Predicted Flight Path Indicators

[Star Commander Shepard]

Anyone who has gotten into a ship battle on starmade knows that whenever you're moving or your target is moving, you fire your cannons in front of the target to compensate for their speed relative to your speed. Currently, all you have is a hitmarker, which leaves you to guess the sweet spot where it's best to fire, you can't focus your shots, and the only remedy to this would be beams if they weren't such close range weapons. What would be nice to have a predicted flight path of the enemy ship when you have it selected, as well as a marker which indicates how far ahead of the target you'd have to aim to get a hit; I'd also like the end of the marker to be a focal point, so you can properly focus your fire even at high differential velocities.

 

[EtherEel]

Personally, I find it odd that Beams & Cannons don't have auto-lock -- or at least an "Advanced Targeting Computer" to slave the weapon to that achieves the same end. Only in the Star Wars world does weapons fire miss most of the time as is the case in Starmade -- in all other paradigms, Beams = death because the ship/crew locks-on target and there's no escape (exceptions withstanding.) Light speed + lock = unavoidable. Now, for some reason, Anti-matter Cannon fire doesn't travel at light speed, but you'd think targeting would be included in the package...

 

[CyberTao]

Once we get better AI, something like that would be nice for new players. AI is far too predictable now, a slow strafe motion is all they know, and given how bad their aim is at some settings, you wouldn't have to aim. Just turn and shoot. But that would be fixed, and an aiming assist would be good then.

Stuff

"Anti-matter" was dropped from the name, they are just cannons now, physical energy rounds I think of them as.
With core drilling being as big of a problem that it is now, I'd rather now have something that boost the accuracy even more (you can change that in the configs). AI can't even use beams really yet anyways, so that's half your problem.

 

[ante185]

Predicting the path of a ship should come as a standard, advanced targeting could be used as a effect system?

 

[Spartan-228]

This is definitely needed. At long-range it would be nice for the slow firing sniper ships, and is badly needed for fighters.

 

[whooplaah]

I agree that there should be a mechanic that focuses beams while you aim ahead of a ship. Right now I've found that building a checkerboard of cannons is helpful in those situations, but terribly inefficient.

Technically cannon-lock-on is already in the game. You can build a bobby-turret with lasers and have it target what you target. It's accuracy is determined by the AI difficulty setting - I've been on servers where pirates snipe me from over 10k.

If you introduce laser lock-on you take out half the point of piloting during a fight.

I'd say that the better way to go is to make thrusters leave a visible ion trail - that way a pilot can gauge speed and direction from the trail the ship leaves.

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

Predicting the path of a ship should come as a standard, advanced targeting could be used as a effect system?

Interesting. What exactly is "advanced targeting"? I can't think of anything more than a flight path and a difference of velocity. Mind you, I'm not a real-life fighter pilot or an aerospace engineer.

This is definitely needed. At long-range it would be nice for the slow firing sniper ships, and is badly needed for fighters.

Fighters are the exact reason I thought this up. I was playing a Newtonian space fighter game and a predicted flight path came along with the package. I also thought that this would be useful for manned turrets.

I agree that there should be a mechanic that focuses beams while you aim ahead of a ship. Right now I've found that building a checkerboard of cannons is helpful in those situations, but terribly inefficient.

Technically cannon-lock-on is already in the game. You can build a bobby-turret with lasers and have it target what you target. It's accuracy is determined by the AI difficulty setting - I've been on servers where pirates snipe me from over 10k.

If you introduce laser lock-on you take out half the point of piloting during a fight.

I'd say that the better way to go is to make thrusters leave a visible ion trail - that way a pilot can gauge speed and direction from the trail the ship leaves.

Laser lock-on would be OP, no doubt about it, and you should probably talk with the admin of the server if a pirate is sniping you from over 5k. If the admin responds with "git gud skrub" then you should probably join another server. Its astonishing that a laser can go 10k in-game. I've built massive laser cannons and the max range I was able to achieve was 2k.

 

[CyberTao]

I've built massive laser cannons and the max range I was able to achieve was 2k.

Weapon ranges are tied to sector sizes, most server owners don't adjust them. Beam's range goes from 0.5 to 1.5 times sector size, and 10k isn't that uncommon for a sector size (Some servers increase the range on them purposely as well).

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

Weapon ranges are tied to sector sizes, most server owners don't adjust them. Beam's range goes from 0.5 to 1.5 times sector size, and 10k isn't that uncommon for a sector size (Some servers increase the range on them purposely as well).

Interesting. I wonder... do you know the maximum default range for a cannon? I always thought the cannon went much farther.

 

[CyberTao]

Interesting. I wonder... do you know the maximum default range for a cannon? I always thought the cannon went much farther.

Spoiler: Bloop

Cannons are 1.0x sector size, Missile are 1.6x, and beam is Beam is 0.5x. Using /beam as a slave triples the ranges.

Damage pulse has a radius of 10m, and beam increases it to 25m afaik.

 

[Valiant70]

One way to do this is to add a simple marker to show you where to shoot, taking into account the speed of the selected weapon, your velocity, and the enemy's velocity. I think this is what the OP was suggesting, and honestly it would probably work the best.

 

[mrsinister]

As long as there is an option to not use it (like a server setting), I am fine with this suggestion. I like the idea of the engine trails.

 

[Admiral_Wolf]

I like the Idea but perhaps altering it so that it is a block that you can either slave to your ship or to a particular weapon system would give it a nice twist. Rather than it being something you are given.

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

One way to do this is to add a simple marker to show you where to shoot, taking into account the speed of the selected weapon, your velocity, and the enemy's velocity. I think this is what the OP was suggesting, and honestly it would probably work the best.

You are right, Valiant70, that's the premise I started this thread on.

I like the Idea but perhaps altering it so that it is a block that you can either slave to your ship or to a particular weapon system would give it a nice twist. Rather than it being something you are given.

I think that's a very innovative idea, and maybe, with this feature added, one could fire and take out their enemy's targeting computers. This could also be useful when firing dumbfire missiles, and perhaps increase their feasibility in fighter-style or turret-to-fighter combat.

 

[En_Dotter]

Its not that easy to make a prediction when it comes to computing. Its not impossible, dont get me wrong, there are formulas that describe that in a rather precise manner. The problem comes to computing power. The best way (that i know of) is PID controller approach. But it requires a lot of advanced calculus, which would make servers and/or clients lag due to extensive cpu usage. I would like this feature in the game but not at the cost of performance, because everyone will learn how to shoot in due time.
Oh yea, this would be kinda hard to code atm (i think) because at close range i have noticed a lot of small teleports (especially when u are entering different sectors during the dogfight), so that would make the prediction algorithm mess up big time. At least thats my experience and my opinion ofc.

To be honest, id rather have better homing missile mathematical models. Since there is no blinking and stuff like that in this game (and missiles cant outrange the jump drive) i would suggest using Kalman filter which should make rockets hit targets as they should. This might be for another thread, but currently i think rockets use only proportional control (check current ship position and turn to hit it, and repeat), so there is not really much of proper predicting and sometimes rockets start circling the target because this approach is rather slow when it comes to reaching the desired destination (although almost 100% accurate in due time, if infinite loop doesnt happen).

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

Its not that easy to make a prediction when it comes to computing. Its not impossible, dont get me wrong, there are formulas that describe that in a rather precise manner. The problem comes to computing power. The best way (that i know of) is PID controller approach. But it requires a lot of advanced calculus, which would make servers and/or clients lag due to extensive cpu usage. I would like this feature in the game but not at the cost of performance, because everyone will learn how to shoot in due time.
Oh yea, this would be kinda hard to code atm (i think) because at close range i have noticed a lot of small teleports (especially when u are entering different sectors during the dogfight), so that would make the prediction algorithm mess up big time. At least thats my experience and my opinion ofc.

To be honest, id rather have better homing missile mathematical models. Since there is no blinking and stuff like that in this game (and missiles cant outrange the jump drive) i would suggest using Kalman filter which should make rockets hit targets as they should. This might be for another thread, but currently i think rockets use only proportional control (check current ship position and turn to hit it, and repeat), so there is not really much of proper predicting and sometimes rockets start circling the target because this approach is rather slow when it comes to reaching the desired destination (although almost 100% accurate in due time, if infinite loop doesnt happen).

I hadn't've thought of the teleportation that AI ships do, or the processing power cost. I guess this brings more support for implementing an "turn on and off in the settings" feature rather than a "targeting computer" feature, since not everybody has great internet connection or a great computer.

However, I'm no computer programmer, but in this particular game I was fighting off an entire wing of fighters, and I was gaming on my laptop. (I was away from my gaming computer and needed a fix.) I had selected one and it was calculating flight path just fine, with no lag and tons on plasma beams flying around. Did it ran better because it was a voxel game? Maybe it was turning down the resolution the farther I was away from the enemy ships to save processing power?

The world may never know.

And I, too, have noticed that the "smart missiles" are absolute idiots. Then again, it would be an easy game if the homing missiles hit the spot each time, so I think having these more complex equations would kill the balance.

However, I still believe targeting computers are at least a somewhat feasible feature, once the random teleporting and such is fixed.

 

[En_Dotter]

I wasnt really referring to single player when i mentioned teleprots. It only happens in multiplayer (and i think it doesnt matter how good ur ping is but someone can correct me here). So if u dogfight with ur friends or enemies its really hard to do it sometimes cus of those little delays that basically displace ships around. Its even worse if u say fight in 2,3,5 and during the fight u enter 3,3,5. Then the ship in front of u can poop quite randomly.
Now the problem with prediction is not that easy to solve because of your choice of questions and answers. For example:
Do i need approximate prediction or precise prediction of movement? (note that every prediction is approximation but im using those 2 different terms to state the accuracy of prediction)
If u want just a bit of approximation then it will often fail due to sudden speed changes along any of the axis, but it shouldnt be that expensive. If you want really precise prediction you need integral calculus (to see the pattern(s) of the targets movement so far(past), proportional (to see where it is now - present) and derivative (to see where it should be in the future). Then using all 3 of those situations you calculate a pretty good approximation of position. But it is really heavy on the cpu (again not much in singleplayer).

About rockets. It wouldnt make them unbalanced, since they already hit pretty much always. They would just hit in more "natural" way. They wouldnt chase the target like they do now, but instead go towards the targets new predicted location. This is also heavy for calculations but it can be called from time to time to correct the course of the rocket, unlike the HUD follow mode, which would need constant updates of states in order to work as intented. (at least i think it wouldnt)

 

[mrsinister]

so then the most feasible way would be for having engine trails? since it shouldn't impact the game too much....cause seriously though, everyone should know you have to lead the target in order to hit it. or, the will learn fairly quickly.

 

[whooplaah]

so then the most feasible way would be for having engine trails? since it shouldn't impact the game too much....cause seriously though, everyone should know you have to lead the target in order to hit it. or, the will learn fairly quickly.

You posted that before I had a chance to. I agree completely that the ion trails is more CPU-friendly.

In response to En_Dotter and Star Commander Shepard :
If we really want to be able to focus our beams along a path calculus isn't the only solution. If the ship had a child element that is a line stretching out in the direction of movement, all we need to do is rotate this line. Enemies can then use the line as a focal point, but still have to guess how much of a lead to give the ship along this line. (in essence, we plot the path but don't calculate the intersection)

If this method is used as an effect-system, as Admiral_Wolf sugested, then the width of the line can be adjusted to match the % of effect. Or maybe it would be better as a cone (with the point at the enemy ship getting wider farther away) that gets progressively slimmer with more accuracy.

This is still more calculation that the ion trail, but not as intense as calculus, and still requires the player to develop a skill at leading.

 

[jayman38]

Even something as simple as a lead indicator that simply projects a point out to where the ship would be if it flies in a straight line at the current speed for one half second would help. It would require only a few simple calculations with variables that are mostly already calculated. (Speed, direction multiplied by a set time to get a 3D vector) This would be a minimal calculation, would remind the shooter to lead the target, and would still require aiming skill on non-hit-scan-weapons. Bonus points if the lead indicator vector can get a neat, client-side space-y rendering effect.