Hi, Devs

Simple yet efficient solution for alternate convoy exit point.

Make ion storms allways have exit point at coords (0,0,0).
Make every convoy's logic head to (0,0,0) when inside ion storms.

Done. Solved.

Then you could camp the exit of ion storms and blow people up without letting them leave the storm.

"Then you could camp the exit of ion storms and blow people up without letting them leave the storm."

And that's a bad thing how? Ion storms were initially made to try to give players a place to ambush other players... They were a terrible failure in that regard.

Also, there's no storms in nation capitals, so this change would not effect anyone "too" new.

Aside from possible ramifications of positioning/tracking/lua/etc that I won't get into... the exit doesn't have to be at 0,0,0, just at a persistent location.

I think this is Alloh's FIRST constructive suggestion. Thanks :)

I have to agree with Drazed.

+1

actually drazed, with the fog and the scanners and shit (the scanners wern't availible untill after the random/broken exit points were added) they might work as ambush locations.

Ok, we implemented this. Tonight.

We'll see if it works. It still doesn't fix/solve the underlying problem, which has never been understood or debugged, despite a great many attempts. But maybe it'll magically be ok.

holy shit.... this is going to give alloh way too much ego...

Reporting back: SOLVED.

I've taken a few voys, asked other players online. Convoys now allways leave storms in the same exit point as we do.

Some reported weirdness as sometimes jump point is near roids, violating the 3km rule. Since ion storm is already an exception in subspace, I see no problem that its exit being another exception.

And exit being near roids increase danger. As the "really only" exit point makes the perfect spot for ambushes. More risk, more fun!

Also, for me, many became "smaller", i.e., you enter nearer its exit, what is also good thing!

Thank you so much, Inc!

"holy shit.... this is going to give alloh way too much ego..."

well he actually came up with a suggestion that wasn't idiotic, or in jibberish.

@incarnate

Let me know when You are ready to implement some more quick and easy solutions to very nagging problems, because i had a few small suggestions which would (each) take maximum few hours of programmer's work and will deliver a big value to this game.

For starters: The one with blinking systems on the starmap where most of players is. Easy as hell to do, 2 hours work at max, great value.

PaladinOfLancelot,

Please stop thread jacking and let Alloh have his very first official victory on the forums. Also, if the Devs think any of your multitude of atrocious ideas or the few good ones you have spewed have any merit... they will get around to them with out your prompting.

Inc, thanks... the ion storm exit thing has bugged me for years.

Alloh, congrats on having your idea implemented.

You know, this might make things really interesting. All the bots hang out in the middle of the sector, and real pirates could do the same and give traders a real scary time. Even more incentive to avoid storms!

I think the entry point needs adjustment, but yeah this kind of works. I was chasing a trader yesterday, we hit a storm, I was first to the exit, the trader really did have no choice but to fly towards me.

Awesome.

Alloh, not only did you get something implemented, you got something that helps us pirates implemented. Kudos.

Now, the real question is: Devs, you've been all 'yeah, known problem, known problem, but we can't figure out why' for years about this. WTF did you need Alloh to give you a duct tape workaround?

What was the problem with ion storms again?

Now, the real question is: Devs, you've been all 'yeah, known problem, known problem, but we can't figure out why' for years about this. WTF did you need Alloh to give you a duct tape workaround?

In software development, it's generally good practice to actually figure out what's wrong. Otherwise, you can blindly change the design and sort of "hope for the best", but the problem may still re-assert itself later in some new and even-more-annoying form (which may well yet happen). So, in a sense, this was actually bad engineering practice, but the ramifications aren't likely to.. say.. take down the server, or anything, so it was worth a shot.

the worst i have seen so far is the jump point being in a middle of a roid but i haven't run into a roid large enough that makes it so i can't jump so I'm ok with a little last second dodging for the convenience of not having to go 2 directions to escort something

Right, but why suddenly try it now and not three years ago? It's not like there's much difference between the state of the bug now and the state of the bug then.

Anyway, I've always mantained you guys needed to spend less time worrying about best practice and more time about actually executing stuff we want to play with (e.g., tridents), so I'm glad you finally took the massive risk of using duct tape :P

Dr. Lecter,
I have to deal with this sort of thing often at work. If you don't try to follow best practices and do the right thing as you go you'll end up with essentially a big ball of duct tape that you can't peel one piece off to replace it with a better fix without making 5 other things peel off that were taped to it.

You guys do an awesome job for such a small team, Incarnate.