SY

Discussion / Announcement area for Dark Nebulae Core development.
madpeople
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Post by madpeople »

pkk wrote:
QUOTE (pkk @ Mar 4 2008, 05:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
WTF, LASER NANITES?!

How can be robots created from laserlight?!

they can because its a game and it sounds / looks cool?

they don't get created by it, they get pushed by it, the nanites are encased in something similar to ice, the laser vaporises the ice which creates a steam jet to push the nanites along through space to reach their target, as they are getting propelled all the way to their target the range of a laser nanite is longer than the range of a normal nanite gun as that just throws them and then they are left to float along by them selves
tongue.gif

+ they get energy from the laser, both from the light and from the heat (which can also be used to weld things on their target)

just like there is sound and drag in space smile.gif
Last edited by madpeople on Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Adaven
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Post by Adaven »

each nanite is equipped with a tiny solar sail.
madpeople
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Post by madpeople »

Adaven wrote:
QUOTE (Adaven @ Mar 4 2008, 05:54 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
each nanite is equipped with a tiny solar sail.

which it also uses as a building material once it reaches its target.

smile.gif

but back to the point

when i look in ICE at DN's SY techtree, each faction seems to have its own version of each upgrade SY research, would i need to stick to that pattern?

or could i do it in a similar manner as my previous post
QUOTE
the way i would think of doing it (using arbitrary pres and defs)
the building SY defines 1

research lt class mk1 requires 1 and defines: 2
research lt class mk2 requires 2 and defines: 3,4,5
research lt class mk3 requires 3 and defines: 6,7


ship speed 1GA research requires 1 and defines: 8
each lt corvette ship requires 2,<faction ID> and defines: nothing
skycap 1 weapon requires 1,2 and defines: nothing
each corvette ship requires 3,<faction ID> and defined: nothing
skycap 2 weapon requires 1,4 and defines: 4 (bring in sc 2 and you get sc 2)
drydock base requires 5 and defines: nothing (?) (this is the upgrade of the sy)
each med corvette ship requires 6,<faction ID> and defines: nothing
skycap 3 weapon requires 1,7 and defines: 7
ship speed 2 GA requires 1,5,8 and defines: nothing

then if i want bios to start with lt class mk 1 i just add 2 to their faction defs (or pres as i think the faction ones are the other way round?)

would that work? or would i need to duplicate the above for every faction?[/quote]

if it did need to be done the complicated way it is now, would anyone else who knows how the current structure works want to do it? chances are i would get confused and i would probably want to just remove all the SY researches and start from scratch, given there is no documentation or associated comments to what each pre/def is used for
Last edited by madpeople on Tue Mar 04, 2008 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
madpeople
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Post by madpeople »

status report:
i have got the researches researching the correct things.
still to do:
make more advanced ships override lesser ships
give ships different properties

this core editing is rather time consuming...

hopefully should have something ready to be tested sometime next week
Andon
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Post by Andon »

Core editing being time consuming is one thing.

Core editing and testing the core takes a TON of time
Image
ImageImage
madpeople
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Post by madpeople »

yeah, but the testing is slightly less monkey tedium type work. + i'm not looking to balance everything perfectly;

i'm just trying to get it roughly balanced so people can play some games on the core, and see if this implementation of SY works better - gets more powerful with more players is one indication that it is better than what we currently have.

right now, sy is overpowered in small games as the enemy teams simply don't have the numbers (fire power) to kill the caps

and sucks in big games as it costs lots of money, and it easily gets owned by a bunch of figs or ints or sfs with killers. (as all the normal techpaths get more powerful with more players)

my objective is to make SY's power increase with player numbers, if i do that, then i will have met my objective, i am not worried if pnx dests are too powerful and gigs cruisers too weak. that is a proper core dev's concern.

this project is to test a different SY structure to see if it works better than normal SY or DN SY. if it does, then the core devs of the normal cores are free to use my structure in their own cores and balance it how they see fit.
madpeople
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Post by madpeople »

getting close to starting closed testing.

i believe apoch is the one to talk to about setting up private servers for testing?

i've mainly just got to go through the loadouts of the ships to make sure everything is mounting what it should, and i need to change a couple of properties of some particles, and it should be set for testing.. hopefully smile.gif
oh, and i want to make a couple of icons...

once tested i can release it on an unsuspecting allegiance community mrgreen.gif
Last edited by madpeople on Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
madpeople
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Post by madpeople »

this is a very early beta.
chances are there are some very silly mistakes, like ships mounting the wrong weapons or some researches taking longer than they should. but i think i got most of them in testing on my own.
but its mostly there.

http://www.mesialonline.com/madpeople/dnCapCoreR4.zip

extract to art folder

some very brief notes about how its designed to be played / changes (brief its now 1 am)
this is basically DN 4.60 except SY has been re-designed.

the cap ships specialise in tasks

lt class kills fighters, it has fast and weakly armoured ships, and uses skycap to do it.
skycap 1 is the same as usual and can be used on GS (can be researched in gar for giga if not going SY, or comes free with lt class 1)
skycap 2 and 3 do more damage, but use 4* the ammo so can only be used on capships, even though they can still be mounted on GS, they chew through its ammo too fast (+ they weigh a lot)

killing lt class is probably best done with med class, though large numbers of small craft may work (i haven't tested this as its hard to do when testing by your self on a lan server)


medium class
has destroyers and devs
dests kill fighters at long range, but are quite &"£$^! when a fighter gets close as they have no turrets and cannot turn (much),
though they wtf pwn everything at long range if they are roughly facing it as hunter killers are much improved.
giga don't get hunter killer 3, but they can buy (at a cost per missile) hunter killer SE (special edition) which is slightly better than HK 3.

dests are weak from behind, if you can sneak a fighter behind them then they can't lock onto you with missiles and they won't be able to turn fast enough to face you, so you can shoot them freely, so their best chance would be to rip out, unless their team defends them (with small ships or lt class ships)

devs are for killing capships and use skyrip to do it (note here that for rix, these roles are now split, rix dests don't get skyrip, and rix devs don't get lancer)


hvy class
frigates/cruisers/battlecruisers are used for killing stations, the ships now use their turrets to shoot stations, tac nuke is gone! the [sky cannon] turrets are very powerful and can easily kill small ships... if they can hit them, which they won't unless the small ship isn't moving (you can dodge these shots in any cap bar a hvy class one, they move that slowly)

battleships are for killing other hvy class ships, but can be used on stations, but aren't so effective. like the other hvy class ships, they use their turrets to do their damage (though the pilot gets xrm torpedo missiles), their turrets are longtoms, but not like the old longtoms, think more like mass drivers, that work better on cap ships than bases

these are very very strong ships, but they have no anti fighter weapons [even bombers can dodge the shots from their guns], so can be easily killed by groups of fighters (want more than 10 to kill it in a reasonable time) or bombers (note here that a single fighter or single bomber won't work, simply too much hp, but if you have a large number then they will work). so you need to defend these ships with small ships [perhaps with support ships to repair the fighters] or lt class ships, maybe med class ships in addition to kill fighters at long range and to take out other caps they may use to attack them.
using med class ships (devs) on these will work well, so will using other hvy class ships (but not so well).

while in a small game low numbers of players may not be able to kill a hvy lass ship easily, since they are so slow, you can easily bomb them while they are advancing very slowly towards your base and kill their bases before they kill yours (provided you have probes and spot their large sig capship...probes win games smile.gif)

support class
has ships to provide support roles, ass ships, freighters, piloted carriers (i'm thinking they may just get removed), and support ships

the new support ships are super nans, they them selves can't be nanned, but they mount 2 laser nan turrets.
what is a laser nan? think pnx laser, except it fixes you instead of damages you.
while technically you can mount normal nans and laser nans on the same slot, laser nans weigh a lot, and use a scout's energy up in under 1 second, they do repair slightly faster than normal nans though.
so basically, you can mount laser nan on a scout, but you won't fly well, and you won't nan well as you will use all your energy and only nan a tiny bit oh hp compared to what you would do with a normal nan.
you can mount normal nan on a support ship, but why do that when it has the energy to mount the more powerful laser nans?
in a break from tradition laser nan levels are related to your current nan level, not the support class level

what you use the support ship for is up to your imagination. basically its designed to keep any ships near it alive, and force the enemy to kill it first. you could try bombing or even galving with it, or taking it with a carrier miner hunting. one thing to remember is that its top speed is slightly lower than a un-pushed bomber's top speed, so if you want to use it for super nan bombing, then your bomb run will need to fly slower else it will fly out of range of the nan ship. you could also use it for keeping fighters defending a hvy class ship alive. or nanning miners or pushing cons (though again, you will need to force the con to fly slower to keep it in range of the support ship)


see pg 1 of this thread for how the the tech tree works.
basically, upgrading a class upgrades the ship and its weapons.

you don't research weapon upgrades individually.
but you do research shield upgrades separately (though the different classes mount different types of large shield)
cms also are researched separately.
you need mk2 class to get a drydock [dependant on factions, some start with DD]

TF is an odd one out as they don't get med or hvy class, they get flagships, which are sort of hvy class, but i bit tougher, and can mount skyrips at later levels.



plz point out any obvious mistakes. (like giga using GT models, ships mounting guns they shouldn't or not having the right amount of hp etc, or ships or weapons not becoming available when you researched the right class level)
feel free to organize tests with people and tell me what you think.


the main aim of this is to try and make SY scale better with game size, so it isn't overpowered in small games, and isn't underpowered in large games.
one thing to note is that SY isn't really a proper tech path, its designed to compliment your main normal tech path. you can try going pure SY if you want but meh *shrugs*

would anyone be interested in putting this on their server?
i never experienced any crashes during testing it.
if someone does put it on their servers, then perhaps it should go no the AU too?
it would make larger tests easier to do (which is part of the idea - a version of SY that scales better)

the numbers are very rough at the moment, but they should make things behave roughly how i want them to
Last edited by madpeople on Mon Apr 07, 2008 4:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
pkk
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Post by pkk »

Support ship is broken:

There is no need for Inf cloaked >9% (>21% with shields) dual nan ship, which never runs out of energy. laugh.gif
The Escapist (Justin Emerson) @ Dec 21 2010, 02:33 PM:
The history of open-source Allegiance is paved with the bodies of dead code branches, forum flame wars, and personal vendettas. But a community remains because people still love the game.
madpeople
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Post by madpeople »

hvy cloak was a slipup, not meant to be there, removed in R3.

it does run out of energy with 2 laser nans going (or it should do). you could use normal nan for infinite usage, but why do that when using laser nan lasts a reasonable time and gives you faster repair rate and longer range.
+ for things to get repaired they would have to remain within 400m of the turrets which could be rather hard if its a fighter trying to defend something. so sticking that close would limit what the thing being repaired could do, and remembering to stay that close could be hard since most ships are faster than it.

perhaps i should increase the sector overload, seems to have gone ok in other cores that did that...
Last edited by madpeople on Thu Apr 03, 2008 9:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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