Hi,

Just to put in a note that I have no problems with fast ships at all, graphics wise. Things are smooth and I can shoot them nicely. I am on a Duron 850Mhz with GeForce2. I turn off some detail to get a nice FPS.

The ships that kill me are usually proms and hogs with their Gatling Turrets, go figure.

MMMM finally the kind of update i've been waiting for yummy!
Well, it sounds like a nice christmas(what ever holiday you celebrate for that matter)gift from the devs. Thanks guys!

Devs: your work is appreciated. To have so many updates w/in two month's time (since release) is incredible for a mmorg. GL w/getting everything out of the door.

Serco Vult and Valk have very very very similar stats. If you want to mimic a fully armed valk in a vult, just try it empty. Wth are you people talking about? There is no lag caused by fast ships. Pleeeeease.

Are you watching the ship from 150m away while moving yourself or are you flying it? The first case is where we see the "so fast you cant track it" thing.

I've fought valk vs valk. There is some display jitteriness (~45fps, <40ms ping), but not noticable. It's mostly fps caused, as far as I can tell. It doens't look at all like it does when I play someone on dialup with a 350ms ping. With a decent fps, it is pretty much invisible.

I get 70-80 fps, have a 50 ping and I've noticed that ships move so fast they appear to jump...

Or are you saying that the other guys have a bad ping?

I'm saying that I only notice lag when the other guy has bad ping, and the effects of lag are no more pronounced on a high maneuverability ship than on a low maneuverability ship.

We're not saying its lag, we're saying that the ship itself moves so fast that it appears to be laggy when it isn't.

Starfisher: I am wondering under what circumstances you get 70-80 fps.

With my graphics settings I usually get ~150 out in space/few asteroids, ~100 with many asteroids around, ~50-60 flying into a station, and I don't want to go too much below that. I think a better benchmark for performance would be "lowest sustained fps" for a sort of worst-case scenario. Anyway, I haven't noticed ships jumping around personally (except from connection related lag).

Is it possible that a hiccough in the frame rate during close confrontations with other ships is causing this jitteryness people are seeing?

Implementing Andy's "multiplied masses" suggestion, and doing some work in order to make that.. work properly, is part of what we're currently doing.

I'm not talking about "nerfing" any ships, nor do I think combat should be the exclusive realm of fighters. However, some ships (like the Centurion) were intended to be very lightweight, highly maneuverable ships that didn't have much weapon capacity. Unfortunately, due to various (and oft-discussed) problems stemming from the physics matrix and the old "globally exchangable" engine system, that was impossible without totally destabilizing the control system.

I don't want to make anything better than the Valk. I don't think that's necessary, and yes, it might demonstrate latency issues that much more as well. However, more ships should be closer to the Valk. It has been utterly dominant largely due to a fluke in the shape of the vessel, which is used to determine its distribution of mass and affects various factors of the flight control system. I look forward to being able to tune things like this with less fundamental engine limitations. We'll see how it all goes.

I don't want to speculate too much on all the rest of it until I get a chance to test things more. We'll see how it shakes out. As we all (should) know.. nothing is cast in stone, we'll still be up for tweaking and tinkering after this coming update. That's the beauty of an updatable game like this :).

Yes, mainly what "Adjusting more of the fighter craft so they fall more in line with the ideal of a `highly maneuverable' ship." refers to is the aforementioned stability problems, not necessarily faster linear acceleration.

I finally solved the stupid damping issue stemming from uneven angular inertia in the ships (for instance, the centurion is much longer than it is wide or tall, so it "rolls" much easier than it yaws because it has less angular inertia in that axis). So now the centurion can yaw at the rate it was intended to without the roll axis oscillating. I just have it work out the maximum feasible damping for each axis and apply it independently to each axis rather than all at once.

You can see the oscillation in the game now; get a bus or a centurion, turn off mouselook, and just tap 'q' or 'e'. That's now fixed. Without the fix, cranking up the spin torque would cause your ship to start completely flipping out.

I don't suppose we will see mission linked (or whatever) engine and ship upgrades in the near future will we? Now would seem the time to do it ;)

Agreed.

[RelayeR gets her blowtorch ready so she can cut loose any further posts about ship balance in this thread.]

I would also like to make the point that I personally believe the vult to be a better dogfighter than the valk.

I fought Eldrad's valk with a Mk IV and had no problems, sure it moves fast, but it also means that if you get them off balance they can correct too far, the acceleration that moves them around so quickly makes it so that it is harder to make small corrections in it.

I don't fly valks anymore, only SVG's or CV's

Would love to see the Bg more powerful.

Shapenaji: The Vulture in the hands of the right pilot probably is a better dogfighter than the Valk simply because the Vulture has that insane profile that makes it so hard to hit.

But the Vult has always had problems with Rockets because it requires an exceptional pilot to not turn its wingspan into a big disadvantage, it doesn't have the Valk's firepower, and its a bit more fragile and a bit slower.

Still, the Vulture doesn't need alot of tweaking if any. At most it needs a few hundred more hull points, but thats only because of some of the more heavily armored Valks are insanely durable for thier size. If the Prom was built as well as the Valk it would have like 30-40 thousand hull points (not that I'm suggesting it should).

The best thing about an updateable game like this is that you're always breathless in anticipation of what comes next :D

Celebrim: :) yeah, I haven't had to fight many rocketeers due to their unfortunate nerfing.

:) well, let me say here that I think the IDF valk is a very boring ship. No versatility, just a bunch of armor strapped to a regular valk. (Though in a neut III fight, it should be pointed out that it only takes 2 more sets of Neut III's than a vulture, which is not really a huge amount more).

I remember first going for combat 9 so that I could get it, and not really looking at its actual stats, then getting it, realizing I hated it for not being an interesting variant, and going back to my rune (which has 9500 armor, only one neutron blast more than either a CV or an SVG).

I think that the IDF valk should be scrapped entirely. If people want armor, let them fly a vengeance valk (which should tack on another 300 kg, up to 3400 kg, 100 kg is not enough to notice any signifigant change)

Rune Valks and ordinary valks do NOT have insane armor, So then let them keep their acceleration, which is what makes them interesting in the first place.

I really hope my hog mk3 with 1 heavy gun can catch up to a loaded atlas mk1 soon(tm), even if they have they option of shooting back....

Independant Axis damping should mean that a Vulture can pitch faster than it can yaw, making strafing "up" and aiming a bit easier.... Can we have a modded bus or Centaur that flies sideways and hence pitches faster in dogfights? ;p