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Author Topic: 0.51a RC3, Flying as fast as my missiles when I fire them - they hit me  (Read 5919 times)

j01

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Just as it says in the title.

I had an engine hullmod hyperion, sped up to engineboost speed during combat, then fired my annihilator rockets. They were exactly the same speed as me, stayed on top of my ship as I went along, and exploded on me after a very brief moment.

This might not ought to be the case, and I can see it being a more common problem on maps with nav beacons that give speed upgrades.

Possibly related, though probably not a bug: I've noticed while flying fast ships around tight clusters of enemies that use missiles, their own missiles can be directed back into them sometimes, but sometimes they pass right through. It seems random, but consistent enough that fast ships can use this as a viable strategy to destroy enemies with their own missiles, if the enemy is quite slow.
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Alex

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Missiles can hit the launching ship after they flame out - that's all working as-intended.
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frag971

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Don't pee against the wind? :D
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Let's say I'm captaining the ISS Slightly Lopsided Isosceles Triangle here.

Ghosti

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No. This is actually an issue. If object A launches a projectile B with force F, then B's starting velocity (vB) should the sum of A's velocity and F (vB= vA+F). I am not really good at physics but i think i got my point across.
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Upgradecap

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Ok, I've actully had issues with this, when I fired pilum missiles and then was going faster than them, and when they were exactly on top of me, they exploded. What??
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Uomoz

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Missiles can hit the launching ship after they flame out - that's all working as-intended.

That's pretty clear.
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Upgradecap

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But mine didn't flame out.
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Vandala

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Maybe it happened so fast you just didn't see it.

Upgradecap

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I doubt pilums flame out four seconds after launch.
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Alex

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Hmm. I'll be on the lookout.

This should be impossible for several reasons - Pilums don't hit friendly ships, and non-flamed-out-missiles don't hit the launching ship. It's possible, of course, but I almost suspect something else was going on.
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Psycho Society

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Re: 0.51a RC3, Flying as fast as my missiles when I fire them - they hit me
« Reply #10 on: April 04, 2012, 10:19:30 PM »

Why don't missiles retain the firing ship's velocity?
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cp252

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Re: 0.51a RC3, Flying as fast as my missiles when I fire them - they hit me
« Reply #11 on: April 05, 2012, 03:27:38 AM »

Because that would be hard to code as hell. If you think of a way, I applaud you. If that way is practical performance-wise, I hope Alex takes it and puts it in the official game.  :)
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Wyvern

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Re: 0.51a RC3, Flying as fast as my missiles when I fire them - they hit me
« Reply #12 on: April 05, 2012, 08:22:14 AM »

Why don't missiles retain the firing ship's velocity?

Because they use the same sort of hand-wavium engines that ships do, where turning on the engine slows you down above a certain maximum speed.

Might be fun sometime to play with a missile that had some low-ish acceleration and an absurdly high max speed, though.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Alex

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Re: 0.51a RC3, Flying as fast as my missiles when I fire them - they hit me
« Reply #13 on: April 05, 2012, 08:40:17 AM »

The problem is all objects need to have a top speed. If they don't, you run into all sorts of trouble - from gameplay issues (imagine how it would work/look if a missile or ship could travel across several screens in a second!) to engine issues (you could miss collisions if objects travel very far in a single frame, and would need to use a different, much more complex algorithm for collision detection).

Missiles *do* retain the firing ship's velocity, though. This is most apparent in the case of bombs, which rely on the velocity of the launching ship to carry them to the target.

Might be fun sometime to play with a missile that had some low-ish acceleration and an absurdly high max speed, though.

Seems like it, doesn't it? From everything I've tried that was like that, though, it's actually just frustrating to watch because it feels so sluggish.

That was the original idea for Pilums. What'd happen is they'd always miss their target on the first pass - can't accelerate fast enough to track it, and the high speed is a handicap in this case, since they have less time to adjust for target course changes. Then, they'd literally take about a minute to turn around and reverse their velocity, only to miss on the second pass or flame out.

I suppose it's probably possible to work it out to where it'd feel better, with some combination of speed/acceleration and AI behavior, though.
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Wyvern

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Re: 0.51a RC3, Flying as fast as my missiles when I fire them - they hit me
« Reply #14 on: April 05, 2012, 08:51:04 AM »

Heh.  Sounds like it would be fun to play around with stats, but not that fun to use... unless you made them proximity-triggered beam missiles!  Bwahaha.  Or something.  I'll have to see what I can cook up next game version.  (Hm.  Supersized sabot missiles might work too, come to think of it.)
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.
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