Cosmoteer Release Candidate 0.15.3 RC3

Walt

Thanks everyone for testing 0.15.3 RC2! RC3 is now available for testing!

Download Cosmoteer 0.15.3_rc3

Changes since RC2:

Decreased Boost Thruster boost mode thrust from 3200 back to 2400 (same as 0.15.2) and decreased passive power consumption while in boost mode from 0.8/sec to 0.3/sec.
RC Bugfix: Loading a saved game crew could cause crashes when killed crew are replaced or if their original home quarters was removed. (Saved games that were saved in RC2 should be considered corrupted and may crash even after this fix.)
Bugfix: Some ships with short-range weapons (such as cannons and lasers) that aren't placed near the front of the ship would sometimes refuse to default to attacking from their front.
Art Fix: Medium and Large Reactors were missing drop shadows under their exterior windows and damage holes.

SpaceCat

Hi,

Is it intentional that:

Large reactors are very hard to overload - warning flash icon almost never blinking. Even when a high number of Souls are queued up?
Medium reacotrs quickly overload - warning flash icon blinking early - only a couple of souls are queued up?

The small reacotrs are quite balanced in that regard, they endure some time and then get overloaded.
Seems like large reactors are producing almost as quick as the total max waiting time can be - and medium ones produce not nearly quickly enough for even few souls waiting.

Is it just my expierience or could there be a better balance between production speed and waiting/pickup time?

Had a quick MP game with Boosters in it and the enemy agreed that they are usefull now without beeing OP.

Raughly 8 sec. of boost (in MP speed) helps catching the enemy in a quick burst. Might be just what they have been intended to be in the first place.

Walt

SpaceCat Large reactors are very hard to overload - warning flash icon almost never blinking. Even when a high number of Souls are queued up?

Yeah it doesn't turn on soon enough. Fill fix.

SpaceCat Medium reacotrs quickly overload - warning flash icon blinking early - only a couple of souls are queued up?

I'm not seeing any problem with the warning icon turning on too early. It is true that it's probably a bit easier to drain the medium reactor than the large because its pick-up-time/production-rate ratio is higher than the large reactor.

ucyimDa_Ruler

I find it odd that a large reactor with 4 bunks cannot supply enough energy to a Tractor Beam set to pull. Two of the bunks don't even bother to help.

Walt

ucyimDa_Ruler I find it odd that a large reactor with 4 bunks cannot supply enough energy to a Tractor Beam set to pull. Two of the bunks don't even bother to help.

The problem is not insufficient crew, the problem is that, with that particular ship, they can't get to it in time to help. If you setup the reactor with a direct connection to the tractor beam it works fine and never goes offline.

ucyimDa_Ruler It feels like the current calculation for crew doesn't consider the large/medium reactor.

It doesn't.

ucyimDa_Ruler In addition, the action to request more resources doesn't consider the gather time when requesting more energy from the closest reactor.

No, and it doesn't consider distance either. It only ever requests enough crew to fill the currently-empty battery slots. I've thought about trying to make it predictive somehow and request more power than it has empty slots for, but my currently feeling is this is unintuitive. (And also tricky to code.)

CGDW I have a saved game from RC2 that does load. Is it fine to continue using it or can this give me errors later?

Go get some of your crew killed and then replace them via repair. If it doesn't crash, you're probably okay, but no promises.

ucyimDa_Ruler

image https://forum.cosmoteer.net/assets/images/2228-k7JSUl4reJtGzDAa.png

ucyimDa_Ruler

And the crew calculation is wrong. It says I'm 20+ crew short. Yet even if I power the thruster at all times, I have plenty of crew left over. So that means the calculation is off by a high threshold if it is recommending 20+ more.

It feels like the current calculation for crew doesn't consider the large/medium reactor.
In addition, the action to request more resources doesn't consider the gather time when requesting more energy from the closest reactor.

That puts you in a tough spot on calculations. Do you rely on the assigned crew to calculate or by closest reactor?

CGDW

I have a saved game from RC2 that does load. Is it fine to continue using it or can this give me errors later?

ucyimDa_Ruler

Walt

What's stopping you from queuing up more people? What's the impact? That would solve the problem right? Right now the system triggers up to 1 person per energy block.

Observations:

Large Reactor - It'll trigger up to 8 crew members with 3 energy units each for a total of 24 units.
Medium Reactor - It'll trigger up to 12 crew members with 2 energy units each for a total 24 units.
Small Reactor - It'll trigger everyone cause I don't have enough.

With a large reactor, why doesn't it trigger any surplus crew?

Kroom

Broadside ships like the Twincruicer don't go broadside in the last RC.

Walt

Kroom Broadside ships like the Twincruicer don't go broadside in the last RC.

I saw another report of that (maybe from you) but wasn't able to reproduce it. Can you please give me a save? (It might depend on what ship the Twincruiser is fighting.)

Kroom

Here is a Savegame http://www.mediafire.com/file/2dzgx1mm4elu59m/Twincruicer.savedgame/file
i just set two Twincruicer to battle between each other, sometimes it tries to go broadside but immediately change back to frontal.

Walt

Kroom Thanks, should be fixed in tomorrow's stable update.

Walt

ucyimDa_Ruler What's stopping you from queuing up more people? What's the impact? That would solve the problem right? Right now the system triggers up to 1 person per energy block.

The system would need to predict when it should and should not queue up more people than there are battery slots. Also, it might be a bit confusing for players and make crew behavior harder to predict. And it should probably be customizable by the player (i.e., crew in excess of the current capacity might be given a lower priority by the player), which would take a good amount of work to implement and make the priority system even more complicated.

ucyimDa_Ruler Large Reactor - It'll trigger up to 8 crew members with 3 energy units each for a total of 24 units.
Medium Reactor - It'll trigger up to 12 crew members with 2 energy units each for a total 24 units.
Small Reactor - It'll trigger everyone cause I don't have enough.

With a large reactor, why doesn't it trigger any surplus crew?

It's not the reactor that triggers crew, its the part that needs the power that triggers crew and limits how many people get triggered. The reactors themselves do not limit how many crew can queue up at a reactor.

ucyimDa_Ruler

Yeah I can see the complexity of it. Overall I would love to have that control because I have some parts that are isolated from supplies so having extra energy/supply in flight would be ideal. Just unfortunately there is no way to configure this today.

Right the part does the trigger. I guess with my ship posted above, I wanted to see how to reacts against different types of reactors. Based on the reactor available, that was the behavior I observed.

It almost seems as the more distance the part is from its supply, the heavier the weight goes into triggering more supply. Corner pieces where crew walk through other parts seem to be effected the most. Those are the parts that I want extra supply to already be in flight.

Walt

ucyimDa_Ruler It almost seems as the more distance the part is from its supply, the heavier the weight goes into triggering more supply. Corner pieces where crew walk through other parts seem to be effected the most.

Not directly, but if crew take longer to supply it, then it will use more of its available power by the time the crew get there, thus triggering more crew.