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s2odan
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It is made to be a challenge, but once you figure out the tactics required it will become easier.

Such as dodging bullets... John also informed me that the AI tends to be accurate in bursts pretty much like a human would be, so basically when you see multiple big blobs of death shooting towards your face, its time to dodge and forget about getting a hit on him for a while.

Also its imperitive that you keep a minimal aspect to the enemy ship, so he has a much smaller target to hit, the enemy will always be trying to do this with you too which in turn makes it harder to hit. A good tactic is to try and get below the enemy, presenting a nice fat target, but he wont like to let you do that.

I'm really impressed with the AI, hopefully if you can give it a chance you will be too. It's designed to have certain weaknesses which can be exploited by the player, but believe me I understand your frustration as I felt it too at first 😉 I think what we would really need is a pilot school in the game or just documents, to describe in detail a good tactic for surviving an encounter.

Failing all that you can always use the guided missiles 😉


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Brianetta
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s2odan wrote:
Failing all that you can always use the guided missiles 😉

Only because the AI doesn't know about them yet. (:


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robn
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s2odan wrote:
It is made to be a challenge, but once you figure out the tactics required it will become easier.

So what you're saying is that the AI acts the way a competent human familiar with her ship and space battles in general would. I like that! Good write-up, thank you.

I think at this point we're not hearing more screams because its so difficult to actually get into a fight right now. Once the new intercept AI is done (a few weeks, probably, unless John finds a few spare hours and motiviation before then) I suspect we'll have lots of interest in either dumber enemies or better tools to kill them with 🙂


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Brianetta
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Or smarter enemies. Enemies who can be bought off. Or help which can be summoned.


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Potsmoke66
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was visiting my daughter over the weekend, sorry*

the prev. posted clip is 9.01, the latest nightly build i downloaded CTR-F12 didn't works as you know for shure.

*first time since 4 years 😀


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Potsmoke66
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i guess what john (and perhaps me) makes so "ninja" is the long time experience with FE2 and i guess especially FFE, battles are extremely hard i feel, often they attack you in groups of 3 or even more fighters, sometimes convois that protect a bigger ship.

they fight hard and often they shoot you down before you took a breath.

you will have to find a way to split the group, so you can beat each fighter single (i tell you merlins and gyr fighters can be horrible hard additionally i'm usually one of the "bad guys" i don't care smuggling slaves and weapons, therefore each system some pirates and headhunters awaiting me and i'm expecting them...).

if they would have only lasers (in FFE), really no problem, usually i only get hit by very early fired missiles (sometimes they fire missiles before you can see the attackers).

but that's only experience, nothing special, if one plays that often he must get better, or get frustrated of the game.

allready, in FFE, i fly a big parabel around my enemies to possibly attack them from behind, it gives me some advantage, but still fails often.

that was a bit off topic pioneer, just to remeber tactics in FFE.

but something that some argued about FE2 and FFE is when you don't move they often can't hit you to...

they're just to fast and can't match a "0 speed", in battles.

i will stay a bit with FFE now, i've allready planned to do some clips to show others how to beat FFE in a legal way, because i know lots find it very hard (while others think it's easy, but ok don't ask thurwitt or me..., those imperial pilots usually fall in somekind of bloodrush when they see more then one ship).

btw, after a succesful photo or bombing i like to "clean" the sky...

i will give the "CTRL-F12" fighter a new chance, let's see...


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s2odan
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Hmmm

One thing I would have never said about FFE is that it was Hard... The game was very very easy, the AI was shit.

Edit// Actually thats not quite true, the game could prove to be a challenge but not down to clever AI or clever game mechanics, quite the opposite, it could prove to be a challenge because of a seriously flawed combat system.

They could not aim, they could not fire backwards, in-fact there was a lot they could not do and the player could.

To compare them is rather funny. This is not FFE, you need to be smarter and better to win here.

And Ctrl+F12 is not the debug pirate, it is a pirate in a LADY BIRD... you know that lumbering hulk of a ship (Big and Slow). 😀

To get the Debug Pirate, start a new game at the Debug Point, you will be evenly matched against a pirate... Same ship same everything except you will have 1ton of hydrogen fuel and he will not.... Have fun 😉

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*first time since 4 years

Pioneer is 3.


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Brianetta
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There were two things I disliked about FFE. The bugs, and the fight model. Frontier was slightly better, but still awful. Thing is, dogfights in space, and real physics, don't really co-exist. It can't happen in real life as it does in games and films, and the only way to make it happen is to put physics aside. FFE tried to do marry the two by introducing a fight frame and forcing your ship's engines to off. The combat computer was a bit of a joke, but I suppose it had to look like they'd tried something.

If I want dogfighting in space, I'll play Oolite. If I still had a Windows machine, I'd play Tie Fighter. Normally, I prefer the realism of space.


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Pyros
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Brianetta wrote:
There were two things I disliked about FFE. The bugs, and the fight model. Frontier was slightly better, but still awful. Thing is, dogfights in space, and real physics, don't really co-exist. It can't happen in real life as it does in games and films, and the only way to make it happen is to put physics aside. FFE tried to do marry the two by introducing a fight frame and forcing your ship's engines to off. The combat computer was a bit of a joke, but I suppose it had to look like they'd tried something.

If I want dogfighting in space, I'll play Oolite. If I still had a Windows machine, I'd play Tie Fighter. Normally, I prefer the realism of space.

Jousting comes to my mind.

An I fully agree that realistic newtonian physics cannot coexist with "classic" space dogfighting. Realistic space battles could be more of launch missiles and other exotic weapons than aim, lock and shoot your lasers. But in a game, fun should take clear precedence over realism. Realism place is simulators 🙂 (which are also a game, but you know what mean :P)


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s2odan
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Jousting comes to my mind.

An I fully agree that realistic newtonian physics cannot coexist with "classic" space dogfighting. Realistic space battles could be more of launch missiles and other exotic weapons than aim, lock and shoot your lasers. But in a game, fun should take clear precedence over realism. Realism place is simulators 🙂 (which are also a game, but you know what mean :P)

Its a hard balance to find. Yes if we went the realistic route ships would be able to engage each other 1000s of KM apart from each other and would use computer aimed projectile weapons which would be no fun.

On the other hand, the old Frontier and FFE model does not work either, we need some happy medium between the two and ideas are always welcomed.


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Brianetta
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Pyros wrote:
But in a game, fun should take clear precedence over realism.

We have realism (well, an approximation of it). We either turn it off, and make fighting a fun and rewarding game in itself, or we leave it on, and cope somehow. Seriously: the only way to make the realism/fun trade-off is to either get rid of the current realistic physics, or to temporarily switch off realistic physics for an artificial "fun mode" when the scrapping starts.

I'm happy to neglect fighting. In Frontier, my strategy was always to trade heavily in the safest systems, until I could afford a ship where I didn't need to worry about survival. I'd carry missiles, but I didn't bother buying a laser. I never went looking for a fight, because it was difficult and uninteresting, principally because the Newtonian physics model really gets in the way of close-in ship-to-ship combat.


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s2odan
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Seriously: the only way to make the realism/fun trade-off is to either get rid of the current realistic physics, or to temporarily switch off realistic physics for an artificial "fun mode" when the scrapping starts.

For me the fun is in the newtonian physics, remove that and you remove all fun. I'm sure I'm not alone in that opinion.


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robn
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I always rather enjoyed the combat in FE2 and FFE, but I was always a casual player and never really cared much for the physics model (though I didn't think it was cool that it was "real"). I also vote for keeping the physics model as-is, because its one the significant parts of Pioneer that both ties it to its Frontier heritage and separates it from most other games out there.

What I would like to see instead is some thought put into how combat could be made interesting, exciting and challenging within a realistic physics model. Some TV shows have made attempts to get this right to some degree (mainstream examples include Babylon 5 and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica), so its not unheard of.

This could be made of anything. New equipment/weapons, targetting systems, remote firing drones, who knows what. Something that always bothered me about Frontier (and by extension Pioneer) was how un-futuristic the technology seems given that its set some 1200 years in the future. Maybe this is our change to rectify that a little by dreaming up some really crazy combat technologies that still make sense given the physics model.

I'm not the creative type, so it probably won't come from me. What ideas do you all have?


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m4r35n357
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s2odan wrote:
Quote:
Seriously: the only way to make the realism/fun trade-off is to either get rid of the current realistic physics, or to temporarily switch off realistic physics for an artificial "fun mode" when the scrapping starts.

For me the fun is in the newtonian physics, remove that and you remove all fun. I'm sure I'm not alone in that opinion.

Not alone, certainly. I am a bit concerned that there is talk about abandoning Newtonian physics to get around this, when we clearly know at least one person that can achieve successful combat under these circumstances. So, at the risk of repeating myself, surely the simple solution is to extract that knowledge and make it public? I really don't care if I have to use my right hand to do it! 😉

Does John read these forums? Can someone make an instructive video? I don't believe in Ninjas!


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robn
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There is no plan to remove Newtonian physics. I repeat: THERE IS NO PLAN TO REMOVE NEWTONIAN PHYSICS. A couple of people musing on such things does not bring it any closer to being. Besides, even if there was a plan, there's nobody to do the work 😆

I'll try to remember to poke John and get him to post something. He reads the forums intermittently, usually when someone tells him to 🙂


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m4r35n357
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robn wrote:
THERE IS NO PLAN TO REMOVE NEWTONIAN PHYSICS.

OK, I believe you - I like unequivocal statements, thanks! 😉


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Brianetta
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That was my bad, it seems. I didn't mean to imply that the devs were prepared to trade off physics for fun! I'm with s20dan on this; the physics *is* fun.


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SeanN
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A few ideas: What if there was a "combat" control mode--sort of like manual mode where you can do translations/rotations, but have the computer assist the player by keeping the ship in a distance range from the enemy craft. Using the number buttons on the keyboard: 1 could be apporximately 1500 meters, 5 could be 700 meters, 9 could be the most aggressive at 200 meters away--or something like that to keep the ships relatively close. Then have the shields/armor be weak where the guns stick out front/back but robust top/bottom/sides. That way you could shrug off much of the fire coming at you if you turned slightly away from the enemy craft but aiming would require you to expose the weak front or rear of your spacecraft. Hopefully those weaknesses could also get the enemy AI to turn away occasionally instead of pummelling me mercilessly 🙂 . The combat might still be like jousting but maybe a tad bit more strategic and less reflex based.


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m4r35n357
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SeanN wrote:
A few ideas: What if there was a "combat" control mode--sort of like manual mode where you can do translations/rotations, but have the computer assist the player by keeping the ship in a distance range from the enemy craft.

This is currently achievable by using automatic speed control, just target, close in, and set to something like 10 m/s approaching to claw back any drift, or adjust as necessary. This is how I've got closest to making combat work. As the AI has evolved this technique has worked better or worse depending. I can't help thinking that this is roughly how it would be done in "real life".

I'd be interested to hear of a good technique with manual speed control, it's an extra thing to concentrate on, and requires judgement of relative speed/ acceleration at large distances . . .

So come on, who here can fight, and how do you do it (I know I've asked this in the past, but the AI has changed enormously since then, and I would hope there are more of us trying now)?


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robn
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m4r35n357 wrote:
So come on, who here can fight, and how do you do it (I know I've asked this in the past, but the AI has changed enormously since then, and I would hope there are more of us trying now)?

As an aside, I'd be curious to know who is actually playing at the moment, and if they're playing alpha 9 or nightlies, and what they're doing (playing "properly" (missions, fights, etc), checking out terrains, playing with orbits, etc).


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Potsmoke66
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why can't we just stay to how it is, i mean, why all the high tech stuff, to me it kills the spirit.

to remember, conquering space in small vessels that carry a overpowered engine and a hyperdrive IS DANGEROUS, or had to be.

it's not that safe like with a big destroyer like ST of BSG, carrying computer controlled weapon systems, one would say that's to expect 1000 years from now.

who said that that must be true?

can't you imagine a future not so bright? technology exist but it's a secret to most tribes how it works? maintanance is left to more or less educated/experienced service personnel?

allready we have the situation that the old rocket engineers are dead and some seriously assume that we arn't able to launch a Saturn V with a capsule and a landing pod to land on moon.

the reason is they got teached in school, but have no idea how it works, it's true and i can see that everywhere where high tech comes to a role.

i'm working in a NPP for a month year by year since 20 years, but i can tell you (and they granted me it's so) technicians that came with the reactor which is still owned by GE, have no idea about what exactly it needs to keep the "big boiler" running, they leave it up to us, because we have the experience even when we are no nuclear technicians.

so you see one part is theory, but it's worth nothing without experienced craftsmen!

to repeat what i posted once somewhere and to explain a bit more.

the alternator was burned by a slowly build up plasma, that field was so strong that it had burned a 20cm diameter hole into 20cm of solid steel like it would be butter.

engineers was standing helpless around the up damaged alternator, having NO IDEA how that could be, they had to call up leftover 80 year old engineers who designed this unique (>1GW alernators exist 5 in the world, each is a different prototype) altenator, because no one else understands the machine like they did*.

tell what happens when they are dead to?

we are allready in a situation where technology is less controlable by humans, not because we are to stupid, no!

it's imo a failure in education, they are NO CRAFTSMEN no more, educated in schools and guess they know it all, but havn't hold a piece of steel in their hands ever!

how could somone like this know what was going on? you need the experience with the matter else....

technicians like the old ones was craftsmen befor they got deeper into it, not only educated theoretically.

they are able to listen to the sound of a machine and can tell you where the devil rests.

i love the idea of "scotty" in ST, because he's a typical example of such a versatile technician, but i guess they get rare in future, if we didn't change a lot in our system.

another problem is that they "forgot" priciples older engineers set up, i.e. pressure containers was designed for a certain pressure let's say one has a working pressure of 50 bar's.

tested it was up to 100 perhaps, but they kept it running only up to 50.

now some "clever" business technicians (i have no other word for that), came up and say, hey we have a far to big reserve, we can run this up to 80 bar.

then problems start, they simply have no idea about the matter, looking only at the theoretical side and forgot WHY they designed that thing so oversized, that was not because of fun or because they havn't known better, they had the experience and knew that it's needed for a certain safty of the container (well they have hold many pieces of steel in their hands).

and please don't get angry, but it's a reason why swiss no longer buy fuel rods from the states, they have been proofed by us as insecure, there was times when certain facilities cheated to get them through quality control, swiss couldn't accept this no more and bought from then on only from sweden.

man nuclear power is no TOY (i guess the past month has shown that very well)! there's no room for cheating and making money on cost of our all safety and lifes!

money again is a killer and easy to imagine that this problem will be bigger in future, believe me!

*for those who like to know what has been assumed and i have to say assumed because even themselfes wasn't very shure about.

the assumed reason for the plasma was that every alternator runs best at it's own frquency, that means output frequency would be varying depending on power the alternator emerges.

now such we can't use we need a matching frequency in the powergrid (which ever, just the same) and it has to be the same modulation, to reach that, any alternator gets backfeeded with power from the grid. such harms the alternator, he didn't likes it, he would like to run his own frequency.

resume, there is some left power which has build under this special circumstances such a plasma field. the reason that stood behind was...

guess what!

money, they decided to run the whole reactor with a 30% higher output (hey we have reserves, you remember?), result; a burned alternator.

btw, that's not the only problem the have to mess with now, free hydrogene which usually gets produced when boiling water with a "immersion coil", has been getting to much, so they have to find a way to get rid of that.

you see only because they looked only at the theoretical side of the problem and forgot the experience needed.

30% more power and a rats tail of problems that came after...

but i know, old craftsmen are stupid, hm? 😆

if you wonder now why this "construction worker" knows all this...

usually you have a lot time left off when working in a NPP, time to talk with technicians and ask them what's going on. if your'e interested they usually willing to answer, it's their beloved work they can talk about then.

---

homer simpson isn't very far from reality, unfortunatly!

---

now let's mess up the evil fighter from debug point.


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s2odan
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Gudadantza wrote:
....I had a suggestion some time ago and it involved some kind of buyable superthrusters with high level fuel wasting rate for use during short times, turning the ship more "Independence war 2" or "evochron" like at the pressing of a key. useful for short combats or near docking maneuvres......

We discussed this on IRC a little while ago, the main problem with superthrusters is of course how much harder it makes combat, as every thing will suddenly become magnitudes faster, the ship may even outrun projectiles by a sizable amount. Combat can basically be measured in difficulty by the enemy ships size and its thrust/max acceleration. The AI could most likely handle all this with no problem, but we couldn't and I dont care how good anyone is they wouldnt beat an eagle that has 10 times the acceleration it has now 😉

Unfortunately I don't have a more feasable idea, other than the obvious 'high tech equipment' thing.

Its 1200 years ahead, surely they have some nifty high tech gadgets.

So that would be Radar and its derivitives, giving a range of several hundread thoussand KM... the range would of course be higher but by that time you would be getting some lag in updating distant targets, so it would become less accurate at those higher ranges.

A combat computer, I strongly believe we should add a combat computer, it would have an accuracy comparable to teh standar AI. Perhaps we can underpower it by requiring the player to at least aim in the general direction, perhaps within a couple of degrees or one degree of the enemy.

Electronic Warfare. Random chances to shut down random equipment on the enemy ship, but its only temporary.

Quote:
why can't we just stay to how it is, i mean, why all the high tech stuff, to me it kills the spirit.

The funny thing about your story is that its based around a Nuclear Plant... Something innately high-tech. Without that you would have been out of a job 😉

Of course humanity progresses, just because some random twat forgets how a pressure regulator or whatever it was fits into the whole process of a NPP it does not mean humanity has stopped progressing.

It could even be less than a decade until we have viable fusion solutions : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

Even today we have more high-tech gadgetry to help a pilot than is in Pioneer.

Back to your question of why we need high-tech stuff... we need it because we need people to be able to play the game. Not everyone has raised themselves on FFE like we have, many people cannot attempt to play the game due to the difficulty in getting to grips with the system.

One thing you must remember P66; all upgrades will be optional! There will be nothing stopping you taking your empty eagle and 1MW cannon and having some fun without cumputer assistance. Who knows we may even reward a player for being hard-core and not using any equipment 😉


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Potsmoke66
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ok, ok, ok,

allready i start to fall in love with the debug fighter...

that girl? gives you really some work to do, guess i have to find a new tactic.

btw, she's a bit unrealistic, or i would like to get a split screen to (at least i guess it would be more annoying then really helpful), i mean i can't fly backwards and fire forwards, what a beast...

but for shure i will find a way to outsmart her.

but why not get trained by the game, i guess i like such, like i said once, get killed a hundred times makes me only more addicted.

i guess usually when you start the game you will try relatively safe routes, yes i guess we all did that once.

i remember how i felt when i was shot in FE2, soon as i left the trading routes...

"that's unfair" i have disclaimed but tried and tried until...

(a little help in the beginning i had i have to say, since i played FE2 first on the CD32, i used a pad with autofire function on every button even the pause button, so you could play it in somekind of slowmotion manner which has helped me much in the beginning).

pilots licence, still a good idea no? fight perhaps "virtually" and of course should be free to choose, i mean, if one thinks he can do without, ok

but for all the rest of rookies it could be handy.

somekind of a afterburner, why not? but on the other hand your enemy will have that perhaps to...

yes it's true the lag of radar info when distance is let's say over a few lightseconds, i thought about to.

but not all has to be to realistic i guess,

i don't know if i would like computer assistance in a battle and how should that look like? autolock on target? with a fixed mounted laser? would mean the computer has to takeover a part of your maneuvres, you're not longer free.

something i can imagine well is a tracking info, some bleep or flashing when the fighter is in crosshair positioned to shoot at (but not necessary).

and please give me distance and velocity info back in outside view, i like to fight this way. usually you lay before or point to high due to that a bit, but that's not bad at all.

---

i really like it and i like that this ship really hits you, that "girl"* can point and hit! great!

if you once match the speed more or less, sometimes bam,bam,bam, and you're gone...

guess i have to match speed and get her from behind, not a easy job, especially because she used to turn the ship very quick around and fire at you while flying backwards (can't turn mine that quick or have really to use l-shift).

at least i damaged her sometimes before i got blown to pieces.

*if it's a girl at all, depends on reg no.


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s2odan
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😀

It's pretty tough eh? I had the most success using a low set-speed and the mouse, just try not to get too close.... A few times it seemed like I was winning using that tactic, but an unrelated mouse problem would kick in and my mouse would end up on the other side of the screen (Old crappy mouse) 😉 Just using the keyboard I couldn't even land a hit 🙂


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Shingen
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Well you guys could take a page from IWar 2 and cap the max speed of AI ships in combat around the player ship. I still think a decent lead indicator would help a lot.


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