[Darkhill]

I don't know if you guys have this problem, but something that has plagued IA is Xwings can't hit anything.  Its because of the wide spread of the lasers on the model.  Have mostly fixed it by adding some code to do auto convergence but its not a perfect solution.  Just wondering if this happens to you and found a way to get around it.

[Black Wolf]

How would you get around it without convergence? Seriously, there's no way. WMCoolmon (I think) put weapon convergence into the SCP some time ago - it will be static, probably set to converge at 500 odd metres.

[Darkhill]

Unless your TIE models are bigger then ours you won't hit a ship under 500 meters (at least this is the problem I was having).  I was just wondering if you were doing something to your models to get around it (playing with normals or something).  Or did SCP ever make changes to how the game handles ship/laser collisions?  A cheap way to get around it was to use bounding spheres for collision detection instead of the default way.

[chief1983]

Ha, I just requested an auto convergence feature on the SCP forums today.  How extensive is your code?  Here's a copy of my request, is it anything like what I described?

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,45201.0.html

Honestly though, those ships not being able to hit anything may just have to be a drawback that has to be dealt with by the pilot.  Beef them up in other areas to make them more balanced maybe.

[Black Wolf]

Link doesn't work for me.

Also, autoconvergence is non cannon for SW - the X Wing books explicitly state that theA Wing is the only fighter with swivelling cannons, and that convergence points for lasers were set before a mission. The static laser convergence we already have should be sufficient.

[chief1983]

Well then, how are those convergences set?  I haven't seen a place to edit a static convergence yet.

[Herra Tohtori]

I don't know if you guys have this problem, but something that has plagued IA is Xwings can't hit anything.  Its because of the wide spread of the lasers on the model.  Have mostly fixed it by adding some code to do auto convergence but its not a perfect solution.  Just wondering if this happens to you and found a way to get around it.

My suggestion would be to increase the size of shield bubble somewhat. That's how they did it in XvT. There's no convergence, and usually quad linked lasers is the best way to hit the target at least with some of the cannons. But as long as the target has shields, it's not necessary to hit the hull area of the target to reduce the shields. Hitting TIE Fighters is supposed to be difficult.

Obviously if you want XWA-like behaviour, auto-converging lasers are an acceptable solution. I myself would prefer XvT way of things. Usually you can get at least one side of the lasers to hit, full four-laser hits require a target at least as big as the wing span of the X-Wing, and some good aiming of course.

Also, how fast are your craft going? 100 m/s or 100 km/h? In X-Wing games I think their speed is announced in km/h, so the fighters are actually very slow in those games...

[MetalDestroyer]

My suggestion would be to increase the size of shield bubble somewhat. That's how they did it in XvT. There's no convergence, and usually quad linked lasers is the best way to hit the target at least with some of the cannons. But as long as the target has shields, it's not necessary to hit the hull area of the target to reduce the shields. Hitting TIE Fighters is supposed to be difficult.

Obviously if you want XWA-like behaviour, auto-converging lasers are an acceptable solution. I myself would prefer XvT way of things. Usually you can get at least one side of the lasers to hit, full four-laser hits require a target at least as big as the wing span of the X-Wing, and some good aiming of course.

Also, how fast are your craft going? 100 m/s or 100 km/h? In X-Wing games I think their speed is announced in km/h, so the fighters are actually very slow in those games...

Well, the fact is Tie Fighters don't have shield so If we want to hit them, we should increase a little the laser radius.

About the craft speed, in X wing vs Tie Fighter, the speed are in mlt/s or something like that but not in 100 km/h nor in meter/s.

[Herra Tohtori]

Actually, I recalled wrong. I did a quick test. Took a TF and flew to >3.0 distance from an installation. Then turned and took the time (approximately) it took for the craft to get from 3.0 distance to 1.0 distance. Speed was announced as constant 100 units during the test. Results:

s = approx. 2.0 units (I suppose those are kilometres, judging by the size of the ships)
t = approx. 19 seconds, and because I was using just a simple wrist watch to define the time there may be some inaccuracy.

By these parametres, the craft's speed was

v = s / t = 2.0 units / 19 seconds = 0.105 units per second.

If the distance is indeed announced in kilometres, then the speed of the craft should've been about 105 m/s. Which is well within error bars of the time measurement - I think it's safe to say that the speed indicator in the XvT game announces speed in metres per second. And thereby it's well within borders to directly convert the ship stats from the old game to FS2 metres per seconds.

It might say the speed is something in craft database, but if the empiric test shows something I'd rather trust it.

Here's some interesting stuff about the "MGLT" unit, and some others too.


And yeah, TF's have no shields in which case the solution to increase the shield bubble size won't work...

But I actually think that hitting TF's is supposed to be difficult so it's not automatcally a bad thing if it's hard. That's why the TF can have such weak armour. It can take two good starfighter laser hits in XvT, no more. Grazing shots it can withstand perhaps three.

Just how hard exactly is it to hit the TIE Fighters in an X-Wing? Is it like "impossible" or just "takes a lot of practice" type of difficult?

[Darkhill]

For one thing people are used to the old games where I think they used bounding boxes for hitzones.  A TIE Fighter may have been the hardest to hit but it wasn't that hard.  The major complaint with out little multiplayer demo was you can't hit anything when flying the TIE Interceptor.  Flying 10 minutes to score one kill between two people is a little unacceptable for me.

Both ships sitting still with convergence of 500m and you'll never hit a ship if your range is less then that.  I can be less then 5m from a ship and the lasers will go right around it.  In Xwing Alliance some of the ships have an auto convergence feature you can turn on.  What it actually does I don't know.  Its worth not being quite cannon if it makes the game a little more enjoyable for anybody to play.

The code is less then 20 lines, wouldn't be that many more to do add the nearest hostile to the distance.

[MarkN]

Anyone though about the fact that it would be even more difficult to hit a fighter (or a Nebulon-B Frigate's neck for that matter) with a B-Wing (with the big weapons at the ends of the wings, again.
And yes, it would be hard, not impossible to hit a TIE Fighter with an X-wing. It could be done.

[Herra Tohtori]

In Xwing Alliance some of the ships have an auto convergence feature you can turn on.  What it actually does I don't know.

It converges the lasers to current distance of the target, but the aim still keeps on the centerline so it doesn't wobble around like the lasers in Trench Run (in the movie)...

Anyway, it does indeed sound a little unacceptable to have such bad chances of hitting as you describe...

[Darkhill]

In Xwing Alliance some of the ships have an auto convergence feature you can turn on.  What it actually does I don't know.

It converges the lasers to current distance of the target, but the aim still keeps on the centerline so it doesn't wobble around like the lasers in Trench Run (in the movie)...

Anyway, it does indeed sound a little unacceptable to have such bad chances of hitting as you describe...

This is what is what my coding change does.  The point where they come together is calculated each time a laser is fired.  It can look a bit odd if say a craft was 200m away and you fired into empy space, the lasers will cross at 200m.

[brandx0]

I'm all for static convergence myself, considering it is Star Wars canon that this occurs.  IIRC most X-Wing pilots set their convergence to about 150-200m  Dogfights are very close in SW

[Darkhill]

I'm not coming here saying auto convergence is the way to go.  But this project has been going on longer then mine has so this issue has to have come up before.

[brandx0]

Though also consider that this mod has practically restarted from scratch

[chief1983]

Yes, most of the original staff are gone, or working on other projects having lost interest hear 

But supposedly static convergence is already in the engine, but I believe it is set in the POF, unless I read the wiki wrong.  I have no idea how to set the normal in the POF, as POF-CS specifically states that there's no need to be able to set it, as there wasn't when it was made.  I would at least like to see the convergence being able to be set in the table, if it's not already like that.  I could live with static convergence, as long as I can figure out how to use it.

[Darkhill]

At least somebody has played around with some Xwing in game?  KARMA(?) had a good looking model at one point, anybody but him take it for a combat spin?  The problem could just as easily be on my end.  Its quite mading to be less then 5m from a ship and have your lasers go right around it.

You can play with weapon normals in Modelview.  But as far as I can tell they aren't used anywhere in the game.  When the game creates the laser it just uses the forward vector of the firing craft to set the direction they travel.

The thing about static convergence at 200m (or 500) is that it was a common thing to strafe enemy capital ships from near a klick a way in the TIE Fighter games.

[BS403]

You set the normals in PCS/ modview then you add the flag "gun convergance" IIRC to the table.

[chief1983]

The PCS I'm using doesn't allow setting normals for gun firepoints.  It says it's not necessary.  I wasn't aware modelview could set normals though, guess I'm still learning it.  Dang, this is gonna be one bugger of a calculation to do.  3d math for the lose.  I think it would be nicer if there was a table variable we could use instead, and the engine did the calculation, instead of making us calculate a normal for every ship by hand.  Then we could also adjust the normals with ease.