Gravity Turrets

[superking]

Why do gravity turrets slow down to a fixed rate, instead of a percentile reduction? What was the thought behind this decision?

[keith.lamothe]

A percentile reduction would be much less effective against the fast moving ships that it's designed to counter, and would be really brutal on the already-slow ships that it's not supposed to hurt much.  It would also be much harder on the cpu.

[superking]

OK

just put this out there because I have been getting SO much rage since the AI started using MK III gravity turrets- 2 speed for 9000 range? AAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHHH

[Ozymandiaz]

OK

just put this out there because I have been getting SO much rage since the AI started using MK III gravity turrets- 2 speed for 9000 range? AAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHHH

I know

I just take the turrets out with my long range ships tho

[superking]

I mostly only use zenith polarisers on the attack (range 3000)

[keith.lamothe]

In the words of Adam Savage, "Well there's your problem!"

[superking]

yeah yeah 

speed 2 does seem a bit unreasonable though

[keith.lamothe]

People trying to get through a gatehouse with boiling oil falling on their heads think it's pretty unreasonable too

[Fleet]

Could it be made more apparent that there is a gravity turret? Its not revealed by z+x right now. It would be cool if perhaps it got a different color shade.

In other words, I don't so much mind that they are used by the AI. I do mind that I often don't detect them until my forces are already within the turrets range.

[superking]

Could it be made more apparent that there is a gravity turret? Its not revealed by z+x right now. It would be cool if perhaps it got a different color shade.

In other words, I don't so much mind that they are used by the AI. I do mind that I often don't detect them until my forces are already within the turrets range.

yes, I was thinking the other day how gravity needed some visual indicator

[Sizzle]

Maybe in unity we could get a subtle ripple distortion effect for them   You guys were gonna experiment with more special effects, IIRC 

[keith.lamothe]

Well, we could probably manage something like that with a shader, but much more likely to just have a different color range-area rather than anything fancy, since otherwise it would bog down the graphics speed and not be supported by older hardware.

[Sizzle]

Understood on the performance aspect.    However as I understand it some effects would be very light on costs.   I recall that there was going to possibly be more eye candy type effects once Unity makes it out the door.   Since that sort of effect would be too expensive,  in the interest of constructive feedback -- IF my memory is correct and you want more effects in game, what sorts of effects would be "cheap" enough to suggest?

[keith.lamothe]

Chris knows a lot more about that side than I do   Main reason in this case is that it would almost certainly be more effective to just use the same approach we've used for displaying other ranges, albeit with a distinct color to distinguish it.

As for other things, we do want to convert the various ship-to-ship lines from raw line drawing (which is inherently monochromatic per-line) to texture drawing (probably uv textures), which will actually be faster and allow much more interesting effects.

[Lancefighter]

imagine releasing full mk levels of zenith autobombs down a wormhole.... only to realize that on the other side (ohhh just far enough away so the autobombs cant kill it in a reasonable time) is one of those :|

On the bright side - its nowhere NEAR as bad as grav drills.