Work arounds for Large pirate spawn problems. -AMBUSH FLEETS

[DrTarDIS]

Often times putting a really cool but REALLY SCARY pirate into the spawn index is a bad idea. Either the server decides to spawn 3 of them inside each other in response to aggressors, or wave 43 base-defense is just a bit much. Especially since the wave-selection system itself is beyond mortal comprehension.

Has anyone ever tried spawning a large ship and it's escorts as a self-destructing pirate station?

I'd see it something like rotator-clock hooked to an 8 or 9 long flip-flop timer set to all blue, hook a change rail to launcher block up at step4 or 5 for the escorts to give them a lead, step 6 or 7 for he capitol ship itseld, and then final flip on a not to a bunch of warheads, despawning the station entity (so the sector can re-populate).

I'd think you could control the likelyhood of them spawning in based o how many blueprints are stations vs. ship-ambush blueprints.

Anyone tried something like this?

 

[Az14el]

you can set the exact spawns for each difficulty tier in catalog under admin tab, manage spawn somethingorother, though no idea how high a tier a pirate station will draw from for base defence, I'd just scale it up to something challenging then just let it yolospawn things from there

 

[DrTarDIS]

yeah...i'm guessing you haven't set a 600m+ ship to pirate spawn yourself yet. The issues I'm referring to are mainly because "large" ships will spawn already clipping with each other, and lag-bomb the geme

 

[BJammin]

Maybe a wave group could be decided by a mass/size quota. Have X total mass allocated for one wave, and the masses of the individual ships added up can't exceed that number (that way, multiple large ships with masses in the 10,ooos don't appear in groups).

 

[Az14el]

having larger ships spawn in a more balanced way (no promises on clipping issues) would be to use the admin spawn lists in catalog to progress in a natural way up to those large ships, and simply not have more than one "problematic" sized ship per wave, or simply give them they're own wave to spawn individually. Not saying this is a perfect workaround, it's obviously tedious & could be done better through the procedural lists. But just mentioning this feature since it's a possible workaround for the moment if you REALLY want those big boats in your procedural lists.

 

[Madman198237]

To solve clipping, spawn a rectangular prism based on the max X, Y, and Z dimensions of each vessel, and spawn the next vessel so that it's box is OUTSIDE the first box.
Done, problem solved, no complexities necessary.

 

[DrTarDIS]

having larger ships spawn in a more balanced way (no promises on clipping issues) would be to use the admin spawn lists in catalog to progress in a natural way up to those large ships....

Last time I tested out waves and lists, the Ai tended to always spawn the huge ships and only the huge ships if you did a 1-torch-shot on a pirate station. That's also when I noticed it would sometimes spawn 3 of them inside each other...You saying that's fixed to the point it's a usable system now?

To solve clipping, spawn a rectangular prism based on the max X, Y, and Z dimensions of each vessel, and spawn the next vessel so that it's box is OUTSIDE the first box.
Done, problem solved, no complexities necessary.

Wat? Have you done this? can you explain a bit more? This a "dear schema" ?

 

[Megacrafter127]

Wat? Have you done this? can you explain a bit more? This a "dear schema" ?

It is quite simple:

First, every ship is simplified as a cuboid with the same length, width, and height as the ship it simplifies. All these cuboids are aligned with each other, because that makes calculations extremely easy.
The only thing that has to be done now is checking whether any of these axis-aligned cuboids intersect, which can be done in a simple way:

First, project each cuboid onto each axis, splitting the test into 3 1 dimensional tests, instead of 1 3 dimensional test. If, for any 2 of these cuboids, at least one of the 1 dimensional tests states they do not intersect, it means the 2 cuboids do not intersect. If all 3 1 dimensional tests for any 2 of these cuboids state they do intersect, then they do indeed intersect.​

 

[Madman198237]

Exactly as Megacrafter said. This is a programming/spawning mechanism suggestion, not something that we'll be doing ourselves. It's just the simplest method of fixing potential clipping issues that I've seen.

The game could define a larger box as well, and then spawn (Randomly) ships inside the box. The larger the ship, the fewer of them you see. Difficulty could then be achieved via changing the size of the box.

 

[DrTarDIS]

sounds like you two should quote it in the Suggestions forum then. I'm Looking for a kludge that'll work in our current state, and to raise awareness for the server admins if it does.

Can't expect schine to gift-wrap us a deeper PvE if we don't lay some path with what we already have, right?