51 replies to this topic

[Madurai]

Hmm. A lot of the space scenes, especially in ANH, seem to show realistic ship physics (sound aside).

I've noticed exactly zero of these. Fighters bank to turn, at no time does anyone have an apparent velocity vector that isn't the same as the longitudinal axis of the ship, and the engines are always on.

[Phoenix Rising]

That's true... and EaW wouldn't even be able to simulate that. I guess the aspect I was mostly concerned with for the sake of this thread was the max speed cap. The sequence from Mos Eisley to the Death Star could not take place with X-wing physics.

[Sûlherokhh]

Keep Max Speed but scale Max Speed to Max Acceleration. That way you can reason that ship captains would be stupid to accelerate to a speed so high that they can't reduce it via deceleration to zero again (turning and pushing to the limit). If a captain did this, the ship would be unable to maneuver effectively. You can see the logic behind this working brilliantly in the TV-series Battlestar Galactica.

Effectively, using Newtonian Physics:

Acceleration proportional to Max Speed.
Acceleration proportional to Maneuverability (the ability to change flight direction by accelerating at an angle to the original flight path) [though it should be reduced by a variable number in respect to the ship size and maneuver thrusters to account for the time the ship needs to physically point the main engines into the right direction)

Keep Max Speed.


I salute you to the best Star Wars Mod i have ever laid my eyes on.

[Phoenix Rising]

Thanks for the input, Sûl. Turning max speed into a function of acceleration is an attractive compromise.

[P.O._210877]

It is quite elegant in it's "simplicity".

[Kitkun]

Curious, is this to be expected in 1.3?

And just a thought, but perhaps that kind of thing can be applied to other stats as well? I.E. shield recharge being a function of max shields and class, energy of damage, shields and class, etc.

[evilbobthebob]

There are a lot of changes being made to space combat in v1.3. We've had a bit of feature creep

[Phoenix Rising]

I wouldn't call it feature creep, because it's not delaying the release. v1.3 was planned as a relay, with my work being frontloaded. It's since been passed off to Ghostrider, which leaves me with an open schedule to fill with as many backlogged revamps can fit. Release happens when Ghost determines the campaigns are once-again presentable, simple as that.

To answer your question directly though, I don't yet know if I'll be dealing with space speeds under v1.3. It's just one of a number of possibilities. Essentially, everything I learned doing land is being reassessed in the context of space.

[Sûlherokhh]

Did you ever try using STARSHIP_LOCOMOTOR instead of SIMPLE_SPACE_LOCOMOTOR for starships? It's got some really realistic motion effects. So far troubling things are that ships turn 180° in a flash when close to zero speed, and of course most troubling that the AI can't move ships plus they don't animate the zooming in from hyperspace. Some of those chinks could possibly be worked out by fiddling with movement stats. Could be that Petroglyph just gave up on it before finishing the routines. Found the tag in the main exe file.

[Phoenix Rising]

Interesting... no, I haven't. I've turned fighters into simples and vice versa, but that's it. I'll check it out sometime, thanks.

It's quite possible that it uses slightly different tags than the simple. Try supplying a minimum speed?

[feld]

PR,

I can retcon either one but I think I'd rather keep maximum top speeds. Remember my theory about all the combats we ever see in the films being primarily fought on repulsordrive? (that one line in the novelization of ANH that talks about repulsor only working within five planetary diamaters ring a bell?)

So you can go either way. Frankly - since PR doesn't simulate deep space battles I concur with earlier poster who said "try it out and see what you like, then go with that".

BTW - as always really happy to see you keeping it going!!!

v/r
feld

ps. Oh - I'm back
pps not sure I've found my EAW disk yet though...

[Phoenix Rising]

Yes, and I think you were correct. I've since run a few tests and determined that the engine can't handle a very high (simulated speed of light) top speed, so that's out.

Welcome back!