The truth is out! j/k

No, in my view the truth is: you come to Pioneer and expect to find Frontier. It's not. It may look superficially the same, but the mechanics are different. Time to start climbing the learning curve again. 🙂

Also, keep in mind that this is alpha software. It's by no means done. The first version with joystick support was just released less than 24h ago. It's still being polished, tuned and adapted. Post your feedback here, for the devs to know their user's opinions.

Shenle is correct, it has differences.

Here's how I generally fight in Pioneer, adapt it to your own use if you like:

* In combat, immediately click on your target, giving you a combat target.

* Now with speed control engaged, your ship will automatically keep your speed relative to the other ship.

* Keep your set-speed low.

* Because you set your speed to be relative to the other ship, when the enemy accelerates, your ship will too.

* To follow directly behind an enemy, set your speed to 0 or just above.

* Following behind an enemy requires either a fast ship or skill.

* An enemy in a fast ship will always out-accelerate you in your slow ship, don't play their game, unload mass amounts of coloured blob at them as they approach on the general vector. With a good aim, they won't know what hit them 😉

Ctrl + F12 while flying 😉

Press it many times for fun.

Thanks for the suggestions, I was trying to use manual control for some reason. I'm intrigued by the idea of automatic mode (as it happens I thought of this but didn't follow up properly as I assumed the pirates were following me!), as long as it doesn't end up with us just creating a new tiny binary system 😉

The "add ship" is good too as the delay of restarting, hyperjumping & hoping was not working out very well either.

BTW I had the joystick code for a while from git, so I did spend a fair bit of time trying out combat, but I'll mess around some more using the new information, thanks again all!

Ian.

Hehe that is MUCH better thanks, nice little congratulatory message in stdout 😉 I'm now a bit confused about automatic mode, which reports speed rather than velocity, does it actually distinguish at all between + and - ? What I mean is, when I launch it appears to report the speed away from the reference, but eg. on landing it seems as if it is just as happy to report it as positive when I approach the ref. Or does it just settle on any direction as long as the magnitude is right?

To confuse me further, it seems that the automatic mode speed can be set to negative, I will have to experiment further . . .

Ian.

As far as I know, automatic mode shows you the velocity you SET (i.e. that you'd like to have relative to the target and your heading), not the velocity you actually have.

Thanks UncleBob, I am aware of the difference between what I set and what I get 😉 I'm making a technical point when I use the words speed, magnitude and velocity; speed is not a very precise term in this context.

eg, if I set a relative speed of 1m/s between me and a foe, I could be closing at 1 m/s, receding at 1 m/s, or going off at right angles at 1 m/s. Or anything in between - all of these represent the same relative speed.

I shall experiment further.

Sorry to answer my own post, but I just wanted to check. I assume the relative speed represents the magnitude of my relative velocity to an object in the direction in which I am currently travelling.

Seems obvious in hindsight, but in combat things are a little tricky 😉

The latest culprit was a speedy little ****, I set a relative speed of 1 m/s, and watched as my actual speed fluctuated between +-500 m/s !!!!!!

I guess there are some situations where fighting is impossible . . .

Now that is MUCH better 😉 Here's the basic recipe I am using ATM:

1. Lock on (v. important!)

2. set auto speed mode

3. close in at around 100 m/s

4. decelerate to 0 m/s at about 500m from target

5. hang on

6. shoot!

The spawn ship feature is great, got some good practice in now! I will try the new AI stuff in a mo . . . I should really be doing something more productive ATM 😉

Ian.

You mean my combat style from FFE isn't any good anymore? You know, mount a big laser in the rear position, and when pirates attack run away at top speed while firing at them in the rear view mirror?

Correct.

An easy way of playing this over in your head is with vectors from GCSE/O-level maths 😀

EG, Enemy ship travels 100m/s (velocity X) along the x axis, 100m/s along the y axis (we call this velocity Y)and 100 m/s along the z axis (v Z). This puts him flying a perfect diagonal between the axis.

Now when you set your target to the enemy ship, your on-board computer will set all your vectors equal to that of the enemy, if it can.

So you will now also have velocity X Y and Z, PLUS, your set-speed and the direction you point the ship.

So set-speed when you have a target selected, just means I want my relative speed to this object to change by this much in the direction I am facing...

It all seems a little complicated at first, but now I know how it works, I could never go back to the original formula, as this is far superior.

The only problem is that faster enemy ships will be all over you like a pig in ... 😉 So an auto-tracking turret could help solve that problem.

FFE was like this (Frontier too I think), except relative speeds were derived from either the star(system) or the nearest planet. I think 😉

Yes thats what I was trying to say in there somewhere 🙂

You prefer the old system?

Yes I think this feels right, at last! Wish I'd tried automatic control before, for some reason I had it in my head that combat should be manual 😉

Had some really good close-up dogfighting practice, 200-300m is really nice if you want to actually see your foe! Think I'll try using some other ships (I've been hooked on that multi-coloured organic irridescent Viper X). One thing I did was to reduce the visibility of the targeting marker (seems to be using OpenGL defaults so the best I could do was the following):

$ git diff

diff --git a/src/WorldView.cpp b/src/WorldView.cpp

index 9a1a9fb..cf9db62 100644

--- a/src/WorldView.cpp

+++ b/src/WorldView.cpp

@@ -1141,7 +1141,7 @@ void WorldView::DrawTargetSquare(const Body* const target)

x1, y2 };

glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);

glVertexPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, 0, vtx);

- glDrawArrays(GL_LINE_LOOP, 0, 4);

+ glDrawArrays(GL_POINTS, 0, 4);

glDisableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY);

}

}

which displays just a small red dot at each corner. Well, I prefer it 😉

PS. just because I can read c++ a bit, doesn't mean I can write it!

Well don't tell anyone, but the latest git updates seem to contain a much more "evil" AI, together with a really neat targeting system that I am attempting to master . . . this is far superior to what was there before & makes my comment moot 😉

need to outsmart faster ships?

[attachment=520:2011-02-09_164452.jpg]

FLASH says, "hands off from the wired flight"

switch to manual (target set for shure), accelerate only to get closer to the target, as soon as you feel the enemy ship starts to do a turn (maybe a little before, needs some intention), stop accelerating and swing your ship in direction of the enemies turn, accelerate again. you can get much closer using this method as the wired flight continuousely firing the engines, which only will make your turning circle bigger and you're allways late then (likewise the AI).

and as long as we have no backfiring lasers, no cowardish "fled and shoot" 😉

but in case of danger you can allways fled in pioneer.

[attachment=521:retro_1.jpg]

You're kidding right? 😉 To me, that takes it right back to jousting. After I accelerate & close in, I'm always going too fast & overshoot. Then I have to turn & try to get the ****er back on screen. Most of the time I'm just staring into space with this boing boing boing sound coming from the blackness. Rinse & repeat.

I can't see how this can work with manual control, and let me reiterate that I use a joystick - what do you use? Anyway, I suppose I need to go & try again, but at least with auto speed I get to see what is firing at me 😉

And yes, I realize this is all being actively worked on, but it's interesting to try thing out as they develop and compare notes with others. I've certainly never spent so much time on an alpha game - congrats to all involved!

This will be out of date shortly after I write it, but the combat AI currently in my repo never turns away. It'll also maintain a separation of around 500m because I turned off some skill-based inaccuracy to debug the evasion code. The shooting code there is deliberately inaccurate, based on the movement of the target, so if you stay still it'll keep hitting you.

Evasion is a bit interesting as it's relative: If you add lateral velocity, you're making it more difficult for you to track the target in addition to making it more difficult for your target to hit you, so to get an advantage you need to change your evasion direction frequently. The player currently has an advantage here because the AIs can't see laser bolts while the player can actively dodge them. Using set-speed mode throws away that advantage and probably reduces combat to a slugfest at the moment.

There's also an effect where ships facing each other have a much larger cross-section against deflection shots due to their shape, so it can be easier to hit a rapidly moving target than a nearly-static one.

Firstly, hi John and thanks for replying but please don't let my rantings distract you from the important stuff 😉 I've been looking at the code to try to understand how the AI works so I can see a lot of thought is going into it.

However, to summarize, regardless of old or "evil" AI the net effect is actually quite similar from my POV - in manual mode it's a struggle to keep the opponent on-screen and/or control relative distance (linear & rotational inertia combined), whereas in set speed mode it's just a case of pointing the ship to fire and controlling overshoot caused by rotational inertia while the computers deal with linear inertia.

It's interesting to find that there are proponents of both methods here, and I am messing around with both. I just don't find it easy to deal with relative acceleration in three dimensions I suppose . . . but the reason I'm posting about this stuff is to learn from others' experiences as the project evolves. To be continued . . . 😉

a smarter AI will allow mission scripting to later on so its a good thing

i swear, one day we all meet for a beer