It's fixed

Re-downloaded, it works fine now

ah good now for the hyperspace to station via map feature

Glad thats working for you now CelticFang, the bug seemed to be related to ship mass (I noticed it more on the small ships with big drives) and drive power, I have reduced the drive power a fraction and it seemed to work, although in Alpha 7.5+fix all drives are a little more powerful anyway so you won't notice the reduction.

Ollobrain, I actually considered releasing that 'fix' as Alpha 8 as it contains a few changes, but they are pretty minor like the addition of some realistic ores and minerals for future mining as well as a few bug-fixes. The drives were also changed somewhat, I added in a new super massive super expensive fuel-less drive for a big ship that I'm working, and have reworked the drive powers of the larger civ drives and all the military drives to conincide with the increases in mass to most of the ships.

this fuelless drive for massive ships sounds something along the lines of a warp drive sounds interesting

What will this massive ship be used for. Im guessing a battlestar or some large size suitable for docking maybe or just long range transport

Could be useful for colony placement missions or dropping of remote science labs, satelites for recon missions or pirate bases or even emergency supplies to some outlying colony type missions

Oh yesties. I think this must be my biggest bugbear with Pioneer right now. Not being able to use that lovely zoomable solar system map screen to set my autopilot targets. I also miss being able to see the planets and stations there.

looks like its on the to do list just need to find a few more programmers

Has anyone tried fighting the police in 7.5 yet or just pirates? Actually its the Alpha7.5 fix on the previous page I am referring to

I made a minute change which I thought gave an improvement to the AI from the little testing I have done.

Instead of an enemy approaching at a constant relative speed, they will alter their speed depending on the distance from you, so will approach much quicker from far away, and slow down a lot when trying to get you in their sites.

Sometimes it seems to work very well and they will actually follow you for a time trying to nail you with the guns, other times they will overshoot you.

But this stil doesn't fix the aiming of AI, from the testing I have done the AI doesn't seem able to 'lead' their target. They always shoot where you were, not where you will be.

Surely this can easily be "fixed" by putting beam weapons in like in Frontier?

I second that. I always liked the insta-hit weapons of frontier. Too many games have those silly, unrealistic slow moving lazers.

beam lasers are a good idea

I think if we have beams, they are gonna have to be much rarer and more expensive than the Blob thrower weapons. Perhaps even as a secret weapon and most of the police and military would have them too. 😉

However, Tom deliberately removed beams so that combat would be more fun and challenging.

Remember the AI will get better as will the settings for weapons and ships, so combat will eventually feel a lot better.

To me it seems more like an issue of artificial stupidity. The trick being giving the enemy beam weapons and giving the player a fighting chance. It can't get more challenging than a beam weapon. Point and click death. But if there is ever laser combat in the future, in space or otherwise, this is how it's likely to be. Even pulse lasers would be better than blobs flying around. It seems such a shame that a game designed with such realism: gravity, realistic orbits etc. should have "unrealistic" weapons.

Making the AI "stupid" enough to give you a fighting chance and still make it exciting would be worth the effort I feel.

Don't get hung up on supposed realism, because it will make a poor game and isn't necessarily any more realistic.

Most likely, combat in space will involve computer-aimed lasers destroying things from tens of thousands of kilometers - no human pilot could compete so 'manual combat' wouldn't exist. That is no fun. We need to build a game that feels like a real space setting, but is also crafted to be a challenging game.

Oh yeah, I'm putting a few things together for alpha 8. Everything will be fine with the project. I can't drop 2.5 years of work on the floor.

yeah by the looks of it alpha 8 is looking good anything on ecm and AI using ECM

I've been trying to add that, it might be more complicated than I initially though.

I thought it would be a simple matter of adding this line:

But that was wishful thinking I think.

@Tom, any ideas?

It gives this error:

cannot convert parameter 1 from 'SBody *' to 'Body *const '

Here's another FE2 feature that's missing in Pioneer's system map, the ability to see the other ships in the system. That's the main thing I miss in FFE. Everyone can see and target you, but you can't see them.

guessing that will come or a solar system mapping module that uncovers other shpis in local

YES!! I'd love to see this feature added in. Also, I'd love to be able to target a planet via the sytem info/trade information screen. I think a few little touches to streamline the tedious stuff and make it easier, would go a long way to make this game so much better than frontier 😀

and its only in alpha stage imagine where the development cycle could take it somewhere elite 4 has promised and faield

Elite 4 promised nothing. It was merely the whisper of a hint of a rumour of the development process actually being started and hundreds of thousands of desperate imaginations suddenly boiling over.

But I am looking forward to the day when the fundamentals in Pioneer are mostly finished and the real work of modding the hell out of it can begin! 😀

If you plan on modding Pioneer you should probably brush up on some C++ and browse through the code, because unless the code is changed to allow it, you won't be modding through the standard way of changing text files, you will mod the souce code directly which is far more effective but a little harder.

That is only if you want to serisouly mod the game, adding ships missions and icon graphics would still work and anything else that had been moved into external files.

im sure a few more coders could be russled up from the internets just need some publiciity.

dont suppose you could make it an online mmo could you?

an online mmo doing this sort of thing will eventually be infinity quest for earth but timeframe is ?? pioneer even i na limited online capacity ie 32 person server might be long term