..it seems we have several collision-related problems with NPCs: the "docking moth" issue, the "docking with friendly capships who are not of your nation" issue, and several others; is it time to re-think the collision model, or are these AI problems?

These are AI problems. No matter the damage, the NPCs should not be that stupid.

If anything, the collision damage should be significantly increased b/c colliding with much of anything at 60 m/s should TOTAL a space ship.

I've always thought it should be higher for Humans my self. If I ram into your ship, I've essentially made my own ship a missal and both ships should take heavy damage due to it depending on the speed of the collision.

I mean if I run my car into another car both cars are going to be more then alittle screwed up.

A vult getting slapped around by a rag should be very hard on the vult, not the rag. If you hit a rag with a raw egg at 200m/s, the rag shouldn't really care, but I wouldn't want to be the egg. rags are already handicapped enuf, you really shouldn't encourage intercepters to be hanging out within 20m of one.

Yea, it's an AI issue..

I took heavy damage the other day when I was spectating the BS mission in B-12. A capship exploded, and fragments of its hull went spinning off into space. What I hadn't realized until that moment, was that those fragments could hurt you. It's awesome that they do, and if anything, they shurt hurt a hell of a lot more. We don't need to tone down collision damage.

Yeah, AI problems. If anything, we need collision damage to be greater and more realistic. Once I was running a fully-laden Behemoth (before the nerf) and found a pirate in a wormhole. Full speed ahead, ram the bastid's hog. I hit head on and not only did my Behemoth was the one sent spinning, it also took the most damage. The pirate just laughed it up and shot me down...

Yeah, it's really an AI response issue rather than a collision related one. We're aware of the problem. Definitely need to fix that before caps become more widespread and important.

Sorry about that jex. Its just a little trick I picked up.

But, I agree - collision damage, if anything... should be upped a bit. But with NPCs, it is an AI issue. I don't know how the devs are ever going to fix wingbugging-like issues, however.

Regarding the vulture: She's also handicapped, what with the large wingspan.

I remember incarnate (I think...) saying something about the collision detection and handling being out of whack all over the game, something about the ship trying to correct the orientation perpetually whilst in mouselook, thus always smashing into the obstacle anew. I don't often fly into obstacles, and even more rare are the occasions where I do not use mouselook.

This really makes me wish for a poll feature, since you could generate pseudo-data more easily (it wouldn't be representative anyway, but still...).

If we had a better collision system, wingbugging a cap would be next to imposiable. Even if you make two ships take equal damage in a collision, how many ships would you go thru to wing a cap.

Basically, komakizies should effectly be converting thier armor into damage. i.e. a moth hase 20,000 armor and turbos into a cap causing 20,000 damage (to both ships). This is not a very effective use of a moth (which could have delievered two pay loads of stingray missles 2*14*2800 ~ 80,000 damage).

This should discourage contacts while making it a vults priority to avoid contacting a rag (or cap, or whatever).

I actually thing a rag shouldn't even be scratched by a vult, but this would at least help, and would help stop people from playing pick at station docking ports.

TRS, how are you proposing that be calculated? you need to take velocity and mass into consideration, not just armor. It would really be best if the game could betetr handle the mass, velocity, vector and impact site information given it to generate some more realistic damage, but I don't imagine that's too high on the priotiry list, what, with 'content' and all.

The game currently does calculate damage. I am only proposing that the damage be destributed evenly between contacties. This would effectivly cap the damage at the point where one collisioners or the other is destroyed. I did not mean to imply that collision would always result in destruction. Only that that a ship with less armor would need to be more carefull around ships with greater armor. I don't know how the game currently calculates damage, but I wouldn't know what to change it to either, so that part we can just leave in.