[QuantumDelta]

I am assuming with a different set of tactics I might be able to fix the problem, but even then it'll be much harder than it was previously I imagine.


The only reason I'm really mentioning it is because it looks ugly as hell, the side beams at the bottom of the tower can shoot through the ship, if you'll notice in my playthrough; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFneFypTgmM
The Hades tower and nose beams are dead shortly after the Soyokaze warps in, but the side ones are still up and never fire (not wholely sure why the one I kill doesn't fire, but meh).
On the version of STR currently out, the Soyokaze gets vapourised almost immediately by both the port and starboard tower beams (both clipping horribly through a large part of the Hades hull), unless you're carrying bombs or maybe stilettos and a disruptor / are carrying a support ship around behind you, it's probably unlikely that the Soyokaze can survive, let alone additional attacks from the bombers that the Hades launches after... On insane, at least, I think this mission may have just become impossible ;P
I'm not entirely sure though, I will be playing it to death for the next few days until I've decided though


Edit;
Video evidences;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWeOnTTUnP4 (May take a few minutes to up/process, I gotta get going to work though!)

[Goober5000]

Hmm.  Could the turret FOVs be incorrect?  This sounds like a question for mjn.mixael.

[mjn.mixael]

No, it's a question for VA.

[QuantumDelta]

Slowly becoming more convinced this is actually impossible on insane ;D
If you take a load out capable of saving the Soyokaze you basically forfeit the rest of the mission..

[Klaustrophobia]

i'm guessing you don't survive very long in a bomber on insane?

[QuantumDelta]

Not in a heavy bomber, but you do okay in a light bomber with Stilettos, after that though you struggle because if you focus on the turrets rather than the lokis at the start almost all of your wingmen are dead by the time the Soyokaze comes in, at which point it becomes very hard to keep up with the incoming fighters/bombers ;p

[Vasudan Admiral]

Ok I think I've pretty much got this one figured, except there's something weird going on too. The Hades will never fire more than 2 of its 3 in-line-of-sight beam cannons at the Soyakaze. In the retail model, it picks the tower beam and the forward beam and does not use the starboard beam. In the HTL model, it fires a single shot out of the tower beam and no more, whilst the forward and starboard beams are then the main source of fire. (Once it gets into line of sight with the starboard beam)

I can't find any rational explanation for it not using all three beams except that there might be some artificial limit somewhere. :\

Anyway, to fix the beam through hull problem, I've defined the "fire on target" flag in the table for all the beam turret subsystems. This seems to have worked perfectly. I'll commit it to SVN in a moment.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Oops - seems to have been a FOV issue after all. I just mucked up my testing of it! The HTL Hades can now fire all three beam cannons at the Soyakaze, but the retail one will still only fire the tower and forward cannons.

So, we now have the question of do we actually want all 3 in-line-of-sight beams to be firing? Currently the retail AND HTL model will only fire 2 of them. Now, i CAN make it so both models will happily fire all 3 cannons, but that is a fairly big balance change right there.
Also, modifying both models to allow them to fire all 3 beams will involve changing both models away from retail - modifying the FOV of the problem turrets to 180° as opposed to the retail 160º. This also may or may not be what we want.

[QuantumDelta]

It /might/ be possible with all three firing on insane, but I'm not sure ;o

[Vasudan Admiral]

I was trying on insane, and it doesn't seem tooooo hard - you can knock out the forward and tower guns pretty quick, and then work on hammering the starboard one before the Soyakaze gets into its line of sight which takes a little while.

[Goober5000]

Wait a minute, are you saying the HTL model's FOV is 180 but retail's is 160?  If so, the solution seems obvious -- change the HTL's FOV to 160.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Nono, currently the HTL model's main guns are all 160°, but for some reason it still exhibits slightly different behaviour to the retail model in that mission, and I don't know why. However, if I set the HTL model's tower gun to 180° and the retail models side guns to 180°, then their behaviour will match, even though their FOVs don't.

[Goober5000]

Hmm.  Could the turrets be slightly differently positioned in space on the HTL model?

Does the model have, or need, the don't-fire-through-hull flag?

[Vasudan Admiral]

The differences are very tiny - like a couple of meters or something. I think it's more likely to be something to do with the fact that the HTL Hades uses multipart guns where the retail uses single part guns, but even that doesn't make much sense. Really - there is just nothing that should be making a difference.

I can't see any reason the retail one doesn't fire its side beams at the Soyakaze while the HTL one does, and I can't see any reason the retail one does fire its tower beam while the HTL one does not. There's nothing I can do to make them more similar in terms of the models, but if you want I can make them behave the same way at least by the aforementioned FOV changes?

Anyway, no the "don't-fire-through-hull" flag shouldn't be necessary since the "fire-on-target" flag should cover that already.

[Klaustrophobia]

granted i know next to nothing about coding or modding, but i find it strage that there would EVER be a need for a flag for "don't fire through hull."  one would kinda expect that to be the standard behavior.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Haha, well it was never really a concern for retail, since definable turret fields of view did the trick 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% you are just unlikely to notice. Unfortunately implementing it as a standard behaviour affects gameplay too much, since ships like the hecate would do a lot less shooting (it keeps shooting through its silly side fin things), and the colossus was incapable of firing forwards (I think the beams clipped the turrets themselves). Hence, it's a flag used for only cases where absolutely necessary.

[Cyborg17]

I definitely noticed all the time, and I was pretty annoyed by it. 

[Aardwolf]

So uh... am I the only one who suspects maybe it's got to do with that they changed from single-part turrets to multi-parts?

Edit: VA, you were too quick to dismiss it! That's almost certainly the problem.

[Vasudan Admiral]

I'm more concerned with how the stupid turrets are able to ignore the limited FOV code AND the 'fire on target' flag on those multi-parts, resulting in the portside beam being capable of shooting backwards through the ship, but if you can find where in the code the single-part to multi-part change would make a difference to anything please do tell.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Oh actually no it can't be just that change - the tower cannon (which is multi-part on retail AND the HTL model) ALSO behaves differently between the retail model and HTL. The retail model fires it normally, while the HTL one does not, or only fires once. It's not just the side cannons that are misbehaving. :\