A missile vs laser confrontation! It's been so long I saw one...

Lasers can have a tremendous range. The theoretical minimum for a the dispersion (because of diffraction) of a laser is a function of its wavelength and its diameter. (The formula is FinalRadius = 0.61 x Distance x Wavelength / LaserRadius)

Which means that with a 10m UV-laser, you can strike more or less anywhere in the system. With a big enough gamma laser, you can attack nearby star systems. Even by being more reasonable with a 1m orange laser, you loose half your power at 40 million km. Of course, you may not have a perfect laser, but even half this distance is quite big.

It seems to be very difficult to make efficient lasers. Which means that more than half the energy of your 100MW-powered laser will probably turn into heat. Disposing of this heat may be the biggest problem, particularly in space where there is no convection/conduction.

Also, if the target is aware of you and with an agile enough ship, they can move at random and you will miss most of the time.

Missiles don't have the same range limitations than lasers, but they can be detected, which means that they can be countered. However, you can shield your missiles so they will survive long enough to overwhelm the opponent's defence. You may not even need a warhead, as kinetic energy alone can turn a fluffy pillow into a weapon of mass destruction, or even a planet buster, close enough to the speed of light.

The problem of missiles is also a big problem for ships : it's hard to make efficient engines. This kinetic energy causing so much damage, you have to put it into the missile in the first place by accelerating it. So if you want effective (basically, fast) missiles, you will need an oversized fuel tank, diminishing the final mass and its survival/damage potential.

So you can have giant interstellar superlasers, or planet-buster relativistic missiles. Which one will be the more effective will depend on what technologies will progress faster. Or we may see both. Like beam-powered missiles. Or bomb-pulsed laser missiles.

And I wouldn't rule out good old mass drivers too fast. Railguns have lots of practical problems, but they are still being developed, with more and more successful prototypes. Coilguns are still slightly out of our reach, but they may have less problems than railguns. And that's just about conventional mass drivers studied today, we may build funnier things later.

Even if they can't put the same kinetic energy than a missile into each projectile (because of recoil)(unless you use expendable cannons) and 'dumb' projectile can be avoided more easily than missiles, let alone lasers, they can still cause damage, particularly if used en masse, like against incoming missiles. They don't have the same potential of evolution than lasers or missiles (they would tend to become missiles themselves, IMO), but they may still be used for quite some time. And a passive dumb projectile would be more difficult to detect in time.

So, to the realism cracks here, what did I forget? I like to learn more, so please feel free to point out mistakes or missing things there.

About combat in-game. After some time fighting against police ships, here are some ideas for improving combat :

When fighting, you have to use mouse movement to have a chance. But to use it, you have to keep the right button pressed. It would be easier if the right button toggled mouse movement instead, or if there was another button to toggle it (then, right-click may temporarily deactivate it).

Even the most nimble fighter take some time to follow mouse movement. While it is understandable for heavier ships, at least some dedicated interceptors should have more powerful side/vertical thrusters, to follow almost immediately cursor movement. It would make combats more dynamic with those ships.

Default bindings are not exactly handy. First, we should use the left hand for thrust and right hand for orientation in default mode. Then, when switching to mouse movement, the left hand wouldn't have to move to control the thrust. Be it with keyboard or mouse, the right hand would always control ship roll, the left hand always thrust.

When in mouse movement, keyboard orientation is deactivated. This is a problem, because there is no way to correct ship roll, which is a problem in atmospheric combat at the first turn. Having to stop using mouse movement long enough to correct inclination can easily be killingly long.

As I now use almost exclusively mouse movement, I changed my bindings to control all six thrusters and rolling with the left hand, (with space and shift for vertical thrusters), but it is taking too many keys to be really handy, and there may be better ways to map it.

Last games I played dealing with that (IIRC, Shattered Horizon and the combat prototype of Infinity) used the mouse right-button to change how the mouse affected inclination. Instead of changing where you pointed at, x-axis changed your roll instead of your yaw, which allowed for very instinctive roll corrections. This freed two keys, which made things more manageable, but here left-button is already used...

Varied keys to target hostile (and other) ships like in most if not all Freespace-like games would also be quite useful. The seconds lost targeting a ship in battle can be deadly, be it with tab or by clicking the moving ship.

Changing set speed with the mouse wheel would also be far handier than having to reach for the keys in the middle of a battle as well.

Another interesting feature of Shattered Horizon is the fisheye radar. Almost any space shooter use the same 3d radar, which is horribly ill-adapted. Fisheye radar is a circle where relative positions are projected as if it was a 180° view. For example, someone right in front of you is at the centre, someone at the edge of your screen is half-way to the border, someone right above you is at the top of the circle. They use big or small circles depending on the distance, and plain circles when they are in front of you/hollow circles when they are behind you.

Contrary to the 3d radar, this allows for a fast reading of the radar in 0g.

Examples here and here

I think it was in the Infinity combat prototype, but I remember a function where the mouse middle-button zooms view, making targeting middle distance enemies far easier. As (dedicated dogfighting) ships should be more nimble, and probably projectiles faster, this could also be an interesting feature.

noooooooooo 👿

my viper armed to the teeth, can not fight a threesome with EYE ASP and shields. I need to improve! 🙄

These days it is done by testing the fighting ..... there is one thing that confuses me ..... change the color of the digits during the pursuit.

The red color is great, but the purple and blue are lost in the cosmos.

Well, since I did not get a response on the question about weapon range, I guess we'll deal with that later.

I've been having some trouble getting on this forum ... suspect my shoddy internet connection ...

Anyway, same story as before ... somebody else has to compile it:

https://github.com/RonLosey/pioneer

Shot speed now only 6 times what it was in Alpha 18, instead of 9x like in the previous test (which was difficult to play). Also minor adjustments on rate of fire. Using the previous test as a base, this should be very close to the desired look and feel (i.e. classic sci-fi movies, what people expect).

This should put us in the ballpark of "playable" on shot speed and rate of fire. "Playable" not defined as "finished", but at least done in a way that gives the desired feeling (weapons fire, not chunks of neon signs, but also slow enough to not feel speed-of-light) and allows the game to be play-tested without every combat incident immediately ending the game in a fit of strangeness. May need a little fine-tuning after other things are set, but one variable should be ballpark of what is wanted.

If the AI continues to perform as it has (i.e. at least adequate for testing purposes), then range is the next variable to discuss and work out. I suspect it will still be too long (i.e. hard to see your target) ... but that's the way this goes, fix one variable at a time until it's close to what is desired, then go back and fine-tune it and/or add in the more complex bits.

Somebody please compile and post this ... everyone else, please try it and comment. This development process heavily depends on people trying it and reporting back on what they think. (I have a process for doing this - the creative vision on where you all want it to go, that I largely prefer to leave to others... just as soon as we get it somewhere close enough that it can be tested and commented upon.)

You should actually be able to compile your own build now, the msvc 2008 project was updated so that it can actually build now 😉

Roger that ... I tried to get the newest version to cooperate ... tragically, the outcome was not good. I'll try a few more things to see what I can do, but I'm not optimistic.

Meanwhile ... as I said, "same story as before" ... somebody else compile and post this thing, so we can test it. (This should be close to right, this time.)

And somebody tell me how the weapon range is calculated, since that's probably the next issue.

The projectiles have a livespan which is the first number. So, they move forward at their speed for that long and then are destroyed.

So, to have about the same range as they had before, but with 6 times the speed, the first number would be 1.3f

They also do less damage the older they are. This is not linear: at 50% of lifespan they do about 70% of their listed damage, when they've gone 99% they do 10%.

I missili a disposizione sono pochi e fanno poco danno in alpha 18.come può essere l'asp explorer con un missile solo? per un viper almeno 6, le navi più grandi probabilmente hanno bisogno di meno missili, in quanto hanno spazio per hull auto repair, shield, ecc... A me piacerebbe vedere in pioneeranche campi minati planetari .... mine che sparano laser,magari per difendere un giacimento di minerali o metalli preziosi. allora i missili servirebbero a qualcosa. per esempio meno monotonia nell'esplorazione, e un incentivo di armarsi per esplorare la galassia.sarebbe interessante, lo sò, molto fantasioso, dover difendere i propri siti di estrazione mineraria. Arrrg..... non sono programmatore 😈

The first number ... the 8.0 in Alpha 18 ... got it. (I expected it to be a time value ... was not expecting the non-linear degrade, but OK, can work with that.) What is it calibrated in? Tenths of seconds? Some imaginary unit that only matters to this particular code? Just wondering, as that little detail could matter.

Meanwhile ... I'll update the code so it comes out about the same range as it was in Alpha 18, and we'll go from there.

(Somebody else still has to compile it, so it seems. Sorry about that, but I'm trying, guys, really....)

Guys ... I can't always get this forum to display, but when I can, I'm still alive ...

Tragically, I've still been unable to sort out the problems with the code refusing to compile and run on my machine.

Is somebody going to compile and post that latest batch of changes? I would really like to know both how it looks and what everybody else thinks about it ... it should be close to the look everybody would expect, and if I'm right about the problem, it should translate to the combat sequence being playable enough to play-test for further tweaks (instead of just being a "placeholder", as it was previously described).

Been out of town for a few days, and as previously mentioned, I can only manage to get on this forum maybe half the time .... yes, my internet connection is THAT bad.

Speaking of things being bad, I still can't get this to compile on my machine, despite trying every darn thing I can think of, and every darn thing that has been suggested, and then repeating that process several times to make sure I didn't miss anything. It's just not going to work for me. Not under current conditions.

So once again - if somebody else would compile and post this thing:

https://github.com/RonLosey/pioneer

It should be close to what everybody would expect this time - weapons fast enough to look like weapons, but slow enough and short enough range to be playable. May need a little fine-tune later, but deal with that after it has been tested. If the AI can handle it, as it seemed to with the last test, then we're well on our way to a playable combat model - at least playable enough for testing, without creating that "what the heck is this?" response. (Yeah, I know - still have turret mechanics and all kinds of other stuff to do ... but you have to start somewhere.)

I have some thoughts on missiles and such, but let's get the first part working first.

In my opinion ...

The most effective, intelligent and enjoyable concepts of combat were implemented with Star Trek Klingon Academy and Star Trek Bridgecommander. I've spent far more hours using these while I used Frontier and FFE for exploration.

But that means:

A: a lot of subsystems that you can damage, just like in real life. The KA system is the best and most elegant I've ever seen, BC is close but energy allocation is simplified with only 4 main systems (prop, shields, sensors and weapons), while KA has propulsion divided in Impulse and Warp engines, every shield quadrant it's own control, every phaser, disruptor, torpedo and heavy/special it's own control and furthermore energy allocation for damage control, transporters, sickbay, tractor beams and cloak. Damage control is very effective and elegant in both games.

B: A value like "hull integrity" obviously comes from naval warfare where it's a ratio of how fast your pumps can work vs. the speed your ship sinks. Personally, I really hate big explosions that vaporize an entire vessel when this "hull integrity" reaches zero. It's this where both KA and BC sometimes hit the spot, and sometimes miss. They hit the spot when the crew dies of asphyxiation while the ship or what's left of it remains (you can damage or destroy life support). Both games don't have the venting of air and/or plasma modeled which is a shame.

C: You will get hit. Evading is pointless and imagining that in the Pioneer universe automatic aim & fire systems don't exist is odd to say the least. KA and BC tactics involve hiding your weakest shields so you're constantly busy with rolling, pitching and yawing, while incorporating semi-newtonian flight (yes, you really see skidding and slipping both with fighters and capital ships). In KA the maximum range of weapons is quite short, in the order of 20km. In BC you can hit a ship at hundreds or thousands of kilometers, if you provide enough power to your sensors for a lock. It's just that they're quite ineffective at long range. And you can aim manually with BC, just don't expect to really damage the subsystem you'r aiming for.

D: If you need pulsating weapons and you see bolts of light flying towards you, those are not lasers but Hollywood props. Pulse lasers are beams of light that produce (ablative) explosions on the surface where they hit. Beam lasers are much weaker and produce less heat, that's why they can be used for longer periods of time.

E: Instead of slow bolts of light flying towards you, I'm confident the future will continue to use fast firing machine guns. In space they're even more effective since there is no atmospheric drag to slow them down and in deep space gravity has no real effect on the trajectory. And they don't need to be rail guns, even a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_151_cannon would work perfectly in space (all the chemical energy is enclosed in the cartridge) and the muzzle velocity would probably exceed Mach 1 because of the enormous pressure differential. You just need to pre-heat the gun and barrel and you're fine.

This is why energy weapons are better for a space game, because you can completely make up their characteristics. If you want the shots to dissipate after certain maximum range, or have the damage decrease as range increases, or want different shield types to be effective against different shots - make it so. You can also have a complete visual control. This gun shoots blue energy blobs and this one green.

Fast-firing machine guns make a pretty effective thruster in space. Newton's second law. You're imparting equal momentum on your ship as you are on each bullet, but in the opposite direction. As you fire more bullets, and your mass decreases, the effect becomes more pronounced. You can't both shoot at the target you want, and go in the direction you want, unless you're very lucky indeed (or don't really care).

Trivia fact of the moment: The GAU-8 Avenger on an A-10 Thunderbolt produces more output force than either of the A-10's engines.

My money's on self-contained missiles. No recoil, good acceleration, and able to correct their trajectory on the way.

cliveindy

Here's an interest file, how accurate the info is I have no idea, big pinch of salt required.

Cliveindy

Could have benefited from a proof reader, that.

As for visual control: don't forget tracer ammuntion. introduced 97 years ago. Also, cannon shells from aircraft guns detonated if they missed the target - max range is easy to implement. And since machine guns produce a lot of recoil and vibration, hitting something that's 5 km away just won't happen. I often fly WW2 aircraft in IL-2 1946 and usually try to aim 150 - 200 meters in front of me.

And yes, the recoil can be a problem. Still, give me a weapon with the same characteristics as that Avenger on the Eagle and I'll know what to do with it. In Pioneer the engines are much more powerful than the recoil of even a tandem of GAU-8's.

I can read what u posted easily enough the ideas are solid just need some proof of concept testing with various ideas

While arguments for or against various types of technology can be made at great length - beam energy vs. particle energy vs. simple projectiles (i.e. bullets) vs. guided projectiles (i.e. missiles) - it really doesn't do much for the game at the moment. The whole concept is based on technology that does not yet exist - weapons and shields and engines with massively more output than anything modern tech can even dream of - so predicting exactly how these technologies will interact is mostly just extrapolating the historical interplay between attack and defense, which is not a very exact approach.

The guys who started this decided to go with projectile energy weapons for direct fire (replacing energy beam in the original Frontier/FFE), supplemented by missiles (as per the originals). Since it's an arbitrary decision for all practical purposes, then fine, let's stay with that unless there is a good reason to change.

I was trying to get the weapons fire to look and feel like weapons fire, as opposed to looking like somebody jettisoned a cargo bay full of neon sign parts. Let's finish that, and see how it looks and feels. If it gives the classic retro-sci-fi feel that this game seems to embody, and if the game works with that, then stay with it ....

I said I had some thoughts on missiles, but it was dividing them by type - dogfight missiles, longer-range intercept missiles, and heavy torpedoes for use against larger and slower-moving craft (and maybe eventually ground targets, if those get into the game) - instead of the rather arbitrary more money equals all-around better missile formula that was tragically noticeable in the original Frontier. The original games (Frontier/FFE), of which this is very much a remake, already largely determined the role of missiles in the game - trying to change that by too much is going to create work.

Now would someone please compile and post that latest version, since I can't? (I wish I could, but I just can't get it to work on my machine ... I've tried everything.) So we can all test it and see how it plays? And maybe someday get the current combat model up to a point where it is more than a "placeholder" (not my word for it - that's how it was described to me). Because I, for one, am anxious to see this game playable enough that it can be tested and debugged by actually playing the game, instead of being largely a test platform ... and getting an acceptable look and feel to combat is the biggest impediment to that right now. If I'm right, it's also the quickest thing to fix, just by changing a few numbers ... it may require one more tweak after this one, but I think we should be in the ballpark with these numbers.

Speaking as someone who finds the current combat playable: Yes, it needs work. Yes, we need to start somewhere. But this is not the place to start. In my testing I find that increasing the speed of the projectiles makes combat more difficult. The speeds you're proposing make it nearly unplayable for me.

This is not something that can be fixed by tweaking numbers. It will take actual work.

You clearly haven't. Your best resource for getting it to work are the very people you're asking to compile it for you. Chances are we know what is causing your problems, and may even have experienced them. Yet, the only times you've described the problem is when we ask and then you do so vaguely.

Describe the steps you take and the errors you get, preferably on IRC so we can deal with it in real time, or if that's not possible in a separate thread here on the forum.

does have pioneer really to be a tactical space sim?

or do you like to live in a little more dangerous space?

this departs gamers i guess, personally i like the low-tech universe of Pioneer.

i now a future technology will provide things like:

"set target to any coordinates, fly me 300meters over ground, use the lowest terrain, climb mountains at lowest passage" finally you press that big red button and off you go to a nice flight following rivers and valleys to your target.

but that's damned boring!

pioneer is pioneer, i will loose interest if it ends up as a tactical space sim with i don't know what super weapons and whatever damage reports on which part of my shitty eagle.

i would find it boring if i just have to sit in a captains chair.

i'm such addicted that,

i once started ST commander, but soon left for

Frontier

it's a complete different thing to me, to ask for things like we have in a tactical space sim, imo it's like you would like to make a soccer game out of a racing game.

so please stay with clumsy missiles and useless laserguns (or vice versa).

already when i blast a ship with missiles i didn't feel i've won, i only blasted my enemy, that's all, no real fight.

that's perhaps good for the captain who commands from his chair and waits to get grey haired...

it's not very realistic to have hyperdrives and such primitive weapons, but to me a important part of the game.

i guess i posted yesterday, it's far closer to SW rather to ST (i don't talk about specific games, just the plot of or the environment you have).

in SW technology is primitive but widely spread.

in ST technology is very advanced but restricted to civilisations that have reached a certain degree of technical and social evolution (that's paternalism, no?).

in SW you fly a fighter still manually with a stick.

in ST you just sit in your shuttle and lay in a curse.

in SW you have to target and release weapons manually.

in ST you leave that to the allmighty computer.

now tell me, where's more action already in the plot?

i can only state,

SW is anything else then realistic, but much more fun

Let me ask a rather provokative question: Isn't combat in space completely pointless?

I mean if a ship has the energy capacity of doing hyperspace jumps it for sure has the necessary amount of energy to immediately destroy enemy ships. On the other hand, those enemy ships do have the energy of blocking any sort of attack. So.....

Active conflicts probably won't happen because it would mean everybodys or nobodys death - similar to cold war.

So i think criminality, fights, conflicts etc. would be more about bluffing, hacking, smuggling - not obvious things like "shooting and flying" that computers could do better anyways...

I don't think that this automatically means that there's no fun anymore. I do think however that there is great potential to do something very innovative that completely differs from "standard"-spacesims. Let's think unconventional as the name Pioneer already suggests. 😎

Just my thoughts. 😉

Never mind the hyperdrive. We have Jon's Law for our regular engines, which are incredibly powerful.

From Project Rho (which should be any fiction writer's first go-to reference when it comes to making space physics plausible):

More edifiying (and extremely entertaining) commentary about Niven's Kzinti Lesson. Well worth a read. In fact, the entire site is. Read it, everybody. There will be a test.

sounds interesting, i will read it for sure

yes, i feel to combat in pioneer is hard, but i don't mind i will get it once just like i felt frontier combat is hard once long ago, now i feel it's very easy.

a "chaff dispenser", yeah something quite useful, sometimes enemies in FFE really make me nervous with that... (i never used it).

laser fire is slow, i guess i stated such long ago, but i accepted it as typical pioneer, even the uncommon large view field, which makes you feel you can overhaul your own shots (really, fire some shots and try to fly towards them, it looks like they would come back to you. i have also a screenshot of such a situation, somewhere).

it was a lot easier (to easy, mission targets had not a single chance) before the AI had learned the "turn off engine and flip" maneuvre. they fire at you now without changing the course from all sides, some ships have better capabilities some less good, seems to be given by thruster setup, which is fine to me. i guess from my pov best is to manage to get a good angle to the attacker, such as you can fire on his top or bottom (anything else then easy), but be aware that they can turn their nose like nothing. avoid jousting situations and try to be the tenth part of a second faster as him. if the attack has failed turn away and start a new attack. you can irritate the AI with changing speeds and additional slight sidewards crawling, in such manner it's possible even to go through a jousting situation without getting hit (a dual stick joypad is then really helpful because you can control all thrusts manually in a comfortable way and point at the enemy in the same time). to me it's also helpful to use the outside camera, if your view is in a good distance to your ship and perhaps you can see a little of the nose (kinda birds or follower view), you'll be able to fly between the shots safely (with a reasonable small ship of course).

of course this needs a good imagination of where you target to, because you won't have the additional HUD informations (enemy accel. and leading cross). but in general all shots lead to the end of the direction you are flying to (your accel. crosshair).

---

this is also a big difference to FE2/FFE, in FE2 shots lead in direction the gun is pointing to (guns crosshair), no matter where you accel. to.

well i'm not quite sure which is more realistic, personally i guess ballistic weapons (as a gunshot) will of course lead finally allways in direction of acceleration simply because they have a mass.

but energy shots have no (measurable) mass and i assume they will lead in direction the gun points to without beeing distracted by your acceleration,

just like in FE2.

i assume pioneer has mixed ballistic-energy weapons (i always did to explain myself this behaviour), because they are "slow" and get distracted like they would have a mass (i was asking myself once if they do have a mass in the game to calculate the damage? if so, then it's logical that they will be distracted by acceleration)

but it can be all wrong 🙄

---

missiles are funny in pioneer if it's still the same, i was often able to blast a ship like a courier with a single missile (save the game before you fire and repeat the action (if it didn't worked, reload and try again) until it happens, i noticed that once accidentially and later i tried to force it. i guess i won't use them often ;). (i'm a real lazy guy, if there is something to get around, a cheat of some sort i will use it, better i use no missiles. likewise that you can allways flee from a enemy with a fast ship).

oh, escaping with fast ships, well i know FE2 is cheating heavy with that, means you can't escape usually, because as soon as you go to higher time acceleration the enemy will overhaul you, even when the ship is somewhat weaker as yours (except with a real powerful ship as a sidewinder and only at max of 3x timeaccel. no autopilot it accelerates far to slow, use full thrust and flip to break with full thrust), i guess not for realism but for hardness it's to think about such. it's simply to easy to just escape a attacker (with one exeption perhaps, it must be done manually).

but in the state the game is now such isn't needed.

i can see a pioneer at the horizon in which the AI grows with the player, but i need a large telescope to see that 😉

crew is unevadeable, i simply love the idea of crew controlled ships...

something else i can see is a configurable engine, just like a beginners mode, mediacre, or heavy.

it could be split to "control mode" and "A.I." (damned i miss the manual approaches from the beginning, like i said if i have a autopilot i will use it, i'm really "lazy", i miss also the former manual control which had no automatic 0 speed, so you had to respect the gravitation of a body, actually you can "park" anywhere over a planets surface, that's maybe realistic for 3200 but much less tackling).

a reason why i restricted the autopilot from some of my small ships, i hope this will be kept 😎

a simple diversion to hard and easy could be made already,

start a game on earth with a "Eagle",

start a game "somewhere" with i.e. a "ADC-44" (no autopilot slot and other disadvantages like extreme low hull mass, strong forward but weak breaking, side and lateral thrust), you will have to earn money without a autopilots help until you can afford the next better ship.

i like the short runs, this leaves a third starting opinion, start with a shuttle without a hyperdrive and weapons, you will have to do a lot of boring short runs until you can afford a better one, autopilot should be restricted from the shuttle for such. i guess that would be my favorite starting position, the "poor mans" career. and finally, after 20 years the "IP Shuttle" will have a reason to exist

hey, thanks brianetta for the link,

if that isn't a big gift for a "space freaked out deadhead beeing so much influenced by mr. griffith" then i don't know 😆

to me the circle is closed now

this trip can't be topped by any substance