How to warp-gate your super massive Titan.

[Loadout]

So I was experimenting with drone racks and warp gating in the new universe. It's tons of fun to see a rack of drones warp halfway across a galaxy and deploy without you pushing more than a single button. Aside from that however I ran into a question which when answered, seems to be a bug...

Despite what you might think, this works, really well actually. The only catch is the increased energy cost. But how hard is it really to stack on a couple hundred or so capacitors? not very... The gate used was quite large, but this could have been done on a 5x5 gate just as easily.

This begs the question of what to do... specifically we have the ability to warp a ship of virtually Any size using a simple contraption like this, and all with the smallest possible gate you can build. Clearly this is not an intended mechanic, and despite the cost / size there is really no additional requirements.

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?

 

[Byamarro]

We need to start summoning ritual of Schema and ask him to fix that.

 

[Loadout]

We need to start summoning ritual of Schema and ask him to fix that.

I agree this needs to be fixed, however it's not easy to just slap a nerf on it and call it good. The issue I see, is that while docked entities add their own mass, they do not add into the size calculation for the purposes of the gate. Honestly I think what needs to happen is that the entire entity + all docked entities need to fully pass through the gate before it activates the jump. At the moment you only need a core to pass through before the warp begins.
Of course, altering this too severely nerfs carrier type ships altogether and it's never pleasant to oust an entire category of design.

Some possible solutions....

• Change the gates to have a mass restriction, anything over say ~10k mass cannot warp it will need an interstellar drive. This is a bit finicky and would require testing, adjustments, and probably another variable in the config file for custom servers to change. Although with the proposed interstellar drive this does seem like a potential solution.
• A majority of the entity passes through the gate, this requires acknowledgement in programming beyond just core passed = true/false. Which appears to be the current case. While that could cause a host of issues in itself, and possibly not even fix the issue to begin with, it does hold some potential.
• Increase the cost of larger mass entities exponentially as opposed to additive. Right now it appears that (mass x 100) is the cost for a ship to travel regardless of size. If smaller ships cost vastly less and larger ships cost extreme amounts it is prohibitive to attempt this kind of configuration.

I'm open to discussing this if anyone has any ideas on how it could be done? I'm @schema and the rest are busy with other things at the moment so if the community could agree on a best course of action it would save them some time.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Leave it be >: D

*Sends Fleet of Turret Toting Destroyers to your location*

 

[Loadout]

Leave it be >: D

*Sends Fleet of Turret Toting Destroyers to your location*

Is that before or after my drone racks with 800 drones get warp gated to your position on a single button push?

 

[Reilly Reese]

Its before

Besides what I sent is like yours except the drones are 188 by 135 by 48 meter killing machines that are coated with turrets :D :D :D

 

[Loadout]

Its before

Besides what I sent is like yours except the drones are 188 by 135 by 48 meter killing machines that are coated with turrets :D :D :D

Well just keep in mind they gotta be attached to a rack of some sort before you send em through. Otherwise they'll get chewed up in the 10 second window I have to swarm them.

 

[der_scheme]

Thrust Mechanics Explained—This post lines out the plans for movement and FTL mechanics. The relevant part:

Any looped shape may be used, so caution is advise on flying through unknown gates, as you may have parts of your ship lost if the paired gate on the other end is too small to fit you.

I expect that the mechanics described will be delivered. However, this is a really complex task—not only are there numerous mechanics questions to be figured out, but the algorithmic part isn't easy, either. So far, everything there has been delivered in small parts. Otherwise we wouldn't have seen an update in months.

 

[Loadout]

Thrust Mechanics Explained—This post lines out the plans for movement and FTL mechanics. The relevant part:

I expect that the mechanics described will be delivered. However, this is a really complex task—not only are there numerous mechanics questions to be figured out, but the algorithmic part isn't easy, either. So far, everything there has been delivered in small parts. Otherwise we wouldn't have seen an update in months.

I see two major problems to this, aside from algorithmic implementation which is always a pain whenever you're programming.

1. Offensive Gating - players can use this to shred large ships by fooling them into using large opening portals which transfer to small teeny portals. That is inviting some serious grief on the part of multi-player. Imagine your large normal sized warp gate gets grief-connected to a small 3x3 gate. The end result is virtually every ship lost which goes through, not a happy day for a lot of people.
2. The requirements for gating need to be altered fundamentally or else even with said gate-shredding, there will still be ways around this which allow larger than normal ships to pass through relatively unharmed. For instance at what distance from the gate would shredding stop? A player could simply lengthen their transport vessel to match that and continue on unharmed.

By the way, before anyone says "it's infinite length so they'll always get shredded!" consider what that would mean to neighboring stations, planets, and vessels with the warp gate attached. Cutting out a huge chunk of blocks is a bad thing, my planet lagged out earlier and I lost a considerably built portion of blocks in a large rectangle, still haven't gotten around to fixing that... Given said planet also holds multiple warp gates, that would disintegrate my gate-planet or stations in moments. Aside from that entering an infinite number is literally impossible, even using variables that match ship length to do it will bug eventually. Integers in programming are limited in length as are floats, shorts, longs, and others. One person, one day, will break that number however long it may be, even if it is 10 x 10^84. At that point either the server crashes or the ship is safe.

TLDR? Numbers bug out, cutting up ships is BAD news, there has to be something else we can come up with.

 

[der_scheme]

Offensive Gating - players can use this to shred large ships by fooling them into using large opening portals which transfer to small teeny portals. That is inviting some serious grief on the part of multi-player. Imagine your large normal sized warp gate gets grief-connected to a small 3x3 gate. The end result is virtually every ship lost which goes through, not a happy day for a lot of people.

There are already ways to use gates in similar manners, and there are also ways to prevent it.

By the way, before anyone says "it's infinite length so they'll always get shredded!" consider what that would mean to neighboring stations, planets, and vessels with the warp gate attached.

Nothing, because the game doesn't work that way.

 

[Lecic]

I see two major problems to this, aside from algorithmic implementation which is always a pain whenever you're programming.

1. Offensive Gating - players can use this to shred large ships by fooling them into using large opening portals which transfer to small teeny portals. That is inviting some serious grief on the part of multi-player. Imagine your large normal sized warp gate gets grief-connected to a small 3x3 gate. The end result is virtually every ship lost which goes through, not a happy day for a lot of people.
2. The requirements for gating need to be altered fundamentally or else even with said gate-shredding, there will still be ways around this which allow larger than normal ships to pass through relatively unharmed. For instance at what distance from the gate would shredding stop? A player could simply lengthen their transport vessel to match that and continue on unharmed.

By the way, before anyone says "it's infinite length so they'll always get shredded!" consider what that would mean to neighboring stations, planets, and vessels with the warp gate attached. Cutting out a huge chunk of blocks is a bad thing, my planet lagged out earlier and I lost a considerably built portion of blocks in a large rectangle, still haven't gotten around to fixing that... Given said planet also holds multiple warp gates, that would disintegrate my gate-planet or stations in moments. Aside from that entering an infinite number is literally impossible, even using variables that match ship length to do it will bug eventually. Integers in programming are limited in length as are floats, shorts, longs, and others. One person, one day, will break that number however long it may be, even if it is 10 x 10^84. At that point either the server crashes or the ship is safe.

TLDR? Numbers bug out, cutting up ships is BAD news, there has to be something else we can come up with.

On offensive gating, it's not an issue. Don't use gates you don't know the ending to. It'll add more tactics to the game, if anything.

Cut off length wouldn't affect the things the gate is attached to, just the ship going through. Larger than normal ships won't be primarily using gates, they'll be using hyperdrive (don't worry, the warping station concept has mainly been scrapped)

 

[Reilly Reese]

you can use /change_sector to move stations though >_>

 

[Sgtwisky]

Lecic, I am not sure you understand the implications of offensive gating, as I think Loadout does. Imagine for a moment. I build a ship similar to what he has... but carrying say.... 10 of those battle ships and rigged with logic to release them once it gets to the other side. Lets also say they are all AI controlled. I then build a gate big enough for ONLY the transport similar to what Loadout has done (as the dimensions of the battle ships have no effect on warping). THEN... I can travel to say 1200m from your main base, and very quickly plop down an endpoint (already having the beginning marked before hand). Then suicide to my indoctrinator back at the other end of the portal. Followed by launching 10 battle ships at your station.

The issue with this is that you can throw up that gate so fast that the person on the receiving end can likely not counter it fast enough. IF they control the system they may get advanced warning. But they may also not be around their base ether. That would give ample time to build/die/press button.

NOW... if we couldn't send battleships through small portals and maybe if portals took time to "connect" to each other if they were in a system that was uncontrolled by the builder... I could see this as being less of an issue. Though I am not trying to say a connection timer is the best rout or even a good one. Just throwing it out there.



OK. Time for my complicated solution to this problem.
1. Include docked entities in bounding boxes for the main entity.
2. When a ship tries to fly through a gate the gate checks the bounding box size
3. if the bounding box size cannot fit through the inner area of the portal then the ship cannot pass and will just smack into the portal.

Note the check should see if the ship's bounding box could pass when the ship is facing forward, upward, or to the right. You only need 3 directions, as the opposite direction will be the same as far as the bounding box is concerned. This can be done pretty easy by checking the height, width, and length of the entity (which would include anything docked to it) and flipping those numbers somewhat during testing. basically using the 3 numbers in 3 separate combinations. this check could be preformed in code in a very very short time.

This should stop the issue of massive ships using small portals. The issue of "offensive gating" is a much more complex one.


EDIT: Just noticed that if docked entity's counted in the bounding box of its parent, then it might also help with docking. Docking a ship with turrets would not make turrets clip through the parent entity. This has seemed to happen to me before and caused lag when undocking. Though this may have been fixed as this was some time ago that I had that happen.

 

[Lecic]

Lecic, I am not sure you understand the implications of offensive gating, as I think Loadout does. Imagine for a moment. I build a ship similar to what he has... but carrying say.... 10 of those battle ships and rigged with logic to release them once it gets to the other side. Lets also say they are all AI controlled. I then build a gate big enough for ONLY the transport similar to what Loadout has done (as the dimensions of the battle ships have no effect on warping). THEN... I can travel to say 1200m from your main base, and very quickly plop down an endpoint (already having the beginning marked before hand). Then suicide to my indoctrinator back at the other end of the portal. Followed by launching 10 battle ships at your station.

The issue with this is that you can throw up that gate so fast that the person on the receiving end can likely not counter it fast enough. IF they control the system they may get advanced warning. But they may also not be around their base ether. That would give ample time to build/die/press button.

NOW... if we couldn't send battleships through small portals and maybe if portals took time to "connect" to each other if they were in a system that was uncontrolled by the builder... I could see this as being less of an issue. Though I am not trying to say a connection timer is the best rout or even a good one. Just throwing it out there.



OK. Time for my complicated solution to this problem.
1. Include docked entities in bounding boxes for the main entity.
2. When a ship tries to fly through a gate the gate checks the bounding box size
3. if the bounding box size cannot fit through the inner area of the portal then the ship cannot pass and will just smack into the portal.

Note the check should see if the ship's bounding box could pass when the ship is facing forward, upward, or to the right. You only need 3 directions, as the opposite direction will be the same as far as the bounding box is concerned. This can be done pretty easy by checking the height, width, and length of the entity (which would include anything docked to it) and flipping those numbers somewhat during testing. basically using the 3 numbers in 3 separate combinations. this check could be preformed in code in a very very short time.

This should stop the issue of massive ships using small portals. The issue of "offensive gating" is a much more complex one.


EDIT: Just noticed that if docked entity's counted in the bounding box of its parent, then it might also help with docking. Docking a ship with turrets would not make turrets clip through the parent entity. This has seemed to happen to me before and caused lag when undocking. Though this may have been fixed as this was some time ago that I had that happen.

I don't think YOU understand what offensive gating is. Offensive gating is to use a weaponized gate system that can rip ships to shreds with ease. One side is a large portal, the other is a small portal. When ships try to go through, anything that doesn't fit through the smaller portal is sheared off.

Offensive gating has nothing to do with warping battleships through smaller than normal gates with docking tricks.

 

[Sgtwisky]

currently this bug that has been found would not be stopped with a gate that shreds ships. as the larger ship does not factor into the gate size. Only the power required. You could still use a much smaller transport the huge docked ships. the issue brought up in the OP is taking BIG ships INTO small portals and out another. NOT making trap portals. In theory people could troll by making gates that kill ships. but I for one wouldn't use a gate that was not under my control. If the faction block were changed or not my faction I would not bother. With the exception of an ally factions gates.

also offensive gating can be applied to BOTH types of gate action though as they both are offensive measures. HOWEVER gate's sheering a ship is not in game yet and would not solve the current issue even if it were. This is because (if its using the same mechanics as we have now for registering weather a ship can pass or not) it currently does not account for the added dimensions of docked entities.

 

[Lecic]

currently this bug that has been found would not be stopped with a gate that shreds ships. as the larger ship does not factor into the gate size. Only the power required. You could still use a much smaller transport the huge docked ships. the issue brought up in the OP is taking BIG ships INTO small portals and out another. NOT making trap portals. In theory people could troll by making gates that kill ships. but I for one wouldn't use a gate that was not under my control. If the faction block were changed or not my faction I would not bother. With the exception of an ally factions gates.

also offensive gating can be applied to BOTH types of gate action though as they both are offensive measures. HOWEVER gate's sheering a ship is not in game yet and would not solve the current issue even if it were. This is because (if its using the same mechanics as we have now for registering weather a ship can pass or not) it currently does not account for the added dimensions of docked entities.

Well, the solution to that would be simple. Just count docked entities into the ship's bounding box for warp. Then, when gate shearing is implemented, they'd get sheared off on going through. You already suggested the same thing, but without the shearing.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Ah... I see your point Lecic. Would be intrusting to have gate shearing built into the game. I could see a faction having portals marked somehow as to what size can actually fit through. That way only allies that know which portal to enter would not be harmed. Unless an enemy was lucky or did a lot of scouting first.