vyshka
406
According to Nvidia it is limited to the Turing architecture because the programmable hw they are using to implement it only exists there.
So they just learned recently how to program their hardware?
No, as Vyshka, said
“…it only exists there”. You can’t program in something that is missing.
What was missing before it’s part that can do integer operations. GPUS are usually big dumb float processing units.
Kolbex
409
I would have thought floats would be harder to work with than integers.
It isn’t about what’s harder, it’s about what’s put in the silicon. 3d operations usually use floats, that’s why gpu are a huge floating point calculators.
Kolbex
411
Mm, just the usage of “big dumb” there threw me off.
KevinC
412
GPUs are hundreds of idiot savants working in parallel that can crunch floats like no other but can’t manage to tie their shoes or make toast.
I am just obsessed with this, I can’t get enough of it. I’m playing it without iron man mode and allowing myself to reload to experiment and over the course of the last … man, two weeks now? Lots and lots of hours, I’ve gotten very far into the campaign, even having a high end terran colony that is starting to really pay off in terms of the ships and weapons it can build:
Just last night I managed to finally build a ship I learned from a blue print (valued at 740k, I nearly sold it like a dozen times through my game, but thankfully never did), and it’s just… mind blowing how cool this is. Holy crap.
I will admit, I don’t manually fly my ship in combat. I just never got the “feel” for it, though I suppose I also never really tried when I found out I could auto-pilot my own ship and just watch the combat play out while I spent command points giving specific orders. Which honestly has been just about the perfect kind of tactical combat for me. It’s so good, I could watch these battles play out for days, I love it so much.
I don’t know if there is an “ending” to the game, but I wonder if I should stop playing now with the game still with at least one major update coming (revising the leveling/skill point system with quite a big over haul), but then I don’t imagine I’ll never not play this on and off going forward, either. Probably my favorite thing I played this year, which is saying a lot as Planetfall turned out even better than I dared hope.
That stuff looks pretty cool. Complex, but cool. Depending on how the X4 update does I may jump to this.
Oh yeah, for sure. You can hit U (or use the icon if you prefer) and your ship will auto-pilot itself (I assume using your character same as it would any other pilot, though I suspect “steady” as the default AI) and if you touch the controls to do something yourself it auto-disables the auto-pilot. But then I can use TAB to bring up the tactical map, issue commands as needed (like having someone with a reduced CR or low hull integrity retreat, or having a ship direct attack a target that I deem a bigger threat than they are currently prioritizing it) and otherwise watch the fireworks. It’s my favorite, it’s like someone slapped an amazing game onto Gratuitous Space Battles.
Thanks so much.
I worry about myself; I did start doing the campaign tutorial but somehow missed this and found (as usual) manual control to be a bit fiddly.
ShivaX
418
If you get good at it the manual controls can swing battles you might otherwise lose, but it takes some getting used to. Often it’s best to fly some specialty ship and float at the edges of battle while the AI handles most of the head on fighting.
One thing the AI is amazing at is using armor and shields to soak more damage than you are likely ever to. It knows how well it’s armor can take a beating so it will sometimes drop shields to avoid the flux hit and just face tank it for basically no damage and then raise shields just as a torpedo or something comes roaring in. In that same scenario I likely would have had my shields overloaded and taken the torp to the face and lost the ship.
That said it can also get itself into deep shit and not get out, so it’s far from perfect.
vyshka
419
There is another fleet building tournament running now:
I recorded this just for you, but if anyone else is curious, here is how I’m playing the game.
Note some of these tips only work as my fleet is much more powerful than those I face - I had some brutal battles that, as @ShivaX noted, a more skilled player could have won handily. On the other hand, letting the AI play for me means I don’t have any advantages over the AI, in theory.
Watched! Thanks very much for that. Time to get back into it.
That was fun to watch, thanks for posting that. Definitely going to get this at some point, but I got to say, it looks like it’s going to take some work to figure out.
I think controlling your ship also confers some stat bonuses, no?
I found that I sucked at manual combat so much that I asked about it in the game’s official forum:
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=15155.0
A few others commented that they also don’t manually control, which prompted others to also say if you do so you’re missing out on a big part of the game. This left me feeling guilty for only wanting to do what you do – let the AI control my entire fleet. So guilty that I just kind of stopped playing.
So the fact that you’re doing it only AI control is liberating to me, and I intend to return to the game!
Gonna watch this now, thanks!
Provided that you invest in skills which affect your ship only. I usually focus on technology and industry skills, so my officers are all way better at flying direct combat ships than I am.
