Two Questions - Missiles and Performance

SpootKnight · Lieutenant Complex Patron Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 74

The first is directed to players that have done team games; something I've seen that to my knowledge is unknown.

Who's run any session with 2+ players in teams and encountered an issue where allied (self or teammate) anti-missile turrets track and intercept the torpedoes of the same team's ships? It's easy to see where this would become a problem, trying to prevent the opposing team (especially Vaygr) from hitting high-value targets with missile defense, only to find out that your Destroyers and Defense Platforms are shooting down your ally's missiles instead. Little is actually done to defend against the attack and more ships are lost than there should have been under normal conditions.

The second question is for the team, on game performance.

Based on observations as a player, would it be possible to allow for a toggle of the semi-persistent dust effect on harvesting, and add a degree of chance in drop rate of ship wreckage for salvage?

These two additions are novel ideas in both aesthetics and gameplay of each feature respectively. However, they are the only things I can see (not counting ships) that are new in Complex, where the other visuals are revisions of what Homeworld already has. I cannot say I know the inner workings of the base game and the mod, but something in Complex was changed or added that turns my ability to run 4v4 games with the unit cap on High without any loss of FPS two hours in, to slowing to a crawl on 2v2 games in half the time, while the High unit cap in Complex is smaller than the original game's Normal cap. Something doesn't add up. And given that the times I've seen an OOS occur was when the game has become extremely slow, it makes me wonder...

Could it be the new effects? I know that given time all the available resource points would be occupied, so that's a lot of dust clouds being kicked up. And even with the changes for wrecks to disappear over time, there's still hundreds of them present given a sufficiently-large fight.

If it would do anything for performance, I'd like to be able to disable the dust, or not see ship wrecks appear 100% of the time they're destroyed. Maybe a low chance for small ships, to give the impression that they typically disintegrate, with an increasing chance as the ship size increases, as there's more of it to remain partially intact.

**Oni** · Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:23 pm Post subject: Description:

Will be good to post save file when you have FPS issues. I can check the content and do some changes.
Yes wrecks and RU clouds can cause performance degradation over time, but it should not be that much.
The game slows down even without these features after long play.

Alewx · Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:37 pm Post subject: Description:

SpootKnight · Lieutenant Complex Patron Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 74

**Oni** · Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:51 pm Post subject: Description:

Well the capital wrecks are way too big and they did not fit into carriers docking bays.
Spliting the wreck into small pieces still did not resolve the size issue.

SpootKnight · Lieutenant Complex Patron Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 74

Okay. It seems there's a considerable difference in elapsed time-to-lag between solo games and multiplayer. I don't know how much help this will be, but

CHIMAS · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 2:54 am Post subject: Description:

Oni,
For those large salvagable wrecks, like frigates, I would break them in 2 pieces and only one of them would be recyclable. The thing is, when the collector has to collect and dock carrying the wreck, you note it can't fit in the (carrier's) bay.

Half of it will do ...

**Oni** · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 4:23 pm Post subject: Description:

Yep i know about this clipping.
That dockpath needs to be moved little bit back.

**Oni** · Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2017 5:22 pm Post subject: Description:

SpootKnight · Lieutenant Complex Patron Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 74

True. The idea was to emulate what a session would be like with a team player versus bots game. Multiplayer sessions are pretty seldom in my case so I'm normally not concerning myself with having full maps.

Though it is unfortunate that the cause involves features that add a degree of tactics to the game. Since the weapon assets were revised to not need experience, that particular aspect has lost some of its relevance, but the fuel would be a more significant loss.

Jelrak · Captain Gender: Age: 42 Joined: 13 Jan 2016 Posts: 234

I also would vote on potentially removing the XP component, but removing fuel would be very unfortunate...

Alewx · Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:04 pm Post subject: Description:

SpootKnight · Lieutenant Complex Patron Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 74

I do know now that a multiplayer 1v1 can be done without any issue, even when the match is staged for non-stop fighting to maximize experience gain and fuel consumption.

The feedback I got on fuel was even though it is a system an official title included, the life expectancy of strike craft provides only occasional chances to see it in use - they take damage, survive and get repaired, or die in their first fight. After an hour of constant fighting between replenishing fleets, neither of us actually had fuel issues. It ends up being such that our only concern on the condition of our strike craft was in their hull, we docked only to keep them from entering the next fight at 50% hull, not because chasing bombers drained a quarter of their fuel.

Now that I think of it, fuel even seemed to be the same way in HW1 - an afterthought in the grand scheme of unit management. Dock to repair, because you either keep them repaired frequently enough that running dry is impossible, or they die before it can happen.

Because it was said this was where the overhead was, I'd like to ask if they could become game options later on, like how it was in HW1. If being able to disable the system would allow for larger multiplayer sessions with better performance, it would be a significant plus.

Teldrean · Ensign Joined: 03 May 2012 Posts: 4

Yea, i got the same expirience, Fuel and the way it is now... you can pretty much ignore it, cause either your fighter blow up before they get even to half of it, or you repair them anyway so they are refilled, on an 3 hour match with 2 Ais on max difficutly, it was rare that a fighter woud survive draining his tank to half before getting blown to pieces, so ther was just no reason to even care abbout fuel.

I think the only way to get even close to an emtpy tank for fighters is having them patrol for a long time in a pretty much safe zone.

CHIMAS · Posted: Sun Jan 15, 2017 8:58 pm Post subject: Description: