Topic: Attention Scripters: Warp Speed!

[FPF-DieHard]

Dave, Karnak and others,how close are we to having a mission pack with the Warp Disengaement? 

Has a concenus been reached as to the criteria for Warp Speed?   This must be the same for all misisons regardless of the scripter.

let me know 

[NuclearWessels]

Well, the short answer is that I've got a two-mission pack that should be able to replace one of my normal 15-20 mission packs, but it needs lots of testing. 

The much longer answer is given below.

I've taken this opportunity to do a major clean-up/rewrite while adding the warp code, and the result seems to be a mission-pack-in-a-script (ok, 2 scripts - one for friendly space one for hostile space).

The nutshell description:
  - it does the usual 3v3 drafting with AI stripping for PvP,
  - it has a custom-built routines to identify the current server year and a custom fleet-selection routine to come up with better AI matchups without the out-of-era issues,
  - it can generate up to 36 ships per side (not that we'll want many 72-ship battles, but the ability is now built in should we decide we want it), 
  - if offered in a planet or base hex it creates the appropriate sized planet/base on the appropriate side, so no more drawing "easy" patrols in a homeworld or starbase hex,
  - it has the ability to generate pirates, monsters, and/or convoys once in awhile (in non-PvP situations), though IIRC that was turned off in the version currently posted,
  - terrain generation and ship placement are (partially) randomized, which (with the new AI generation routines) should lead to pretty decent mission variety, even when hitting the same hex over and over.

Anyway, this pair of missions should replace about fifteen or twenty of my standard patrols and assault/defense missions, cutting the download size by about 80%.

It should  also make code changes and maintenance much easier, as well as guaranteeing better standards and consistency between missions.

The downside is that it has involved renovating a helluva lot of code over the past few weeks and (of course) really needs a buttload of testing with a variety of shiplists, eras, and races, solo battles, wings vs the AI, and PvP.

Preliminary versions of the pair of scripts are available in my current warp pack (along with a sample .mct) but I only got the last of the BIG bugs worked out yesterday, so I'm assuming there are still a lot of little ones and tweaks to be dealt with.

The missions are  Met_EDDisengagePlayer.scr and Met_EDDisengageEnemy.scr, although the download also includes a pair of Combat versions (in which you can drop in and out of warp, as opposed to using it for disengage only).

http://www3.telus.net/NuclearWessels/sfc/downloads/EDWarpPatrols.exe

This doesn't address standardization between EEK/TG/ED missions, but I figure we need folks to actually play the warp versions of those at some length, find the holes and impact on gameplay, and come to some conclusions based on their experiences before we can settle on what the practical standards need to be anyway.

dave

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

Hey Dave, were the scripts I sent you any use?

[NuclearWessels]

Hey Dave, were the scripts I sent you any use?

Absolutely!  Liberated lots of good ideas

Say, did the mGetHexType ever get fixed for OP?   I remember Dave fixing it in SFC3, but couldn't remember if he patched it back into OP afterwards ... in any event, it's crashed every time I experimented with it recently.

dave

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

Hey Dave, were the scripts I sent you any use?

Absolutely!  Liberated lots of good ideas

Say, did the mGetHexType ever get fixed for OP?   I remember Dave fixing it in SFC3, but couldn't remember if he patched it back into OP afterwards ... in any event, it's crashed every time I experimented with it recently.

dave

Well, I'm not sure if mGetHexType is working, but if you look in the script I sent, I was able to get the info another way. The hex type is recorded and output in the mission text file actually, so look in that part of the code (its the overloaded friend output method).

[Lepton]

Three things I noticed with these scripts.

1.  There still seems to be no trigger for when disengagement occurs unless I didn't wait long enough.  I think it's great these speeds can be programmed and such but I feel the idea is more to have larger maps and actually to be able to disengage from them in a timely manner.

2.  If you go speed 500 for a while, it appears as if the ship were slowing down as the stars begin to pass you more slowly.  This could be an artifact of the game engine, but it might be nice to confirm that the ship is indeed still at that speed.

3. In a particular mission, I drafted 4 allies but was faced with 5 klingon ships AND 5 pirate ships.  That was not a winnable situation as they were all gunning for me it appeared.  I was using the SG6 shiplist so that could be a complicating factor as the klingon ships were prefaced with a Y making me think these were part of the donor ships on the list.  Heck if I know, but it was odd.

[Lepton]

One additional thing.  Again, while it's great that all your mission scenarios can be be placed in two scripts, it doesn't really give the player any choices.  If I were to take one of these mission, I might as likely get a convoy raid as a 1v1 patrol as a pirate mission, etc.  There are instances in which a player would prefer not to get a convoy raid especially where PvP is concerned.  Perhaps there are procedures for handling such difficulties but that would seem like alot of extra work to account for such contingencies.

[el-Karnak]

Dave, Karnak and others,how close are we to having a mission pack with the Warp Disengaement? 

Has a concenus been reached as to the criteria for Warp Speed?   This must be the same for all misisons regardless of the scripter.

let me know 

Need Server Admin Input here:

We need some firm and fast rules on what we all want to see in warp disengagement.

For example, just use Huge Maps and give players ability to warp-out at FTL speeds (ie. 3000) to disengage; basically, replacing the "taco-belling across the red-line" tactic.  Or, as an added feature, have missions that can do fast sub-light stuff (ie. speeds 125, 500, 1000) at yellow alert.

Once that is figured out the mission packs can be updated accordingly for dyna play.

NW and I have already agreed that the final warp-out disengagment speed will be in the 2000 to 3000 range (ie. player won't really notice the difference at these speeds). It's whether we want the sub-warp speeds of (125, 343, 500, 1000) with ship at yellow alert that we need input on.  If we all decided that the non-Andro player cannot disengage greater than 31 speeds, then once engaged it won't really matter if the mission does a NW staggered speed warp-out or a EEK more-instantaneous TNG-like warp-out.

[NuclearWessels]

Three things I noticed with these scripts.

1.  There still seems to be no trigger for when disengagement occurs unless I didn't wait long enough.  I think it's great these speeds can be programmed and such but I feel the idea is more to have larger maps and actually to be able to disengage from them in a timely manner.

2.  If you go speed 500 for a while, it appears as if the ship were slowing down as the stars begin to pass you more slowly.  This could be an artifact of the game engine, but it might be nice to confirm that the ship is indeed still at that speed.

3. In a particular mission, I drafted 4 allies but was faced with 5 klingon ships AND 5 pirate ships.  That was not a winnable situation as they were all gunning for me it appeared.  I was using the SG6 shiplist so that could be a complicating factor as the klingon ships were prefaced with a Y making me think these were part of the donor ships on the list.  Heck if I know, but it was odd.

1. Disengagement occurs once you're off the map, the disengagement speed needs to be set higher to get you there in a timely fashion (have't bothered to pick a speed yet, but like Karnak says we're thinking in the 2k-3k range).

2. I thought i'd noticed that too -- will dig into it.

3. Whoops   will fix that

One additional thing.  Again, while it's great that all your mission scenarios can be be placed in two scripts, it doesn't really give the player any choices.  If I were to take one of these mission, I might as likely get a convoy raid as a 1v1 patrol as a pirate mission, etc.  There are instances in which a player would prefer not to get a convoy raid especially where PvP is concerned.  Perhaps there are procedures for handling such difficulties but that would seem like alot of extra work to account for such contingencies.

These two replace the pure combat missions, which all appear only as patrol right now anyway - the only difference is that if you get a patrol on a planet/base hex it will always include the planet/base.   (The pirates/convoys that crop up are on the same basis as the ones in the ED10 patrols now, not the convoy raids.)  These replace the two #5 fleet actions, the #6 patrols, the #10 patrols, the #17 patrols, the #7 base assaults, and the #9/18 planet assaults.

Specialty missions will still be seperate - as you say, there's two many contingencies to handle in a single script that way.

thanks for all the feedback!

Need Server Admin Input here:
We need some firm and fast rules on what we all want to see in warp disengagement.

For example, just use Huge Maps and give players ability to warp-out at FTL speeds (ie. 3000) to disengage; basically, replacing the "taco-belling across the red-line" tactic.  Or, as an added feature, have missions that can do fast sub-light stuff (ie. speeds 125, 500, 1000) at yellow alert.

Once that is figured out the mission packs can be updated accordingly for dyna play.

NW and I have already agreed that the final warp-out disengagment speed will be in the 2000 to 3000 range (ie. player won't really notice the difference at these speeds). It's whether we want the sub-warp speeds of (125, 343, 500, 1000) with ship at yellow alert that we need input on.  If we all decided that the non-Andro player cannot disengage greater than 31 speeds, then once engaged it won't really matter if the mission does a NW staggered speed warp-out or a EEK more-instantaneous TNG-like warp-out.

What he said!

dave

[NuclearWessels]

Hey Dave, were the scripts I sent you any use?

Absolutely!  Liberated lots of good ideas

Say, did the mGetHexType ever get fixed for OP?   I remember Dave fixing it in SFC3, but couldn't remember if he patched it back into OP afterwards ... in any event, it's crashed every time I experimented with it recently.

dave

Well, I'm not sure if mGetHexType is working, but if you look in the script I sent, I was able to get the info another way. The hex type is recorded and output in the mission text file actually, so look in that part of the code (its the overloaded friend output method).

No worries, I've got an alternative technique working (the old standby of going off the map picked), I was just hoping that something in the api was actually functional

dave

[FPF-DieHard]

Dave, Karnak and others,how close are we to having a mission pack with the Warp Disengaement? 

Has a concenus been reached as to the criteria for Warp Speed?   This must be the same for all misisons regardless of the scripter.

let me know 

Need Server Admin Input here:

We need some firm and fast rules on what we all want to see in warp disengagement.

For example, just use Huge Maps and give players ability to warp-out at FTL speeds (ie. 3000) to disengage; basically, replacing the "taco-belling across the red-line" tactic.  Or, as an added feature, have missions that can do fast sub-light stuff (ie. speeds 125, 500, 1000) at yellow alert.

Once that is figured out the mission packs can be updated accordingly for dyna play.

NW and I have already agreed that the final warp-out disengagment speed will be in the 2000 to 3000 range (ie. player won't really notice the difference at these speeds). It's whether we want the sub-warp speeds of (125, 343, 500, 1000) with ship at yellow alert that we need input on.  If we all decided that the non-Andro player cannot disengage greater than 31 speeds, then once engaged it won't really matter if the mission does a NW staggered speed warp-out or a EEK more-instantaneous TNG-like warp-out.

Warp Speed should be fast like 3000.

I don't think fast sub-liht is needed.

I would set the conditions so this can be triggered nearly any time with a time delay.  Rules can police this, I'm ciurrently of the opinion that Waro should not be allowed to be used at all "tacticly" as there are too many potential abuses that we'll never catch them all.

For Andros, I would like there to be some trigger tat allow limited burtst of Tac warp that does not require yellow alert to simulate the displacement device but since I guess the new download is small, making custom scripts for that setup shouldn't be too bad.

[el-Karnak]

Dave, Karnak and others,how close are we to having a mission pack with the Warp Disengaement? 

Has a concenus been reached as to the criteria for Warp Speed?   This must be the same for all misisons regardless of the scripter.

let me know 

Need Server Admin Input here:

We need some firm and fast rules on what we all want to see in warp disengagement.

For example, just use Huge Maps and give players ability to warp-out at FTL speeds (ie. 3000) to disengage; basically, replacing the "taco-belling across the red-line" tactic.  Or, as an added feature, have missions that can do fast sub-light stuff (ie. speeds 125, 500, 1000) at yellow alert.

Once that is figured out the mission packs can be updated accordingly for dyna play.

NW and I have already agreed that the final warp-out disengagment speed will be in the 2000 to 3000 range (ie. player won't really notice the difference at these speeds). It's whether we want the sub-warp speeds of (125, 343, 500, 1000) with ship at yellow alert that we need input on.  If we all decided that the non-Andro player cannot disengage greater than 31 speeds, then once engaged it won't really matter if the mission does a NW staggered speed warp-out or a EEK more-instantaneous TNG-like warp-out.

Warp Speed should be fast like 3000.

I don't think fast sub-liht is needed.

I would set the conditions so this can be triggered nearly any time with a time delay.  Rules can police this, I'm ciurrently of the opinion that Waro should not be allowed to be used at all "tacticly" as there are too many potential abuses that we'll never catch them all.

For Andros, I would like there to be some trigger tat allow limited burtst of Tac warp that does not require yellow alert to simulate the displacement device but since I guess the new download is small, making custom scripts for that setup shouldn't be too bad.

OK, I will start making a EEK warp-out enabled mission pack that has the following features:

• Huge maps that would take a ship at speed 31 about 15 minutes to exit w/o warp-out
• Setup a delay timer for warp-out like the game's self-destruct 20 seconds time-down with notifications every 5 seconds
• Ship warp-outs at speed 3000 and goes to immutable green alert status.
• Ship must be capable of speed 23 in order to engage warp drive.
• oh yeah, fix time warp thingie too.

For future Andro ships, we can use speed 3000 to 9000 limited burst warp speed that followed the rules of the DisDev in SFB. Basically, the warp burst time period would only equal the time it takes to go X number of 10k km. hexes according to SFB DisDev rules when device is used by the Andro ship. It will look pretty instantaneous to the human eye.

[NuclearWessels]

...

OK, I will start making a EEK warp-out enabled mission pack that has the following features:

• Huge maps that would take a ship at speed 31 about 15 minutes to exit w/o warp-out
• Setup a delay timer for warp-out like the game's self-destruct 20 seconds time-down with notifications every 5 seconds
• Ship warp-outs at speed 3000 and goes to immutable green alert status.
• Ship must be capable of speed 23 in order to engage warp drive.
• oh yeah, fix time warp thingie too.

For future Andro ships, we can use speed 3000 to 9000 limited burst warp speed that followed the rules of the DisDev in SFB. Basically, the warp burst time period would only equal the time it takes to go X number of 10k km. hexes according to SFB DisDev rules when device is used by the Andro ship. It will look pretty instantaneous to the human eye.

Sounds good to me - I'll start tweaking things to match.

dave

[FPF-DieHard]

...

OK, I will start making a EEK warp-out enabled mission pack that has the following features:

• Huge maps that would take a ship at speed 31 about 15 minutes to exit w/o warp-out
• Setup a delay timer for warp-out like the game's self-destruct 20 seconds time-down with notifications every 5 seconds
• Ship warp-outs at speed 3000 and goes to immutable green alert status.
• Ship must be capable of speed 23 in order to engage warp drive.
• oh yeah, fix time warp thingie too.

For future Andro ships, we can use speed 3000 to 9000 limited burst warp speed that followed the rules of the DisDev in SFB. Basically, the warp burst time period would only equal the time it takes to go X number of 10k km. hexes according to SFB DisDev rules when device is used by the Andro ship. It will look pretty instantaneous to the human eye.

Sounds good to me - I'll start tweaking things to match.

dave

Could you gys also figure out how to get wyour scripts to trigger with equal frequency?   

[NuclearWessels]

Could you gys also figure out how to get wyour scripts to trigger with equal frequency?   

Yeah, but what kind of challenges would that leave for the lazy admins??? 

dave

[GDA-S'Cipio]

• Huge maps that would take a ship at speed 31 about 15 minutes to exit w/o warp-out
• Setup a delay timer for warp-out like the game's self-destruct 20 seconds time-down with notifications every 5 seconds
• Ship warp-outs at speed 3000 and goes to immutable green alert status.
• Ship must be capable of speed 23 in order to engage warp drive.
• oh yeah, fix time warp thingie too.

For future Andro ships, we can use speed 3000 to 9000 limited burst warp speed that followed the rules of the DisDev in SFB. Basically, the warp burst time period would only equal the time it takes to go X number of 10k km. hexes according to SFB DisDev rules when device is used by the Andro ship. It will look pretty instantaneous to the human eye.

Hey, I really like the timer thingy and the immutable green alert status.  Speed 3000 is cool too, along with the maps that take 15 minutes to exit at normal speed.

I'm not sure this has been brought up before but, with the map sizes, do you three realize how many AI-at-the-border problems you are about to solve?     At last, fighters and PF's need not fear "breaking" near the big red line in space.

Can I be bold enough to offer one more (last minute) suggestion?  A warp requirement of speed 23 means that there are some ships, like the War Eagle, which will never be able to disengage.  (Not even by crossing the red line manually, since it's max speed of 21 makes that 15 minute crawl more like, what, 25?)

I understand you guys have discovered that you can't recover the health of the engines, so you can't use 1/2 power as a requirement.

What if you set the speed limit to 15 instead of 23.  (Stay with me for a second.....) That would sort of fit in with the SFB rule that you had to have half your warp power, or 15 engine boxes, whichever was lower.  You probably wouldn't have too many cases of ships at 15 getting away that would not have gotten away with a 23 requirement, since any ship unable to go much faster than 15 with shields off will probably have a rough unshielded 30 seconds anyway.  However, the War Eagle could disengage when undamaged.

(Unless you want to be really fair with the War Eagle and let ships disengage at speed 10, since that is the WE's half warp power point; but I'm thinking there is some resistance to lowering the speed.  What say you?)

-S'Cipio

[bca11]

What about the asteroids?

If you move fast and you can't steer, will it not make it impossible to disengage from a rock map?

 

[NuclearWessels]

What about the asteroids?

If you move fast and you can't steer, will it not make it impossible to disengage from a rock map?

 

Actually, that would be kinda realistic - no way you're really going to jump to warp in the middle of an asteroid field ... but I've set up the asteroid generators on mine so they thin out a ways from the center, so you can actually find a clear area to jump from/through.

Of course, if the admins like, I can undo that -- effectively making asteroid hexes on the server areas that you can't quickly disengage from... but that's another kettle of fish

dave

[NuclearWessels]

...

Can I be bold enough to offer one more (last minute) suggestion?  A warp requirement of speed 23 means that there are some ships, like the War Eagle, which will never be able to disengage.  (Not even by crossing the red line manually, since it's max speed of 21 makes that 15 minute crawl more like, what, 25?)

I understand you guys have discovered that you can't recover the health of the engines, so you can't use 1/2 power as a requirement.
...

I've got no objections to dropping the required disengagement speed. 

Any comments from other admins??????

Actually, now that I've stuck in the custom ship picking/analysis routines I can determine the maximum speed of a healthy ship, so I could always just halve that as another possibility.

dave

[GDA-S'Cipio]

Actually, now that I've stuck in the custom ship picking/analysis routines I can determine the maximum speed of a healthy ship, so I could always just halve that as another possibility.

dave

 



-S'Cipio

[Dfly]

...

Can I be bold enough to offer one more (last minute) suggestion?  A warp requirement of speed 23 means that there are some ships, like the War Eagle, which will never be able to disengage.  (Not even by crossing the red line manually, since it's max speed of 21 makes that 15 minute crawl more like, what, 25?)

I understand you guys have discovered that you can't recover the health of the engines, so you can't use 1/2 power as a requirement.
...

I've got no objections to dropping the required disengagement speed. 

Any comments from other admins??????

Actually, now that I've stuck in the custom ship picking/analysis routines I can determine the maximum speed of a healthy ship, so I could always just halve that as another possibility.

dave

Sounds great, oh mighty NetGod

[el-Karnak]

What about the asteroids?

If you move fast and you can't steer, will it not make it impossible to disengage from a rock map?

 

Yeah, I thought about that. Basically, any asteroid terrain mission will keep the original asteroid area and transpose it on the bigger map. So, you fly your way out of the asteroid field into empty space which would be equivalent to flying to the red-line in the current missions.  Once you are in empty space then you can safely warp-out.


Note: I looked up the common sizes of the asteroid belt in our solar system in my freshman Astronomy course textbook from College, and the amount of cubic space spanned by the belt would be more than enough to encompass any of the big maps of the warp-out missions. But, sometimes you have to just change science factual things for better gameplay. There are just a lot of itty, bitty pocket asteroid belts in the missions. So, sayeth the EEK Q entity and so say we all.  

 I also noticed that some nebulas can span light-years in distance so all the maps would need to have nebula covering every hex.

[NuclearWessels]

Okeedokey ... the assorted changes are in place for the warp-disengagement missions.

They're available in http://www3.telus.net/NuclearWessels/sfc/downloads/EDWarpPatrols.exe

Keep an eye out for weird ship placement or oddball matchups, but otherwise they're hopefully in ok shape.

A few notes on the warp disengagement
 - it uses pseudo-SFB rules for minimum speed to jump (in SFB you need to be travelling at best speed with at least half your engines or 15 warp boxes, whichever is less, so I compute what speed that would mean for your ship and use that speed as the requirement)
 - disengagement is done by getting to (at least) your minimum required speed and switching to yellow alert, then wait for 30 seconds or so til it accelerates you to speed 3k and drops you to green alert
 - there is a chance your ship will breakdown if you take any damage at that speed, dumping you to speed 0 with a bunch of extra damage
 - drone users might manage to sneak off one parting shot, but I think I closed all the other warp speed exploits (I'm probably wrong, lemme know )
 - the map is roughly 2500x2500, so it should usually only take 10-20 seconds to escape using the disengagement speeds

EDIT:: Oh bugger!  I forgot to include the catch that you can't warp out in the first two minutes ...OK, corrected and reposted.

It's just two missions, Met_EDDisengagePlayer.scr, Met_EDDisengageEnemy.scr, but as discussed earlier it effectively incorporates planet/base assaults and defenses.  (Though these two do not support destructible bases for the server map, I'll need to put together a seperate script for that.)

I'll get around to big-map/warpifying the specialty missions over the next couple of months - convoy raids/escorts, surveys/scans, ambushes, shipyard raids, etc etc.

dave

[Riskyllama]

- disengagement is done by getting to (at least) your minimum required speed and switching to yellow alert, then wait for 30 seconds or so til it accelerates you to speed 3k and drops you to green alert
- there is a chance your ship will breakdown if you take any damage at that speed, dumping you to speed 0 with a bunch of extra damage

 even if shields are up(assuming a yellow alert jump)?

[NuclearWessels]

Yep, your shields only stay up until you actually jump - then you're down to green alert anyway.

Clarification: if you're hit while you're at the 3k speed you have a chance of breakdown, not while you're waiting for the jump to take place.

dave

[Lepton]

Scripts seem to be working fine for me.