Figured it out

A number of people have mentioned the ridiculousness of "top speeds" in space. This has lead to the concept of TCs built with every ship having an insanely high top speed, say, 2000. The biggest problem with this has been hyperspace; whenever you jump into a system, you enter going at your top speed - so ships like the Leviathan blow past the system center and spend a long time turning around.

I finally got a work-around to, well, work.

Ingredients: (ID numbers for example sake)

Quick version:
Cron to start a mission every day, and give player an outfit.
Outfit: top speed reducer, inertial dampener
Mission: destroy a "timer ship" - invisible, 0 armor, death delay 60, remove outfit and abort itself onshipdone

Long version:
Cron: 0 pre and 0 post holdoff, on start g128 s128 (give outfit 128, start mission 128)
Dude: timer ship
ship: timer ship: invisible, 0 armor, death delay 60 (for 2 seconds. Adjust to taste, but I've found it works better above 10 frames)
mission 128: Remove jump speed reducer - ship count 1, ship system -6 (wherever you are), Timer ship dude, goal: destroy all ships
On ship done: d128, a128 (destroy the outfit, abort the mission)
outf: jump speed reducer: speed mod -1500 (adjust to taste), and inertial dampener.

That last bit seems to be very important. When you jump in, your ship decelerates from 2000 to whatever, and depending on your settings, drifts a bit to the right or left. The effect isn't half bad, actually.

I've attached an example plug, coded in Windows. In it, the Shuttle is modified to have very high speed. Mac users will have to convert. Compressed with Stuff-it, .zip format. Tell me if you have problems opening it. Alternatively, you can download it uncompressed here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H3643WUQ

Enjoy!

Attached File(s)

• HighTopSpeed_SlowJump.zip (729bytes)
  Number of downloads: 4

This post has been edited by n64mon : 18 February 2010 - 02:19 PM

This should go in the "Cool Nova Hacks" thread. Also, I'm definitely borrowing this for HOTS, with you permission of course, n64mon. I'll even give you your own pers resource. Now I just need to find a graphic for a dancing bunny ship...

Nicely done.

Sure thing, darthkev; anyone is free to use it.

Ah, I remember the Speedster from Frozen Heart. Had a top speed of like... 8000 or something ridiculous. Pop into a system, careen past the planet before you could see it, slam into the system edge until you get stuck in the corner and have to wait for the "walls" finally slow you down enough and push you away so you can slowly navigate back to the planet.

You should probably include a shän so Mac Nova doesn't crash when the shïp enters the system.

Also, the crön is not strictly necessary.

Set the mission to not appear in the 'I' dialog.
Set the mission to be abortable.
Set the mission to have a 1-day time limit.
Set the mission ship to Jump In After A Short Delay.
Set the mission's OnFail expression to grant the slowing-down outfit and restart the same mission (G130 S201).
Set the mission's OnShipDone expression to remove the slowing-down outfit (D130).

Now once the mission has been started it will trigger every day until something aborts it (A201).

When you enter a system it will fail from its time limit expiring, so you are instantly slowed down by the outfit you are given, and the mission is restarted. A few seconds later the mission ship will jump in and immediately die. Now OnShipDone triggers and the outfit is removed, but the mission is still active.

The one drawback here is that the Time Limit Exceeded Mission Failed text appears when you enter a system. This can be covered by putting Qxxx in the OnFail field to show a string (even a blank one) on entering a system. (If you want you can even put Qyyy in OnShipDone to make a second message appear when you regain normal maneuvering.) But the Qxxx will prevent legitimate Time Limit Exceeded or system buoy messages from showing up.

So the crön is nice, but not absolutely required.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 19 February 2010 - 10:58 PM

I can't say that I've ever encountered a TC with all ships having ridiculous top speeds.

Can someone tell me what the purpose of such a plug component is supposed to be? What does it add to the game/gameplay?

Galaxy's Edge was such a plugin, where all ships regardless of size had the same "top speed". However, the bigger the ship, the much longer it took to accelerate. It worked out pretty well. The purpose of this was because the plugin was intended to be "realistic", and was set in a scale model of the Solar System where it took days to travel from planet to planet because of all the "sectors" you had to jump through. It was really a great plugin

Do you mean this fix n64mon came up with or giving ships high top speeds?

In the case of the former, it slows your ship down when jumping into a system so you don't blow past the stellar objects in the system and then gives your ship back its normal top speed.

In the case of the latter, the purpose is realism. Since space is literally empty—as in there's nothing there—there shouldn't be any reason ships can reach only a certain top speed. With ridiculously high top speeds, any ship can get really fast for realism, but it also makes you think twice before using such speed thanks to larger ships having slower acceleration because of more mass.

In either case, I've just realized a problem with this: it only works for the player. Any escorts you have and any AI ships will still blast past everything and have to make their way back to the center. However, there is a way to fix this with one simple outfit.

Basically, give every ship their own top speed relative to their turning speed and acceleration to represent the AI controlling their own speed so at to not make things harder for themselves when stopping. Then make one invisible outfit granted to the player at the beginning when starting a new pilot that adds some insanely large number to the player's top speed. This outfit also stays with the player throughout the game. This outfit can also work with n64mon's fix for this. Just switch things around so the mission first takes the outfit and then grants it after.

** Edit:** Bah, Geek beat me to the punch. Well, at least I got my idea in.

This post has been edited by darthkev : 19 February 2010 - 10:46 PM

Ah, I understand.

Though I'd disagree that anything with regard to space games can ever be coined as "realistic".

Not until we attain actual interplanetary space travel or someone makes a space game taking place solely around Earth and our moon, something that's hard to make entertaining.

Very nice, Qaanol. As far as I've seen, "Mission Is Invisible" missions do not display the "time limit exceeded" message.

Yah, I originally had a shan, but deleted it when I found Win Nova did fine without it (not having tested it on a mac).

Geek's right, Galaxy's Edge was a fun plug. I never got very far, though.

Also, I feel the need to point out that the AI might not respond well to high top speeds.

This post has been edited by n64mon : 20 February 2010 - 12:20 AM

QUOTE (n64mon @ Feb 20 2010, 12:13 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Very nice, Qaanol. As far as I've seen, "Mission Is Invisible" missions do not display the "time limit exceeded" message.

Good call, you are right.

Here's my version: HighTopSpeedSlowJump2.rez.zip (855bytes)
Number of downloads: 1
I lowered the DeathDelay on the zero-armor ship to 2. That is the minimum for it to function correctly. Then the tangible delay is only waiting for it to jump into the system. Provided there aren't already 58 ships in the system, this will occur in a couple seconds.

So we've got this working with 1 mïsn and 1 oütf. There's also 1 shïp, 1 shän, and 1 düde, but if you use zero-armor ships for other in-flight effects, you'll need the shïp, shän, and düde anyway. One mission and one outfit is very cheap to allow for high top-speed, low acceleration ships.

DarthKev brings up an excellent point about the AI behavior with high speed and low acceleration though.