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Author Topic: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive  (Read 2494 times)

Locklave

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QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« on: August 04, 2020, 05:58:40 AM »

Is it possible to improve these elements?

Auto pilot flies you into a sun/black hole/ect costing supplies. It should avoid these things by default, which it sort of tries to do when you get super close. In cases where the jump point is in a system inside the corona the AI fleets are unable to enter the jump point and bounce off the invisible bubble auto pilot creates when close to the Sun. Hope your colony wasn't counting on those shipments. 

Increase the avoidance distance and modify spawn locations for jump points to account for the corona range for the AI fleets. Would that work or create new problems?

Sustained Burn Drive in combination with Auto Pilot causes dumb wastes of fuel and at times major annoyances, including problems for the AI fleets. Spinning around in circles endlessly missing the jump point in hyperspace because of storms.

Give auto pilot the ability to shut off and restart Sustained Burn if it overshoots the destination. Could that work?

Yes, I know the player can just take control personally. Manually avoiding Suns and having to restart Sustained Burn aren't enthralling game play and QoL improvements are good for the entire playerbase.

Increasing turning control while in Sustained burn might also help, maybe 10-20% more turning sharpness.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2020, 06:01:10 AM by Locklave »
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SCC

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2020, 06:46:39 AM »

Autopilot doesn't actually turn at all. All that happens is that your fleet gets pushed away from the star.
Additionally, it doesn't matter at all if an NPC fleet is stuck the way you described or not. Economy gets affected only if that fleet gets destroyed. And anyway, if you leave the system, the fleet's movement gets abstracted and it makes it to the jump point.

Alex

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2020, 08:59:26 AM »

In cases where the jump point is in a system inside the corona the AI fleets are unable to enter the jump point and bounce off the invisible bubble auto pilot creates when close to the Sun.

(This is actually fixed in the next release, btw - AI fleets will know to use Emergency Burn in cases like this. And, right, like SCC said, that's not autopilot, that's the actual corona effect and you'd be subject to it as well when controlling your fleet near a star.)
« Last Edit: August 04, 2020, 09:00:58 AM by Alex »
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Terethall

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #3 on: August 04, 2020, 04:38:19 PM »

I think Autopilot does turn when it misses a jump point or destination with sustained burn on, and then makes these super wide loops and keeps missing, when just turning sustained burn off and back on would let it bee-line for the destination.
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Alex

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2020, 05:02:36 PM »

To clarify what's perhaps a salient point: there's no autopilot in the campaign :)
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Terethall

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2020, 04:52:40 PM »

Yes -- I don't know that the feature has a proper name in the campaign layer, but what it sounds like everyone has been referring to in this thread so far is the automated fleet navigation on the campaign layer, activated by clicking to lay in a course, and thereafter reactivated by pressing the (default bound) 'a' key. With larger fleets, when activated while sustained burn is active, it often misses its target (especially small targets like jump points) by failing to adjust its heading to face the target directly. It seems like that is due to limited turning speed while sustained burn is active. Rather than halting (or deactivating sustained burn, or reducing speed at all) the fleet will often do multiple loops around small targets during auto-navigation, which is a little awkward. That said, turning sustained burn off or slowing the fleet might also result in suboptimal behavior, and so might not be worth the benefit given the effort it would take to make fleets never loop awkwardly around their target.
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Alex

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2020, 06:04:52 PM »

My point is that this feature has no real decision-making ability, besides picking a shortest path in terms of jump-points. Aside from that, it's literally just the same as "click on the next jump point and move to it". As you're saying, trying to make decisions about how to do that - ability use, etc - can be problematic. And it's very much outside the scope for this feature; it's just there so you don't have to tab to the map all the time to check your bearings. It's absolutely not meant to replace manual control, if that makes sense.
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Locklave

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #7 on: August 06, 2020, 11:27:56 AM »

I believed I was seeing elements of path finding AI but it was just a repel mechanic of the Star. So that would require building the system from scratch rather then modifying an existing system. Toss it in the pile of things maybe to do someday if the mood or inspiration strikes you as it's not a major issue, lol.

It's good to here about the jump points near Stars, seeing it always gives me anxiety for some reason.

Any chance we could get very slightly tighter turning on sustained burn drives? I understand there are balance concerns with changing that.
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Alex

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #8 on: August 07, 2020, 09:12:49 AM »

Any chance we could get very slightly tighter turning on sustained burn drives? I understand there are balance concerns with changing that.

As you say, balance concerns! Or, rather - if that downside is toned down, there'd literally be never a reason to turn it off. As-is, it's already something you keep on much of the time, so based on that, I don't think it needs buffing, if you know what I mean.
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Locklave

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #9 on: August 07, 2020, 09:48:03 AM »

As you say, balance concerns! Or, rather - if that downside is toned down, there'd literally be never a reason to turn it off. As-is, it's already something you keep on much of the time, so based on that, I don't think it needs buffing, if you know what I mean.

I'd say it's on most of the time because traveling is slow, even inside systems it feels time consuming. I think that's of the route of that problem with it always being on. Going dark is great for sneaking, problem is it's 4 times slower travel. Maybe a solution would be to improve Go Dark/Emergency Burn and basic drive? Creating more reason to use them.

Is Sustained Drive too beneficial or are the other options too weak? Because slowing it down would make me install a mod asap. Raising the speed scale might help. 10/20/30 doubling the base ship speeds and having Sustained Drive/Emergency Burn be a +10 instead of a double(just a random thought), 10 would be a max speed fleet Go Dark, 20 a max speed fleet normal drive. If Go Dark had 10 speed possible with normal ships I wouldn't personally feel frustrated with my ships moving painfully slow feeling the need to Sustained Burn everywhere. If you did this you could lower the Turn radius from Sustained Burn and allow all skills to step forward in their intended roles. Sustained Burn would be for long distance travel and poorly suited for most movement in a system except crossing it. It also wouldn't make people pull their hair out on the forums because you'd be giving us something and not taking things away.

I'm aware this might impact system performance, moving faster means needing to load faster. I think people might like that if it's doable/balanced and/or doesn't conflict with existing plans.

edit:
On a current a 10 speed ship it would be 20 speed, doubled, in this example.

Go Dark = 10
Normal = 20
Sustained Burn = 30 (+10 instead of double, lower turn radius to suit it's intended role)
Emergency Burn = 30 (+10 instead of double, same turn radius as normal)
« Last Edit: August 07, 2020, 10:05:24 AM by Locklave »
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SafariJohn

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #10 on: August 07, 2020, 04:59:38 PM »

You can change how fast you move per burn level in settings.json. Try setting "minTravelSpeed" and "speedPerBurnLevel" to 36 instead of the default 20.
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Locklave

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #11 on: August 07, 2020, 05:30:58 PM »

You can change how fast you move per burn level in settings.json. Try setting "minTravelSpeed" and "speedPerBurnLevel" to 36 instead of the default 20.
I might do that, but I'm mostly just thinking about the vanilla game.
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Alex

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #12 on: August 07, 2020, 05:55:01 PM »

One thing to keep in mind is the relationship between speed and sensor range. That the faster the movement speed is, the less time there is to react when another fleet shows up on your sensors on an intercept course.

I'd say it's on most of the time because traveling is slow, even inside systems it feels time consuming. I think that's of the route of that problem with it always being on. Going dark is great for sneaking, problem is it's 4 times slower travel. Maybe a solution would be to improve Go Dark/Emergency Burn and basic drive? Creating more reason to use them.

Is Sustained Drive too beneficial or are the other options too weak?

I think to some degree, "faster" will just always be more appealing, regardless of where the baseline is. I mean, assuming it's somewhere halfway reasonable. That said, there are actually some changes / improvements to "Go Dark" in the next release. Emergency Burn is, I think, already pretty good, with the +8 bonus. There are also some changes to fleet AI -making it less likely to use EB - that can be construed as a buff to EB since it's more likely to actually let you produce some separation or close the gap, rather than being needed just to stay on par.

I mean, SB is *supposed* to be on for much of the time, it's the main travel skill. But the other skills are meant to have their place, as well, and the downsides of SB are pretty important to that...
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DatonKallandor

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2020, 08:11:29 AM »

Is the kinda exploity "toggle sustained burn to instantly dump all momentum" going to be fixed or is that staying in? Cause the player being able to do that is a big factor in Sustained Burn being superior to everything else. The downside of bad inertia management doesn't apply.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2020, 02:43:54 PM by DatonKallandor »
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Alex

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Re: QoL Auto Pilot/Sustained Burn Drive
« Reply #14 on: August 08, 2020, 09:42:35 AM »

Yeah, that's a bug and it's been fixed in the dev build.
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