[headdie]

how does this sit for a solution to this problem

Fred sets a flag in any new mission created by it which call it something like "Use New Loadout behaviour:  # " where the hash isreplace with 0 or 1 as appropriate, the flag can be controlled by a control in mission spec editor.

The game then reads the flag, if it's absent or 0 then it uses the retail loadout behaviour, if its 1 then is used the code with the correct rounding

[FelixJim]

The fix, wherever it ends up, ought to be a check one box/edit one table/do one whatever thing for an entire mod. There's really no need to support mission-by-mission control. Is there?

[Qent]

I'm reluctant to call FRED's rounding "correct," as it is canonical that, e.g., Myrmidons can load eleven Trebuchets. Unless the new way of describing secondary capacity is helpful for a mod, all that remains is to have FRED display and alter the actual number of missiles seen in the game.

As far as realism goes, secondary capacity doesn't necessarily translate to physical space. There could be other considerations like storage and feeding mechanisms, ship compatibility, or the "instability of antimatter," and the number that the GTVA gives pilots happens to describe how many missiles can be carried if you round to the nearest integer.

So... just my $0.02 I guess.

[chief1983]

It's canonical unfortunately because of a bug in FS2.  The table doesn't say, 11 trebuchets.  It say, you have X space, and trebs take up Y space each, but even though it's physically impossible to put in more than floor(X/Y), we'll let you have one more if it's close.  Now, why no one noticed that when working on FS2, I have no idea, because you'd think the tablers would have caught that it didn't make any sense.  Or maybe it did lead to the result they wanted, even if it is stupid.

[Qent]

I thought I addressed that in the second half of my post.

[headdie]

the problem we have is that while FRED is rounding down as we would expect FS2 seems to be rounding up on some occasions. so in the examples shown a bomber with 40, 100, 100 points of capacity tabled and a weapon tabled with a capacity usage of 15.0 points per missile.  this means the boa has a mathematical capacity of 2.666, 6.666, 6.666. Cyclops.

Fred is rounding down at all times which is what you would expect I.E. you cant load 2/3 of a missile on the ship, FS2 is rounding these numbers up which looks like you are getting a third of a missile for free.

and as for how this was missed, it's easy, you set the loadout in fred and expect FS to mirror fred, an error like this is what you expect the original devs to have picked up on when designing the code.  I wonder if FS1 had this problem, unfortunately I no longer have my copy to find out.

[FelixJim]

I repeat: balancing. Realism is sacrificed throughout FS for the sake of balancing, and I don't see why this ought to be any different.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Another solution might be to just show the actual percentage being held.  Well ideally enter the amount as a percentage (since that is the way it's stored in the mission file) and display the calculated amount based on FS2 calculations in FRED.  So if you actually wanted a 2,6,6 loadout on the Boa you would just set to  75,90,90 and 2,3,3 would be displayed. 

[Goober5000]

I think we're being overly pedantic here.  Let's just accept the rounding as a clever way to allow the user to carry more ordnance than he should, by rights, be able to; and just change FRED to use the same behavior.  There's no need for yet another flag.  If mods care enough that this bothers them, they can tweak the weapon and cargo sizes to suit them.

[The E]

Agreed.

[chief1983]

Yeah if you just use exponential values for everything now, you don't even need to worry about it either way.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Wasn't the issue that if you wanted to set it to 2,6,6 you couldn't? 

[headdie]

yes that issue did crop up when looking into this

[karajorma]

I think we're being overly pedantic here.  Let's just accept the rounding as a clever way to allow the user to carry more ordnance than he should, by rights, be able to; and just change FRED to use the same behavior.  There's no need for yet another flag.  If mods care enough that this bothers them, they can tweak the weapon and cargo sizes to suit them.

I tend to disagree. Setting FRED up to always round up completely breaks the expected outcome when setting up a new weapon. Asking a mod to tweak cargo sizes is completely ridiculous since it would set up a never ending cycle of tweaks. As soon as you tweaked the size of a weapon you'd find it changed the number in every other ship. When you tweaked the ships it would require that you tweak all the other weapons to fit again.

[Tomo]

I'm with Goober here.

If I understand correctly, the basic issue is that FRED and FS2 currently calculate loadout capacity differently.

If FRED indicates differently to FS2, then FRED is wrong.
FRED should use the same method as FS2 (whatever that may be) of determining capacity.
- This will not actually have any effect on existing missions, because the in-game capacity is already being worked out by FS2 using FS2's algorithm.

It's also irrelevant whether it makes sense or not, because when you are playing the game, that's the loadout you can have.

If it's rounded to nearest instead of floor, that's fine - modders are presumably already taking that into account, because it is what happens when they playtest the game.

You'd be really surprised if FRED and the game indicated different values for ship hitpoints or any other ship property - this is no different.

[karajorma]

Fine. Then he can fix it.

[chief1983]

If modders _had_ taken it into account, they would have said something about the difference in the first place and the bug wouldn't exist.

But, regardless of what the mission designer thought he was giving the ship, the playtester and balancers never saw that and only saw what was in game.  The fact that this bug exists at all actually really pisses me off, and I so want to fix it 'right', but I get that we can't go unbalancing every existing balanced mission ever made, and the numbers do need to match up.  I still think it would be nice to be able to enable a fix for this bug per mod that affects FRED and FS2 both, but I'd rather see FRED changed than FS2 if it has to be only one way.

[Qent]

If modders _had_ taken it into account, they would have said something about the difference in the first place and the bug wouldn't exist.

It's likely that the reason is that partial loadouts aren't very common.

[headdie]

i reckon there is 2-3 missions in retail between fs1, st and fs2 using partial loadouts

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Yea I still don't think you can even do partial load outs in multi.  You couldn't do it in single in 3.6.10 if you could load out wingmen either.  Not even sure if that one was fixed.