Revert the ship sensors

[Peppermint]

Seen this topic come up a lot on discord lately.

The current iteration of ship sensors, whilst mechanically interesting, just doesn't fit any more - especially with the increased ship speed. Navigation is just about bearable provided you're not covered in hazards, but ship combat has become extremely tedious. I can't remember the last time I saw third parties fight, or the Horizon engage anything. 

The horizon also moves less and when I've asked BC mains why, apparently it's due to the sensor issue. But that's purely hearsay.

I feel the server would benefit from going back to the previous version.

[greenjoe]

One greivene I have with the current ones is that scans take ages sometimes, with a ship sitting near by but slow in the process of scanning the bogey

[Fluffy]

18 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

I can't remember the last time I saw third parties fight, or the Horizon engage anything. 

That's because third party ships are heavily discouraged to engage the Horizon, and the Horizon has no real reason to engage the third party ships either; I think that is more of a policy issue than a mechanical one.

 

20 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

ship combat has become extremely tedious.

Sensor probes projectiles were introduced in #15817 and positioned on the map in #16219 - they have to still be tweaked, but provide an immediate 100% contacts scan of the area around the path they're shot at, which is how you can acquire an immediate view of what you have around; the next iteration I would like to make will be beacons that are shot and attach to the enemy vessels which makes them immediately scannable, once the probes are tuned and ship combats more common.

[ClemTheDuck]

i dont think we need to fully revert to the old sensors, especially since the issues with the new sensors are very easy to fix (and are currently being fixed). The new sensors have more interesting features and also more potential than the old ones, id rather we work on improving them over discarding it all entirely

[Roostercat]

As someone who plays BC quite a lot, I think the pacman maze of hazards errs more on tedious than mechanically interesting. It can take fucking DECADES to reach a spot and even then there is no guarantee you will actually find what you are looking for anyway, as the bearings you get at roundstart get pretty hard to track when you have to go halfway across the map because four zipcodes worth of carp are having a convention next to the ship roundstart. 

 

I think two ways to improve this is to make it so more gaps appear in hazards for the ship to traverse through or, alternatively, making the scan generated at round start repeatable so you can get up to date bearings on locations. I don't think it would be too terrible to revert them back to what they were before either should those not really work. It would just mean flying into hazards is less common, though it would definitely mean more third party ship interaction. 

 

5 hours ago, Fluffy said:

 

Sensor probes projectiles were introduced in #15817 and positioned on the map in #16219 - they have to still be tweaked, but provide an immediate 100% contacts scan of the area around the path they're shot at, which is how you can acquire an immediate view of what you have around; the next iteration I would like to make will be beacons that are shot and attach to the enemy vessels which makes them immediately scannable, once the probes are tuned and ship combats more common.

I've tried to use these twice and both times they didn't move from the tile the horizon was on and just stayed in place, not scanning anything. 

 

I also think it should take less time to scan objects in general. It can take a REALLY long time if you are far away enough (not on top of the object)

[Lly2]

1 hour ago, Roostercat said:

I think two ways to improve this is to make it so more gaps appear in hazards for the ship to traverse through or, alternatively, making the scan generated at round start repeatable so you can get up to date bearings on locations. I don't think it would be too terrible to revert them back to what they were before either should those not really work. It would just mean flying into hazards is less common, though it would definitely mean more third party ship interaction. 

Out of curiosity, have you played BC in the last few days? Vision got increased a lot 2-3 days ago or so, because it turned out that opacity was bugged and every single object was unable to be seen through, now everything is transparent except dust clouds, meteors, and carp schools (the rare spawning carp event, not the regular shoals). 

I felt the same way but personally, I think vision is in a nice spot now. PR here has a before/after if you or anyone else hasn't seen it since.

[Guest]

for third parties, you generally need 2 people for most ships to be able to fight, because helm and guns are seperated.(as well as them to actually have a reason to fight, like over station boarding etc)   Not played the previous sensors to know, and i thought the lag in anything was a server issue not mechnical, as i tried boarding a station and it was just darkness.

[Fluffy]

2 hours ago, Roostercat said:

I've tried to use these twice and both times they didn't move from the tile the horizon was on and just stayed in place, not scanning anything. 

This isn't expected, I will look into it when I can.

29 minutes ago, Lly2 said:

opacity was bugged and every single object was unable to be seen through

This was not a bug, it was designed that way, because that's how radars work; If it is more enjoyable this other way, it's better, but it was not bugged, it was designed that way.

46 minutes ago, Rataca said:

the lag in anything was a server issue not mechnical

It is, the sensors ping fairly frequently when there's no lag, they otherwise should update every some seconds or so.

[GeneralCamo]

12 hours ago, Fluffy said:

because that's how radars work

We're in space, radar wouldn't work at all. Your arguments on "realism" here do not hold weight.

 

 

As for the revert: Matt stated a while back that a revert is not an option. I doubt he would change his mind, so I would recommend looking into ways to improve the existing sensor system, rather than suggesting the revert.

[Fluffy]

1 hour ago, GeneralCamo said:

We're in space, radar wouldn't work at all.

You're thinking of a sonar, radars do work in space and, as I said, if this is better from a game perspective, even better than what it was, realism can cede to fun, my point is that it was not a bug, but intentionally designed to do what was described. That is all.