[Flashblade]

Hi there, kinda confused because I thought I had allready registered in this forum. Oh well doesn't really matter.

What I would like to ask is if it is possible to increase the power of the slide? As it is now I see hardly any reason to use it. It is hardly noticible thrustwise if you fly full throttle and it takes ages to kick in, both things I would like to change. While the glide feature is kinda nice, it doesn't have anything to do with how a Starfury should work. What I really would like to see would be the possibility to completely change the direction of thrust. After all a Starfury should be able to fly backwards as fast as it flies forward. Maybe not exactly as fast up and down and to the sides since those thrusters are smaller, but they should be more powerful than they are now.

Whoops started rambling off a new idea. Well the question stands, thanks for answering

[Vidmaster]

that was discussed plenty of times before. Above all else, there is one major argument against it:
It would make the game very very easy, since the AI can't really react that well to sliding. All you would have to do is flying a constant circle to avoid getting hit.


Additonally, I wouldn't call the current setting useless, in fact it's key to victory in the thougher campaigns.

[Dragon]

I think that slide handling by AI should be improved, as it wouldn't break retail and will open a lot of new possibilities.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I was actually considering making an alternate ai_profile with some of the new glide functions.  It wouldn't change any of the old missions but would allow new ones to have the option for improved glide and AI use of glide.  As for slide that would require a change that would effect existing missions so no chance on that one unless you want to make your own mod and run it. 

[Flashblade]

How is the 20 slide in each direction after a delay of 3 secs mission critical? I don't see any reason to use this or are you refering to glide? If it is the latter I never said it is useless. I said glide has nothing to do with how a Starfury should handle. As for complete thrust control making missions to easy, has anybody tried this or is it just a guess that it would become to easy?

In a way this is besides the point though. Let me state my question more precisely. If I would want the slide to be lets say 30 less then what is max thrust on the fury (without AB) and for it to take effect faster, where would I have to edit that if it can be edited by myself? I never asked for a global change in the first place.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well the thing that it does do is throw off the current balance of missions.  If all of a sudden the EA ships have improved maneuverability and the Minbari don't then all the EA vs Minbari missions are now out of balance. 

As for doing it yourself there is no problem with that just make a mod folder of your own and create a flashblade-shp.tbm  in Flashblade\data\tables.  To change things just look at the main ship.tbl in vpview (or whatever vp viewer) and create an entry in the .tbm with +nocreate to change the values.  For an example look at the zathras-shp.tbm in the Zathras.vp. 

[Vidmaster]

I even made a mod like this for myself to test it ingame, it's really easy.

[Flashblade]

Thanks so far, would you also tell me which variables I would have to edit?

[Sushi]

Use this as your reference:
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Ships.tbl

You'll probably be most interested in the $max velocity and all of the $glide settings (especially the new 3.6.11 ones ). You may also be interested in the $use newtonian dampening and $use additive weapon velocity AI profile flags.


By the way, are you people SURE that the AI has trouble hitting sidethrusting targets? Because they sure have no trouble with it in Diaspora. I suppose it makes it easier to dodge exceptionally slow weapons (since you can do so without having to change your orientation), but sidethrusting doesn't make it any harder for the AI to aim... they'll still aim at the right place to hit you, sidethrust or no.

[Akalabeth Angel]

I think what the guy wants is more neutonian combat, which as far as I know is possible with FSO (nukemod??) though it hasn't been used very much if at all due to gameplay issues (ie being really hard???).

[Colonol Dekker]

Newtonian surely

[Flashblade]

Thx for the reference Sushi and you pointed me allready in the right direction. Do I look for more newtonian combat? I guess so. Completely newtonian? If I wanted that I could just play "Babylon 5 I've found her" but first of all I dislike those jousting matches and second this is not how things work in B5. It is not completely newtonian. To a degree fighters and capships still work like they are in an atmosphere.

"You would be wrong about glide though Sushi, as I stated previously in this thread, while I think glide is a nice feature it doesn't have anything to do with how a Starfury would work." <-- I take this statement back since it allows you to keep your inertia in one direction and turn your ship to make a pass guning for an enemy

I can tell you by an example what I am looking for. In the episode " The Fall of Night" in the first scene Zeta leader is behind another Starfury as he fires his shot, the pilot in front of him fires his maneuvering thrusters and evades upwards, continues to turn and hits Zeta leader as he passes below him. Thats what I am looking for and glide doesn't allow me to do that. Stronger slide will work better I suspect. It is as close as I can get to complete directional control.


Ah yes, I know changed Max Speed for x and y to 20 less than z speed and shortened the delay and that feels so much better and more useful. Thanks for the help.

[Flashblade]

I'm making a new post because of some play testing. Vidmaster you said more slide would make it impossible for the ai to hit you. I've experienced differently even with my vastly improved slide the enemy shots don't go wide they are pretty much dead on and in close proximity they will hit me. I can't confirm that sliding makes you invincible quite the contrary actually. If you stupidly keep on sliding you are toast.

[Vidmaster]

Sure you aren't referring to Gliding? But again, really strong Slide Boosters make the game extremley easy since most weapons are rather slow in TBP. If you disagree, no problem but that's my experience while playing with modified thrusters.

Just go ahead and make a mod, it doesn't require to much work and I always support any member of the community who wants to make something new.

[JGZinv]

Perhaps you're referring to "slide" as Tachyon called it, but technically in FS2 it's called "glide."
Slide/glide will "pause" the engines so that you continue on the same course but can rotate the ship in place.
Lats or lateral thrusters, cause you to go left or right while still maintaining the forward or reverse speed.

FringeSpace (our mod) uses slide and lats as major movement features, but I've not gotten a chance
to renovate things so we use Sushi's new slide functions. BTRL might have used some lats or glide, I forget honestly.

Here's something to start with as an example:

Code: [Select]

$Damp: 0.0                                 ;; affects how quickly you will accel/decel to your target velocity. Higher damp means slow acceleration and deceleration - lower this number, the faster the ship responds. Example, specifying a value of 0.0 means there is no damping, in other words, "like Wing Commander" The more damping, the harder to control, but the more smoothly it moves.
$Rotdamp: 0.1                           ;; same as Damp except for rotation (all axis I believe)
$Max Velocity: 30.0, 0.0, 74.13125 ;; in x/y/z format x = lats y = verts (N/A in tach) z = forward. use special tokens for backward movement - all values are added together to make the total max speed of the engine at 100% thrust IE. 25,25,100 means throttle at 100% is 150 MPS, NOTE - anything over 800 total seems to break collision detection
$Rotation time: 4.05, 4.17, 3.76                    ;; x, y, and z -axis - number of seconds it takes to complete rotate a ship (360 degrees) around the given axis
$Rear Velocity: 74.13125                            ;; maximum reverse velocity in meters per second - is not added to maximum velocity count
$Forward accel: 8.13                                ;; number of seconds needed from full stop to maximum velocity
$Forward decel: 7.86                                ;; number of seconds needed from maximum velocity to full stop
$Slide accel: 1.02                            ;; Lats & Verts - number of seconds needed from full stop to max lat/vert speed
$Slide decel: 3.22                            ;; Lats & Verts - number of seconds needed from max lats/verts speed to full stop
$Glide: YES                                 ;; Allows (Tach: 'sliding') (FS2 'gliding') yes or no
It's not perfected by any means, but might help you in some ways as an example.

[Flashblade]

Hi there been a while,

JGZinv no I am not talking about glide. I know what that does. I am calling slide what is under control config ships "right thrust", "left thrust", "up thrust", "down thrust". Those basically give you "crude" control over a Starfurys manuevering thrusters. In the code example you posted you actually find "Slide accel" and "Slide decel" which control the before mentioned four partly. Thats why I called them slide for simplicities sake.

[JGZinv]

horizontal and vertical lats is easier to identify... imho

[Flashblade]

It is? Maybe but I am pretty sure that Vidmaster and Sushi understood what I was talking about. What I still don't understand though Vidmaster is your statement that it is easier to evade weapons, because they travel fairly slow. My X and Y speeds are now 20 less than Z speed. Are you talking about missiles perhaps, because I can't see much of a difference with energy weapons. Missiles are fairly easy to evade even without slide axis, no? Maybe it is not much of a difference to me because my pilot skills are not on par with yours. But I think it is nice to see AI Starfurys use slide and me actually be able to notice that they do it. Once an AI Starfury slid right out of my front view and I thought that was very cool. The AI doesn't abuse that feature anyway.