X4 - Now with more flyable ships

Yeah, although lets see what they have broken as part of the fix before celebrating too much :) I am backing up my save games and giving it a go tonight for sure.

One of the things that killed the game for me was my brief experience as an outlaw. A space station went aggro because I plinked it while helping fend off a lone hostile ship. So it started dribbling out attack ships. Well, “attack” ships. None of them ever punched through my shields, which were just the default starting shields. It spit out one, then a second, then a third, and then a “wave” of three. This was one of the main Argon bases on the superhighway, so I figured it would put up a fight. I figured I’d see how long I could hold out against its defenders before having to reload. But after those last three ships, no one else showed up, despite my reputation plunging to “enemy -30.”

Then I decided to see what would happen if I attacked a bigger ship. It didn’t do much but send out a couple of obligatory “hey, stop that” messages, so I figured it was unarmed. I’m chipping away at its hit points when I realize, ah, right, I can attack the individual components mounted on the outside of the hull. I kill a few shield generators. I shoot off one of the engines. Then I start attacking another component that, it turns out, was a turret. The ship had a turret. A turret that never fired.

Maybe the ship was undercrewed. Maybe the turret didn’t have software. Maybe it was damaged. Maybe I was within its minimum range. I had no way of knowing. Whatever the case, that was when I decided this universe was broken, opaque, or nonsensical. Maybe a combination all three. So I didn’t reload and uninstalled instead.

-Tom

Sorry you didnt have fun @tomchick !

I figured out how to make custom logos work :) My minions will carry my glorious visage across all of trade space :) Hail the god emperor! Err maybe the power has gone to my head a little.

instructions here, pretty simple.
https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence/display/X4WIKI/User+generated+logos+-+Usage

Turrets are effectively useless right now (except for possibly beam turrets?). The aiming calculations were too much of a performance hit, so they made them update every few seconds only or something along those lines. And yes, this makes combat pretty much broken. They’ve said they’re looking into it.

So far it’s the Skyrim of open space games. Impressive and massive yet chock full of funny issues.

If that’s really the excuse, somebody needs to be fired. There’s no situation in which aiming calculations of straight firing lasers should be a performance hit. Unreal Tournament could run trajectory simulation for 32 bots every few frames in 1999. I don’t care how many ships and turrets you have, it’s 2018 and they don’t even need to deal with gravity.

Good comparison.

That… can’t be right.

Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Egosoft, Travis!

I mean, if anybody here feels the need to make a turret lead a target, I guess, here you go - it ain’t that expensive. (curse you forum software for removing TABs)

float32 MATH::predictIntersectionTime( const Vector3_64& StartPos, float64 Speed, const Vector3_64& TargetPos, const Vector3& TargetVelocity)
{
Vector3_64 toTargetVec = TargetPos - StartPos;

float64 discriminant =Speed * Speed * toTargetVec.squaredLength()
- ( toTargetVec.crossProduct( TargetVelocity ) ).squaredLength();
if( discriminant < 0.0f )
{
return 100.0f;
}

// Compute the target-hit-time
float64 ret = ( sqrt( discriminant ) + toTargetVec.dotProduct( TargetVelocity ) )
/ ( Speed * Speed - TargetVelocity.squaredLength() );
if( ret < 0.0f )
{
return 100.0f;
}
return (float32)ret;
}

Vector3_64 CShipAI::GetPredictedIntersection( CShip* pTarget )
{
float32 Time = MATH::predictIntersectionTime( m_pShip.getPosition(), m_pShip.getWeaponSpeed(), pTarget ->getPosition(), pTarget ->getVelocity() );

Time = min( Time, m_pShip.getWeaponlifespan() );
Time = max( Time, 0 );
Vector3_64 PredictedLocation = pTarget->getPosition() + pTarget ->getVelocity() * Time;
return PredictedLocation ;
}

Maybe there’s been some misunderstanding somewhere?

I found the original developer quote that started the rumour. When asked by a twitch streamer whether it’s possible to improve turrets in-game:

[EGO_Lino]: @CohhCarnage There is currently no ingame way of making them better. We already noted down, we will improve that soon! Technical why: its retargeting every few seconds (retargeting is expensive to calculate). We will improve that for the playership soon™

Maybe they mean something else by ‘retargeting’ - I dunno!

And here’s a good example of the turrets in action:

Uhhhhh. yeah, that’s super occasional target-leading all right.
Weeeird. The math is not that complicated or expensive.

Bless your heart. Thank you for the code!

Being generous, it probably also means “choosing a target” which means calculating the intersection and then tracing it for all potential targets. But that still should be pretty cheap.

This thread makes me want to load up X3:TC.

I get it, I own all the previous games as well and have tried playing them repeatedly to no avail. I remember when Egosoft did the 3D benchmark/demo that led to X.

X4: Foundations makes me want to load up X3:TC!

-Tom

Speaking of which, how good is X3:TC? What does X4 have that it doesn’t have?