OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Open Feedback => Topic started by: doctor medic on July 21, 2014, 03:55:19 pm
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There was a bug with the firestorm and lighting that made them resuply everytime their fuel supply was at 50%.Was it fixed in OpenXcom?
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If you you mean this bug, then the answer is yes, it has been fixed.
Elerium-fueled Craft Bug[edit]
A Skyranger or Interceptor, once dispatched, will return to base when its fuel supply has dropped to a level that it will only have just enough fuel to return to base. Craft fueled by Elerium-115, however, will always report the "Low Fuel" message as soon at the fuel supply is 50% depleted, no matter where they are on the globe. This significantly shortens the already minute time that a Firestorm, Lightning, or Avenger can be dispatched to patrol.
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Ok thanks.
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I never use Elerium-fueled ships for patrolling, they're combat only. I think Elerium is too rare to use for that.
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It's not just about patrolling. Intercept courses in XCom are woefully inefficient. By aiming at where the enemy craft is instead of where it is going, you can spend well above 50% of your fuel on the way to an UFO, while still having enough fuel to make it back to base.
A better trajectory calculation would be quite an improvement to better Elerium efficiency. Of course, just fixing the bug also made a big difference.
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Yes, that's why it's important to have a human in the loop. I get to use my brain, it keeps things more game like. :)
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I guess so.. To me it breaks the immersion of the strategic simulation that my pilot/flight controller can't do better than: "There's a UFO there!! Fly to it quickly!!" *2 seconds go by* "Oh, it's there now! Correct course!" and so on..
Whereas a simple "find intercept point between UFO at current speed and heading and interceptor at max speed" would be much more sensible and isn't hard to implement either.
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In French, we call this "la courbe du chien" (~"the curve of the dog", sorry i can't find any good translation) .
The nose of the dog/fighter/rocket always pointing to the target instead of the future position.
To me, it's seems to be a too big modification from vanilla to give such a sophisticated capacity to XCom interceptors, but what could be really cool and maybe not a too big work would be to allow launching interceptors with multi-point orders (like the blaster trajectory) so we could give at least one fixed point to the fighter before heading for the ufo.
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To me, it's seems to be a too big modification from vanilla to give such a sophisticated capacity to XCom interceptors, but what could be really cool and maybe not a too big work would be to allow launching interceptors with multi-point orders (like the blaster trajectory) so we could give at least one fixed point to the fighter before heading for the ufo.
Oooohhhh yessssss. That would make patrolling so much easier.
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I had never heard of "La courbe du chien", even though french is my native language..! It makes sense for a dog, but for planes and missiles? We have much more refined guiding/interception systems and I bet they had them in 1999.
Multiple waypoints would work. I have started launching interceptors at my "predicted UFO location" instead of going straight for an UFO. Once you get the Hyperwave decoder, it helps a lot too since you know where it is headed. Having multiple waypoints like in RTS games would work reasonably well too indeed.
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Multiple waypoints woudl be a real bonus, in the vanilla state of the art, patrolling is a chore but is also part fo the game at higher difficulties.... :-\
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I had never heard of "La courbe du chien", even though french is my native language..!
On the mathematical side, it was a beloved subject for one of my professor in "Math Spe", I'm probably unable to recalculate one now, but this leaves some memories ...:-p
On the "military" side, it is probably more used in submarines for long torpedo trajectory path than for the much shorter and faster missiles shoot.
It is a matter of optimizing the interception time and consumes less fuel (ie autonomy and practical range of the weapon).
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A better trajectory calculation would be quite an improvement to better Elerium efficiency. Of course, just fixing the bug also made a big difference.
Actually there is already a better trajectory calculation implemented on OXC: the great circle route (https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Known_Bugs#Great_Circle_Bug).
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Yeah... The route a skyranger uses to get to a terror site is much improved, indeed. But that's not much of an issue.
The route an interceptor uses to get to a moving UFO? A Great circle is better than whatever way they used to take before, but going towards the UFO's current location is still a very bad interception mechanism. Using the heading and speed of an UFO, which are already provided by radars, to guide it would be much better.
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As I said before, having multiple waypoints would be very useful.
But following a UFO manually is not such a big problem to me. It's exciting enough.
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Indeed, multiple waypoints would be good (especially if the last one can be a UFO to intercept).
I've found that playing "flight controller" for my fighters is not so bad. It makes the geoscape "battles" more engaging than just "launch interceptor". Maybe it is a good thing that they don't use the best interception route after all..! It leaves me with something to do while waiting for the dogfight.
Speaking of dogfights, I seem to remember UFOs spreading their fire in the original, if engaged by multiple crafts. In OpenXCom, it seems like the first fighter to get in range gets the full attention of the UFO (which is dangerous, but also means you can "exploit" it by having your stronger crafts tank while weak interceptors get to shoot with impunity)
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Yeah... The route a skyranger uses to get to a terror site is much improved, indeed. But that's not much of an issue.
The route an interceptor uses to get to a moving UFO? A Great circle is better than whatever way they used to take before, but going towards the UFO's current location is still a very bad interception mechanism. Using the heading and speed of an UFO, which are already provided by radars, to guide it would be much better.
But isn't this a lot more complicated? To get such a vector for an interceptor you need to use the heading and speed of the UFO plus a time window. Or, "send the interceptor on a course that it will intercept the UFO in 2 hours if it keeps its current heading and speed". But this time window can vary greatly. I.e., launching an interceptor from North America against a UFO in South America will take longer for it to arrive, than if the UFO is located at North America.
Or you could simply set the time window for 30 minutes but then you risk that the interceptor is constantly correcting its path if the UFO arrives at its location and its trajectory implies a lot of turns. And in that case it would seem that manually picking a location might be more effective.
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To get such a vector for an interceptor you need to use the heading and speed of the UFO plus a time window. Or, "send the interceptor on a course that it will intercept the UFO in 2 hours if it keeps its current heading and speed". But this time window can vary greatly. I.e., launching an interceptor from North America against a UFO in South America will take longer for it to arrive, than if the UFO is located at North America.
Hey, mathematics people. Time is one of the unknown variables that you need to calculate. So any discusion about time window in which the predictions will be made is pointless. You can calculate the meeting point anytime you wan't independent on distance or time. Or to calculate that you just cant catch the UFO.
But such predictions can lead to some weird stuff going on when the UFO is far away and flying fast. It can happen that if UFO is speeding away from you, by the calculations it can be more effective to go around the world and meet the UFO head on. But when the UFO changes speed or direction, you can suddenly be stranded on the other side of the globe without any chance to intercept.
So to make the interceptions effective you don't need time window in which predictions would be made, but more practical is a distance under which your interceptors will try to predict UFO path. And this distance can be either fixed, depending on craft's speed or just variable that player can set.
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Indeed, there are already very sophisticated algorithms to calculate interception courses. At the basic level, it's just finding the point where two lines (UFO and Interceptor Trajectories)cross, varying the heading of your Interceptor but considering its speed at constant max speed. You then update that every so often (the current course is updated every time the UFO moves, so updating is not an issue). Then you can get into more complex algorithms or also define "regions of interception" (like if you have a HWD, force the interception to occur in the region you know the UFO is running its mission).
All that being said, I no longer think it is necessary, or even favorable, to have that, since it gives you an extra role in the geoscape: Flight Controller, instead of just watching your interceptors and waiting because you know they are also using the mathematically best way to intercept. Having a bad automatic intercept makes the player useful.
Multiple waypoints (assigned on a shift-click, like in most RTS?) would be awesome though, especially if the last can be an UFO.