Check it out (while its there) Sol II H-13 - the frigate is parked with its nose burried in the station.

I circled the frigate a few times but didn't see a 'Driver Under Instruction' sign anywhere. :)

That commander should be fired!
Sombody do something!!111 :P

But honestly: Always in Sercospace :(

should be in the news ingame!

This is a good time to remind people that AI is less I and more S.

Add to the mix that the capships in VO aren't as aware of their size as they should be and that they like to fly as if they're little tiny fighters... and this is what you get.

This is kind of like when the cars drive into strip-mall stores.

"The pilot, distracted by several screaming children in the backseat, mistook the gas pedal for the brake, and plowed into the station, killing 54 dockworkers and heavily damaging the station's Serco Ale refinery.

News at 11."

I know it was called "The Frigate" back in ye olde dayes, but aren't they called Heavy Attack Cruisers now?

Anyway, nice pics. This sort of stuff is always funny.

Leber: Pier 1 Imports? This mall's got everything!

Pretty funny.

We're trying to fix a bunch of this stuff. Capships can fly a lot better, but their awareness of their own size is still pretty.. poor. I actually hope we get some related issues fixed tonight, as otherwise it may hold up some BS changes.

This is more related to capships in "formation", but I just shot these in a BS on the test server:




<sigh>.. working on it :).

How are you guys handling capships (and any other ships, really) formations? Are you using some implementation of boids?

Another question about formations -- there are a lot of "standard" formation patterns (like finger-four or diamond) that would have relatively static positioning based on ship size. Do you think they would be good for capships to use (assuming implementing it is doable within whatever timeframes you've set), or would they be more restricted to smaller ships like fighters and bombers in the event such formations were coded in?

(I'm ashamed of myself, I didn't notice that there were two Tridents stuck on the Constellation until the second image... XD)

Andy would have to comment on the algorithm specifics. But I think there are basically two ship-grouping methods.. flocks and formations. I think flocks may be our own version of boids. Formations are more static, in theory anyway, but are kind of ad-hoc at present.

The recent problem is correctly getting the size of the ship and using it properly. We have a way to calculate their radius, but.. well, anyway, there are various tradeoffs to doing things in various ways. A sphere radius is a pretty huge area for something like an HAC, which has a pretty narrow aspect.

There actually is pre-existing "formation" code for fighter-size ships, that lets them fly in V formations and such.. it just isn't really used for some reason that escapes me. I think it was never properly finished.

I'm not totally sure what is best for capships yet. I think, ideally, they should navigate autonomously, and not be that strictly limited to a given formation pattern, but have general limits on distances from some sort of central command vessel or point. The above screenshot-issue only cropped up because we've been trying to use "Defend" objectives to keep BS capships from floating off into space while fighting. The objective uses an ad-hoc formation, which is clearly.. very wrongly sized.

On the upside (kind of) the above ships aren't floating off into space when in combat, heh.

Obviously it's a mother cap ship nursing its young.

Yeah, it would be great if they were space-whales or something.

Careful, Inc - you'll encourage the "Vendetta changing to Underwater MMORPG" folks.

I want some torps!

Is there any sense in using the area marked by the 3D targeting box as a bounding volume for formation collision avoidance, or is that an entirely client-side calculation that the server has no idea about? Those seem like they'd be more accurate than spheres for the capships, but less efficient.

That's a client-side thing, I think it's basically an axis-aligned bounding box generated based on the OBB (collision hull) of the object. That being said, I don't know why it couldn't also be used on the SD, if reworked somewhat. But, I have no idea how much work would be involved in "somewhat".

But, right now we're just trying to "make it work" with the minimum amount of time spent, so we can at least release this Border Skirmish change tonight. I'm not sure what route Andy is taking.