A dev's log.

[Kosa]

I've been reading about the changes planned to be made in 4.87. I see a ton of work in this version and from what I read it's going to be awesome! I can't wait to see it.

After you finished the rumors what major things are there left to do?

[AeternusDoleo]

Well... 4.87 is finally released. Naturally, there's a ton of bugs that are being reported. It's always a stressful time after a major release - more so when you don't have much time to spend on devving to begin with. Nevertheless, stuff is getting picked up.

I've taken care of a few small economy irregularities that were reported. I haven't even gotten to the main bugs thread yet... Right now I'm working on the fighter hitboxes. It wasn't documented anywhere how shieldbubbles work, and during playtesting they did not appear to be missing. But they are. I've figured out how they work now and am working to adjust every snub hitbox to include a shield grid. Yes, that includes those tiny ships that until now did not have them. I'm also adding them to several smaller gunboats or gunboats with very irregular shapes that make them harder to hit. Think on ships like the Tridente, the Bottlenose, the Kusari Gunboat...

I'm also doublechecking the target rectangle position on all snubs I'm redoing. Should make snub fights more fun.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[AeternusDoleo]

Well... the hitbox adjustments for the fighters are done. I doublechecked the aiming target points while I was at it, setting them automatically doesn't always seem to work properly,,. The Kusari Explorer, Kusari Gunboat, Bottlenose and Tridente also got a shield perimiter since their models allow folk to shoot through them frequently, or because they were tiny models to begin with.

Next on the list is the NPCs that many folk are complaining about. They'll be toned down on all fronts: The amount of NPCs per encounter will drop so there's less of them around, and their equipment is going to be toned down as well. They'll lose the pulse guns on the lower tiers, and have a lower damage version on the higher ones. The guns and missiles will also drop a level, they'll have less regens, and the armor multiplier will be lowered as well. All in all a major NPC nerfage.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[Govedo13]

NPC nerf and fixing fighters are excellent news-thank you for your time.

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€œ

Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)

[AeternusDoleo]

Update:
Keep being strapped for time to do devwork. So progress has been slow... Some things for the upcoming update 4:
- All fighters set to a *1.0 explosion damage multiplier. Many vanilla snubs that used to have ship parts that were individually targetable were set to have a reduced explosion damage on the main hull. When these components were taken out of the equation, the modifier was forgotten - resulting in reduced explosion damage to many vanilla models. The Scimitar, Eagle, Sabre and such are examples of these.
- Replaced Osprey and Kusari Container Transport with new models provided by Jinx. The Kusari Container Trans now fits a lot better with that ship line. The Osprey will become a solid SHF.
- Added the "Stellion" Council VHF. New ship. Completes their shipline.
- Miningmod tweaks. These are already live.
- Tradelane hitbox fixed. Mines can drop the lane again, lane center of hitbox is center of model again. I still need to do this to the Gaul version.
- Various minor bugfixes that were reported in the bug threads.

Next major project: Readjust the NPC fighters. I'll need to:
- Define or adjust NPC shields that don't regenerate.
- Define new NPC weapons for all factions with NPC ships. These will be undroppable (less clutter in the cargo hold). Mission NPCs will still be strong though, and drop gear - if you take a mission, you're looking for pews.
- Adjust all loadouts of NPC snubs, taking away their armor, and probably a few regens. Also dropping their pilot level down a bit so they will be easier to swat.

This needs to be done for every NPC. As a result, this will take a while.

Further on the list:
- Redo all cap ship hitboxes, including gunboats and transports, add a shieldgrid to the player versions. Reason why explosions don't work well on those I've found out, is that those ships never had shields before. So they don't have a hitbox for the shield, which means they default back to the HpMount hardpoint at the nose for damage. Added bonus will be that ships with a shieldgrid will have less of a hard time in asteroid fields.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[Daron]

- Define new NPC weapons for all factions with NPC ships. ...

I hope you're meaning reassigning instead of creating new ones.
That would be a real waste of time.

- Redo all cap ship hitboxes, including gunboats and transports, add a shieldgrid to the player versions. Reason why explosions don't work well on those I've found out, is that those ships never had shields before. So they don't have a hitbox for the shield, which means they default back to the HpMount hardpoint at the nose for damage. Added bonus will be that ships with a shieldgrid will have less of a hard time in asteroid fields.

Oh, good work on figuring this out.


In general i must admit you did a great job, well done.

[Tunicle]

" I still need to do this to the Gaul version."

If change is just aesthetic why not leave, adds some variety and Gallia is supposed to be different.

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[AeternusDoleo]

Tunicle: I was referring to the Gallic tradelane not being affected by explosives (like plopping a mine to drop the lane behind you to throw off a chaser, a common tactic). I've fixed that one as well for the next update now. Hitbox issues are functional, not aestethical.

Update: About 10% done with the NPC adjustments. And yes, I do need to define new weapon entries for them. Reason for this is that NPCs just handle their gear differently. Infinite power, no real logic behind ammo usage, and blowing them up tends to clutter space with a ton of useless gear. I'm going to address all those issues by:
- Setting the minedroppers, missile launchers, and CMs to not use ammo (prevents useless ammo packs from dropping).
- Eliminating the "pilot" cargo from the weaker NPCs.
- Making all NPC equipment on the weaker NPCs undroppable.
- Making the NPC weapons do 1/8th damage of the class 8 guns of their line (1/10th for pulse guns).
- Almost eliminating shield regeneration on NPCs, and reduce their shield capacity. They'll still use shield batteries though.

In essence, all they'll drop are a few regens, except for transports which will still have a random cargo.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[Thyrzul]

Sounds like a crapload of work, anything in there a total noob can do as well or stuff easy to learn to ease your job?

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[AeternusDoleo]

'Fraid not. Since all of it is integrated it doesn't really help to try and fragment it. It'll be more work to check and merge it then to just do it myself.

Also, after a suggestion in dev central, I'm also taking away shield and hull regens from the weak fighters, so people can't bat/botfeed off of NPCs anymore. Seeing as the desire is to have NPCs not affect the outcome of engagements between players, botfeeding is also something that needs fixing. Freighters and transports will drop a reduced amount of them to allow pirates (or cargo interdicting lawfuls) to steal a few, but the amount will be very low (5 or so per ship).

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.