Cosmoteer Release Candidate 0.15.1 RC3 & RC4

Walt

Thanks everyone for testing 0.15.1 RC1 & RC2! RC3 is now available for testing!

Changes since RC2:

Upon delivering power or ammo, crew will now be immediately assigned to pick up more power or ammo if the part they delivered to still needs more. This should eliminate any unnecessary waiting that can be seen on large ships when crew have to travel only a very short distance to pick up more power or ammo.
When copy/pasting parts, crew roles and assignments are now copy/pasted as well.
Recentering a ship's blueprints will no longer cause missile types, crew roles, and squad assignments to be reset.
Using the grab hand to move or copy a part will now copy the part's missile type and crew role, if relevant.
Using the "Clear Everything" or "Clear Debris" commands in multiplayer Creative Mode will no longer remove any ships that are being actively worked on by another player.
The red X's that are displayed over parts and decals that will be automatically removed can now be turned off in the Ship Editor settings.
It is now a bit harder to accidentally click-and-drag away from an enemy ship to unintentionally set a specific distance/angle of attack.
RC Bugfix: Rare crash when crew operating a part die by fire right before another crew arrives at the part to operate it.
Bugfix: A.I. ships that had lost their long-range weapons would sometimes refuse to attack from short range.
Bugfix: Adding A.I. players to a multiplayer game didn't immediately update the number of players displayed for that game in the lobby.
Bugfix: Presing Ctrl+A to select all ships (in Creative Mode) while in direct control mode would cause the interface to get "stuck" in a state where the player couldn't do anything if there were at least two ships and only one of the ships was controllable.

SpaceCat

Walt It is now a bit harder to accidentally click-and-drag away from an enemy ship to unintentionally set a specific distance/angle of attack.

Would it be thinkable to set the "snap" angle for this in settings?
I would prefer a narrower angle for snap/unsnap to set the attack position more precisely.

Also the snap range gets larger when further away which can get uncomfortable.
Maybe snap/unsnap it at a specific distance from the attack indicator line - rather then at a specific angle?

Happy to see you experimenting with it - as it is palyable but not quite perfect yet.

chief_chaman478

Walt When copy/pasting parts, crew roles are assignments are now copy/pasted as well

Thank you 😃

Equalizer

Walt

The red X on parts when part placement would cause deletion looks "cheap". Particularly on parts where it hangs off the end due to the physical rect extending past the part outline (e.g. thrusters). Consider using a red rectangle around the X similar to that when a part is hovered with the delete tool.
Crew do still wander off when assigned to tasks that are intermittent (e.g. supply power to factory). However, it seems that by disabling other task for these crew is sufficient to resolve this for the situations I've seen so far.
So I suppose it is working well enough.
The load balancing works well provided the multiple sources are near each other. If they are not crew wandering back and forth between sources is still an issue.
(e.g. Reactor on either side of a tractor beam will result in crew wandering though the tractor beam repeatedly.)
Rather unimportant but crew do not seem to be able to use storage as a relay (e.g. crew will never move power from a full power storage to an empty power storage; they all will go to a reactor).

Edit:

There is a bit of an issue with crew wandering away from shields that they are assigned to and instead heading off to any shield that is under fire.

image https://forum.cosmoteer.net/assets/images/2085-X7XP53bWABDml1uA.jpeg

Although it may seem to be a good idea that the crew help the drained shield it is a complete waste of their time as the limiting factor is power not crew. By not staying with their assigned shields it makes the ship weaker and the only way to prevent wander appears to lock the crew in with modules.

Equalizer

Walt There still appears to be an issue where crew are inconsistent in how fast they can reload due to some form of "stalling". This is visible with large arrays of ion cannons where some of them can be sustained with 4 crew while others flicker.

E.g. Running all of the ion cannons on auto fire on this ship some of them flicker after a while and others do not even though all are identical.

image https://forum.cosmoteer.net/assets/images/2085-RK16ITiAyvhoh0DU.png

Walt

SpaceCat Would it be thinkable to set the "snap" angle for this in settings?
I would prefer a narrower angle for snap/unsnap to set the attack position more precisely.

I don't think I want to have a setting where you can precisely adjust the angle, but I'm not opposed to one to turn off the snapping entirely. I think I also agree that the angle should be narrower and probably not get wider with distance.

SpaceCat The red attack markers sometimes get stuck on parts even when other targets are selected so that the previous ones get unselected.
Only happened when multiple parts whre targeted in sequence and then a single part gets targeted.

Are you 100% sure that there wasn't something targeting it?

SpaceCat

visual bug/glitch i encountered in MP (so no savegame so far.)

The red attack markers sometimes get stuck on parts even when other targets are selected so that the previous ones get unselected.
Only happened when multiple parts whre targeted in sequence and then a single part gets targeted.

This does not compromise targeting at all - just a visual glitch.

SpaceCat

Walt I'm not opposed to one to turn off the snapping entirely.

Just a little "dent" where it snaps is certainly nice - just so that you "feel" where the zero position is.
- "OFF / LOW / ON" setting maybe
  (perfectionists chatting 😉 )

Walt Are you 100% sure that there wasn't something targeting it?

... will check it out - maybe rly pebcak (?)

SpaceCat

some brainstorming

Really like the overall balancing at this point, (nuke-) spinners no longer OP but still good ones are hard to fight.
Even built some ships that counter missiles at 1.5 mil.
Rails seem very powerfull and it is rare that you catch their shots with flak.
Tractors can still tilt opponent ships but no longer send them into a
uncounterable spin.
blah ... to be continued ...

Walt

SpaceCat Really like the overall balancing at this point, (nuke-) spinners no longer OP but still good ones are hard to fight.

Well just wait til a future update when I inevitably upset the balance. 😉

Walt

RC3 had a crash whenever you use the hand tool to pick up a part, so I just released RC4 to fix it.

Walt

Equalizer The red X on parts when part placement would cause deletion looks "cheap". Particularly on parts where it hangs off the end due to the physical rect extending past the part outline (e.g. thrusters). Consider using a red rectangle around the X similar to that when a part is hovered with the delete tool.

It's the same X as the delete tool, though that has also been updated. Maybe it looks cheap without the rectangle surrounding it? The problem is the rectangle adds too much visual noise.

Equalizer Crew do still wander off when assigned to tasks that are intermittent (e.g. supply power to factory).

You mean when a squad has been assigned to a factory? Yeah I can see that still being a problem.

Equalizer Reactor on either side of a tractor beam will result in crew wandering though the tractor beam repeatedly.

Do you have an example ship?

Equalizer Rather unimportant but crew do not seem to be able to use storage as a relay (e.g. crew will never move power from a full power storage to an empty power storage; they all will go to a reactor).

Yeah they have never done this, because how are they supposed to know which storage they can pick up power from and which they can't? The only solution to that I see is to allow the player to set that manually.

Equalizer There is a bit of an issue with crew wandering away from shields that they are assigned to and instead heading off to any shield that is under fire.

Yeah this is my concern with the current approach where assigning a squad deprioritizes everything else but doesn't fully ban those jobs. Banning all other jobs when a squad is assigned would fix the problem but possibly create confusion/frustration for new players who do it accidentally or don't fully understand how the logic works.

Kroom

Walt Yeah this is my concern with the current approach where assigning a squad deprioritizes everything else but doesn't fully ban those jobs. Banning all other jobs when a squad is assigned would fix the problem but possibly create confusion/frustration for new players who do it accidentally or don't fully understand how the logic works.

Maybe a toggle button for "work on selected modules only" could work?

Nordwolf

Walt Yeah they have never done this, because how are they supposed to know which storage they can pick up power from and which they can't? The only solution to that I see is to allow the player to set that manually.

This and other issues should be solvable if you have an ability to force/specify sources for crew.

Walt

Kroom Maybe a toggle button for "work on selected modules only" could work?

Maybe, but if squad assignment isn't very useful without that toggle on, then the only point in having a toggle is to make it less confusing for new players, in which case I feel like there's probably a better way to make it less confusing to new players.

Equalizer

Walt At least on discord when you brought up the different options how crew assignment to parts would work people seemed to like the idea of "loose" assignment, which is what it currently behaves as. So perhaps most people would like this version best and only "min-max'ers" would want a "strict" assignment.

If that is the case then defaulting to loose assignment and a toggle to make it strict seems reasonable.

For crew wandering back and forth between reactors when powering a tractor beam try this test ship:

image https://forum.cosmoteer.net/assets/images/2085-9RUzvmh9UYZWwjS4.png
(Detach the armor block and fire the tractor beam at it.)

Kroom

Walt I think that it is more useful to have it off most of the time but having the option to turn it on is great too.

Walt

Equalizer people seemed to like the idea of "loose" assignment

The question is, how much value does loose assignment add over the role priorities, which already use distance as a tiebreaker? I'm starting to think not much.

Kroom I think that it is more useful to have it off most of the time but having the option to turn it on is great too.

Can you give an example of how you use it, that role priorities are insufficient for?

Equalizer For crew wandering back and forth between reactors when powering a tractor beam try this test ship:

Thanks for the ship. I may be able to make some tweaks to make this work a bit better, but this is an incredibly hard problem to solve in a way that won't wreck performance and won't cause delays after crew drop off ammo.

Equalizer There still appears to be an issue where crew are inconsistent in how fast they can reload due to some form of "stalling". This is visible with large arrays of ion cannons where some of them can be sustained with 4 crew while others flicker.

I see what you mean, but as of yet I have no idea what causes it. I'm 99% sure there is no "stalling" as of RC3/4, I think something else must be going on to make crew take very slightly longer. Will have to investigate more.

Walt

Equalizer For crew wandering back and forth between reactors when powering a tractor beam try this test ship:

So this problem seems to be mostly relegated to the situation where there aren't enough crew to supply the weapon but there are enough crew to drain a reactor, and the reactors are far enough apart to waste a lot of time walking between them. Adding more crew seems to fix the problem, as does moving the reactors closer together. (And enough crew + four total reactors can keep the TB online indefinitely.)

I'll keep thinking about an algorithmic solution, but there might not be one, and the current algorithm is already a good bit better than pre-0.15.1 anyway. There are also a couple possible upcoming improvements that might help the situation:

I'm considering making it so that assigning a squad to a reactor/factory will allow them to pick up ammo/power from it, not just deliver power to it. In that case, you could assign squads to nearby reactors/factories, and they wouldn't walk across the TB to the other reactor.
Larger reactors will make the need for multiple small reactors much lower.

Equalizer

Walt Could some of the crew reloading slower be related to some form of crew congestion oddity?

If there is a second door added to the ion cannons any of the ion cannons that are loaded by crew using both doors don't run out of power. However, some ion cannons will only be loaded through one of the doors even though there are two present. Some of which then flicker.

Nordwolf

Walt Can you give an example of how you use it, that role priorities are insufficient for?

Any scenario where there are two modules connected that have same weapons but don't fire at the same time (eg. on opposite sides of the ship), I don't want my crew to wander to the other side each time only one side needs operation.

Walt

Equalizer Could some of the crew reloading slower be related to some form of crew congestion oddity?

That's what I'm investigating right now, but I didn't make any deliberate changes to congestion, and looking through my code changes since 0.14.15, I'm not seeing anything obvious.

Equalizer

Walt What I seem to see is that the crew on ion cannons that sustain are for some reason taking a partial step forward into the ion cannon or reactor. Even though they are actually moving slightly further I guess it is some how adjusting the congestion so that they move fast enough to more than make up for this.

Edit:
Here's a gif showing this. The first power drop off is normal (crew immediately turns) second is abnormal (crew takes a partial step further into ion cannon after dropping off power).

image https://forum.cosmoteer.net/assets/images/2085-GhFA7T5qAhfXZwWL.gif