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Planetary Transports |
Okkam
Marshal
Joined: February 06, 2008
Posts: 157
From: Dorset
|  Posted: 2008-08-17 18:28
Hey, just a few things i'd like to point out. First a warning. This is a forum warning I post with my forum posts anywhere on the internet.
The following thread has alot of writing, let me make myself clear....This is a internet forum, if you don't like writing DON'T READ A FORUM. If it is too much writing with little in the way of proper grammar or whatever then it isn't going to help matters to point it out now is it? Phrases such as "omg walloftxt" and "learn to space things out" aren't welcome nor needed. Even if this doesn't happen on darkspace forums (being as I have never been on the forums here) it must be said.
Right, back to the important stuff...
1.) A neutral planet (even when under clear blockade) will continue to spawn transports which can be shot down forever and a day giving the person doing the shooting unlimited chances to gain combat pres/general pres. Shouldn't the transports have a time delay or a code stopping them from spawning under blockade? Otherwise the fact that a transport will spawn at a neutral planet can lead to someone camping the planet with a large ship shooting all day and getting free pres. (Pres farming)
2.) 'Large ship'. This brings me onto the other subject involved with transports. In my view a transport should not be able to take the damage from a attack frigate and kill it in turn. Yes I understand it is a transport with resources and yes I understand it has to defend itself but the auto repair on a luthie transport makes it impossible for anyone short of flying a cruiser (maybe destroyer) of killing them or even hurting them. Just my view.
The 2nd issue I don't mind about, the first issue I think needs to be addressed or the pres farming from bombing on the current MV has been changed into pres farming by shooting transports from neutral planets. (Or hostile planets, i'm not sure if a hostile planet still spawns transports under blockade, not tried it yet)
3.) I'm liking the resource chain and stuff that these NPC transports seem to be doing, however after sitting in Sirius for a while I notice the fact that there is ALOT of transports. Doesn't this leave the option that if someone was to walk into a home system with a interdictor and sit imbetween planets and capture transport after transport somtimes 2 at a time because of this? This point also leads onto point 4.
4.) Transport waypoints. A transport will spawn from a planet and go the safest route to the planet it needs to go it (I say safest route because I've only seen them jump in direct lines, but if there was a sun in the way....you get the picture). However, a transport will auto jump regardless of who controls the planet imbetween them and their destination, making the transport stop at a interdictored planet and be destroyed in turn by the planet defences, effectively cutting off the resources to the planet it was going to/from. Now while you may argue 'this makes people want to take the planet' I agree but several issues come up with that. One, we want to take the planet anyway? Two, If we dont have enough support no chance to taking it down... Three, Space is vast, infinate and empty, why can't the transport just adjust its route to go past the planet so it ISN'T dictored? I know this might be more programming and effort for people but its somthing I just want to point out to others.
Also, as mensioned above, if a ship with a interdictor were to sit between planets on the trade route and prevent transports from getting to their destination and destroying them why can't the next transport simply change its route so it doesn't warp into the interdictor? It would make things harder for the interdictor pilot to find and kill the transports and prevent it from just sitting there (cloaked like a luthie can) til it times the spawn from the planet (because I assume there is a timer before next spawn/warp of transport) and then uncloaking when the time has come to blow up a transport following in a straight line the same way the rest of the transports have done? Somewhat reminds me of a old game called Total Annihilation (great game) where no matter how many factories you would build it would still send your units to their destination via the straight line route thus making one person (or in TA a laser turret) destroy entire armies because the units would walk single file into it.
'Sent wave after wave of men into it before the killbots reached their set kill limit and shut down'.
Suggestions:
1.) Make the neutral planets not spawn transports when clearly blockaded.
2.) Make transports fly in random routes instead of in a straight line, that way it would prevent a few issues (in my opinion).
3.) Maybe adjusting the defences of a transport is in order? It can easily destroy a corvette (especially a k'luth corvette).
Other than that, good work with the beta guys. Really liking how it is coming. Thanks to those who test the beta aswell so that it wont be as buggy as the current MV  .
Oh and one last thing....Why is the sun a big blue square?
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silent
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When the universe collapses and dies there will be 3 survivors; Tyr Anasazi, the cockroaches and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches...
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2008-08-17 18:49
Quote:
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On 2008-08-17 18:28, Silenthunter13 [NOMAD] [tracker] wrote:
Suggestions:
1.) Make the neutral planets not spawn transports when clearly blockaded.
2.) Make transports fly in random routes instead of in a straight line, that way it would prevent a few issues (in my opinion).
3.) Maybe adjusting the defences of a transport is in order? It can easily destroy a corvette (especially a k'luth corvette).
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thanks for the tl;dr
1) Thats more of a bug then anything. neutral planets shouldn't be spawning transports..whats the point?
2) thats more of a game AI thing, I dunno if thats fixable, or even broken
3) I don't know how it works, does it open fire on you if you get too close? Maybe it should only attack if you attack it. it shouldn't be killing frigates, but scouts should take a beating
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Oh and one last thing....Why is the sun a big blue square?
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it's an on going graphical bug (e/a)ffecting many people.
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Kanman
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: August 26, 2005
Posts: 1017
From: Virginia, United States
| Posted: 2008-08-17 21:43
That's not so much text for the DS forums. Pretty average in size for an original post in these forums.
as for the transports, I understand and completely agree. They must travel unpredictabe. dynamic, and intelligent paths or be shelved from the release. They must check to make sure both the source planet and the destination planet are owned by a common faction. They must plot courses around other clusters and stars. I realize thsi means that virtually EVERY trade route will have to be MANUALLY designed and programmed by someone looking at the map, which after dozens of worlds and a dozen or so systems would be unrealistic in labor.
dictoring transports sounds fun, assuming when the transport detects an enemy that all players on that faction can see the ship on nav. If they program a random list of 3-6 jump paths from point A to B, it will be difficult to discover the exact paths and waypoints of transports. experts in scout could become valuable, as they examine and study an area to define enemy trade routes. If possible, though, these transports should be capable of taking enemy activity in the area (known by direct detection) into account when selecting the jump path to the next planet.
[ This Message was edited by: Kanman *FM* on 2008-08-17 21:53 ]
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2008-08-17 22:35
Quote:
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On 2008-08-17 21:43, Kanman *FM* wrote:
I realize thsi means that virtually EVERY trade route will have to be MANUALLY designed and programmed by someone looking at the map, which after dozens of worlds and a dozen or so systems would be unrealistic in labor.
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nested for loop.
Also, it's been done before in .480 ...although it was inter system, not galactic scale.
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Griffinhawk
Vice Admiral
Joined: January 20, 2003
Posts: 137
From: Barberton, Ohio
| Posted: 2008-08-18 04:39
i miss 1.480
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Little Pet Slinki
Admiral
Joined: April 16, 2006
Posts: 836
From: United Kingdom, South West.
| Posted: 2008-08-18 21:27
Current Transports is more of a spam, could we have maybe larger transports? (New Design?) That are less troop transport designs that we have now, and non player cargo transports, large, slow, primarily used for jumping between planets, then we wouldn't need so many - and would work well with few, but heavy weapons etc.
Also makes a more fun, and harder to kill target for events and such.
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Griffinhawk
Vice Admiral
Joined: January 20, 2003
Posts: 137
From: Barberton, Ohio
| Posted: 2008-08-19 03:18
what i remember is that people would just hunt the transports for pres and positive kills.
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Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Raven Warriors
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2008-08-19 05:49
Quote:
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On 2008-08-17 18:28, Silenthunter13 [NOMAD] [tracker] wrote:
Suggestions:
1.) Make the neutral planets not spawn transports when clearly blockaded.
2.) Make transports fly in random routes instead of in a straight line, that way it would prevent a few issues (in my opinion).
3.) Maybe adjusting the defences of a transport is in order? It can easily destroy a corvette (especially a k'luth corvette).
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1.) Likely a bug.
2.) I don't think this would be easy to achieve or, even if it was, even beneficial or efficent. Jumping is basically, done in a straight line. In order to travel 'randomly' it would have to execute multiple, small jumps. Not only making it take longer for resources to get where they're going but also taking up more CPU time. And there are alot of transports.
Theres also the fact that the whole idea of resources in transports is so that they can be interdictor or stopped on the way to their destination. Given that its already difficult ti predict which transports will go to which planets, and that its still pretty hard to have a dictor placed just so.
Personally I'm more in favor of having AI transports easier to stop in midjump, by having linear routes that are made clear to all factions, allowing for siege like tactics. Just making them harder to find and harder for them to do their job seems entirely redudant for their intention - interception of resources.
3.) These AI transports aren't meant to be easy to kill. I really dont have a problem with them having firepower enough to defend themselves from small threats.
I think that there should be less overall transports, at least. Like, a single transport will cover several planets, and so on. In large systems it may be a bit heavy to keep track of dozens of AI transports.
-Ent
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Rae
Admiral
Raven Warriors
Joined: May 23, 2002
Posts: 284
From: 10 minutes away in a fast boat
| Posted: 2008-08-19 13:59
Quote:
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On 2008-08-19 05:49, Enterprise wrote:
I think that there should be less overall transports, at least. Like, a single transport will cover several planets, and so on. In large systems it may be a bit heavy to keep track of dozens of AI transports.
-Ent
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+1 to that.. there's alot of transport clutter on the maps!
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Kanman
Grand Admiral
Pitch Black
Joined: August 26, 2005
Posts: 1017
From: Virginia, United States
| Posted: 2008-08-19 15:41
I agree with Ent and Rae. You have to figure that a system with many planets will have enough server processing to deal with, since it has more planets and more planet defs to manage. Adding even a single transport to each planet virtually doubles the server load, since now the server much manage a planet and a ship (with all its systems and weapons).
Keep it to one transport per 'cluster' (however you want to define that), and make it a transport that has mondo cargo and mondo defs. This will keep the server load small, while making a successful attack on a transport really make a difference.
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Axianda The Royal
Fleet Admiral
Terra Squadron
Joined: November 20, 2001
Posts: 4273
From: Axianda
| Posted: 2008-08-19 17:31
Quote:
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On 2008-08-17 18:28, Silenthunter13 [NOMAD] [tracker] wrote:
1.) A neutral planet (even when under clear blockade) will continue to spawn transports which can be shot down forever and a day giving the person doing the shooting unlimited chances to gain combat pres/general pres. Shouldn't the transports have a time delay or a code stopping them from spawning under blockade? Otherwise the fact that a transport will spawn at a neutral planet can lead to someone camping the planet with a large ship shooting all day and getting free pres. (Pres farming)
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i sense this is the major concern right now of this post and let me try to clarify it a bit.
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Rules of Conduct
3.3 B
Monster/AI Transport Farming
Description: Individual or team-camping of a monster spawn point to gain combat prestige/repair prestige. Also, the premeditated setup and killing of AI transports in the MetaVerse. This includes the use of AI transports for anything other than trade routes.
Why Its an Exploit: Individual(s) or a group of players working together to gain prestige, by killing monsters and repairing ships, while staying at or near a monster spawn point is certainly not the way DarkSpace is meant to be played, and certainly could not be excused as hunting.
Elaboration: If the team is going to the monsters (IE, moving around) instead of letting the monster come to them, then it cannot be considered exploitation. Also, if you just kill a few at a time on your way to someplace else, its fine! This is an exploit where EXTENDED practice is forbidden.
Also, setting up planets in a system with multiple starports is illegal. Transports are only used for transporting goods between planets, and they should not be created in large amounts so that others can destroy them for easy points, nor should they be used as a way to defend your planets against bombing.
SPECIAL NOTE: This exploit does not apply if you are killing monsters consistently in defense of a planet or a teammate orbiting a planet.
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now please rest assured that although it has happened in the past and will most likely happen in the future the punishment for this exploit can be in the end quite severe on a players profile.
this alone was enough to warrent that almost no player was "stupid" enough to keep farming the transports. even if they do it will show in the log since the transport have such standard names, and staff will intervene. no matter when i happened this is one of the things we as staff always keep an eye out for.
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Okkam
Marshal
Joined: February 06, 2008
Posts: 157
From: Dorset
| Posted: 2008-08-21 21:46
yes yes we know farming it is a exploit and yes it is covered in the game but if it is a clear exploit and its not meant to be abused then I am in agreement with neutral planets should not have transports.
Few other things:
1.) Blockades should stop transport production otherwise it will mean farming like above and planetary defences can kill ships within range if they get caught between them and the enemy. (like luthies defences)
2.) If there was this transport issue before then I'm guessing this discussion has already happened before, back when transports were ingame for resources (i think i read right.). There is alot of transport clutter and it already adds to the servers amazing ability to stay stable when in a medium sized combat engagement, you know? So I personally don't see why you can't combine both having smaller amounts of transports, random set jumps so that they don't warp into a planet because it happends to be there in the middle of the jump distance (whereas a human player can predict and counter this, i'm not sure if the transport AI has been edited to do the same) and bigger transports is also a interesting idea if I say so myself. Makes it so it takes a small group to take down a transport and tat they can't be one shotted by a cruiser or higher. (luthie cruisers pretty much 2 volley a transport and it dies atm)
3.) A transport will only attack you if you attack it first, it will actively seek out the smaller ship and attack it or the closer one (normally the same thing tbh). Thinking about it, its probably a good thing scouts can't kill transports, but the transport I was on about was luthie defence...how hard is it to kill icc transports?
4.) The manual aspect of a trade route will be hard to do if you have to do it all and so on. Is there not a way to create some kind of code that makes transports change jump directions from time to time? Instead of manually applying varying jump routes for varying planets to other planets in alot of systems is a chore indeed but if we are going to have 1 transport per planet spawn and warp to another planet in the system then there will be systems like Procyon that will have a ton of transports flying around ALL over the place, just everywhere.
5.) bigger transports sounds like a decent idea to me, have a transport spawn from a select few planets or so (add a building that you can have similiar to a shipyard in cost, but not as much, that builds them or without it you cannot have a transport?) and have the transport capable of transporting a ton of resources.
6.) Now, we all know that shooting transports that spawn forever is farming but there is another issue. Even if you don't shoot transport after transport but shoot the occational one then it will also have the same affect, if you for instance jump to a planet blow up one transport then jump to another nearby planet and blow up another is that technically farming or doing what this version of the game is clearly wanting people to be able to do by introducing transports?
7.) Now, personally I stopped playing the MV (RL issue) when I tried this but I suppose I could try it again. What about inside defences on the transport? They don't seem to have infantry to me, does capturing one count as capturing a real ship? If so you're gonna get ninja transports being piloted by people running about dropping inf on NPC transports or people in scouts or whatever. Sure it can be called pres farming but if you want to keep calling things like this pres farming then hell....everything in the proposed MV is technically pres farming then isn't it? This is what the game wanted to introduce, more action, more life and produced transports (probably over lots of discussions) so it seems silly to just create the transports and when someone points out a bug such as my previous one of transports spawning over and over again, that it should be kept the same (before implimentation) and simply not changed, claiming that we already solved this problem by saying about farming? If there are no infantry on a transport and capturing a transport is going to add to capture ship pres then someone arguably can farm this by picking up a heavy transport and running from planet to planet 'invading' planetary transports and if someone were to get banned for such a problem that could be fixed earlier on in development then that seems to me like a problem.
While some may consider this to be un-needed work and extra chores to do, more days and weeks before we can finally experience this beta in all its glory they hey. But personally i'd rather the beta took a extra month to come out if it meant it was less buggy, less able to be exploited and less laggy.
- QUOTE -
"now please rest assured that although it has happened in the past and will most likely happen in the future the punishment for this exploit can be in the end quite severe on a players profile.
this alone was enough to warrent that almost no player was "stupid" enough to keep farming the transports. even if they do it will show in the log since the transport have such standard names, and staff will intervene. no matter when i happened this is one of the things we as staff always keep an eye out for. "
As I think I said *reads up a bit* yes it is a exploit and I understand its a bannable or serious offence and it can be monitored, but its a bit like saying..hmm, how to put this...
"we have this electro shocker by the hallway here, every now and again it kills someone"
"why don't you remove it or change it so it doesn't kill someone?"
"no, its ok we have signs up somewhere saying it kills people and people need to be careful not to get too close"
I think that makes sense, but after writing a large forum post I tend to stop making sense and start also going round in circles.
- Lag issue? -
proposed MV: People + NPCs + planets + missles + guns + multiple engagements = lag + NPC lag?
current MV: people + planets + missles/guns + multiple engagements = lag
Sorry, has to be said. I'm connected directly into my router and yet I still experience lag when it comes to more than like 6 ships in combat in one area, yet alone a planet.
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silent
[ This Message was edited by: Silenthunter13 [NOMAD] [tracker] on 2008-08-21 21:54 ]
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When the universe collapses and dies there will be 3 survivors; Tyr Anasazi, the cockroaches and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches...
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doda *EP5 no longer exception...*
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 11, 2005
Posts: 1012
From: happy land
| Posted: 2008-08-21 21:50
how about just make a limit of 1 transport per faction for each system
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Okkam
Marshal
Joined: February 06, 2008
Posts: 157
From: Dorset
| Posted: 2008-08-21 21:55
No, i'd say 2-3 but not 1 or 1 per planet because otherwise its either adding to the complication or simply adding to the complication
The 1 transport can be identified and killed thus starving the system, but 2-3 makes it so atleast 1-2 gets through if there are hostiles around no?
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silent
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When the universe collapses and dies there will be 3 survivors; Tyr Anasazi, the cockroaches and Dylan Hunt trying to save the cockroaches...
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Eledore Massis [R33]
Grand Admiral
Templar Knights
Joined: May 26, 2002
Posts: 2694
From: tsohlacoLocalhost
| Posted: 2008-08-22 07:15
quick commenting.
- neutral planet: yes no transport re-spawn.
- AI smart jumping: if i recall, in a neutral environment AI looks for red-line. But don't know at the moment and not forgetting planet orbit speeds.
Having Transport AI waypoints sounds like a good idea, just how to get it in the game would be a challenge.
But plz keep in mind, the smarter you make the AI of the NPC ships the more server resources it will hugg.
- Larger transport; ghehe nice idea.
Might be nice if possible to code. to let the standard transport be replaced with a larger one, once a SY is on a planet.
For ICC i would say use a existing model; the model of the M-248C Carrier Cruiser. It looks bulky enough to be a transport 
- Manual trade route: At the moment you would either just select what planet to trade with, the AI executing it would still be the dumb old one.
If waypoints would be added than i would say this might be a nice one, but at the moment i don't see any advantage.
- Not one transport per planet but limit per system: .....
Sounds nice but might be something that might require some serious coding, not to mention every system would need its own AI/script.
To add i would say, lets forget Interstellar transport, lets just focus on the inner-system for the moment.
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