Topic: Greetings and a couple of observations and questions

[Spartan159]

Howdy.  Nice community here, I've browsed through a few time learning a thing or two along the way.

I've been playing SFC off and on for a long time, solo play only as my net connections generally need serious help.

Recently the bug bit me again and I reinstalled SFC:OP, and browsing around found the latest and greatest updates etc.  I would like to take a moment to thank those involved in the OP Enhancement Package v3.2, very handy if long download for me.

Having been playing a week or so now, I've come across a problem.  Twice now I've been nailed with the Phaser Beams of the Gods at the very beginning of a mission (the same ones that destroy the derelict ship in the Investigation mission) and once sadly as I blew the last starbase in a very hard fought nail biting Planetary Assault. Won the mission, lost the ship.  Is this preventable or just an occasional hazard of the game engine?

Also, I had noted while playing the Beast Raider campaign that I was not seeing certain large ships available in the shipyards, namely DNH's, BB's or XCA's.  Went digging around and found they were restricted along with a boatload of other ships I had just not noticed.  (actually XCA was not restricted, I eventually saw one for sale game years after other race X-ships were giving me fits)  I there some reason for the restrictions?

As an observation, something that has always disappointed me with the series has been the random seeming matchups.  Medium size ships is not so bad, but when you see 3 B11K's opposing you...  I'd rather see a mixed fleet built around 1 B11K that made some sense.  I gather that the various race/cartels don't actually keep track of ships built or I'd see a decline it the bigger stuff after making serious inroads in their controlled space, or so I'd think.

I also wish the fleet control in OP was more like SFC 1, it seemed like I could have individual ships behave more intelligently. (You go capture that ship, you bombard this base from here etc etc)

Another question, it there a limit to the models usable? Could I for instance set every different ship to a different model if I had them, or is there a game engine limit?

Thanks for your consideration

PS...

Until just recently I was receiving a database error every time I tried to register, and there was no way to get in contact with someone to tell them, perhaps a button to send a PM from the error screen would help?

[Bonk]

Welcome aboard! 

Until just recently I was receiving a database error every time I tried to register, and there was no way to get in contact with someone to tell them, perhaps a button to send a PM from the error screen would help?

I just learned of and fixed that recently, it was a flaw in the SMF code preventing registrations from anyone born before 1970...    I'm pretty ticked at simplemachines about it. God knows how many members we have lost because of it. I'll look at adding the admin e-mail address to the error screen in case similar issues turn up in future, thanks for the suggestion.

Another question, it there a limit to the models usable? Could I for instance set every different ship to a different model if I had them, or is there a game engine limit?

You can use a different model for every unique ship if you like, there is no limit that I am aware of.


I'll let others address your other questions.

[Soreyes]

Welcome Aboard.   You wouldn't like to chuck a few Drones would you?  The Kzin are allways looking for a few Good Cat's

Having been playing a week or so now, I've come across a problem.  Twice now I've been nailed with the Phaser Beams of the Gods at the very beginning of a mission (the same ones that destroy the derelict ship in the Investigation mission) and once sadly as I blew the last starbase in a very hard fought nail biting Planetary Assault. Won the mission, lost the ship.  Is this preventable or just an occasional hazard of the game engine?

Ahh Yes "The Hand Of Bethke"  It's a hard Coded little Burp in the Game. Just look at it this way. The AI believes your doing to good of a Job as a Ship Captain. And every once in awhile the computer will say "TAKE THAT"

[KBF-Kurok]

isnt there a restriction of 128 ships  per class in op? it was something like 68 in eaw. IM just nor sure if thats  per race or per the whole ship list. Fire soul wrote some thing on this a while ago.

[Bonk]

isnt there a restriction of 128 ships  per class in op? it was something like 68 in eaw. IM just nor sure if thats  per race or per the whole ship list. Fire soul wrote some thing on this a while ago.

Yes, from the patch readme as of 2.5.3.8:

71)Increased the number of ships per class from 64 to 128.

But you can use a different model for every ship in the list if you want as far as I know. That would be:
19 races * 20 classes * 128 ships = 48640 ships/models possible... so yes there is a practical limit on the number of models that can be used, you are correct.

Effectively unlimited models as far as I'm concerned though as you can have one per ship for a total maximum of 48640.

But note that the larger shiplists put a greater strain on the client as well as the server, the effect of OP+4 with 5958 ships vs the stock list with 2370 ships is noticeable.

[762_XC]

The models are limited by the pointers in whatever shiplist you're using. For example, if the F-CA and F-CAR both point to the "fca" model folder, you have to use that model for both. You can change the model if you want to, but both ships will have to use it unless you mod the shiplist.

The easiest way to determine what model each ship is using is to open up shiplist.txt (Excel is probably the easiest thing to view it with) and look at the model pointer for each ship. It should be one of the last columns, and list the path for the model folder.

In the stock shiplist, many of the ships use the same models. What Firesoul did with 4.0 was to duplicate a lot of the model folders and use different pointers so you can customize. For example, F-CA and F-CAD might point to fca and fcad, which could be copies of the same model folder. This means by default the ships use the same model, but if you want to use a different model for the CAD you can (without changing the shiplist), because it now has a discrete model pointer.

[C-Los]

Welcome Aboard.   You wouldn't like to chuck a few Drones would you?  The Kzin are allways looking for a few Good Cat's

Having been playing a week or so now, I've come across a problem.  Twice now I've been nailed with the Phaser Beams of the Gods at the very beginning of a mission (the same ones that destroy the derelict ship in the Investigation mission) and once sadly as I blew the last starbase in a very hard fought nail biting Planetary Assault. Won the mission, lost the ship.  Is this preventable or just an occasional hazard of the game engine?

Ahh Yes "The Hand Of Bethke"  It's a hard Coded little Burp in the Game. Just look at it this way. The AI believes your doing to good of a Job as a Ship Captain. And every once in awhile the computer will say "TAKE THAT"

Good One Bud         Best explanation ever !

BTW/  I hate when that happens too !!   

[Father Ted]

I remember my first Hand of Bethke. SS1. I was deepstriking with Lucky in a F-BCF and the sucker just blew up. Lucky is screaming at me on RW: "Alt Out! Alt Out!" which made absolutely no sense since this was my first server, and I figured I could hear him more clearly once I was out of the mission. Oops!

[Alphageek]

Is this the seemingly random "auto-destruct" that sometimes happens at the start of missions?

[GDA-Agave]

Is this the seemingly random "auto-destruct" that sometimes happens at the start of missions?

Yes.


It's a real bitch.   Funny how it always seems to happen at the worst possible moment, i.e. setting up a 2v2 match, deepstriking, just got your favorite ship, etc.   Must be in the fine print of Murphy's Laws somewhere.   J'inn would probably know.   

[Spartan159]

Thanks for the response.  Hand of Bethke eh? Figures.  The mission start ones were not so bad as I tend to save after nearly every mission, but the mission end one hurt.

The models are limited by the pointers in whatever shiplist you're using. For example, if the F-CA and F-CAR both point to the "fca" model folder, you have to use that model for both. You can change the model if you want to, but both ships will have to use it unless you mod the shiplist.

The easiest way to determine what model each ship is using is to open up shiplist.txt (Excel is probably the easiest thing to view it with) and look at the model pointer for each ship. It should be one of the last columns, and list the path for the model folder.

In the stock shiplist, many of the ships use the same models. What Firesoul did with 4.0 was to duplicate a lot of the model folders and use different pointers so you can customize. For example, F-CA and F-CAD might point to fca and fcad, which could be copies of the same model folder. This means by default the ships use the same model, but if you want to use a different model for the CAD you can (without changing the shiplist), because it now has a discrete model pointer.

Alright.  The concern I had was if it mattered if the game had different models for each ship or not.  I did not know if the game tried to load all the models or just the ones in the current mission.