It cannot be displayed. Not only that, but it has some parameter errors in place of strings in some places.

Lines beginning with # are comments, and are ignored by Pioneer.

Hi all, just registered for a bit of feedback and some thoughts, hope I can post it here. First of all, I'm really impressed by your work so far, and especially with the outlook of having features I always dreamed of in good old Frontier. Persistent character entities for example, with skills and die rolls, wow, that could lead to some very interesting RPG-like mission types.

I have tried Alpha 18 a few days before and now Alpha 19, and have to say that I like the controls much better now. You can simultaneously roll with the keyboard and pitch/yaw with the mouse, and with the right keymap (for me, Enter/RShift: accel/decel, 2x3 block directly left of that: strafe/roll) I have complete control for complicated maneuvers... that is really a step towards immersion. Also, only the relative mouse movement after the right-click matters now, instead of having to hit the middle of the screen as before.

I have one issue though: when unpressing the right mouse button while rotating, the ship has to reach the last assigned rotation before I can click the right mouse button again, so now I'm forced to keep it pressed for fast response. edit: sorry, seems to be a problem with my system (compiled under Ubuntu 11.10 64, Radeon HD 5850, OpenSource or fglrx drivers): just every second right mouse click is recognized. After closing Pioneer, the desktop doesn't respond correctly until the rmb is pressed again (?).

Regarding general combat, for me it doesn't really have the right feeling in the current state. From the other thread about combat I understand that it is more like a placeholder and that you are in the process of finding general concepts before deciding on implementation, and probably you discussed that a lot already. So excuse me if I'm stating old things now, but maybe it can generate new ideas.

After getting used to it, I liked the newtonian combat in Frontier a lot, especially in combination with infinite-speed beam lasers. For me, it's main points were a 3D tactical battle about relative angular speeds and timings of firing. This was because the computer AI did not have a perfect aim: the precision depended on the relative angular speed of the target (and distance). So to evade the 20+MW instakill of an Imperial Courier, the first thing for me to do was to accelerate perpendicular to the firing axis of the AI (and minimize my hit surface) and try to circle in towards the ship, because low distance means high angular speed (at constant velocity). This also meant I couldn't simultaneously fire, because the main thrusters had to be used for highest acceleration in other directions. When I felt sufficiently safe, and the AI was beginning to overheat it's lasers and turn away, I could reduce relative speeds and carefully finish it off, even with a 1MW-Beam in a weak ship.

This was complicated by missiles, and even further by additional enemies. Imagine to have to find the best evasion trajectory from two powerful ships simultaneously in the heat of battle! You had to carefully separate them to have a fighting chance, but it was incredibly satisfying to succeed at last. That was real tactics, compared to the typical non-newtonian dogfight of "rotate towards enemy and shoot". I mean, I also liked X-Wing etc... but Frontier felt special.

I would really like to see that in Pioneer. But on the other hand, I'm also too old to perfect my firing accuracy as in Frontier, trying to hit sub-pixel targets 15km away. That's not tactics, that is a FPS-skill. What about following change: laser mounts are basically fixed in relation to the ship, but also have (depending on type, quality) a computer-assisted aiming help (like image stabilization in digital cameras). This assistance is not perfect, and is limited to a maximum angle (e.g. 1 degree from center, so you still have to aim), and is dependent on a number of factors (target surface, relative angular speed, electronic warfare, own weapons skill, enemy pilot skill). From these numbers, dice could be rolled to determine if it hits (and where the beam shoots). You still have to aim your ship accordingly, but the focus of the combat is on your skill to prepare the battlefield in terms of positioning, velocities and timing. It would maybe feel a bit like Star Trek, but still different. What do you think?

That's right, the problem of supporting the Cyrillic alphabet.

One must either enable it, or create and add to the game font with Cyrillic characters in the lower part (down 128 byte).

Known issue. Its a bug/quirk of the underlying input library that we haven't yet figured out.

It's pretty much the reason I fly with keys... (-:

Just a quick one.

Is it possible to fly direct to another system without hyperspace? Disregarding propellant. ie. If I accelerate to the speed of light, shut off the engines, turn my monitor off and come back in the required number of years, where will I be?

Not possible. Pioneer will eventually crash having hit the upper limits of the distances it can represent. Even if it could represent arbitrarily large numbers, still nothing would happen. Pioneer only builds a representation of the objects in the current system. For all intents and purposes the other systems don't exist until you jump into them.

Fyi, Pioneer implements a Newtonian physics model, not an Einsteinian one. Light speed is just a milestone on your way from 0 to 1e+37 km/s 😉

Is the exact limit known? Shouldn't it be possible to put a zone around a system and instance individual star systems? Need about 10B km for our system (more but we could probably get away with ignoring most of Eris' orbit).

That said, I think the best way to go would probably be to create the zone around the PLAYER and everything outside it would be on a separate instance (aka "interstellar space") with it's own coordinate tracking (of individual instances, other interstellar "objects" (be they ships or other individual systems). If two objects intersected (ship entering a system), it would join that instance.

Interstellar space is really kind of pointless for STL travel since you'll probably never run into anything or anyone that way. Would only be necessary if doing a Star Trek or Star Wars style FTL. Or perhaps even B5/Star Control "hyperspace."

Oh it could be done, don't get me wrong - its all just code. The trouble is that once you fact in the vast distances and enormous travel times, actually flying through that large expanse is a just a pointless thing to do. There's nothing there, and at max timeaccel its still going to take days/weeks of real time to get anywhere. If it was easy to build it might be fun, but there's actually some pretty difficult technical challenges to solve. For so little return its just not worth the effort.

Well, we now know that there's not "nothing there". There are planets that have been ejected from solar systems and who knows what else. Extremely few and far between perhaps, and probably not worth doing, but a dense nebula inhabited by some sort of space jellyfish sparks my imagination. 😆

If there's a specific case that you want to address then we can look at ways to make it work. The general case however is a whole lot of empty.

I'm constantly getting denied permission to dock at stations due to npc ships being docked there. After waiting for many hours I'm still denied permission to dock as the ships are still not moving, this is getting very frustrating when trying complete delivery missions on time.

I looked on the issue tracker and noticed this was on issue #11.

So I'm wondering if you are already aware that this problem is still an issue and is being worked on, or if not should #11 be re-opened or a new issue created ?

A new issue if they are not leaving at all. The largest of them can take almost a day to leave as the time they stay is proportional to the amount of cargo they (pretend to) transfer.

Information to include in such an issue would be where you see this happening (port, system, sector), how long you waited, the stdout.txt (in My Documents/Pioneer) and the id of any of the docked ships, or even a save file. Oh, and the version of Pioneer which is displayed on the title menu.

Thanks Ziusudra, I need more time to study it as I noticed last night they are coming and going if I'm docked in the port, main problem seems to be if they are already spawned in port when I enter the system, also there is usually a very large ship stationed above the entrance to the port which also never moves.

Will open an issue when I've had more time to look at it.

I'm currently using pioneer-b72c066-win32.7z on windows xp.

p.s. If I download a new nightly can I still use my saves?

"I'm constantly getting denied permission to dock at stations due to npc ships being docked there."

This needs to be adjusted. On occasions I've waited weeks without success. The solution was to start a new game. 😐

Actually, the only time they are spawned in port is when you start a new game. When you enter a system they are (supposed to be) only spawned in space or hyperspace. I'll check that.

Those are bulk ships which are too big to dock and are working as currently intended.

With that nightly, I don't think so.

If they don't undock within a day, it is a bug. Without more information as I mentioned above I can't track it down.

(Though a badly damaged ship might wait longer than a day, it still wouldn't be "weeks".)

Ziusudra. This was only one comment, when I encounter a problem trying to "capture and document" and published it in git> issues.

There are many problems that I can not capture or document, but that's normal in a project in alpha state.

Do not take this as criticism, are doing a good job.

I try to do a good "game tester".

Upgradeable ports would solve this, complexes could grow if the layer delivers construction components so that the trade ports can expand and contract if theres a lack of profitable tracffic, missions requiring upgrading of planet and orbital facilities could earn the player income. This could then tie in with system or localised traffic npc levels, pirate activity etc etc.

End result more docking ports player can influence the galaxy and this would solve issue 11# * longer term idea however *

That could be done in the universe generation phase. Similar to what Dwarf Fortress does perhaps, but always using the same seed so that the universe always stays the same between different machines. Then have these ports upgrade dynamically throughout the game normally, as you described.

Do those huge ships near stations actually have a part in the game? Or are they just for decoration? More importantly, can we fly one?

That would be 😎

No the universe generation doesn't work like that. For a start the universe is never truly generated.

If you want to take a look at me experimenting then checkout my "populating" branch on github. It's not the approach I'd use now but i started defining population/political volumes which dictate what happens to other systems when they're created. System creation only really happens when you're "looking" at them, be that in the hyperspace target view, arriving in the system, or searching for local systems in scripts etc. Once they're out of sight they're out of mind with only a small cache being kept of the most recently viewed/searched/etc.

What I wanted to do was mix a galaxy created using the current system, with defined epochs of exploration by certain political/population affinities leading upto the year 3200 when the game starts. From then on they'd just keep expanding away from their start/hub systems using something like diffusion limited aggregation to control where new hubs formed, but thats not implemented as I ran out of time for looking into it when I went sailing and then started my new job.

The other issue is something that Brianetta likes to post about, how do you stop the player having disproportionately large influence in the game?

Lets say there are two colony ships heading to settle a new hub world, this hub world will control the affiliation of dozens of other systems depending on who settles it. That equates to tens of billions of lives, different tech, whether whole worlds are terraformed or just domed, etcera etc. Now imagine the player decides that they prefer one side over the other and so fly to the opposition and destroy or damage their colony ship.

That one player has just altered the fate of billions of lives and thousands of worlds. It gets worse, because as time passes that "new" hub, will become old and established and eventually settle other hub worlds. That simple act could well encompass tens of thousands of worlds and there associated beings.

It's pretty cool, but from a gameplay point of view they player is given situations where they're power far exceeds what you'd expect the game to allow them. it certainly makes a mockery of the sole trader, buying fertiliser to sell to a farming colony so they can afford fuel and a return trip with vegetables in the hold... oh and altering the fate of galaxy along the way 😆

Maybe it's not so bad. Perhaps the colony ships just need military protection (with military drives 😉) and then it'll all work out.

I dunno, but it needs more thought.

Ramble over! I'm off to the pub 😀

Andy

well if a player spreads himself out, changes slowly take place where he has influenced before ie pushing colonies forward might cause them to drop back if trade goods drop off being delivered. Or put restrictions on the total amount of influence the player can have by simply pushing stats influences up and down based on other factors as well might dilute the player while still allowing them to influence events through their actions

As I was playing Pioneer last evening i realized that earth-likes planets seems to be very rare in the galaxy ? In real words, excepts earth, I did'nt found any earth-like planets ?? Is there particular conditions programmed for a solar system to host planets like this ? Do I have to add it by myself via lua scriptings ? Maybe someone asked the same questions before me, but sorry I did'nt took time to browse the 59 pages of this thread... 😳

Nevil.

Hi all. I am ashamed to say, but do not know Frontier in any version. I started with Pioneer and Frontier information I found did not help much.

😕 The text attempts to explain the function of a button, to no avail. 🙄

I suspect the fault is my ignorance of English. It would be very happy studying English, its you study Spanish (Castilian, we say in Argentina) 😉

But we must not let that stop us from communicating. Blessed be the Google translator. In the 3200 works perfect. Only 1,188 years that I have patience. 😳

That's why we ask those who know the Frontier and Pioneer: ❓

➡ You can write here the differences?

I think many people will be grateful. 🙂

Documentation patches are every bit as welcome as code patches. We also started the manual a few months back but put a hold on it because its hard to track a moving target. If you fancy yourself a good writer you might like to pick it up.