Talk:Combat mechanics

Projectiles and firing range

Shiver, which projectiles are you talking about when you say that some have a speed that is tied to ship speed? SvdB's comments on Talk:Relativity effect indicate that at least the one's he checked don't. Also, what do you mean by saying that the range "illusion" is very real "in practice"? From my understanding, relative to the background stars (the special frame) the range is constant (multiplying the projectile lifetime times the speed), of course this relies on the previous assumption that the projectile speed in the special frame is independent of the ship's speed. Only when we consider the range relative to moving ships does it appear to be longer or shorter, but in the special frame, it's still the same. Is this what you mean by "in practice", ie relative to the moving ships? --Fyzixfighter 20:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Ilwrath and Pkunk shots are tied to ship speed. Earthling missiles also have some sort of speed modifier, but I haven't looked into that in detail to see exactly what that does. Go look at the code yourself if you don't believe me.

Yes, in practice weapon range varies due to ship motion. If all projectiles were tied to their firing ship's speed, this would not be the case. If a player is trying to be effective at melee, it helps to treat the exaggerated projectile behavior as true. --Shiver 21:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, about that...unfortunately, my practical coding ability doesn't go much beyond LabView and Matlab. So most of what I've learned about projectiles and what not is from those who can read the code and empirical evidence. For example, I see what you mean now about the Pkunk and Ilwrath weapons. As for the human nukes, unfortunately if there is a speed modifier, I can't tell with the simple empirical tests. Although I did confirm that the nuke has an "exaggerated" range when fired backwards. Anyways, thanks for the enlightenment. --Fyzixfighter 21:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the code, it appears that, for the Pkunk, the speed of the ship is added to the speed of the bullets (called "bug missile" in the code) when they are spawned, but that for the Earthling missiles, the initial speed is always the same. The "range" of a missile isn't a direct property of it in the code; instead, what is specified is the time-to-live. So after a certain number of frames, the missile disappears, which makes it appear that an Earthling missile has a shorter range when fired in the direction of movement, than when fired in the opposite direction. — SvdB 09:39, 17 July 2009 (UTC)