[Solatar]

I've encountered what I think is a bug...but I think it was there in retail fs2 as well.. If I have an Orion vs. a cruiser of some sort, both armed with only blob turrets, the cruiser doesn't fire it's weapons. The Orion fires all turrets, but the Huge blob turrets hit and the regular ones dissapear before they get to the target. This doesn't work for a balanced capital ship battle.

Anybody know if I've broken something?

EDIT: A GVD Typhon with blobs seems to just sit there as well. The Orion's Terran Huge Turrets are owning it, but the Terran Turrets dissapear before reaching.

Could this have something to do with the bounding boxes of the ships?

[StratComm]

What's their engagement range?  Those blobs only travel a short distance relative to missiles or beams, on the order of maybe ~1400m.   If your ships are farther apart than that, the turrets won't fire.

EDIT: The dissapearing is a symptom of the problem; the turrets think they can hit their target if part of its bounding box is in range, but more often than not it won't be and the turret shot will just dissapear.  The maximum possible range (at which point it will dissapear) for the Terran Turret, i.e. the yellow blob, is 1375m.  Terran Huge Turrets can travel 2100m, and so can reach places that the normal turrets cannot.

[Solatar]

The thing is, I order them to attack, but they never get close enough to really hit each other.

I'll up the range and see what that does...

[StratComm]

That's because the attack ranges for the AI are too far out for those turrets to hit.  Especially so for destroyers, but even cruisers tend to move to standoff distance and try to pound on their target with whatever they have that can reach (or with nothing).  Capital ships should never be ordered to attack each other unless they have big enough long-range weapons on their flanks; they tend to avoid close proximity like the plague and the only way to fool them into getting closer is to script their combat with waypoints.

[Solatar]

Ok, I'll screw around with waypoints and see what I can do.

[Taristin]

FS1 combat > Fs2 Combat

Blob turrets rawk.

[Solatar]

I actually like blob turrets a great deal.

[StratComm]

If they weren't so pathetically slow.

[Taristin]

Well... Sarny's capship turret upgrade fixed that

[Pnakotus]

Doubling blob velocity makes capship combat work, doesn't break missions or make the players job noticably harder, and even improves how combat looks from a distance.

But hey, I'm a guy that added impact explosions to the blob turrets

[StratComm]

It does make capships, particularly friendly ones, more capable of defending themselves from bomb weapons.  Though that's about the only real issue with them being faster.

[Anaz]

Originally posted by StratComm
It does make capships, particularly friendly ones, more capable of defending themselves from bomb weapons.  Though that's about the only real issue with them being faster.

with the null-distance engagement range the FS2 bombers employ, that shouldn't be too much of a problem

[Pnakotus]

I expected that result, Stratcomm, however it didn't occur in practice.  Only doubling (usually, I triple or more to make them comparable with fighterguns) the vel still has the blobs missing bombs all over the place.  And bombers too, even when they fly in a straight line.  However, this could be a result of some accuracy setting I'm not aware of, like AI level or something.

Also, I noticed high-AI bombers jink automatically.  That will render all but point-blank fire worthless, so we can speed the blobs up all we want!

Thinking about it, I think the blobs miss because the bombers are slightly adjusting their course to stay on target against moving ships, thus over the flight time of a blob they change angle enough to be missed.  That's pretty lame: thats WWI-level AA fire.

[Solatar]

Does increasing the velocity enable large capital ships to attack each other without scripting?

[Pnakotus]

Increasing velocity increases range, as range = vel * lifetime.  However, since the caps position themselves based on their bounding boxes, somewhat larger than themselves, I don't think it'll help by itself.

Perhaps there is a way to get caps to move to attack, then move 200m closer.  That would bring them into 'actual' gunnery range.  Although you'll be surprised how much they miss.

[Solatar]

well, missing isn't too bad, but I'd like to see some more terran vs. Vasudan waterballoon fights.

[Pnakotus]

Isn't there a 'move to x distance from ship' SEXP?  You could use that to set the range, and use other settings to get the attack going.

Someone needs to cook up a decent, maneuveuring, rolling, broadside-enabled, bomb-prioritising capship AI, though.

[Solatar]

The AI code isn't too friendly from what I hear, so I wouldn't get your hopes up.