OK, merge away.

I just didn't find the old thread on the first page of the search function, so I decided to start a new one.

Well, I remembered having posted something to that effect so I had an unfair advantage. =P


Merged "Hardpoints and various item sizes" + "Turret Tracking Speed topics".

Shuffled dates around a bit so that Rabiator's post (which is none too different from the OP) ended up 2nd.
(See that forum energy? I wield it.)

That merge had one funny side effect:

My moved post is now dated Tue Dec 10, 2013 4:05 pm. And still referring to the May 2014 dev update. Hey, I'm psychic

More on topic, I see that I have already posted most of my good ideas in the old thread. 'Nuff said.

Rabiator wrote:Considering the latest dev update, it seems we have a continuous range of "compactness" now (unless Josh reconsiders that bit). Which leads me to two obvious questions:

• "Which weapon fits into which hardpoint"?
• and "Are there clearly separated size classes (as in fighter vs. battleship hardpoint)?"

For a change, I'll pull a Gazz and suggest a system that goes for maximum flexibility, maybe at the expense of nicely distinct categories

Here goes:

• An item fits into a hardpoint if its "compactness" (inverse of size) exceeds the "minimum compactness" of the hardpoint.
  This may be more intuitive if we use the inverse and say "the size of the item may not exceed the max. allowed size of the item in the hardpoint".
• The resources needed by the hardpoint go up with the max. allowed size of the item in the hardpoint. I'm intentionally vague here since we don't know the scaling laws of the LTverse yet.
• You start out with a freely selectable hardpoint size (as in, "for this fighter design I want a hardpoint that can hold anything with at least 0.9 compactness") and maybe power capacity ("at least 5 GW, I need to power a point defense laser"). The room needed in the ship follows from this player-selected size and power capacity.
• Same for turrets, which are a special kind of hardpoint.
• Turrets with large allowed item size tend to have a lower slew rate.
• Turrets are researchable objects where you can trade slew rate for maximum item size and vice versa. Maybe more properties, I'm just a bit out of ideas right now

Edit:
The AI counts as player in this, following Josh's motto "the AI is equally powerful". And I'm curious if the AI will understand ship engineering as well as a human player

Personally, I think having hardpoints with decimal values for size would be more than a bit cumbersome. Oh, you can't fit this gun here.. The gun takes up 9.459 m3, and the hardpoint can only accept 9.456 m3.

I would instead rather just see the standard S/M/L/XL/Etc hardpoints, and instead of the 'compactness' stat determining what size of hardpoint the weapon can fit in, it instead subtracts from the ships total internal volume. Making weapons more compact is still valuable, but you're no longer counting decimals to ensure something can or can not fit.

To give an example, you have a battleship with 1000 m3 of useful internal volume. It has ten large hardpoints, to which you can fit ten large weapons. Weapon A has a volume of 20 m3, while weapon B has a volume of 25 m3. If you fit all of weapon A, your ship will have 800m3 of space left for other supplies/equipment/cargo. If you fit all weapon B, you will have 750m3 remaining.

This strikes me as a far more user friendly solution. It is still a valuable stat, but it will greatly simplify the act of fitting.

I'd personally like to keep the m^3, CP or whatever allocation toying around inside the ship editor/creator and not in the outfit phase.

I suggest making a hybrid system of the class-based hardpoints and volume/mass/whatever based hardpoints.


At the very bottom its the floating point variable sheningas that cutterjohn just negated.

So your hardpoint has an internal storage of 10.564m^3 and when your weapon has 10.565m^3 it doesnt fit. Period.
this may be combined with a minimal size.
Because you cant mount a 9mm pistol into a turret which was designed for 120mm barrels.
(At least not without massive sheningans)

(In the ship designer hardpoints use up the volume they provide + some more for motors, gears etc)

Now comes the big BUT
There are hardpoint classes.
Those classes are based on volume.

so if you have a hardpoint capable of mounting 10-15 size equipment, its class C.

Every hardpoint that wants to be called class C must at least be able to fulfil this standard.

So if you have a hardpoint capable of mounting 9-16 size equipment its class C.

So every weapon which is specified class C (so it has a size between 10-15) it fits into every class C hardpoint, because every class C hardpoint fulfils the standard.

So, now to the hybrid part.
classes are not hard enforced.

So if you have a big class B weapon with size 9.8 and your class C hardpoint can fit down to 9, you can fit this class B weapon into class C slots.

Same in the other direction.
You have a class D weapon with size 15.6, and your class C hardpoint can do up to 16, it fits.

If a hardpoints capability spans multiple standards completely (for example 5-10 class B standard, 10-15 class C standard, 5-15 hardpoint)
It gets multiple assignments, so the hardpoint in the bracketed example would be class B/C.
Every weapon that fits class B or class C can be mounted.

This makes the whole system easily readable for the ones who just want to find matching equipment and makes it still possible for fine tuners to find the best possible equipment for their ship.


Ps: hey cutterjohn
Havent seen you in a while, where have you been?

I don't think that all the decimals will be helpful.
Items have enough angles of freedom so that the class / mounting size can be an integer.

Fit or doesn't fit is a binary solution. If it's a size 16 or size 15.965 weapon that fits into your size 16 mount makes no difference. It only throws more numbers at the player for the hell of it.

I do not intend to shove the floats down the players throat.
Its mainly for the ones who like fiddly.

Bur yeah, i agree that 3 decimals would be too much to show the player.

Maybe calculate internally with many digits, but round up to the next 0.1 step or something.
That ir does not become so granular that it amounts to size class changes as soon as the compactness changes by 0.001 but not so fiddly that you have to match the last digit of 5 digit numbers.

Also, most of the time players would use the simple class system and not mess with the precise size of the equipment.
(At least as i imagine )

Gazz wrote:I don't think that all the decimals will be helpful.
Items have enough angles of freedom so that the class / mounting size can be an integer.

Fit or doesn't fit is a binary solution. If it's a size 16 or size 15.965 weapon that fits into your size 16 mount makes no difference. It only throws more numbers at the player for the hell of it.

True, but if you stick with the Joshian system of small changes, you will eventually get a size 16.035 gun which does not fit. If you hide the decimals, the player will be confused why .

An alternative would be removing the "compactness" from the system and going back to a simple class size system. Guns would then always have a size that is designed to fit a small, medium, large... hard point, as suggested by CutterJohn. There would be no continuous size distribution. Maybe there would still be differences in mass, but without changing where the gun fits.

....or just move the decimal three places to the right.

Rabiator wrote: True, but if you stick with the Joshian system of small changes, you will eventually get a size 16.035 gun which does not fit. If you hide the decimals, the player will be confused why .

An alternative would be removing the "compactness" from the system and going back to a simple class size system. Guns would then always have a size that is designed to fit a small, medium, large... hard point, as suggested by CutterJohn. There would be no continuous size distribution. Maybe there would still be differences in mass, but without changing where the gun fits.

or we round to the next meaningful decimal after researching the item.

for research all of the decimals get used.

for mounting not.

I thought about that but what would it do?

For the most part the size stat would constantly flicker between 2 integers. It would take 20 or 30 consecutive improvements of it before anything useful (reduction by 1 size) happened.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:I'd personally like to keep the m^3, CP or whatever allocation toying around inside the ship editor/creator and not in the outfit phase.

I suggest making a hybrid system of the class-based hardpoints and volume/mass/whatever based hardpoints.


At the very bottom its the floating point variable sheningas that cutterjohn just negated.

So your hardpoint has an internal storage of 10.564m^3 and when your weapon has 10.565m^3 it doesnt fit. Period.
this may be combined with a minimal size.
Because you cant mount a 9mm pistol into a turret which was designed for 120mm barrels.
(At least not without massive sheningans)

(In the ship designer hardpoints use up the volume they provide + some more for motors, gears etc)

Now comes the big BUT
There are hardpoint classes.
Those classes are based on volume.

so if you have a hardpoint capable of mounting 10-15 size equipment, its class C.

Every hardpoint that wants to be called class C must at least be able to fulfil this standard.

So if you have a hardpoint capable of mounting 9-16 size equipment its class C.

So every weapon which is specified class C (so it has a size between 10-15) it fits into every class C hardpoint, because every class C hardpoint fulfils the standard.

So, now to the hybrid part.
classes are not hard enforced.

So if you have a big class B weapon with size 9.8 and your class C hardpoint can fit down to 9, you can fir this class B weapon into class C slots.

Same in the other direction.
You have a class D weapon with size 15.6, and your class C hardpoint can do up to 16, it fits.

If a hardpoints capability spans multiple standards completely (for example 5-10 class B standard, 10-15 class C standard, 5-15 hardpoint)
It gets multiple assignments, so the hardpoint in the bracketed example would be class B/C.
Every weapon that fits class B or class C can be mounted.

This makes the whole system easily readable for the ones who just want to find matching equipment and makes it still possible for fine tuners to find the best possible equipment for their ship.

That would be a pretty acceptable compromise. My only question then is how robust/logical/consistent the games simulation is. Most games tend to be pretty arbitrary in this regard. In EVE, for example, a small turret will do like 10x less dps than a large one, despite the large one being 100x bigger, and taking 100x more power to fire. Splitting it off makes it far easier to balance, since you don't have to worry about what would happen if you managed to fit a smallish medium weapon into a small slot. EVE continued to scrub those instances out of the game as time went on, eventually introducing sized components for most things because balance is finicky and fitting oversized/undersized, or one size fits all, modules tended to break their math in spectacular ways.

So that is another reason I see distinct slot sizes that can't be altered as useful... It just makes balance easier. This of course comes at the cost of freedom, but it may be a necessary tradeoff.

Ps: hey cutterjohn
Havent seen you in a while, where have you been?

Just kinda unplugged for a while. Didn't have much left to argue about anyway.

CutterJohn wrote: My only question then is how robust/logical/consistent the games simulation is. Most games tend to be pretty arbitrary in this regard. In EVE, for example, a small turret will do like 10x less dps than a large one, despite the large one being 100x bigger, and taking 100x more power to fire.

In this, I have big hopes for LT being better. Because with procedural generation, LT will need scaling laws that make sense, and I think Josh is smart enough to understand this .

CutterJohn wrote:Splitting it off makes it far easier to balance, since you don't have to worry about what would happen if you managed to fit a smallish medium weapon into a small slot. EVE continued to scrub those instances out of the game as time went on, eventually introducing sized components for most things because balance is finicky and fitting oversized/undersized, or one size fits all, modules tended to break their math in spectacular ways.

So that is another reason I see distinct slot sizes that can't be altered as useful... It just makes balance easier. This of course comes at the cost of freedom, but it may be a necessary tradeoff.

Actually you can mount undersized modules in EVE (or could a few years ago, when I was playing the game). They just will leave a lot of potential unused.
In LT with the ship designer available it may not be so easy to force a balance on inherently unbalanced items, unless you greatly constrain the amount of weapons a ship can have. Taking EVE as an example again, mounting 16 light missile launchers on a Drake would have made a great close combat ship .

The main advantage I see in distinct slot sizes is keeping your inventory sorted and actually being able to use most of the guns you buy/plunder somewhere. Because you will not encounter a "medium" gun that is 0.1 size points too large for your medium hard point.

Rabiator wrote: The main advantage I see in distinct slot sizes is keeping your inventory sorted and actually being able to use most of the guns you buy/plunder somewhere. Because you will not encounter a "medium" gun that is 0.1 size points too large for your medium hard point.

well, i proposed something that would provide such a thing without it being fiddly by default.

if you have a class C hardpoint every and any class C weapon will fit.

if you start to play around with the actual sizes, it gets fiddly but rewarding

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

Rabiator wrote: The main advantage I see in distinct slot sizes is keeping your inventory sorted and actually being able to use most of the guns you buy/plunder somewhere. Because you will not encounter a "medium" gun that is 0.1 size points too large for your medium hard point.

well, i proposed something that would provide such a thing without it being fiddly by default.

if you have a class C hardpoint every and any class C weapon will fit.

if you start to play around with the actual sizes, it gets fiddly but rewarding

Your concept will admittedly avoid problems most of the time.

But if you keep pushing the actual size in a certain direction, you will eventually reach the point where it crosses the threshold to the next class. That means your "medium" gun mutates to a "large" one or maybe a "small" one if you go the other way and work on miniaturization.

Around that threshold, things may still be surprising to a player who does not want to fiddle around...