From Matt Burch

Hi guys,

Matt has been looking through the beam weapon code for the last month, on and off, and has discovered the cause of what's going on. Here's his explanation.

Matt Burch said:

All right, I've stepped through the code in the debugger once more, and I am prepared to declare that it still works. I did, in fact, previously change the behavior of beams so that multiple fast-firing beams (by which I mean, beams whose Reload time is less than their Count lifetime) will be tracked separately and not merged. This fixes the behavior the users were complaining about earlier.

However, I do agree that the particular test the one gentleman was doing will not yield a different result, because of a different limitation in the EV code that certain Nova weapons are running up against: no single weapon type can fire more than once per in-game tick. Unfortunately this is one of those limitations that's based on old assumptions (from 1994-95 probably!) and isn't likely to go away.

Take for example the Manticore, which has 8 beam weapons. Each of those beams has a count of 2 and a reload time of 0. Although there 8 beam weapons, the limitation of one shot per weapon type per tick means that there can only ever be two beams in action at any given moment - one that was just fired, and one that was fired on the previous tick and is about to time out. The solution is to make beam reload times be closer to their count values, so having more beam weapons causes more beams onscreen.

I apologize if this limitation wasn't clear from the documentation. I'll make sure it's noted in the revised Nova Bible that I'll include with the next beta.

So, it looks like I need to update and/or change a number of weapons in Nova so that they work correctly. Any ideas from you guys on:

• which ones need changing?

• what values I should change them to?

Any advice appreciated.

Dave @ ATMOS

Weapon reloads need to be at least 1 below than the maximum you can buy of that type of weapon. Ie, you can buy 8 Ion Cannons so the reload should be at least 7. I think the BRL is the only other weapon affected by this - reload should be at least 5 for the standard and at least 1 for the turret.

This post has been edited by Guy : 15 January 2006 - 11:31 PM

on the subject of beams, i have noticed that if a beam weapon has a set innaccuracy, and a count that is grater than 0, each game tick the beam will appear at a different angle. This comeplety defeats the purpose of innacuracy in that it makes it actually easier to hit a target because it in effect gives you a wider beam. I view this as an issue because it makes ships with powerfull, low acuracy beam more deadly, instead of balancing them out. I had hoped maybe this was something that would be redressed, but i seem to be the only person who has really taken notice of it. Is it possible/feasable that perhaps a later version will have a fix where once a beam comes out at a certain angle, it stays at that angle untill it dies?

This still doesn't explain just what is going on with asteroids. They seem to take beam damage properly, and from what I've heard from Windows users, it can't be another manifestation of the exponential beam bug (it apparently didn't affect 0-reload beams?).

Anyway, the beams affected are the Ion Cannon, and standard and turreted BioRelay Lasers, and the Vell-os beams (although they don't exaclty count).

Edwards

Edwards, from Matt to you:

Matt Burch said:

Respectfully, I submit that he is wrong. I have verified that asteroids and ships both get the same treatment when hit by a beam.

Dave @ ATMOS

Guy, on Jan 15 2006, 05:27 PM, said:

Ie, you can buy 8 Ion Cannons so the reload should be at least 7.
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Whoops, forgot about the illegal ones. You can buy 16 so the reload should be at least 15. And of course you may want to increase count to make up for it.
Here's an oddity though - standard Ion Cannon decreases accel by 1 but the illegal version decreases speed by 1.

Y'see, this here is the problem. If I have to adjust the reload values to account for all the possible combinations of weapons that could be purchased for vehicles...

Well, you can see my dilema.

The simplest solution for Ion Cannons is to make them fire simultaneously. In fact, this works for all low-reload beams. I'd say that all but one beam in the stock game should fire simultaneously. The only one that shouldn't is the Polaron Cannon, because it uses a burst reload (I think it does, anyway. I haven't checked recently.)

And for looks, in particular for the Manticore's looks, Ion Cannons, and perhaps all beams, should not fire from the closest exit point. They should fire from all beam exit points to create an awesome "converging beams" effect.

Can someone post a screenshot of what a Manticore looks like when firing Ion Cannons out of all exit points simultaneously, please?

I'll agree with Edwin that beams should have one of two set-ups: Either very low (zero) inaccuracy, or significantly high inaccuracy. The latter should only ever be employed on beams whose reloads far exceed their count, and thus each "shot" goes in a different direction, with no overlap.

In summary, Ion Cannons should fire simultaneously from all exit points.

Qaanol, on Jan 17 2006, 09:37 AM, said:

In summary, Ion Cannons should fire simultaneously from all exit points.
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That's a big should on that one - here's your manticore...

Perhaps I don't know EVnew well enough to get the darn thing to fire from all exit points at once...

This post has been edited by Shrout1 : 17 January 2006 - 12:23 PM

Nevermind - your wish, my command:

Does this have the same effect as having one beam exiting at a time or is it more powerful?

(edit)Just ran the expirement - sure does. Get in range of a Manticore and you're absolute toast, no time flat. My PVIV also had a lot more bite to it, I could disable a Pirate Carrier faster than my CPLs could have taken it down were I in a scarab. So not cool, very unbalancing. Is my suspiscion correct that a single Ion Cannon does as much damage as 8 if this "simultaneous fire" is not enabled?(/edit)

Plus, I always assumed that the ring was like some kind of a plasma or ion stream which could break in one place and jump to the target. I mean, it's all mumbo-jumbo, but I thought it had some greater design purpose behind it.

This post has been edited by Shrout1 : 17 January 2006 - 12:38 PM

Yes, that's the visual effect.

Shrout1, on Jan 17 2006, 12:29 PM, said:

Is my suspiscion correct that a single Ion Cannon does as much damage as 8 if this "simultaneous fire" is not enabled?

Yes. That's the whole point of this thread. The damage from more than one Ion Cannon doesn't currently stack at all. Firing simultaneously makes it stack properly.

I agree that the damage is unbalanced. That's because the beams deal their damage every frame. I can't remember the damage an Ion Cannon deals, but if we call it x then eight stacking properly deal 240x damage per second (8 cannons * 30 frames per second = 240 hits.) Sixteen cannons would deal 480x DPS.

Quote

Plus, I always assumed that the ring was like some kind of a plasma or ion stream which could break in one place and jump to the target. I mean, it's all mumbo-jumbo, but I thought it had some greater design purpose behind it.
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Okay, I'll give you that. The closest-exit-point thing was just something I liked. It doesn't affect the damage at all.

pipeline, on Jan 16 2006, 05:02 PM, said:

Edwards, from Matt to you:

Matt Burch said:

Respectfully, I submit that he is wrong. I have verified that asteroids and ships both get the same treatment when hit by a beam.

Dave @ ATMOS
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Hmm. I was talking to Weepul and he was 100% sure that beams used to do damage differently vs asteroids than vs ships, with damage to asteroids doing the correct amount of damage and with damage to ships not doing the correct amount of damage.

This seems to have been changed, tests now show that damage done to asteroids is now consistent with the same "incorrect" damage done to ships. As Matt said in the first quote this problem is the result of the EV3 engine being based on an engine thats 10+ years old. Fixing beam damage would probably have required a rewrite of far too much, so Matt changed asteroids to match up with ship damage.

This makes sense, if making damage work the way everybody thought it should work is not possible, then at least beams should not be inconsistent. I think we all just have to live with the way it is and change our scenarios to work with the engine. Including Nova itself. Unfortunately I'm not up on my beamology so I'll let the rest of you figure out what values to change...

This post has been edited by Ragashingo : 17 January 2006 - 04:21 PM

Qaanol, on Jan 17 2006, 02:52 PM, said:

Okay, I'll give you that. The closest-exit-point thing was just something I liked. It doesn't affect the damage at all.
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Phew, glad I got somethin!

pipeline, on Jan 16 2006, 11:08 PM, said:

Y'see, this here is the problem. If I have to adjust the reload values to account for all the possible combinations of weapons that could be purchased for vehicles...

Well, you can see my dilema.
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You don't need to worry about combinations of weapons as two different weapons will always fire simultaneously and won't affect each other. But the legal and illegal ion cannons both point to the same weapon so this is why both of them must be taken into account.

I don't agree about the inaccuracy though. The way it currently works does make sense. It may make targets easier to hit but only some of the shots will hit so it's still doing less damage - I don't see how it's different to inaccuracy on projectiles.

Guy, on Jan 17 2006, 04:27 PM, said:

I don't agree about the inaccuracy though. The way it currently works does make sense. It may make targets easier to hit but only some of the shots will hit so it's still doing less damage - I don't see how it's different to inaccuracy on projectiles.
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Valid point, unless there are somehow "extra" beams being generated thereby allowing the weapon to do more than the intented damage, there would be no huge benefit from this...

Guy, on Jan 17 2006, 04:27 PM, said:

I don't agree about the inaccuracy though. The way it currently works does make sense. It may make targets easier to hit but only some of the shots will hit so it's still doing less damage - I don't see how it's different to inaccuracy on projectiles.
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it is different from projectile weapons because the barrel of the weapon (projectile) may contain imperfections that effect how te projectile exits the barrel, as the weapon is fired, the barrel becomes dirtier and these imperfections become more numerous, and change in their positining, thus causing the offset of the proectile to be different with each subsequent shot. A beam weapon is focused with a collimator that is made to be absolutely perfect, because to be otherwise would result in the destruction of said collimator, therefore innacuracy would be a result of error in the fire-control system, and would be persistent until corrected for on the next shot. the only system that would be free fromthis effect would be the Manicores beams because they have no collimator, and are thus subject to dispersion at range.

Maybe the weapon isn't attached firmly and wobbles a bit...

Guy, on Jan 17 2006, 10:03 PM, said:

Maybe the weapon isn't attached firmly and wobbles a bit...
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"FIRE!!!"

<squueak squeak squeak squeak> <whiiiiir>

<boom>

that'd be a quick way to blow yourself to hell

Ok, that was pretty funny, but could we please get back on the topic of "fixing" Nova's beam problems? I'd really like my Manticore to be worthwhile again...