Jump to content


Photo

EXECUTOR class weapon arcs


70 replies to this topic

#61 Kaleb Graff

Kaleb Graff

    title available

  • Members
  • 1,035 posts
  • Location:Classified

Posted 11 December 2008 - 03:37 PM

I definitely think we need a hardpoint sticky thread, or maybe even an FAQ covering this, and maybe some other common questions. About the engine thing, though, didn't you say we couldn't do that, or that only one would work?

#62 coinich

coinich

    title available

  • Members
  • 293 posts

Posted 11 December 2008 - 04:13 PM

Alright, I understand quite a bit more as well. What about untargetable hard points, however? Wasn't that the plan for a while, make a few HPs targetable so they can at least partially simulate battle degradation?

#63 Ghostrider

Ghostrider

    Sith Lord of Campaigns

  • Project Team
  • 2,035 posts
  •  Phoenix Rising QA Lead; Manual Editor

Posted 11 December 2008 - 05:22 PM

Alright, I understand quite a bit more as well. What about untargetable hard points, however? Wasn't that the plan for a while, make a few HPs targetable so they can at least partially simulate battle degradation?


Just remeber - we now have 250 pirate models, plus the entire upgrade trees of CSA, Empire and Alliance. - That's a LOT of hard points to mess with.
I believe dreadnaughts take the best part of a day to re-rig. Each. :lol:

Unless I am much mistaken, there are a lot better things to fix first. Land for example.

#64 feld

feld

    title available

  • Project Team
  • 400 posts

Posted 11 December 2008 - 06:18 PM

Alright, I understand quite a bit more as well. What about untargetable hard points, however? Wasn't that the plan for a while, make a few HPs targetable so they can at least partially simulate battle degradation?

coinich,

Short answer
Making a few HP targetable doesn't really simulate battle degradation at all well. That would require a lot of hardpoints so that systems stopped working gradually as opposed to say five or ten or twenty guns suddenly not working. But it would be so much work for the mod team that it would probably bring v2.0 (Land) to a screeching halt. Details below, alot of this is repetion so you can skip it. But I'm using it as first draft of a HP FAQ/sticky. Comments/corrections welcome. Expert modding opinions on what can/cannot be changed and what is currently unknown would be very appreciated.

Long answer/Hardpoint FAQ Draft 1

PR DOESN'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO TARGET HARDPOINTS (HP) THAT VANILLA EAW/FOC DID.
They were removed early on when it was realized how much extra work would be required to make each and every new weapon the mod introduces work properly with this feature. <insert link to where PR first explains why he did this>

The purpose of this FAQ is to describe the problems, possible solutions, and the amount of work required to reintroduce HP into PR. There are two ways people commonly want to use HP.
1. Graceful degradation: Why can't we use destroyable but not targetable HP to simulate the gradual destruction of systems and reduce capability slowly over time? This is a common question from people who note (correctly) that large capital spacecraft in PR don't get "damaged". They keep all their guns and engines until the second their hull bar goes to zero. Then they explode. Most people seem to agree that this is non-canonical and unrealistic.

2. Targetable systems: Why can't we use destroyable and targetable HP to simulate "called shots" on vulnerable systems?
This is a common desire from people who want to be able to take out specific items on the surface of an enemy ship. Think EXECUTOR's bridge sensor globes in RotJ. There has been some debate about how canon "called shots" are. I WILL ADDRESS THAT IN A SEPERATE FAQ IF NEEDED.

The Overkill Effect
I'll try to address each use of HP but first let me summarize the difficulties that the EAW/FOC game engine imposes. When a whole Y-Wing squadron shoots at a HP TARGETED BY THE PLAYER every torpedo, laser, and ion cannon in the squadron shoots at that HP. Each HP takes a certain amount of damage before it counts as destroyed. The remaining weapons pass harmlessly through the target ship model. So say it takes two proton torpedoes to blow up the turbolaser battery you're targeting. The Y-Wing squadron shoots 24 (2 torpedoes X 12 starfighters) proton torpedoes. The first two hit and blow up the target but the other 22 would fly through the Star Destroyer model and then out the other side of it. Same for all excess laser and ion bolts.

AI TARGETED FIRE might not shoot every weapon at the HP, but the overkill effect described above will still happen with excess fire going through the model.

So:
Why not use destroyable but not targetable HP to simulate the gradual destruction of systems and reduce capability slowly over time?

Imagine all those excess weapons flying through ships...but every time they fired. To simulate graceful degradation, you need to have a relatively large number of HP. Otherwise ships will lose weapons mounts suddenly: you'll blow up a hidden HP and all of the sudden, five turbolaser cannons on the enemy ship go quiet. The most gradual degradation would come from having one HP for each gun, engine, etc. The problem here is that, the more HP you have, the more often you're going to see overkill bolts and missiles flying through models and out the other side. One problem with this is just the looks: it'll look really really silly to always have ships shooting through each other. Another problem is that the hull and shield values of PRs ships have all been carefully balanced through playtest and the team's tweaks. It took a year. Adding HP would mean doing that all again. This would probably change PR's schedule for v2.0 (Land) alot. Finally, there might (see below) be a problem where enabling HP like this would allow the bad guys to shoot through your ships to target the HP. This would totally destroy all the fine work that PR's done giving guns realistic firing arcs and require a great deal more work to fix. In universe, it's also hard to explain where so many overkill shots go. I can see it for a small number of HP...but not enough to do graceful degradation.

Why not use destroyable and targetable HP to simulate "called shots" on vulnerable systems?

This is a little easier. The overkill damage is easier to explain away if there are not alot of HP because all warships have equipment and space onboard that is necessary for the ship to run but not necessary for it to run in combat (PM me if you're interested but this is too long already). EAW/FOC/PR only covers combat so we can get away with a little overkill here. The real problem with targetable systems is the graphical effect of shots going through the opposing ship, the limited number of HP that you can use without cluttering up the interface with green icons, and the amount of work/time required to implement the idea and rebalance the game when you're done.

What does it cost to bring HP back?

-just to re-enable HP targeting for the weapons that PR's added to the mod would be 200,000 lines of code. A script has been proposed to do this.
-We might be able to write new collision meshes. This work would probably need to be done by hand. According to PR it would be a lot of work.

What cannot be fixed/changed?

-Engine hardcoded to shoot everything on the firing platform when player targets a HP.
-Engine hardcoded to show green icons for each targetable HP when you mouseover a ship. The engine shows one icon for each HP. This is important because it would make ships "all green" if you made each and every gun on the ship a targetable HP. This sets a limit to how many HP you can show on a ship without cluttering up screen.

What don't we know/aren't sure of?

-Seems like PR's not entirely sure but thinks that he'd have to write a new collision mesh for each gun to prevent being able to shoot them through the ship. This is because the main collision mesh attached to each ship wasn't written to account for all the new guns he added. The effect of this would that, while your guns could not shoot through the ship that they're mounted on, the enemy would be able to shoot through your ship to hit your guns. Don't ask me. I'm not a modder. This is a bunch more work ASIDE from the 200,000 lines of code listed above. Then add sensors, engines, and any other systems.
-What about AI targeting? Does the AI pick a single target for all guns when it's automatically shooting or under a general player-issued "Attack" order?

#65 Kaleb Graff

Kaleb Graff

    title available

  • Members
  • 1,035 posts
  • Location:Classified

Posted 11 December 2008 - 08:00 PM

Looks very good. That should save us from answering the questions again and again. Still, I'm not sure how not targetable but destroyable hardpoints would work. Has it been tested?

#66 feld

feld

    title available

  • Project Team
  • 400 posts

Posted 11 December 2008 - 08:31 PM

Looks very good. That should save us from answering the questions again and again. Still, I'm not sure how not targetable but destroyable hardpoints would work. Has it been tested?

Targetable but not destroyable? I didn't say that did I? That's not what I meant...
You mean destroyable but not targetable maybe?

r/
feld

#67 Phoenix Rising

Phoenix Rising

    Beyond the Impossible

  • Petrolution Staff
  • 6,509 posts
  • Projects:Phoenix Rising
  •  Mod Leader
  • Division:Petrolution
  • Job:Mod Specialist

Posted 11 December 2008 - 09:31 PM

I intend to write this up for stick-ification (probably in community suggestions) b/c the new release will probably mean lots more new players: they're going to ask. Like me. Again. And again. And again.

Good point. Go ahead and start a thread and I'll pin it. If FAQ-style threads become popular enough, we can do a sticky for the stickies to clear up room.

But it would be so much work for the mod team that it would probably bring v2.0 (Land) to a screeching halt.

Well, without the right personnel, that's inevitable anyways. We don't have the experienced modelers/skinners/texturers/animators to be able to create the units necessary for Land (more map help would be nice too). Unlike Space, I don't have a nearly-limitless source of third-party models from which to draw units.

PR DOESN'T HAVE THE ABILITY TO TARGET HARDPOINTS (HP) THAT VANILLA EAW/FOC DID.
They were removed early on when it was realized how much extra work would be required to make each and every new weapon the mod introduces work properly with this feature.

Well, I'm not sure if it was the extra work so much as it not really meshing with my concepts for Space (obviously we're not afraid to tackle some ambitious projects). With individual weapons, the existing flaws in EaW's hardpoint system just got amplified that much more to the point where it became a detracting feature. The tradeoff, however, is being one of the few games to do justice to the bigger starships.

Most people seem to agree that this is non-canonical and unrealistic.

Including me, I might add. I just want to say that I have nothing against hardpoints in general, but that my position on them is determined more by the modding realities of it.

There has been some debate about how canon "called shots" are.

If you look at the movies, I think there's good justification for it - just not so much as being able to entirely knock out shields by blowing out a couple of sensor domes (feel free to take that apart from an engineering standpoint).

When a whole Y-Wing squadron shoots at a HP TARGETED BY THE PLAYER every torpedo, laser, and ion cannon in the squadron shoots at that HP.

This would inevitably happen to the AI as well. Let me just provide some numbers though.

The hull of an Imperial I is 2272 RU and it has 145 weapon emplacements. For the sake of argument, assume that every weapon would get the same amount of health. That means that each hardpoint would have only 31 or 32 hitpoints (starships effectively get double hitpoints to account for the fighter bias in XW/TF/XWA). That's equal to the damage of one light proton torpedo (32). For the squadron in your scenario to take out just one of these weapons, it would have to waste 736 torpedo damage, which is enough to drop just about any given corvette. It would be hideously wasteful.

-just to re-enable HP targeting for the weapons that PR's added to the mod would be 200,000 lines of code.

Well, not quite. That's just how much hardpoint code we already have.

Also, I forgot to mention breakoff props (see SpaceProps.xml, the second half or so). Unless we came up with a way to standardize this, each weapon would need one.

-Seems like PR's not entirely sure but thinks that he'd have to write a new collision mesh for each gun to prevent being able to shoot them through the ship.

I'm totally not sure on this, but I see it as a potential problem that could crop up. I've spent virtually no time on proof-of-concepts for this stuff, so I just don't know. I'm just speculating that, unless the engine knows exactly where a certain hardpoint is (such as with a small, unique collision mesh), it would treat any collision with the big collision mesh as a "hit" on that hardpoint, even if it's 500 meters off-target. So, in that case, you could just take a Lancer up to something and blow off every hardpoint that you wanted on full-auto.

-What about AI targeting? Does the AI pick a single target for all guns when it's automatically shooting or under a general player-issued "Attack" order?

If I remember (and it's been a while), but attacking something in general would just prompt the game to choose a certain hardpoint to attack, although you can set targeting priorities by HP types, which is useful (i.e., given no orders, your units would first look for shield HPs, then engine HPs, and so on).

Still, I'm not sure how not targetable but destroyable hardpoints would work. Has it been tested?

That's what we currently use.

Edited by Phoenix Rising, 11 December 2008 - 09:32 PM.


#68 Kaleb Graff

Kaleb Graff

    title available

  • Members
  • 1,035 posts
  • Location:Classified

Posted 11 December 2008 - 09:51 PM

Looks very good. That should save us from answering the questions again and again. Still, I'm not sure how not targetable but destroyable hardpoints would work. Has it been tested?

Targetable but not destroyable? I didn't say that did I? That's not what I meant...
You mean destroyable but not targetable maybe?

r/
feld

That was indeed a typo. I meant destroyable but not targetable.

#69 coinich

coinich

    title available

  • Members
  • 293 posts

Posted 11 December 2008 - 11:53 PM

I'd quote all of that, but its a ton.

Thanks for the explanations, I get it much more now. The wasted shots numbers really do say where that glitch comes in. You could do mass changes by simple search/replace functions, but thats not fine enough for PR. Not for a finished product.

Kind of a shame (twas one of the things I liked about old EAW) but I see where you all are coming from.

#70 feld

feld

    title available

  • Project Team
  • 400 posts

Posted 12 December 2008 - 01:06 PM

<snipped many corrections>

Roger all. I'm actually going to be at a friend's wedding all weekend so I won't be able to make these changes until I get back but I'll do so then.

r/
feld

#71 anakinskysolo

anakinskysolo

    Phoenix Rising Fan

  • Members
  • 490 posts
  • Location:Chile

Posted 21 January 2009 - 04:41 PM

Going back to the original subject, does anyone knows of a good rigging tutorial out there?



Reply to this topic



  


0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users