*** Vendetta 1.8.94
- All asteroids now perform full obb occlusion instead of sphere occlusion.
- Occluded ships no longer show their health in the sector list.
- Radar Next/Prev selections now properly ignore occluded ships.
- Plugins can no longer get ship distances when the ship is occluded.
- Improved sector performance.

Been a long time since I've been first to post one of these...

Niiiiice.

Cool. So the next step is to actually not show occluded ships on the sector list and life will be swell. :)

Next step is to gut radar range for non-friendly/non-group member ships down to 2000m base (extenders should expand it), and remove anything outside the radar range from the sector list.

But then what's the point of sector chat?

Perhaps you could elaborate a touch more ingoguy? I would imagine Sector Chat would become increasingly pragmatic (ie. "Hello? Is there anybody there?"). I'm not quite sure how this effects the chat at all...

And Lecter why would you want to reduce the radar range? It's already quite ridiculously minute (5km in a vacuum in the year 4xxx?).

What's "minute" is determinable relative to the speed of ships, the reach of weapons systems, and the jump-out range, which in VO make 5000m ridiculously too much. For purely gameplay related reasons, potentially hostile contacts should not be in radar range before 2000m (assuming no storms, occlusion, or radar extenders), and if it's not on the radar, it shouldn't be on the sector list.

I see what you're getting at. While I agree the gameplay might benefit from it, I don't think the immersion would. As it stands right now, the Greyhound only has a radar range that accounts for about 0.6% of its top speed (5km vs 810km/hr). Compare this to an F14 Tomcat which has a radar range that is about 12% that of its top speed (320km vs 2485km/hr).

Like I said, I get that it would aide the gameplay a bit, but I don't know if it's worth the loss of immersion. I know I'm in the minority, but I always opt for the simulation/realism options.

I also think the same gameplay mechanics could be aided by other addons. It would be cool to see a small port addon that masked your friend/foe status until you were within 1000m for instance, or along the same lines, something that could fake faction up until a certain distance.

*Disclaimer* My stats on the F14 might be off. Just pulled them from Wikipedia... any Military buffs out there, feel free to rip them to bits.

The F14 doesn't hunt prey that can just jump away, so stop with the real-world references. Immersion has nothing to do with such things in this game.

instead of masking friend/foe status, faction or whatever until you're within a certain range, why not masking the whole ship? :D Cloaking device small port addon !

nice update anyway.

Sector Chat is very useful.

Uses:
- demands for... fees. Safe passage and whatnot.
- shouting taunts, so you do not spam #100
- conversing about specific things without having to use /msg
- Nation War (and other) event coordination
- inter-group communications which can be open (okay, bad example)
- enjoying some green on your monitor (snot is so tedious to wipe off)
- ???
- profit

Yesplease do the sector list omission thingamajig.

It would also be helpful if people in the middle of empty space weren't invisible to radar and targeting (which still happens on this update).

These are easily the worst and most prevalent bugs I've ever seen. They literally make the game unplayable in 100% of space and with a random but highly occuring frequency.

This has to get fixed. I find it very annoying, but a noob who is getting cut to pieces by a vet who knows how to engage a ship without targeting it is just going to be hugely frustrated and angry.

Definitly left a few of those scattered around.

snax did you really just compare quantities of different units as a percentage? Shame.

A statistician I'm certainly not. I didn't know this was frowned upon!

That said; Phaserlight, did you really just start a sentence without a capitalized word? And a name to boot!!

For shame!

Edit: What would be the proper way to explain those relationships then?

1.8.95 patch has been released. It includes a new 'One-Off' proximity warning mode and fixes the radar occlusion bug.

Snax, if you really want to compare those units, you'll have to compare the speed of the ship to the speed of light. It doesn't make sense to compare how far your radar can see to how far the ship/plane can move in an hour. Radar range, as far as I know, is limited only by occlusion, and is effectively infinite in a true vacuum. Without gases, dust and debris to interfere with the radar waves, you can theoretically see an object infinitely far away provided it is not blocked by a nearer object. That's where light speed becomes important... it would take a second for an object one half light-second away to register on radar, and two years for an object two light-years away to register on radar. Whether a ship moves 30km/hr or 2000km/hr makes no difference in radar range, though in my opinion both radar range and top ship speed should be greater than they are in this game.

Snax,

Given the fact that one number is a velocity and the other is a distance, you would have to either

arbitrarily choose a time interval so that you could say 'in x seconds, object a crosses a distance of y km, whereas its radar range is z km, which is u % of the distance traveled, whereas object b... etc' or, because it's easier, say

'object a can cross its radar range in x seconds, while object b takes y seconds, which is a z percent increase'.

As said, I would choose the latter.

Edit: PC, I do not think it makes sense to use SOL in this comparison, both the velocities and distances being so small. As I understood it, Snax meant to emphasise the fact that jet fighters take longer to travel the distance of their radar range than ships in VO.

Good point, toshiro. My point is that since radar waves travel the speed of light, worrying how long it takes to cross radar range in space is silly. If I'm taking a space walk with a radar scanner, I can see just as far as a ship traveling at near light speed. You explained much better than I did how Snax can fix his calculations, though. As I think about it, however, I think Snax is making a very good point as far as gameplay is concerned. (Whoa.... Professor Chaos making a case for putting gameplay over realism? No way!)

Hehe. That's what engineers are there for ;)

You are right about the velocity of electromagnetic radiation, of course. For us, it matters little whether a ship moves at 200 m/s or 1000 m/s, we see it 'equally soon', because the difference is negligible.