Re: Ask Loki

by **the-anger** Fri Sep 28, 2012 1:57 am

lurking with a nighthawk... i suppose you could but those experienced with a nighthawk can and will prefer to get in the action as much as possible. sniping is a valid tactic but the difficulty somewhat asks you to brawl more...

by Xron Fri Sep 28, 2012 5:12 am

Trust me, when the squad update comes out... THEN I will start lurking, I will make all you "Aces" fear the broken moon.

by **Loki** Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:09 am

Glad to see someone else who appreciates Broken Moon; many ask to veto it.

I'm not partial to lurking myself; I'd much rather get up close and personal, with any ship.
Lurking will score you a few kills here and there, but you're better off diving in for S&D.
Hiding near your carrier on CTF or Carrier Assault and sniping with beams or missiles will greatly disrupt enemy operations...

by **Loki** Wed Oct 17, 2012 3:05 pm

Acceleration and what it means to you.

A ship's acceleration is independent of it's afterburner speed and acceleration in this game translates to "how much does my ship drift when I try to turn?" as well as "how fast do I get moving again after turning?" The greater the difference between your speed (base speed or afterburner) and acceleration, the more unintentional drift you get and the slower you start moving in the direction you've turned.

The Mamba has a high base speed & afterburner vs the lowest acceleration of all ships (121m/s & 302m/s vs 75m/s^2), so it feels out of control compared to other ships. Stingray is second highest drifter, then the Timberwolf. The Cobra and Merlin conversely have the tightest controls in the game (for ships that dogfight effectively); they go where you want to.

Average the base and afterburner speeds, then divide by the acceleration and you'll get a number that you can use to compare the ships. Or you can be very thorough and break it down by base speed and afterburner...
in Excel (multiplied by 10 to give more meaningful resolution to what I'm calling Drift Ratio);
Drift Ratio =(Average((BaseSpeed/Acceleration), (AfterburnerSpeed/Acceleration))*10
(all calculations use fully upgraded stats)

EDIT: Updated to show normalized drift stats with a 3/4 bias on Afterburner;
Normalized Drift Ratio =(Average((BaseSpeed/Acceleration), (AfterburnerSpeed/Acceleration)/0.75)*10
Ship: Avg Drift : Normalized Drift

Mamba: 28.2 : 34.95
Sidewinder: 21 : 26
Cobra: 17.6 : 21.6
Krait: 18.25 : 22.4
Viper: 20.1 : 24.9

Nighthawk: 17.15 : 20.95
Kingfisher: 21.8 : 27.05
Merlin: 17.9 : 21.9

Stingray: 22.75 : 28.1
Hammerhead: 20.8 : 25.5
Piranha: 19.4 : 23.8
Barracuda: 14.6 : 17.55
Swordfish: 20.4 : 25.4

Rhino: 20.8 : 25.8
Timberwolf: 22.2 : 27.7
Bison: 17.9 : 22
Grizzly: 17.5 : 21.5
Panther: 19.3 : 23.95

by **the-anger** Wed Oct 17, 2012 6:51 pm

hmm... thats not quite right...

your calculation puts T-wolf second for drifting, as well as swordfish and hammerhead having a similar drift, which i find they do not in practice (t-wolf should be 3rd as you said)...

the ratio of max speed to acceleration doesn't yield any meaningful stat - the dimension your working with is seconds * 10 ( speed / accel = time ), which outside of nontrivial differential equations relating your acceleration in terms of your velocity alone (or other similar whackiness, equations of motion dont have to be in respect to time) is sort of useless... sorry to say.
edit - was wrong, it gives the time needed to accelerate to max speed which is relevant to drift amount; what is incorrect is how boost is factored into it.

ive written up something similar already (in DMH section, i guess you could look through it if you wanted without me posting it here lol)... this is an excerpt on acceleration from that writeup:

the-anger wrote:
Acceleration & Speed

The first thing to note is that your ship has a 'Desired Velocity' vector which I will call DVel. At full throttle, your DVel is the ship's max speed in the direction your ship is facing. Throttle can go from 10% to 100%, affecting DVel directly in this manner. This is not the Velocity vector - the ship's True Velocity is slowly jinked towards the DVel, and the rate at which this occurs is governed by the ship's Accel stat. It seems that the jink is done linearly with acceleration - your velocity cannot change by more than Accel m/s in one second, in any direction. This applies to any fraction of a second if scaled correctly, and becomes highly relevant to understanding drifting and derivative movements.

An example... A ship with 200 max speed, 100 accel, 10% throttle. The ship will be moving at 20 m/s. If the throttle is changed to 100%, DVel becomes 200m/s forward. With 180m/s difference in velocity to compensate for, it will take 180/100 seconds (1.80) to fully accelerate to the desired speed.

A more complex example... Same ship, going at full speed. Suppose the ship cuts throttle to 10% as well as (in the same instance) turns 90 degrees to the right. What will the ship's flight path be like? This is where vector math comes in (trigonometry on roids). The ship's velocity will change from 200m/s forward to 20m/s to the right. Doing the math very quickly, this amounts to a change of 200.1 (to 2 decimal places), which is ~2 seconds. Over these 2 seconds, the 'forward' speed will change steadily from 200 to 0, and the 'right' speed will change steadily from 0 to 20. The flight path will be a parabolic spline (which has interesting implications) that will make the ship appear to decelerate as it approaches it's slowest speed before the ship appears to suddenly move to the right slowly (it is gently speeding up to the one side at all times, but compared to the forward-motion, this is not noticeable until the forward-motion almost completely disappears).

Lost you yet? ok, think of it like this: imagine an arrow, the base of which is pinned to your ship and facing forward. The length indicates how fast you want to go (the direction always being forward). Imagine a second arrow, also pinned to your ship at the base. This arrow is your true velocity. The true velocity arrow's head will move towards the first arrow's head at a max rate of Accel m/s. Your ship will fly wherever the True Velocity arrow is pointing at a rate proportional to it's length. The arrow itself changes every instant, but you at least know to where it will go.

Drifting exploits the above mechanic directly by creating a large distance between True Velocity and DVel, often with boost.

This is also the reason your ship slows down when you turn too sharply, doing so causes your True Velocity Vector to have to cut corners to reach your DVel as fast as possible. If you can somehow spin fast enough around that your true velocity is 'behind' you, you will be flying backwards for a little.

and do tell if its wrong too, here to learn not argue Smile

also also, boost does affect your acceleration. whatever the multiplier is between max speed and boost speed is also applied to acceleration when boost is held (boost is just a multiplier applied to acceleration and max speed, well, theyre 2 separate parameters that happen to be more or less equal for most ships).

edit - word on boost & drift...
if the above is correct and boost multiplies your max speed and acceleration, it means that a drift-factor should also reflect how long it takes for the ship to change direction after boosting (as is the most common drift scenario), ie, boost forward, turn and cut boost at the same time, then time how long it takes for you to fly straight again at max speed (unboosted). for simplicity lets make it a 90 degree turn. going with that, you get something like this:

Drift_Duration = sqrt(<boosted_max_speed> ^ 2 + <unboosted_max_speed> ^ 2) / <acceleration>

eg for mamba = sqrt(302*302 + 121*121) / 75
= sqrt(105845) / 75
= 325.34 / 75
= 4.34 seconds

if you still have the excel sheet for your calculations (i assume it has all ship stats relevant to this already), try plugging that in and see if the numbers agree with observations...

edit 2...

you could further refine the above by factoring in the time it takes to accelerate to full boosted speed from max normal speed as a penalty to the drift duration. though, this now factors in how easy it is to enter a drift as well as how long you can stay drifting.

time to boost to full speed from max normal speed = <unboosted_max_speed> * (<boosted_max_speed> - <unboosted_max_speed>) / (<acceleration> * <boosted_max_speed>)

for mamba this would be 121 * (302-121) / (75*302) = 0.97 seconds (seems wrong but try it with a stopwatch Razz

)
'real' drift time = 3.37 seconds approx.

by **Nightwing** Wed Oct 17, 2012 10:33 pm

Loki wrote:Glad to see someone else who appreciates Broken Moon.

Broken Moon is SUCH a fun map!
It makes for some interesting dogfights when the pilots are bordering suicidal speeds between the core and the shell, plus it lets fans of Rock Field have a bit of fun, due to the small groups of asteroids on the edge of the map.
I especially enjoy Broken Moon in CTF... It is SO much fun to do a grab loop in a Mamba on that map. My average grab loop time in a Mamba in Broken Moon is about 1:30, provided I'm not killed... I do that by keeping AB up by tapping the button...
Broken Moon is such a good map, but many people fail to see the beauty in it's elegant simplicity...
I'm a Broken Moon fan, and proud of it!

by **Loki** Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:14 pm

the-anger wrote: imagine an arrow, the base of which is pinned to your ship and facing forward. The length indicates how fast you want to go (the direction always being forward). Imagine a second arrow, also pinned to your ship at the base. This arrow is your true velocity. The true velocity arrow's head will move towards the first arrow's head at a max rate of Accel m/s. Your ship will fly wherever the True Velocity arrow is pointing at a rate proportional to it's length. The arrow itself changes every instant, but you at least know to where it will go.

Drifting exploits the above mechanic directly by creating a large distance between True Velocity and DVel, often with boost.

This is also the reason your ship slows down when you turn too sharply, doing so causes your True Velocity Vector to have to cut corners to reach your DVel as fast as possible. If you can somehow spin fast enough around that your true velocity is 'behind' you, you will be flying backwards for a little.

I've started messing around with the calculations suggested, but haven't had enough time to dig too deep with it.

One comment I have on your two arrows explanation; I've always considered there to be 3 arrows, which you hint at, but don't say outright.

One is attached to your targeting cursor. This is the one that is constantly changing unless you've got it set dead center. The more you move this, the more your acceleration in any particular direction is reduced. This is the only "arrow" you have direct control over.

Another is on your HUD circle for missile locks. This one is a visual marker that most often (but not always) represents the actual direction you're travelling, controlled indirectly by a combination of your cursor, roll keys, ship speed controls (unused by many players), and afterburner. When you're in an easy to moderate drift turn (whether actively drifting using the roll keys or the natural drift of your ship), this is the direction you're travelling. It's very easy to alter the orientation of your ship around this point (aiming your guns) while still travelling in mostly the same direction. I consider the radius of the HUD circle +50% to be very easy to move your ship towards.

The third is the invisible one (DVel) and it separates from the HUD circle when you've made a very hard turn (often results in flying backwards). This is the result of built up inertia of your previous vector overpowering your new vector (collisions are the reverse) and can be influenced either actively by your use of afterburner, or passively using the ship's acceleration. If you are passive about getting your ship moving again, you'll be left hanging in space and vulnerable; I advise some afterburner to get moving.

Also, the formula I came up with was intended to be a quick ratio to compare ships drift rather than coming up with a real-world number. I think the ratio worked out pretty well, though I'll tweak it to weight the numbers to favour the afterburner speed, as this will give you more fair representation of drift capability; the majority of your turns are performed with some afterburner applied shortly before the turn rather than the 50-50 split on base speed & afterburner my first formula assumes.

by Xron Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:38 pm

So you know the arguments awhile back about the side turning exploit?
The side turning exploit being that if you roll the opposite way to your turning and put your cursor in the upper corner you will turn the fastest.

Now a lot of people argued with me that this wasn't an exploit, more a mechanic, despite it being counter intuitive (any one who's played any other dog fighting game knows it's fastest to turn up or down and roll INTO your turn.).

My compromise that everyone ignored, blinded by their rage was.
What if, you could turn faster up or down BUT if you turned sideways you would slide more, hence better drifting.

What do you think of that?

by **Loki** Sun Oct 21, 2012 11:29 am

I've always been curious why you're so insistent that it's an exploit rather than just the way the game works. If there were training materials available in-game, would you still count it as an exploit and ignore its usage?
As it is, WJ has asked the player base to assist with training. The Quick Tips thread is something WJ asked us to provide for eventual use in-game.

I consider the drift mechanic here to be as much as an exploit as strafing in an FPS, and Moon Breakers already shares many characteristics of a multiplayer FPS. Strafing is a key mechanic in those games, even if in the early days they mapped the controls obscurely.

Here's some other thoughts on the game controls;

Turning up/down is harder to see where you're going; the aspect ratio of the display you play on is most often considerably wider than it is tall. Zooming out a few ticks (use "Z") can help compensate a bit, but unless you're playing with a square display, you gain no advantages by turning in a direction you can't see. This has been an issue for most flight games I've played.

Unlike most flight/space games (that I've played), the camera doesn't actually point in the direction you're aiming. The camera tends to stay focused on the HUD Circle, which is where your actual movement is. This tells me that lateral drift is such an integral mechanic to the game that the dev team felt it was more important to see the direction you're going instead of where you're aiming.

It could be that this evolved naturally in development and they decided was something they had to live with or rebuild the flight engine, or it was an intended mechanic all along ("We should make ships strafe like an FPS?"). We simply don't know, and the devs have never explained themselves regarding this particular issue (pro or con).

I can tell you that the devs certainly know about the drift technique and have seen at least one of them use it (very effectively) in-game.

by Xron Sun Oct 21, 2012 5:54 pm

It feels SO wrong. Your ship tries to roll into the turn, your trying to turn away... who would design a ship that the pilot has to fight against to turn well?
We've explained why it's faster to turn Left/Right in this game and it's not by design. It's just because the turning system is set up in a retarded way. It counts the distance from the center of the screen rather than the percentage between the center and the side of the screen. Wj has admitted this.
And why do you keep calling it the drift technique. This technique is about turning faster than the other guy. It's important to drifting but that isn't it's only use. If we did what I said then it would be the drift technique.
Also, you didn't even look at what I suggested did you?

We can't teach the other player, most will never come onto the forums and the in game chat is a pile of @#$%. We need the game to teach itself, and for that we need to remove the unfair "in the know" tricks.

by **longshot** Sun Oct 21, 2012 6:20 pm

Btw Xron, using the opposite roll does not make you turn faster, it simply keeps the ship stable so its easier to aim when strafing. You'll turn at much the same rate when using the opposite roll, the same roll as the turn direction, and no roll at all.

In fact I believe that using the same roll as the turn direction will minimise drift & hence bring you through the turn with greater speed.

There's many things in this game that need improvement to make it more new-player-friendly, but over time I've come to regard this as a feature that needs to be explained in the F1 help rather than an exploit that needs fixing.

by Xron Sun Oct 21, 2012 6:34 pm

What if, you could turn slightly faster up or down BUT if you turned sideways you would slide more, hence better drifting.

Yeah... I'm going to keep posting this until someone actually notices it.

by **longshot** Sun Oct 21, 2012 6:46 pm

What's the point Xron? Devs would already have read your views on the subject on their official forum months ago. None of us here have the ability to change it even if we wanted to.

by Xron Sun Oct 21, 2012 6:50 pm

I know, but I have a nice compromise and you guys seem to only argue with the lead up.

by **the-anger** Sun Oct 21, 2012 7:35 pm

mostly because it doesnt really matter.

your proposed (and unrefuted-as-yet) controls would be:
mouse X -> turn left / right (yaw)
mouse Y -> turn up / down (pitch)
keys A/D -> roll

and there is nothing wrong with that. simple to use and makes sense why you would do it this way.

current controls:
mouse Y -> same
keys A/D -> same
mouse X -> (yaw + roll) / sqrt(2)

instead of mouse left/right turning your ship left/right, it also introduces a roll of proportional magnitude. the axis is neither front-back (roll) or up-down (yaw) but at 45 degrees to both... something like front-down - up-back.

its confusing. its not intuitive. but it still works. there could be only 2 reasons for implementing this style, either backstory reasons or a deliberate difficulty mechanic to make it challenging to aim (also possibly for backstory reasons) or just because, idk.

which you want to use / think should be used is up to taste; personally i dont care enough to voice opinion for either, like most of us, but i do concede that the current way is needlessly steep to learn.

otherwise... a non-issue imo. could be why devs have been ignoring it.

by **Loki** Sun Oct 21, 2012 9:19 pm

Longshot is right; you do turn faster by rolling into the turn, though it makes it harder to aim and maintain the heading you want. It bleeds off some speed and counters lateral drift somewhat, and both reduce your turn radius.

Counter-roll keeps your turn stable and allows you to keep your guns trained on your target, though you don't necessarily turn faster. Only by reducing your speed while counter rolling do you reduce your turn radius.

I use a combination of both to maintain control while maneuvering around asteroids or the carrier.

Even if I could turn up/down faster, I can't see far enough ahead to feel like risking it.

At this stage, I'm trying to make the most of what we have and I'll spam as many info messages and forum URLs as I can. I'm done with feature requests for now and I'll be happy if we get another update at all.

by Xron Sun Oct 21, 2012 10:46 pm

Thanks anger, good breakdown. However if it was just that is wouldn't be a problem, it's merely the fact that the current yaw is WAY stronger than the pitch.
For my system I would still have the roll and yaw together, but also that there is a huge drop acceleration when you yaw and counter roll, this way the ship would slide much further (EPIC DRIFTS!)... if you want it to, else you would just use a pitch turn.
Of course we want some cool advanced moves for us aces to have, and I have no problem for drifting to be one of them... it's just the fact that the current system makes new players turn like a pregnant aircraft carrier that's more than a little unfair.
Currently there is no reason for aces to use pitch turns. If we did this^ then you would have two choices in how you want to turn, Pitch if you want to turn fast or dodge trough asteroids and such, yaw and counter roll if you want to do a dough nut of death around a bomber or turret.

by **Adama** Tue Nov 20, 2012 4:03 am

Hello friends and foes, greens and reds! Smile

I hope i won't be off topic, and sry for interrupting, but i have some techical issues ingame, and as far as i know, there are ppl with more expertise on hardware and software than me. I'm just using it. Smile

Sooo... I start with my config: It is an AMD platform with X6 T1075 processor, 8 GB of 1600 DDR3, VGA: Gigabyte HD 6870 with 1GB Vram ddr5. I have a Corsair SSD for the system. Win7 home professional 64 bit.

I have minor lag and FPS problems all the time. I know it, because once the game was soooo smooth i couldn't believe. But only once, and i'm not sure if it was because of the unstable server, or because my machine has some problems running the game.

I think i exceed the recommended specs, but from time to time the game resets the detail level from high to low or standard. And i don't know why. I have no other applications running, only steam and MB. And there is that nasty lag and FPS problem.

Am i the only one experiencing this, or not? Could there be any problem with my machine? Is this game written for Nvidia cards, just like Borderlands2? Smile

Thanks in advance. Smile

Cya in space! Smile

by **Loki** Tue Nov 20, 2012 10:30 am

Hi Adama,
Not my usual thing, but I'll give it a go.
Based on the description of your system, I'd say you more than exceed the requirements.
While framerate and lag issues improved significantly when they launched the game on Steam, these seem to be systemic issues with the game itself, not anyone's particular build. It is far from optimized and has no customization for graphics. The existing graphics settings only affect lighting and close-up fine textures. Smoke from damaged ships and explosions often make my system drop to single digit framerates (many have asked for low-res smoke!).

I have no idea if it was built and tested on machines that run only Nvidia cards, but I can tell you that my Nvidia card cries itself to sleep at night for not being able to run a game as simple graphically as Moonbreakers...

by **Adama** Tue Nov 20, 2012 11:52 am

Loki wrote:Hi Adama,
Not my usual thing, but I'll give it a go.
Based on the description of your system, I'd say you more than exceed the requirements.
While framerate and lag issues improved significantly when they launched the game on Steam, these seem to be systemic issues with the game itself, not anyone's particular build. It is far from optimized and has no customization for graphics. The existing graphics settings only affect lighting and close-up fine textures. Smoke from damaged ships and explosions often make my system drop to single digit framerates (many have asked for low-res smoke!).

I have no idea if it was built and tested on machines that run only Nvidia cards, but I can tell you that my Nvidia card cries itself to sleep at night for not being able to run a game as simple graphically as Moonbreakers...

Good to hear that. Smile

Thanks for ur reply, my little heart is ok now. Smile

I feared, that i'm the only one with such lag. Smile

Very annoying, when i want to use my favourite weapon, called beam. Smile

by **the-anger** Tue Nov 20, 2012 7:02 pm

lag in this game is a problem... and gfx have their issues too

eg, if you start typing ingame chat as you're launching the first time in a round, gfx switch to high on mine on their own... high gfx is absurdly poorly written, insofar as i can tell it is just different shaders being used between high/med and no shading on low. the shaders might be in some poorly supported form, like CG shaders (which are rarely used on nvidia cards last i looked, with a possibility they are emulated)

i can safely say that you should only play on normal or low... high WILL cause lag for you. but because your framerate goes down, so does your firing rate, and your latency increases.

for everyone else, the server latency increases too because of your delays, and when the delays become substantial and a paradox is created between client / server (eg, destroying a nuke launched by a laggy player sooner than the feedback is received to that player that a nuke exists now) often crashing everyone within the vicinity with runtime errors to the effect of 'pure virtual function called' or 'memory access violation'.

its.... pathetically poorly written... sorry to say lol

by **Adama** Wed Nov 21, 2012 1:47 am

Good, good, good.

I just felt it in my veins, that throwing away my current VGA won't solve the problem. Smile

Poorly written, but has so big potential... I love this game and the ppl playing it. Smile

by **Nightwing** Wed Jan 23, 2013 1:25 am

X wrote:If you guys need help on drifting, let me know on Steam. I can give you guys a little training lesson if necessary.

Since X is no longer on, I can help with drifting lessons...
I'll normally be on either US West or EU, at around 8:00-11:00 P.M. in the U.S, Pacific time zone.
Don't be afraid to ask for help. The best players are almost always willing to help new players get the hang of the game...

by **Loki** Wed Jan 23, 2013 10:43 am

Nightwing wrote:
X wrote:If you guys need help on drifting, let me know on Steam. I can give you guys a little training lesson if necessary.

Since X is no longer on, I can help with drifting lessons...
I'll normally be on either US West or EU, at around 8:00-11:00 P.M. in the U.S, Pacific time zone.
Don't be afraid to ask for help. The best players are almost always willing to help new players get the hang of the game...

Sadly, I haven't heard from X since the summer.

I agree, though; many of the better players will be more than willing to give out a lesson or two, so don't be afraid to ask.

by **Nightwing** Wed Jan 23, 2013 2:01 pm

If 8:00 Pacific doesn't work for anybody, I can also help teach drifting between 9:00 and 11:00 A.M. in the same time zone.

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