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[xenoargh]

Not really "magic", just looking at what's actually eating RAM and dealing with it appropriately. 

I think the main challenge now is going to be figuring out the strategic-level play and also making the local Factions that show up less monotonous.

[xenoargh]

OK, got the randomness dealt with; no more monoculture Systems.  Surviving Factions will spawn in new fleets (if they're hostile, they spawn at the Hyperspace points) and Hyperspace is populated. 

Still well under 600MB RAM (anything from 506-522MB depending on the context) with 32 Systems and over a month into the game.

So I think that's pretty much that for dealing with memory issues while providing mega-huge numbers of systems to explore / conquer.  I have no idea what the upper limit is for Systems; I'm guessing somewhere south of 100 if I want to keep it under 1024MB RAM, but that's a game that would take a player weeks to complete.

I still need to deal with the issue of Factions attacking one another's Stations and all that stuff, code up diplomatic results from attacking / building Stations, etc.

[Debido]

For the love of...HOW Xenoargh!?!?!? How do you optimise the game so well!? Others are happy to make nice big sprites and guns, but noooo. You make sprites, guns, gun scripts, hull mods, AI scripts, game plugins AND you optimise the game to work with a smaller data set.

[xenoargh]

There weren't any miracles.  I just quit worrying about persistence entirely, because it just doesn't add much fun and it sucks up RAM, even with the cut-down fleets in the last iteration.

It's pretty cool, though; RAM use is, IDK, 1/6th of where it was, and loading / saving takes a fraction of the time it did, too.  IIRC, all current players have 1024xms settings by default, so pretty much anybody can play with huge numbers of Systems now; it's down to how long of a game you want rather than how much RAM you have, which is how it should be, imo, in a sandbox game with a win condition. 

It also means that if I really wanted to, I could make each System crazy-huge and have 60 fleets flying around.  I don't think that many is really necessary or adds more fun, and it'd push RAM use back up again, but it's technically feasible.

Anyhow... I've gotten the AI teams back to being able to take over each other's Stations (this includes the Player stations being able to play in that game, although I haven't yet developed an attack-vs-defence strength system for the RNG, that's coming).

[Nanao-kun]

By the way, is there anything that can be done about slowdown during battles?

[xenoargh]

Yes, and I've already done a fair amount of it.  It's still pretty intense with the really huge battles, but it's considerably better than it was

[Zaphide]

Xeno, this might be a super dumb question but if you take the fleets out of the system the player isn't in does that mean that nothing happens in those systems while the player is gone?

Say I'm in a system and there are 10 fleets, I go to hyperspace and then come back, will there still be 10 fleets?

Or, I'm chasing a fleet through hyperspace and it goes into a system, can I still keep chasing it? Or will it have been 'randomised'?

[xenoargh]

does that mean that nothing happens in those systems while the player is gone?

Not at all.  The factions make war on each other (and on the Player's stations) as usual, it's just abstracted and doesn't use any RAM long-term.

Say I'm in a system and there are 10 fleets, I go to hyperspace and then come back, will there still be 10 fleets?

It depends on how long it's been.  I wait a day between wipes, so that players won't get frustrated by having a System's contents get "re-rolled" after they've merely popped out into Hyperspace to look for prey.  That said, it's timer-based, so if you're chasing a fleet around "midnight" and it goes down a Hyperspace hole, you've lost it for good.  Seemed like the most reasonable compromise between memory and what players want to do.



Anyhow, I'm testing one last thing; since Swifts work again, I've decided to see if Boarding Shuttles can work again.  Either way, short of some massive, game-crippling bug... Soon is nigh

[xenoargh]

Boarding Shuttles appear to work again, no crashy bugs post-capture.

So... other than that crazy thing I did with capture points generating Stations (which really, really should wait until I've built a smarter Admiral AI or just get left on the Altar of Silly Features)... it's all feature-complete and... ready, finally?

Anyhow, will write up the release stuff and I guess it's finally time to make this thing available

[Debido]

Sweet, I haven't looked at the boarding shuttle code yet, have you needed to make any modifications? I hadn't  played the vacuum mod when the boarding shuttle code was working.

[Uomoz]

A bunch of questions about your interesting work on this mod, xeno!

In abstracted systems:
How do you handle fights between fleets? Do they happen randomly? Do they happen at all? Do station captures and other events happen randomly every x minutes, with chances based on the abstracted value of stuff in the system?

[xenoargh]

How do you handle fights between fleets?

I don't; it wasn't adding anything to the experience except for RAM bloat, anyhow.

Do station captures and other events happen randomly every x minutes, with chances based on the abstracted value of stuff in the system?

Yes.  Basically, there's an "attacker strength", based on how many other Stations the Faction has (i.e., how strong they'd be if they concentrated some fleets there) and a "defender strength", based on how many Stations the Faction has in the System.  Defenders get a bonus vs. attackers, and there's a flat cap on how strong both values can get (set to allow players to get a slight advantage over attackers if they have 4+ Stations), so that the chances of a capture are relatively low, but (ironically) it's more reliable than the old way, because Assault Fleets aren't wandering around uselessly like they were.  

The code runs weekly.

Sweet, I haven't looked at the boarding shuttle code yet, have you needed to make any modifications?

Not to the Boarding Shuttle weapon, no.  But it is absolutely not compatible with Vanilla, period.  Just how it is; the method used breaks the Vanilla FleetEncounterDialog's assumptions used when (ironically) setting up the Boarding mini-game (which went bye-bye in Vacuum; all boarding happens just like it does with Asteroid encounters now- bring Marines).

Just for funsies, I gave Pirate captains two Wings of them as their starting "buddy", so people can start boarding things right away if they want to be pirates.

Anyhow, I feel the strong urge to order a pizza and eat stuff; will post the release as soon as I can get through the changelog, re-write parts of the OP that are now wrong, etc. etc.

By the way, I have an issue, I can`t get the mod to work, the mod keeps glitching! When I try to set it up it keeps glitching, not giving me time to get it loaded. It folded after I attempted to get it to load. It wasn`t on long enough for me to look at the enemies unfortunately. Could you help?

Thanks in advance,

Was that directed to me?  If so, probably you hit the memory limits that have been a problem for a lot of users in the past.  That's largely going away with this release

[Debido]

Ah I see, it really does break vanilla boarding completely. I have to be honest I have preferred your boarding mechanism so far to vanilla.

Looks like it is going to be more difficult to make a faction with that takeover capability modular and usable in multiple mods etc. maybe I should ask Alex for an API to easier transfer of ship entities to bypass the existing vanilla boarding mechanism...which is so....so....vanilla....cardboard vanilla flavoured.

[xenoargh]

Alpha 9 has been released.  Finally 

Changelog:

1.  New AIs for auto-aimed turrets, missiles, and ships, with many fairly-well-documented bits of code of interest to modders.  Many improvements over various areas of Vanilla in regards to Vacuum's special rules and balance.
2.  Substantial improvements to the performance of fighters and drones; various small speedups to combat performance.
3.  Major memory improvements for all scales of play.
4.  Rewrite of Fleet Encounters, incorporating diplomatic results, standardized capture mechanics and a shorter playthrough.
5.  Many new Systems or special effects for ships, including the Glaug's new Armor Regeneration power, Neutron weapons, Spore Cannons, the Millenium AA gun, the Acanthus's new type of shield... and more.
6.  Big improvements in the strategic level of play.  Diplomatic repercussions to attacking a Faction's ships may change who likes or hates you; building Stations changes relationships with local groups, new strategic-level AI play constantly influences the gameworld.  It's considerably more difficult to win the game now.
7.  Incorporation of LazyWizard's latest version of Combat Radar as standard.
8.  Many other small changes, improvements and rebalance of various things too numerous to explain in detail

Balance is probably still pretty rough, feel free to tell me what's OP/UP this time around... but rest assured, the Glaug can be beaten and yes, Exigency can win that one Mission

[Nanao-kun]

I'll give it a try soon.