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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

@Biomechanoid,Please stop being rude to people. You've quoted him out of context and he was referring to Frontier back on the Amiga.That was a long time ago and it's the same for most of us. We devoted time and effort to it back then but don't expect everyone to remember every detail of everything perfectly after 10 or 15 years have passed. Andy

I said "The Combat does Suck" because that's how I feel about the combat. "The games do cheat" because Frontier etc did cheat (spawning in ships close enough to you and moving fast enough to intercept is cheating). "The game is not Fun" - isn't something I said. I said that "just because it might be possible to win an engagement does not make it fun or enjoyable to do so.", which is the truth. You might find the combat fun or enjoyable, but lots of others do NOT. Therefore that statement is true which is why I wrote it like that so that there was no ambiguity. I love playing Pioneer, that's why I spend so much time writing code for it to improve the rendering, the world generation, wrote the factions system and have contributed to modelling a station and rewriting the docking system, and supporting DDS texture loading as well as the original texture compression, along with hundreds of other contributions.For me combat can be fun, I play a lot of FPS games, loved Elite, Frontier, the Descent series, Freelancer, I-War, etc etc etc and I work in the games industry.The combat in Pioneer can, and will, be much improved in time but right now I just find it irritating. Irritating like the random encounters in a lot of JRPG's where there is a mechanism to victory but no enjoyment in it. You enjoy the current combat? Really?With ineffectual missiles?Hopeless peashooter lasers?No warning of ships on an intercept course?No space dust to indicate motion?No augmented reality to show you shield or other information?No other weapons to choose from?The game is set 1200 years from now and all we have are weak pew-pew lasers and missiles slower and less maneuverable than the ships that they're chasing? If you're attempting to defend Pioneer's combat because it's a "simulation" then the weapons should be much better simulated too.There should be an appropriate gamut of offensive weapons covering the kinetic spectrum and not just lasers, defensive shielding, armour, decoys and countermeasures not to mention stealth coatings and equipment to avoid combat entirely. That's what I've said and feel.It seems that you want a hi-res Frontier clone - Pioneer would like to be the game that Frontier would have liked to have been but couldn't be due to technologies limitations at the time and not _just_ another Frontier clone.

Yeah... Pioneer's combat sucks... I've been source diving a little and trying to figure out where to start on a "Tactical Mod" to explore more combat options but it's beyond me... I've floated the idea before I think, maybe now the time is ripe?

They could start to reverse [url]https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/issues/1607[/url] Or better yet, implement [url]https://github.com/ParagonDevelopmentTeam/pioneer/pull/8[/url] I'm testing. Greatly enhance the visual experience and effectiveness in combat.

Frontier and FFE were made at a time where the WSAD / mouse controls for your spaceship was not a standard control mode, like one can see in Freelancer, Parkan, etc. in games after 2005. Such a control mode would have given much more combat sense and "Situational Awareness" to the players, but just using some keyboard commands makes the combat part almost unplayable and not enjoyable at all. The right mouse button pressing for ship maneuvres is just ridiculous. This should absolutely be changed in Pioneer :haha:I fully realize that this is easier said than done ! (i wish I was a coder, with more than just macro and batch programing skills.)A good example would be the control mode of the Starwraith games (Evochron Mercenary) where Newtonian physics are also implemented, but where such a control mode can be switched on or off for combat as you like WITHOUT neglecting the laws of physics.It makes no sense to take over the flaws of FE/FFE if something new could be done. When I said it "sucks" that was for sure a hard language for a game which I liked (and still like a lot), but I wanted to bring it to the point. IMO the control mode is the game's biggest flaw. XenonS