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Author Topic: Problematic Collisions with Stations  (Read 1661 times)

Wyvern

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Problematic Collisions with Stations
« on: December 07, 2018, 10:53:53 PM »

In particular, if a moving pylon (or, heaven forfend, the shield arc of a high-tech station) happens to move into you, you don't bounce off like you would with a normal ship - you end up taking several ticks of collision damage, with often excessive results.

Why, you ask, was I close enough to notice this?  Well, I had (past tense), an Omen class frigate, and was happily EMP-ing an adjacent section of station, when a slightly incautious maneuver ran me into the station... and the omen just vanished.  I had shields up, I was at essentially zero flux... and the Omen just died instantly, not even leaving behind any wreckage.

I suspect that this is a bug with the station's immobility - with normal ship to ship collisions, both ships move, and even a sudden shield overlap gets resolved very quickly.  The station, however, doesn't move, and I'd guess that a ship that collides with it is still using calculations that assume the thing it's bouncing off of is also being repelled by the collision.  Posting this in suggestions instead of bug reports, though, because I'm not actually -sure- if it's a bug, and there's probably some room to discuss whether anyone else has seen similar results.
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CrashToDesktop

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Re: Problematic Collisions with Stations
« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2018, 11:12:40 PM »

Ah, I've run into this exact same situation before.  Shields up, a station pylon just brushes me, and my Omen gets instantly destroyed.  Ashamed to admit that's happened more than once on different occasions. :P Same as you, I think it has to do with the overwhelming mass difference as well the fact that the station is both an immovable and unstoppable force due to the Axial Rotation.

In a related note, joining a battle that's been going on with a station involved can lead to ships spawning within the station's hitbox and getting instantly destroyed, as here.  You can just make out the poor Enforcer's corpse on top of the structural spur between the hangar module and missile module.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2018, 11:19:43 PM by The Soldier »
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XazoTak

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Re: Problematic Collisions with Stations
« Reply #2 on: December 08, 2018, 01:12:29 AM »

This belongs in bug reports I think.
Ditto for being instakilled by spurs.
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Wapno

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Re: Problematic Collisions with Stations
« Reply #3 on: December 08, 2018, 03:12:59 PM »

This also happens with drones orbiting the star fortress. If you happen to be on collision course and don't move out of their way, they will ram and grind through you with unstoppable force. It's not an instakill, as with station spurs, but they similarly "grab" you with the collisions, and in the end they did enough damage to seriously injure my Astral, before exploding from collision self-damage.

It's also more annoying with the drones, as sometimes they do some bizarre maneuvers, in which they suddenly get a burst of speed and ram you at great velocity, for no apparent reason. I've seen them do this sometimes when they reorient themselves when one of the other drones gets destroyed, but in many cases I couldn't see any reason behind doing this.
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Megas

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Re: Problematic Collisions with Stations
« Reply #4 on: December 08, 2018, 03:18:09 PM »

Or the drones ram themselves to death.  I thought drones would be shoved aside like a destroyer or cruiser, but they try to smash through, and if I cannot get my battleship out of the way, the drone will kill itself against my shield.
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CopperCoyote

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Re: Problematic Collisions with Stations
« Reply #5 on: December 08, 2018, 05:18:35 PM »

I suspect the rotation adds more force than the mass might otherwise have. As a demonstration when you bump dead ship hulks with your shields up they bump off but only the slightest bit faster than your ship. If you rotate your shield (especially rotating an omni while your ship rotates at the same time) the the hulk will go flying even if your ship is stationary.

I use the rotational push to quickly clear debris whilst assaulting bases so my fleet doesn't loose much dps to shooting garbage
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