flying backwards for a few seconds. This eliminates that.

But at high speeds, watch out, because now your turning radius is more like it should be for a fast moving ship, huge! But at lower speeds your manuevering ability is vastly increased.

Also, try making the lateral speed and accel values the same as the Z values. Believe it or not, rather than making the ships fly sideways more, I find it actually makes the ships fly in a better forward straight line. More like movie ships. 🙂

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