Author Topic: UW Act I Demo Release  (Read 126570 times)

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Offline HelDM

  • 24
FreeSpace != reality. In the Plato escort missions you can't target the Shivans even though you can see them with your unaided eye.

This actually made a great deal of sense to me.

The Shivans are really, really different. Their ships don't even seem to obey the same rules of movement yours do. They evidence weapons and technologies nothing like the stuff you have at that moment. You've never even seen a bomb at that point in the game; those the Shaitans launch ought to be the first.  Your fighter's sensor system software is designed to track the emissions and sensor returns of Vasudan and perhaps Terran craft. The Shivans are nothing like either of them. They could have an emissions profile so radically different from Terran or Vasudan ships that your sensor software just doesn't know what they are and writes them off as spurious signals. (This is offered as one of the reasons in a Command Briefing.)

They may not even scan to active sensors at all. Their shields, after all, are quite capable of absorbing EM energy, as witnessed by the total ineffectiveness of your ML-16 chemical lasers, which means you might not even be able to get a radar/ladar return off them due to the signal being absorbed by the shield. This may also work both ways and tamp down a Shivan ship's own emissions, frustrating the task of passive sensor software that's not designed to track those emissions already.

Or the Shivans, not being human after all, could have some exotic form of ECM that your ship's software and sensor gear just isn't equipped to handle because nobody human ever thought of it. You don't have the tools to beat their ECM gear, not the correct programming or the correct sensors, or both. (This is also mentioned as one of the reasons in a Command Briefing.)

They could fix this, easily apparently, but we aren't really sure how. It might be that they simply configured the sensor and target gear to look for areas where background radiation did not exist to locate Shivan ships; points of black against the light, betrayed by the shield systems that at first protected them detection. It might be that Shivan ships have totally different emissions profiles from Terran and Vasudan craft, and they simply needed to upload the proper data so your software recognizes Shivan ships. It might be that new programming defeated Shivan ECM.

So all in all, yes, the primative sensors thing was rather dumb this time around.

But if it at first contact with the Vasudans you can't lock them up either, that would be totally justified. And I won't bat an eye.

I completely agree. Targeting someone means that your on-board computer has enough data about that ship/station/whatever to give you feedback on it's HP, it's systems etc. At least, this is the logical explanation. This is even more true in the case of not being able to target something at all (say a lot of missions in TVW). You computer simply isn't equipped to "see" ships while your eyes certainly can. (hence the phrase "there is no better computer then the human mind" hehe)

Consider it being a modern navigation system in your car with no satelite connection. You have to do with the maps that are provided by the software of the little computer. if you go to a place that the nav system doesn't support, you drive blind. You can upload new maps to make it better.

Same goes for Terran fighter computers. They can't target if the profile of the unit that's gonna be targeted is not uploaded on your comp. (obviously targets who have practically the same configuration show up to, but that targeting data can be incorrect at some points, because subsystems could be wildly different)
Admirer... or something like that

 

Offline Mobius

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I really have to agree with ngtmr1 here.

Now pilots have full computer support, I hard believe things will become WWI-like in a few hundred years.
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Same goes for Terran fighter computers. They can't target if the profile of the unit that's gonna be targeted is not uploaded on your comp. (obviously targets who have practically the same configuration show up to, but that targeting data can be incorrect at some points, because subsystems could be wildly different)

    Eh, if you guys want to rationalize it away for the sake of the game that's cool . . . but in the real world there would be no stealth.

 
   I don't think the lack of targeting is that big a deal.

 

Offline HelDM

  • 24
it's not a big deal. I actually think it has a great flavor and really shows how far terran tech has come in FS. I'm only trying to rationalise it for story's sake ;)

Admirer... or something like that

 

Offline NGTM-1R

  • I reject your reality and substitute my own
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  • Syndral Active. 0410.
Eh, if you guys want to rationalize it away for the sake of the game that's cool . . . but in the real world there would be no stealth.

But that's just it, I'm not claim they were stealth, I'm claiming that your ship's sensors and softwear simply couldn't recognize them by hook or by crook.
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story

 
Eh, if you guys want to rationalize it away for the sake of the game that's cool . . . but in the real world there would be no stealth.

But that's just it, I'm not claim they were stealth, I'm claiming that your ship's sensors and softwear simply couldn't recognize them by hook or by crook.


           Well if your ships sensors can't lock onto something they can't recognize they're quite honestly pretty stupid.

 

Offline Jeff Vader

  • The Back of the Hero!
  • 212
  • Bwahaha
Eh, if you guys want to rationalize it away for the sake of the game that's cool . . . but in the real world there would be no stealth.

But that's just it, I'm not claim they were stealth, I'm claiming that your ship's sensors and softwear simply couldn't recognize them by hook or by crook.


           Well if your ships sensors can't lock onto something they can't recognize they're quite honestly pretty stupid.
Are you also stating that a virus scanner is stupid if it can't identify a virus if it doesn't have an entry on it in the virus database? Surely some heuristics can be applied to ships' sensors, but they only work so far. We don't even actually know just how different the Shivan engines are from their Terran and Vasudan counterparts.
23:40 < achillion > EveningTea: ass
23:40 < achillion > wait no
23:40 < achillion > evilbagel: ass
23:40 < EveningTea > ?
23:40 < achillion > 2-letter tab complete failure

14:08 < achillion > there's too much talk of butts and dongs in here
14:08 < achillion > the level of discourse has really plummeted
14:08 < achillion > Let's talk about politics instead
14:08 <@The_E > butts and dongs are part of #hard-light's brand now
14:08 <@The_E > well
14:08 <@The_E > EvilBagel's brand, at least

01:06 < T-Rog > welp
01:07 < T-Rog > I've got to take some very strong antibiotics
01:07 < achillion > penis infection?
01:08 < T-Rog > Chlamydia
01:08 < achillion > O.o
01:09 < achillion > well
01:09 < achillion > I guess that happens
01:09 < T-Rog > at least it's curable
01:09 < achillion > yeah
01:10 < T-Rog > I take it you weren't actually expecting it to be a penis infection
01:10 < achillion > I was not

14:04 < achillion > Sometimes the way to simplify is to just have a habit and not think about it too much
14:05 < achillion > until stuff explodes
14:05 < achillion > then you start thinking about it

22:16 < T-Rog > I don't know how my gf would feel about Jewish conspiracy porn

15:41 <-INFO > EveningTea [[email protected]] has joined #hard-light
15:47 < EvilBagel> butt
15:51 < Achillion> yes
15:53 <-INFO > EveningTea [[email protected]] has quit [Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client]

18:53 < Achillion> Dicks are fun

21:41 < MatthTheGeek> you can't spell assassin without two asses

20:05 < sigtau> i'm mining titcoins from now on

00:31 < oldlaptop> Drunken antisocial educated freezing hicks with good Internet == Finland stereotype

11:46 <-INFO > Kobrar [[email protected]] has joined #hard-light
11:50 < achtung> Surely you've heard of DVDA
11:50 < achtung> Double Vaginal Double ANal
11:51 < Kobrar> ...
11:51 <-INFO > Kobrar [[email protected]] has left #hard-light []

 
Are you also stating that a virus scanner is stupid if it can't identify a virus if it doesn't have an entry on it in the virus database? Surely some heuristics can be applied to ships' sensors, but they only work so far. We don't even actually know just how different the Shivan engines are from their Terran and Vasudan counterparts.

      Virus Scanner?
      Radar in the 1940s detected a plane whether it was a German Fighter, or Bomber, or British plane , or American or Italian or Russia or who cares what else. Whether their primary means of detection or not, Terran fightercraft must have some sort of heat sensing device (if they put a heat seeking in a rockeye (or FS1 equivelant), they can put something similar on a fighter), and if they do, then the Shivan ship would be a burning torch in a pitch black night. Even if they use some fancy grav engines, the ship itself is still going to be considerable warmer than space. (ie, space 3 degrees kelvin . . . compared to room temperature being about 200+ degrees kelvin for the ship).
      It's not about tracking a particular silhouette or configuration, it's about tracking an obviously artificial object.

 

Offline Jeff Vader

  • The Back of the Hero!
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  • Bwahaha
But can we be sure that the sensors on ships have been designed so that they track heat sources? It is still possible that those sensors were "stupid" and only functioned by tracking engine emissions, which caused the Shivan ships with their weird designs to be somewhat untrackable. The radar obviously did something else, because you could still see those blinking blips on it.
23:40 < achillion > EveningTea: ass
23:40 < achillion > wait no
23:40 < achillion > evilbagel: ass
23:40 < EveningTea > ?
23:40 < achillion > 2-letter tab complete failure

14:08 < achillion > there's too much talk of butts and dongs in here
14:08 < achillion > the level of discourse has really plummeted
14:08 < achillion > Let's talk about politics instead
14:08 <@The_E > butts and dongs are part of #hard-light's brand now
14:08 <@The_E > well
14:08 <@The_E > EvilBagel's brand, at least

01:06 < T-Rog > welp
01:07 < T-Rog > I've got to take some very strong antibiotics
01:07 < achillion > penis infection?
01:08 < T-Rog > Chlamydia
01:08 < achillion > O.o
01:09 < achillion > well
01:09 < achillion > I guess that happens
01:09 < T-Rog > at least it's curable
01:09 < achillion > yeah
01:10 < T-Rog > I take it you weren't actually expecting it to be a penis infection
01:10 < achillion > I was not

14:04 < achillion > Sometimes the way to simplify is to just have a habit and not think about it too much
14:05 < achillion > until stuff explodes
14:05 < achillion > then you start thinking about it

22:16 < T-Rog > I don't know how my gf would feel about Jewish conspiracy porn

15:41 <-INFO > EveningTea [[email protected]] has joined #hard-light
15:47 < EvilBagel> butt
15:51 < Achillion> yes
15:53 <-INFO > EveningTea [[email protected]] has quit [Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client]

18:53 < Achillion> Dicks are fun

21:41 < MatthTheGeek> you can't spell assassin without two asses

20:05 < sigtau> i'm mining titcoins from now on

00:31 < oldlaptop> Drunken antisocial educated freezing hicks with good Internet == Finland stereotype

11:46 <-INFO > Kobrar [[email protected]] has joined #hard-light
11:50 < achtung> Surely you've heard of DVDA
11:50 < achtung> Double Vaginal Double ANal
11:51 < Kobrar> ...
11:51 <-INFO > Kobrar [[email protected]] has left #hard-light []

 

Offline ShadowGorrath

  • Not funny or clever
  • 211
FreeSpace sensors are very different from what you think. They can detect subsystems and aproximate health of them and the ship. Plus it can calculate where to shoot ( lead indicator ) and can show distance with speed at the same time. That's because it's based on ship electronics data ( like in FS1, if I remember right, they said they can't lock onto Shivan ships because of the unknown electronic devices used on them ).

 
FreeSpace sensors are very different from what you think. They can detect subsystems and aproximate health of them and the ship. Plus it can calculate where to shoot ( lead indicator ) and can show distance with speed at the same time. That's because it's based on ship electronics data ( like in FS1, if I remember right, they said they can't lock onto Shivan ships because of the unknown electronic devices used on them ).

     Eh, don't modern aircraft give lead indicators on the HUD as well? What's so different about that? The fact that it knows more about the individual subsystems means it should be more powerful than your basic sensors, further negating the whole "we can't track teh shivans bit". I mean, if at first the computer cant distinguish the subsystems that's fine. But if it can't distinguish the ship from the background of space there's something wrong.

But can we be sure that the sensors on ships have been designed so that they track heat sources? It is still possible that those sensors were "stupid" and only functioned by tracking engine emissions, which caused the Shivan ships with their weird designs to be somewhat untrackable. The radar obviously did something else, because you could still see those blinking blips on it.

       Eh, you can't be sure of anything. The fact is that under modern technology an observer on Pluto could detect the main drives of the Space Shuttle in orbit around Earth. So I think a heat-related sensor system could likewise pick up a Shivan ship at a mere 150meters. Sensors don't track engine emissions, they track heat from the engine.

       
       The fact is, from my viewpoint, is that the Shivan ships weren't detectable because Volition wanted them to be even more mysterious and more powerful than they are just as the opening cinematic portrays. Likewise, TVWP in my interpretation wants to emphasize how low tech their era is by having the player fly in ships with very crappy sensor systems. Aside from of course, wanting to distinguish their MOD in some way from other mods.

       My one complaint with the sensor system in the TVWP Demo was that, I don't mind having crappy sensors. What I don't like is having to look down at my radar to know if the ship I'm shooting at is friendly or hostile. Basically I would've liked some nation distinguishing markings on the planes, like red stripe for Mars for example, Yellow for Jupiter. As it is, I think there'd be a hell of a lot of friendly fire incidents.

 

Offline Solatar

  • 211
I think the earlier weapons were purposefully weak (somewhere in the tech descriptions) for that reason. Pilots weren't issued more powerful weapons until they gained the situational awareness to not shoot their friendlies.

As far as the markings...I think they just wanted to get the project out the door. Feature creep almost killed it, so it had to stop somewhere (even though the markings would have been great).

 

Offline Admiral Nelson

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I tried putting markings on the craft.  The UV mapping wouldn't allow for it, and so one would have had to add a separate texture a la Ezechiel.  This would have required a modeler and was therefore not going to happen.  As Solatar says, it was time to get something out the door.
If a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

 

Offline Antares

  • 28
  • Author of The Shivan Manifesto
If it'll make you feel better, you can cheat and lock onto 'cloaked' Shivan craft by targeting a friendly unit and then pressing "J" to target the unit that friendly is targeting.

They still show up as "Unknown".  :p
We have returned to continue our purification of this galaxy. It is again your turn to be crushed beneath the great force that is the Antaran army. All your petty squabbling with the other beings in this galaxy is meaningless. The Antaran fleet will destroy you all, one by one. You may not surrender. You cannot win. Your only option is death.

 

Offline hip63

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So now that TBP is done, any chance you guys need an installer guy? ;7

hip63 :p
operator: "So what do you need? Besides a miracle. " hip63: "Games. Lots of Games. "
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Isn't Turey the installer d00d?
Fun while it lasted.

Then bitter.

 

Offline jr2

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He's the online Installer dude.  hip63 is the offline (burn to disc) installer dude.  (Although, admittedly, you can do the same with Turey's... hip63's looks better.  ;)  Good for pimping whatever project you're giving to your friend.  here's a link to his work.  Bleh, I'll quote it here for ya.


With the impending certification of TBP RC2 as being FINAL, I decided it was time to start priming your guys for TBP DVD

The Babylon Project DVD is not just the 3.4b web installer thrown on a disc, oh no, it's much nicer than that.

The DVD not only have an much more advance installer, it will have the latest Campaign Pack plus a whole lot of other goodness too!

First, have a peek at the DVD Main Menu which features B5 theme music with play/pause controls and menu animations:



And here's the ReadMe in a built-in html viewer included on the DVD with working hot links:



On the Extras Menu (not shown) there are nice extras like DirectX, OpenAL, DVD Cover Art and Web Links to related sites.

OK now the DVD installer is much more advanced than the web installer and is all about giving you more control over your install options:





Not shown is the screen that allows you to browse for an install location but fear not, it's there ;)

Coming soon!

hip63 :p

 

Offline CaptJosh

  • 210
Ok, taking on the gripe of stealth in space.

So you could pick up heat in earth orbit clean from Pluto. Great. You can see a blob of heat. I might add that at that range, you'll be seeing where it was HOURS ago, if not over a day. And can you determine anything from it? Not really. Now that aside, could you find out anything at engagement range? No, not really. No significant characteristics, no target data. Maybe you'd get enough for a lead indicator, IF your radar system could lock on. Remember, the lock system is basically radar based. Heat seaking missiles are fire and forget weapons, and you better make damn sure there are no friendlies around near your target, because they're just as likely to get hit by your missile as the enemy.

Thermal imaging (FLIR, etc.) might be useful for tracking a target on the ground, or maybe in a helicopter to helicopter battle, it's pretty damn useless in the middle of a dogfight in fixed or sweepwing aircraft or the space equivalent thereof. Infrared is too long a wavelength to be useful for any more than giving a general idea of the position of a possible target.

So whoever has been complaining, quit *****ing and moaning about stealth being useless in space. So you can't conceal your heat signature. That's not that crucial in making your craft stealthy, so that it can't be locked on to via radar, and so that it's hard to hit. Remember, stealth != a cloaking device. The correct terminology is "low observability." A B-1 Lancer is a low observability aircraft. The B-2 Spirit and F-117A Nighthawk are better at it. The F-22 will be better still, and the F-35 even better. But it's not that they can't be detected, it's that they're very difficult to detect. Even if you see the F-22 it's hard to hit. You have to close to within gun range, somehow avoiding being missiled to death, and then you have to do just like in TVWP here, and guess your lead. Which is exactly what you have to do in the beginning against the Shivans, save one thing. You get enough on your radar to get a vague position, so you at least know about where they are relative to you, like maybe you're getting...oh, a heat signature?

Yeah, the campaign is tough. I like a challenge. So do most the players I've seen comment, it seems. Not every government is going to have top of the line avionics. So maybe the Lunies couldn't afford nice fancy sensor suites at first. I mean, the moon is not exactly resource rich. Granted I haven't played all the way through it yet, but maybe it takes the trade agreement with the Belters to get them the resources it takes to finally get state of the art avionics.

In closing, I would just like to say, it would seem that the complainers are complaining for no other reason to complain. Any arguments I see made are to win, not to learn. This is a mistake. If you can't keep your criticism constructive, keep it to yourself.
CaptJosh

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

 
Ok, taking on the gripe of stealth in space.

So you could pick up heat in earth orbit clean from Pluto. Great. You can see a blob of heat. I might add that at that range, you'll be seeing where it was HOURS ago, if not over a day. And can you determine anything from it? Not really.

        Ah, yes, yes you can. So you read it hours later . . big deal, next second you get the next reading from an hour later, next second another reading etcetera. How long for example, do you think it'll take your ship to travel from Earth to Mars? It depends on the technology, but one thing's certain is that the guys at Pluto will know you're going to Mars LONG before you ever get there.

Quote
Now that aside, could you find out anything at engagement range? No, not really. No significant characteristics, no target data. Maybe you'd get enough for a lead indicator, IF your radar system could lock on. Remember, the lock system is basically radar based. Heat seaking missiles are fire and forget weapons, and you better make damn sure there are no friendlies around near your target, because they're just as likely to get hit by your missile as the enemy.

      So you're saying that a person couldn't create a system to track heat signatures?
      Radar is just sending out stuff and getting it back and reading what comes back. Why couldn't a person just set up something that reads it coming back in the first place?
      And if not heat tracking, what about visual tracking. What a person can't create a computer to track an object in motion?? That's already being done by some computer nerds with too much time on their hands. So you're saying your ship, can't track another ship 200 metres away? Considering that there'd be no need to wait for the radar to bounce back, it would be twice as fast as conventional systems.

Quote
Thermal imaging (FLIR, etc.) might be useful for tracking a target on the ground, or maybe in a helicopter to helicopter battle, it's pretty damn useless in the middle of a dogfight in fixed or sweepwing aircraft or the space equivalent thereof. Infrared is too long a wavelength to be useful for any more than giving a general idea of the position of a possible target. . . . A B-1 Lancer is a low observability aircraft. The B-2 Spirit and F-117A Nighthawk are better at it. The F-22 will be better still, and the F-35 even better. But it's not that they can't be detected, it's that they're very difficult to detect. Even if you see the F-22 it's hard to hit.

           Space has no horizon.
           No ambient heat.
           Anything artificial producing heat will be easily trackable.
           You talk about very difficult to detect? Well space has an ambient heat of like, what 3 degrees kelvin or somesuch. Whereas room temperature for a human is like . . . 200+ degrees kelvin. Bit of a difference is it not? That's not even talking about engines, etcetera. There's nothing difficult about it. You're talking about craft that are designed to reduce radar emissions, who needs radar in space?
       
Quote
So whoever has been complaining, quit *****ing and moaning about stealth being useless in space. So you can't conceal your heat signature. That's not that crucial in making your craft stealthy, so that it can't be locked on to via radar, and so that it's hard to hit. Remember, stealth != a cloaking device.

In closing, I would just like to say, it would seem that the complainers are complaining for no other reason to complain. Any arguments I see made are to win, not to learn. This is a mistake. If you can't keep your criticism constructive, keep it to yourself.


         Eh, you need to read the posts a little more carefully. My argument isn't a criticism of the TVWP at all. I enjoyed it and had no problem with the lack of targetting. Rather:
         People are saying, "oh, waaah, my ship can't lock onto the enemy targets. That's dumb. Even modern day fighters can do that!"
         To which I replied "well Freespace isn't very realistic to begin with, so who cares. If it were realistic there would be no stealth at all, yet the Shivans have stealth and so do FS2 fighters so obviously it's not realistic. Just play the demo and enjoy".

 

Offline CaptJosh

  • 210
Look, yet again, heat signatures wouldn't really give you enough information. You'd know something was there, but you wouldn't know what until you were within visual range. And you wouldn't know if it was an enemy until it started shooting at you, or it failed to answer some sort of challenge. So you could track a ship going to mars clean from Pluto. What does that have to do with being able to use a heat signature in the middle of a dogfight? At high relative speeds with shooting going on, you need something with a shorter wavelength to get the data fast enough to be useful. I'm aware of the supposed ambient temperature of space. Even so, you've got a heat signature, and nothing else. It doesn't tell you anything about your target except location, and maybe velocity. Doesn't tell you who they are. "Captain, infrared scans detecting a heat signature in sector 2, on course x by y by z." That's all you've got. Are they friendly? Hostile? You don't know. Heat doesn't tell you jack.

As for visual tracking, are you telling me that on a combat spacecraft, you're going to try to put cameras all over it so that it can use image recognition to do that? I don't think so. Gun cameras are about all you're going to do, and they, generally speaking, just record things. They're not connected to the flight computer, which has much more important things to be doing than crunching numbers from images. Yes, people are making image recognition systems now, for LOW SPEED or STATIONARY objects. Processing video data is processor intensive. Even if you use thermal imaging in space to bypass the issue of visually being hard to see beyond combat range, you're still talking about something that is hard for a computer. Not only would it be tracking the enemy, but it has to factor in your changing speeds, your maneuvers, and how that changes the lead on the target, and thermal imaging, even in space, is not going to be particularly precise. Plus you still have to have a way of tagging specific craft as friendly or enemy, so you still need something besides the infrared, which really isn't going to give you a useful silhouette. Again, the wavelength is too long.

So maybe by the time of or near FreeSpace they've solved that. Maybe not. Maybe even with all their fancy tech. they can't fit enough of a computer on a small craft to handle that. Nothing is really said about it, but if these fighters have fusion power plants, they have to have a LOT of radiation shielding, plus the hull has to be fairly heavy as well, to survive stellar radiation plus radiation from heavy weapons. Doesn't leave a lot of room for the on-board computer. Plus, any combat pilot will tell you that if you make it so they have to pay attention to too many guages, dials, buttons etc., they'll die. So, given your usual military mentality, such systems are not going to be included as they are not effective, and they just create more cockpit clutter. Besides, despite the comments in game about Shivans being hard to detect, they're not. They're hard to track, yes, and at first impossible to get a lock on. Probably due to some level of EM interference from their shields. If it was active jamming we probably couldn't break it, given the tech superiority. You can fire heat seekers at them if they're in your reticle, and those will track, and even hit, but they don't deliver enough punch to deal with the shields.

BTW, Akalabeth, you need a refresher course on your physics. The data you get from tracking a thermal signature that started at earth and was heading to Mars while you're at Pluto would be hours upon hours delayed, but there's no time dilation. Each second that passed, you'd get the next second's data, at whatever delay you were at due to the range.
CaptJosh

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.