Hi robn,

sorry to disturb, caus' my question had a stupid background: I was flying away from Earth and didn't see any landscape, so I suspected that the texture didn't load or my settings were wrong. But it's all fine, maybe i should take an upgrade in Geography 🙂

Another thing that I noticed, maybe an issue, is this: Playing Alpha 33, space station near Europa (Jupiter): 3 Police patrol ships; I selected one with left mouse and it stays selected forever, even when leaving the system. A bug? How do you deselect a ship target? The t command does nothing (or I'm using it at the wrong moment).

Thanks,

Xenon$

The reason of your sudden acceleration is probably the change of the reference mass for which your speed is calculated (the change from planetary reference to system reference.)

XenonS

@Biomechanoid

yeah Biomechanoid, you are welcome to do such tutorials, there's a lot to say about those topics :girlcrazy:

I remember, many years ago when I played FFE, I was wondering how pirates were able to intercept a ship flying 50.000 km/s. The result is simple: it's impossible (in the real world). But then, with the Aniso Mod they came 3 at a time which made it almost impossible surviving without cheating. Also the laser sound always recalled me my last visit to the dentist :haha:  (one must be tollerant with games of the 90s).

@Pioneer devs,

I really like to see the work achieved by the Pioneer team, especially the "enter in orbit" feature and the exact orbit calculation and display. Great work, chaps 😎 😎 😎 .

I would highly welcome the Mining implementation as well as the Military faction missions from FE2 (Bombing + Photography missions), but Walterar has done exceptional work with Scout + already. Still I have to fly the difficult ones. Pioneer has already gone much further than FE2, mainly because of the nice ship models and overall planet textures. But I would say: The time has now come to focus on the *mission* aspect, all which can be mainly done with lua coding, although difficult, much harder than to insert the 107th model, IMO. Please give now all these models a decent occupation !

As a practical idea, for example, AA guns on the planet surface that protect a base against human missions, all such can be modded with a ship model in a way to fire from a fixed position, and also be destroyed producing a "crater" in the landscape that would vanish from memory once out of sight (I'm almost sure the engine will work that way).

The hardest thing is to produce "temporary" objects like special ships doing specific things like flying a precise route around a base, planetary vehicle activity (modded ships, yeah !!) etc. But: it's not written anywhere that Pioneer could not load an extra game engine for that, not all game aspects have to be  "transitory", I mean, for doing interesting missions, I wouldn't mind a loading time of 10-15 seconds to do them.

Just some generic ideas of pre-coding to hopefully involve imagination.

Great work,

XenonS

:flood:    :punish:

@Biomechanoid

Paragon isn't Pioneer, Paragon is based on the engine written for Pioneer.

Tourists "Genesia" and Walterars "Scout+" are mods for Pioneer, Paragon goes a bit further in that it takes Pioneers source code and extends it.

They still regularly pull the latest code from us with new features and bug fixes, and I'm hoping that we can pull some of their changes back into Pioneer where appropriate.

Andy

Hi, I'm somewhat new to Pioneer... when I hyperspace to some stars and then try to go to a planet, a hostile ship appears on the screen and tries to attack my ship(fine until then). But when doing this I'm going at almost 2300km/s, so I don't explain myself how the other ship maneuvers so fine at that speed. Could you give me some advice on how to fight these ships??

nda,

Hostile intercepts:

in the real world any ship starting with 0 speed should not be able to intercept you. Just do a 1 second turn in another direction when flying at high speed, and this would screw up the enmie's intercept line, so: no intercept possible. However, David Braben when doing his Elite, FE2 (Pioneer is based on that) and FFE, has decided to ignore this for playability: in fact, if not ignoring this, a player would never encounter any ships and no activity in space would be possible.

Ship combat:

This is the only thing which really sucks in the Elite series IMO, it's the *magic* capabilities of enemy ships in combat: magic fast turns in your direction, 100% gun hits etc. etc., not very appealing and your destiny is to die quickly, unless:

The solution is rather easy: the more shield generators you get, the harder it will be to shut you down, unfortunately they will also consume your cargo space. So, if you want to be on the secure side you must buy a ship of 100+ tons capacity and fill it with at least 10-12 Shield Generators. A scanner, cloud analyzer, good fire weapons, autopilot, ECM, 3 missiles should be standard for combat too.

Hope this helps,

XenonS

Thanks, XenonS... So, combat is almost impossible on a regular ship(like the one which with you start in the game)??

Thanks, XenonS... So, combat is almost impossible on a regular ship(like the one which with you start in the game)??

No, I wouldn't say that, because you could be up against only 1 enemy. The Advanced Scanner will tell you about the enemie's weapons and equipment, that's the first thing you should look at, so you know who you are up against.

Fighting against multiple enemies, you'll have to be very skilled OR have a very letal equipment.

If things go bad you can always hyperspace :haha:

XenonS

And to fight against an enemy, I should just try to face it... Or is in another way how i should do it??

Biomechanoid, can you please move this stuff to another thread (make your own if you like). People come to this thread to ask questions and I fear you're drowning them out. Thanks.

But what's wrong?? He is answering my question :/

I think that Bio's answers are pretty good and entertaining.

@Bio: could you gather them in a thread on his own or some kind of tutorial? I think that they deserve more attention and here there's the risk that they could be shadowed. :good:

Oh don't get me wrong, if you're answering questions that's fine. Your previous posts all looked to me like a semi-fictional conversation with Braben, which is certainly creative, but doesn't strike me as the best way to get answers across (and particular to preserve answers to questions for future readers of this thread. That was why I suggested your own thread to continue your "conversation".

@nda,

The best way to try combat in Pioneer, FE2, FFE ist just: to try out, period. While doing so, you are playing the game.

I don't see what my answers are lacking. I can give you precise answers for making a Pancake, but not for combat behavior.

XenonS

The combat does suck, just because it might be possible to win an engagement does not make it fun or enjoyable to do so.

That's the difference between a game and a simulation.

Also XenonS' response was both accurate and pragmatic - the games do cheat and you're best off loading up with shield generators and big guns or avoiding combat wherever possible.

The games do cheat to give you encounters with other ships, I've never actually met one in Pioneer yet though

Also XenonS' response was both accurate and pragmatic - the games do cheat and you're best off loading up with shield generators and big guns or avoiding combat wherever possible.

The games do cheat to give you encounters with other ships, I've never actually met one in Pioneer yet though

As far as I'm aware, Pioneer does not cheat to generate encounters, or to give enemies any tactical advantage. However, computers are much more capable of flying accurately than humans are, particularly for combat in free space where you have six degrees of freedom to control and you have to deal with the lack of drag or gravity effects (which tends to go against human intuition). The only reason enemies don't kill you every time is that the AI incorporates some deliberate limitations in its accuracy, to give some simulation of a human pilot.

Edit: This is not an area of the code that I'm very familiar with, so I could be mistaken.

John B

Ah I meant it cheated in the originals not in Pioneer. As I said, I've never actually encountered a ship attacking me in Pioneer 🙂

Just hanging around sol? 😉

Ah I meant it cheated in the originals not in Pioneer. As I said, I've never actually encountered a ship attacking me in Pioneer 🙂

Try pressing CTRL-F12 several times :spiteful:  :biggrin:

In one occasion, they found me just after my arrival via hyperspace. I should have known that... the guy had warned me that it would have been a dangerous mission. They made me into crumbs in a few minutes.  😆

Just hanging around sol? 😉

Nah, I just spend all my time these days coding the damned thing instead of playing it 😉

I just want to precise that I'm not minimally upset against anyone 🙂  My last response could give this false impression.

Also I highly welcome Biomechanoid's responses: writing is an art. Hopefully people will take the necessary time to go through his readings, so, Tichy's advice to start a tutorial thread is a good one 😎

I would highly welcome myself any tips for succeeding in combat in FFE, FE2 or Pioneer , because it's just plain HARD whatever I try, so I surely would be misplaced to give any substantial adivices ...

I remember that there was some huge strategy pages for FFE, if I find them, I will report and link them.

XenonS

(...)

The games do cheat to give you encounters with other ships, I've never actually met one in Pioneer yet though

In order to encounter plenty of hostiles, you will have to travel to indipendent systems or anarchies. Here, you will get some occupation... At least that is what happens in Frontier II. I guees that this will also happen in Pioneer (?). The core systems (Earth, Hope etc.) are rather safe. And if this is not enough: There's always Walterar's excellent Scout + mod 😎 😎 😎

XenonS

Just pick a ship with alot of cargospace and go to low / unpopulated system and you'll surely get attacked by pirates. 🙂

@Biomechanoid,

I also remember that in FFE there is nothing easier to do some mass distruction on pirates: this is not cheating, just get a Panther Clipper, buy 100 Shield Generators, go in an anarchy system, stop the engines and put on the time acceleration. Pirates will find you and crash into you like madmen. You get rewards after rewards. Go and drink a coffee, in the meantime you will sureley get the Elite rank...

Listen, I have played this game long long ago, with all the tricks in the book and without tricks, with cheating and without cheating. There's not much that I have to learn anymore on FFE. So, thank you for stopping to quote my name everywhere which is out of place and context.

Pioneer is a different beast, but it's a different game, still in development and meant as a platform for people who want to take it as a serious base for much more. This will involve not discussions, but hard, hard coding work...

XenonS