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[Okim]

Regarding fortress shields. Yeah, there is a certain problem when a player masters such ships and begin to crush even owerwhelming forces.
However, you can achieve the same results mastering any other aspect of Star Sector combat. For example - dodging. Having a great reaction and a swift-moving ship can bring better results even compared to fortified ships.

[Bob McBobbyton]

What's the extension on the file you downloaded?
The file should be named 'ironclads6.6.2.rar'

My guess is that you don't have an archiver installed that recognizes .rar files and VLC (or other media player) is trying to open it instead. If so, try extracting the files with 7-zip http://www.7-zip.org/

the mod doesn't say .rar but when I hover the cursor over it it says it is an .rar file. but when I click on it it opens my media player.

[Sundog]

@Bob McBobbyton: Sounds about right. Your operating system is just hiding the extension (the '.rar' part). Did you try opening it with 7-zip?

[Bob McBobbyton]

@Bob McBobbyton: Sounds about right. Your operating system is just hiding the extension (the '.rar' part). Did you try opening it with 7-zip?

it works now. I used a different unzipper thingy but I cant play more than 1 min because it crashes and says it needs more information.

[Max1045]

Asteroid collision is not a mod-related issue, but the increased mass of all ships (and thus increased collision damage) may be the reason why such situations bring your attention so often. Surely asteroids do hit the ship the same amount of time in vanilla, but the damage received is so small, that you don`t pay attention to it (and AI normally does not either).

No, there's definitely a difference. The ships move the same way to avoid asteroids as they do in vanilla, but they neglect the use of shields to defend themselves. I'll double check just to be sure, and post screenshots of the results.

Edit:

Here are two gifs, one for vanilla, and one for Ironclads. I noticed that I misspoke earlier, they do not move to avoid them at all. They act like they don't even know the asteroid is there, until the ship takes damage. Even then, they put the omni-shields forward, regardless of where the asteroid impacted, as if they didn't know where damage came from. It seems as if something in the mod has disabled or confused whatever logic the ships use to avoid asteroid collisions.

Note: The homepage for the gif hosting site I used has an NSFW warning, as they don't filter the gifs that are hosted. That said, the links I've provided should in no way provide a direct link to adult material. The links are to the gifs only, not the website.

Ironclads gif: http://gifti.me/i/qpy5fQY.gif

Vanilla gif: http://gifti.me/i/BjbELmIzXQ.gif

[sirboomalot]

The difference between your two gifs are the size of the ship. Frigates try to dodge the larger asteroids, raising shields and acting as if the 'roid was another ship, while most destroyers and larger ignore all asteroids. Even after hitting the asteroid, the destroyer in your gif isn't raising shields because there was an asteroid, it is raising shields because it took damage. Replace that wolf class frigate with something larger and it should do the exact same thing as the modded ship. Replace the modded ship with a frigate and it should act the same as the wolf.

[Max1045]

The difference between your two gifs are the size of the ship. Frigates try to dodge the larger asteroids, raising shields and acting as if the 'roid was another ship, while most destroyers and larger ignore all asteroids. Even after hitting the asteroid, the destroyer in your gif isn't raising shields because there was an asteroid, it is raising shields because it took damage. Replace that wolf class frigate with something larger and it should do the exact same thing as the modded ship. Replace the modded ship with a frigate and it should act the same as the wolf.

Both of the ships in question are frigates. The gif of the Ironclad California class frigate is simply zoomed in more. Sorry for the confusion.

[sirboomalot]

D'oh, thats what I get for commenting in a thread for a mod I haven't played in a while. And also for assuming that it came down to the class of ship. If that is the case I suspect the difference is between mass of the two ships. From what I can tell ships with larger mass ignore 'roids while ships with less mass try to avoid them, so the mass of the modded ship is probably just a bit higher.

[Max1045]

D'oh, thats what I get for commenting in a thread for a mod I haven't played in a while. And also for assuming that it came down to the class of ship. If that is the case I suspect the difference is between mass of the two ships. From what I can tell ships with larger mass ignore 'roids while ships with less mass try to avoid them, so the mass of the modded ship is probably just a bit higher.

I'm never positive what people are referring to when they talk about Hull mass, because I can't find that listed in the information panel for ships anywhere. I'm going to assume you just mean hull points. If that's the case, then the Wolf Frigate (the one in vanilla, which dodges the asteroids) has 1500 hull points and 150 armor compared to the California frigate, which only has 1000 hull points and 100 armor.

[Farlarzia]

Hull mass is a stat provided in the ship info but not provided on the info panel. It effects a few certain attributes to ships. It mainly effects how manoeuvrable a ship is, and its acceleration, though I may be wrong.

Edit: You can find a vanilla example of this in Fractal Softworks\Starsector\0.54.1a\starsector-core\data\hulls\ship_data

[Max1045]

Hull mass is a stat provided in the ship info but not provided on the info panel. It effects a few certain attributes to ships. It mainly effects how manoeuvrable a ship is, and its acceleration, though I may be wrong.

Edit: You can find a vanilla example of this in Fractal Softworks\Starsector\0.54.1a\starsector-core\data\hulls\ship_data

Oh, thanks. So the wolf's is 200 vs the california's 750. I'll do some more testing...

Edit: So I tested with an Eagle (Hull mass 1200), and it behaved just as the frigates in Ironclads do. That's really interesting. Has Alex said anything about whether this is going to be fixed? It doesn't make sense for large ships to try to move out of the way, but it certainly would for them to raise shields.

Anyway, thanks for everyone's help figuring this out. Awesome mod, Okim!

[Okim]

That`s a good catch out there. As i assumed the mass of the ship was responsible for that behavior. I increased it a very long time ago to make the feeling and danger of collisions much greater. I didn`t know that this value was used by the AI to determine the need to avoid stuff.

Perhaps i should lower the mass for frigates to make them more dodgy.

P.S.: just a hazard guess, but i think that a mass comparison takes place between two ships or ship/object in proximity to each other. The ship that has lower mass tries to get out of the way of the heavier object. Asteroids seem to have a mass between 200 and probably 500, so Wolf gladly let`s an asteroid pass, while California thinks that it`s mass grants it a defence against the asteroid.

[Thaago]

I've also seen from playing around that the AI uses mass to know whether it can run into asteroids safely.

Speaking of asteroids: from my experience several of the missions are unplayable because of them. I've had my capital explode on mission start from asteroids, or just have the majority of the fleet crippled. Also, many of the battle maps are very short vertically, so ships basically burn drive into combat range instantly.

[Okim]

Yeah, missions. I kinda left them behind a long time ago. As well as the mod itself - i got myself a bit tired of it and switched to other projects.

Hope that 0.6.2 will bring back my attention to Ironclads

[Max1045]

Assuming you do get energy to work on the mod again, do you have any new ship ideas on the horizon? XLE and UIN research ships, perhaps?
Anyway, as far changing the mass of the ships, I actually really like the way ships handle in your mod. However, I've had frigates weakened from battle kamikaze into an asteroid and die, so hopefully Alex will find a way to fix that.


I was distraught this morning to find my save somehow corrupted.... Even after I had gotten it working again with the Java trick, it died again. I'll miss my Battlecarrier, the USS Oregon. By the way, I think that's potentially the coolest ship I've seen for this game out of any mod or vanilla.... Something about its utility as a carrier and it's ability to outfight almost any other ship just works for me. 60 lber siege cannons in the front ballistics and particle pulse cannons in the clustered medium universals make for a barrage that cripples both shields, armor, and hull.