Realism nitpicks

[DynamicRanger]

These observations are too minor to be considered technical issues, or even feature requests, so I figured I'd just see what other mercs think.

When reversing thrust (I just recently discovered this incredibly useful control feature) an exhaust plume is shot ahead of and behind the player's ship. Does anyone know of a way to disable the rear-facing exhaust when reversing thrust, or if it's slated to be fixed in the expansion, or if it's intentional?

The explosions in the game, while a heck of a lot more realistic than those found in most SF (especially games), are still fiery. The asteroid explosions are giant fireballs. Does anyone know of way to mod in different explosion effects? It may seem dull and monochrome, but I'd like to see metallic asteroids explode into dust clouds and icy asteroids into clouds of white vapor.

Ships' maneuvering thrusters only appear to be on the central frame, while the entire reasoning for having wing systems (aside from atmospheric flight) is to effect a ship's reorientation in space. The maneuvering thrusters (for roll and yaw, at least) should be on the tips of the wings, rudder(s) and ailerons.

Like the subject line says, these are nitpicks and I think the balance between fun gameplay and realism in EM is just about perfect. The game is a great example of how realistic physics can inspire great gameplay--how the "balance" between them is a false dichotomy.

[Edited on 11-15-2012 by thetiebers]

[Marvin]

Evidently, you're somebody who flies in 3rd person. Piloting from the cockpit, I've never noticed the location of my thrusters. But I do notice explosions ... did you check the Customization Kit to see if they can be modded?


Edit: Yes, I saw your cool cockpit. Which begs the question: Why such a fancy cockpit if you're flying in 3rd person?

[Edited on 11-15-2012 by Marvin]

[DynamicRanger]

I don't fly in third person, but when I discovered the reverse thrust feature I switched to the cinematic view to see how it looked. Now that you mention the view modes, given the spacing of most engines' main thrusters, you should be able to see the reverse exhaust plume from the cockpit on either side, around the same area as the lasers.

No dice on customizing explosions through the normal means explained in the Custom Kit readme. The explosion effects are probably enclosed in the EvochronData.evo as animation files.

[Viper]

Ships' maneuvering thrusters only appear to be on the central frame, while the entire reasoning for having wing systems (aside from atmospheric flight) is to effect a ship's reorientation in space. The maneuvering thrusters (for roll and yaw, at least) should be on the tips of the wings, rudder(s) and ailerons.

About this, I can say that what I've learned from playing around with custom ships that the position of the maneuvering thruster effects seems to be directly attached to the engine module of the ships in game. With civilian ships you can influence this somewhat because you can move the separate parts - including the engine module but only the module and not the individual thruster effects - around in the shipyard, but for the military frames they cannot be moved, so they appear on fixed positions.
Note that on most military frames the mesh for the engine module is hidden, so you don't actually see the engine module. But you still see the thruster effects.

So in short, there is no way yet to reposition the thruster effects client side at this time, and I don't think this option will be available directly after the expansion is released either. However, coincidentally I have also proposed to enable this as a possible feature for the future, as I was thinking the same thing as you. So depending on how high on the priority list it has been put / how much work there is involved / how much time the boss has, there is a chance you might possibly see this option enabled in the future.

Don't take my word for it though. I have also learned that there is a whole lot more involved to adding features to the game than just adding a few lines of code. Besides, Vice is not the kind of programmer that does things without reason - in fact I have found that he always has a really good explanation for why things are set up the way they are. Using the engine module as a host for the thruster effects no matter what ship you use might in fact just be one of those nifty little tricks to keep the download size / memory load etc of this game extremely low for its performance. Adding unique thruster effect locations to all the ships, plus adding the option to customize those positions might actually present a gigantic workload and an unreasonable increase in download size / memory usage etc.

Then again, you never know. I myself certainly don't have the technical knowledge of coding a game like this either, so I really can't tell you one way or the other. But one thing I'm pretty sure of: if the idea is supported well enough by the community and it is realistic in nature and contributes to the game experience, the boss will surely give it serious consideration.

[Edited on 11-15-2012 by Viper]

[DynamicRanger]

I'm no expert on the programming side, either, but it may just be a matter of placing the maneuvering thruster effects on the wing systems, for civilian ships, at least. When all is said and done, if the ships' orientations are calculated from the 3D model's center as opposed to dynamically calculated from the force of separate thrusters, we're just talking about a few strands of tinsel.

[Busch]

Recall that not only do the individual engines have their own thruster sets intrinsic, each ships' frame resources, and increase in wing sets, also add their thruster packages to the aerodynamicity of your ship - up to a point. Then there's the wing-set w/ the anti-grav generators and other special features... Haven't as yet seen Vice mount weapons or equipment on wing-mounts. Probably for the express purpose that it's too much like really hard work to code wing-mount placement for each & every wign-set/frame combination a pilot could think of...

[Viper]

And then to think of all the custom ships / ship modules this would also have to work on flawlessly... Not an easy task indeed methinks.

[DynamicRanger]

But if the location of thruster effects is cosmetic and doesn't effect the calculation of a ship's motion, then I'd expect that moving the points-of-origin for those affects actually would be a minor adjustment in coding. I'm going on the assumption that the complex interaction of a ship's components (frame, engine, wing system) is done "behind the scenes" and that visual effects are not directly connected to mechanics. I'm assuming this because of the first bit I mentioned: reverse thrust appears to fire both forward and aft thrusters. If the calculated forces acting on a ship correlated with the location and intensity of thruster visuals, then reverse thrust (where both forward and rear thrusters fire, as depicted in-game) would actually just cancel out any change in forward velocity, consuming fuel, but producing no movement.

[Marvin]

Take the number of different wing configurations and multiply that by the different X-Y-Z changes you can make to each wing. Then think how that will affect the packet exchange when five or six human-controlled ships are in the same sector in MP. Not to mention the fact all the AI ships are allowed the same mixture of configurations.

[DynamicRanger]

That's sounds like more trouble than it's worth to program. Duly noted.

[Marvin]

Somebody once asked Vice if he could add formation lights to the wing tips. His answer was about the same ... only he explained the problem a lot better.

[Filament]

I'm just happy that the wing thruster and weights are modelled!

I spent a fair amount of time configuring my (civ) ship to 'behave' the way I wanted with wings/engine/cargo bay configs for the role I want for it to function.

My ship only has 4 cargo bays and 4 external pylons, at present - and I can 'feel' when even one cargo bay is loaded.

Any more than that equipped, and it just doesn't 'handle' the way I want for my preference.

[Chronathan]

Thrusters never bothered me. But the explosion changes would be nice. It was something I noticed as well. Would love to see enemy ships simply break apart along with perhaps some form of vapor cloud for escaping fuel, etc.

I would love to see Vice open this game up to more modding. Let us get into some of the coding side too. I used to do some scripting for Skyrim mods and I have so many ideas. I think this would open up the modding community greatly and attract even more people to the game as well. Sooo much potential for this game if the modding was really opened up. Anyone know if this is planned or been considered?

[Marvin]

Would love to see enemy ships simply break apart....

If AA is any indication, that will happen in the expansion. As for allowing players to tamper with the coding ... it will probably never happen. It was a big problem with CFS back in the days of the Zone and I doubt anyone has come up with a solution. Give certain people access to the code and, in MP, they will log on with invulnerable ships. Not cool.

[Busch]

As with everything else game-related, Vice has got the handle on modding efforts and the games' codeing. Some things you can mod, others are hard-wired features that may be "game-breakers", vis-a-vis the "dicsussion" about modding planets. Vice also updates the Mercs' Customizing Kit with germaine/pertinent features for those who wish to try their hand at modding. There is however, a certain protocol...

Ya got ideas for the game environment ? Send Vice a note and/or a representation of your ideas. He does keep notes, and from time to time actually incorporates player/pilot suggestions and craft-work in-game, should it be found to be fair for all and game-play balance is assured.