feat(data): Scaling Drones 40%, Fighters 50%, Interceptors 60%

[Zitchas]

Bug fix
Fighters are comically big, drones are even more comical. While this is amusing, it also makes for the fact that they are disproportionately easy to target due to their size.

This PR addresses the bug/feature described in issue countless discussions on fighter utility

Summary

Originally, I was aiming at this as a starting point:
Drones have been shrunk to 40% of their normal size.
Fighters have been shrunk to 60% of their normal size.
Interceptors have been shrunk to 75% of their normal size.

But upon flying around with them, I've found that a somewhat tighter spread looks better:
Drones 40%
Fighters 50%
Interceptors 60%

At least, for the areas I have spent a bunch of time experimenting in, namely the Remnant. Numbers may vary for other factions, but at least for now, this will be my revised goal.

To-Do:

All the ships that have been scaled, all 48 of them, will need their hardpoints and flares adjusted to match their scaled image.

This PR is to help people get started, assistance figuring out all the hardpoints and stuff would be much appreciated.

[Zitchas]

Based on just getting the Remnant done, thinking possibly dropping them and interceptors down to 50% and 60%.

Anyway, very preliminary testing, but looks like the hardpoint new numbers line up.

[Zitchas]

Is there anyone working on any of these? Just so I don't nullify someone else's work.

[ravenshining]

How are we going to handle bay counts ?

At a scale of 0.7, I would increase a Palavet's compliment of 'olofez to 4

At a scale of 0.6, as you have, I would give it 4 'olofez and 2 drones. I think this would a a reasonable increase.

At a scale of 0.5, things get fun and we can get experimental. Now you can stack them in all three dimensions. In theory you could cram 16 'olofez on a Palavret, but to keep things reasonable sane and provide space for a hot landing, I'd have 6 'olofez plus 4 drones.

The KWS-E becomes a serious carrier at that point, too.

[Zitchas]

I wasn't planning on changing the bay counts within this PR, just keeping it focused on the scaling alone.

But yes, I fully support expanding the counts of carried ships on any ship where bays and carried things are an important feature. Ex, I'm not going to expand the bays on the Lampyrid, because both lore says 2, and because bays are not a core aspect of its identity.

I should also note that my initial pass for scaling put fighters at 0.6, but subsequent testing and updating the hardpoints looks better to have them at 0.5.

So I'm currently running on the plan that I'm going to be adjusting that to 0.5 as I get to them. Or hopefully, as other people get to them. Which is why I adjusted the title of this PR and description to clarify this.

[ravenshining]

Ah, nice ! And yes the Lampyrid definitely needs a pair of shuttles 😎 It's kinda too small to fit normally-sized shuttles anyway.

Add "make a carryable shuttle for the Lampyrid in blender" to my to-do list lol

[Zitchas]

I figured that the drop ship was probably a close enough analog to the little shuttles from Firefly.

[Zitchas]

Currently working on human interceptors.

[Zitchas]

Berserker adjusted.

[TheGiraffe3]

Do you have a list of size adjustments for each category?
e.g. HW 80%, fighters 50%, etc.?

[Zitchas]

:)

As per the title, I currently have rough scales for Drones 40% (scale 0.4), Fighters 50% (scale 0.5), and Interceptors 60% (scale 0.6).

I do not have any scales for any of the other size categories, as while there has generally been quite good reception for shrinking these down to tiny sizes and a decent amount of agreement to ballpark scaling, there is a lot less consensus about the sizes of the rest. Some people thing that things in the heavy category should be massively bigger, some people think they should be just a bit bigger, some don't think they should be changed at all. Right now, I don't have a consistent opinion on that myself yet. I don't think I have seen anyone advocating for reducing the sizes of any ships in the heavy category.

My initial bulk pass did 40%, 60%, and 75%; but after doing some testing I decided the revised values looked better. So now the old values (fighters at 0.6 and interceptors at 0.75) serve as markers denoting ships in categories I haven't done the hardpoints/flares on yet.

[ravenshining]

I kinda feel like Interceptors and up all ought to remain at 100 % -- and this could be paired, later, with other changes like making hyperdrives require some attribute, or making fighter outfits intrinsic, to add some distinction between hyper-capable vs carried classes.

As for embiggening HWS, that is a terrible idea where things stand at the moment. The mass changes and thruster slot limit have done enough harm as it is. I can imagine some scenarios where making some ships bigger might make sense given attendant increases in outfit space and hardpoint allocation, but I am loathe to suggest such given how horrifically nerfed mobility has been.

[Zitchas]

Interceptors are, admitedly, in a very weird place. They are consistently described as basically being hyperspace capable fighters. The Hawk and Sparrow are described (and look) similar enough to bealmost interchangeable. But as is, interceptors and light warships are pretty close in size... So, well, if the target area is the same, why stay in an interceptor when one has the choice to be in a light warship? Might as well get the outfit space and shields and whatnot to go with that target profile.

And thanks for demonstrating the lack of favor against changes to heavy warship size... (although as an aside, a massive ship at 20 turn feels significantly faster than a large ship at 20 turn. So such an up-sizing might actually make really big ships feel better)

Looking at just human interceptors, they range from the sparrow, at a total mass of 223; to the Hawk with a total mass of 417.

Makes me wonder if perhaps they should have different sizing. Perhaps the Sparrow and wasp should be sized down to 60% being just a bit larger than fighters; with the scrapper and fury being at maybe 70%, and the Berserker and Hawk at 80%?

Interceptors really don't have much going for them, nor reason to stick with one; and area also the smallest ship that most players are likely to spend any amount of time in. Including them in the drone/fighter mix (which is what they, in lore, are aligned with) in terms of sizing keeps them in the realm of "if a player wants a ship they can dogfight in without having to sacrifice space for an HD..."

Honestly, I think in terms of gameplay, lore, and simplicity, I'm inclined to keep processing interceptors to be smaller; although I think I may go for 60% for wasp & sparrow, and 70% for the rest. Scaling's not a hard rule, adjust as seems best for any particular faction or ship.

[ravenshining]

Gamplay wise, some ships are not meant to be stuck with. We even have this explicitly mentioned first thing in the tutorial where we can say that we'll be getting our hands on something better ASAP. Interceptors may serve a role in a fleet but aren't meant to be used as a flagship for more than basic duties.

On my blasters PR you suggested that some weapons may simply be inferior and cheap and that's a good thing; so it goes with Sparrows.

20 turn has absolutely no business on any flyable ship outside of minimally-engined superheavy, which humans do not have, or a bulk freighter that doesn't care about getting anywhere.

[Zitchas]

It was a random number pulled out of thin air. Any arbitrary low turn speed feels more satisfying (and faster) on a bigger so than on a smaller ship. Correspondingly, making a ship bigger will make it feel like it is turning faster (since it is, in fact, moving faster), even if the turn speed as indicated remains constant. I am not currently contemplating making slow ships bigger; although that could certainly be discussed.

[Zitchas]

Now I am curious... What would it change in the game if turning speed was listed as the speed the nose if the ship can move clockwise or counterclockwise? I am curious as to whether or not that value would provide a more consistent "what feels good" than the degree turn rate.

[Zitchas]

Maths (calculating how fast the nose swings):

Premise: For the sake of comparison, this is calculating how fast the nose of the ship swings when the body of the ship undergoes a 90 degree rotation, which is to say, a quarter of a circle, in one second. I am making no promises or allusions to the fact that these ships actually can do 90 degrees in a second, just that I'm using that value for the sake of comparison.

1. I have a vague memory that the game uses the sprites at half their normal size, but I might be wrong on that. So for each of these three ships, I have calculated how fast the nose moves as both with and without that assumption.
2. I assume that every ship rotates around the center of its sprite, which is to say 0,0.
3. The point that I am measuring is the nose of the ship, which is in all three cases, the farthest point of the ship from 0,0.

Carrier is 400 pixels tall, I think game renders at half that, right? So 200 in game. Center of rotation is right in the middle.

So that gives a radius of 100. If it has a turn of 90 degrees/second, that means the nose of the Carrier is moving 157 pixels per second when it turns.

Shuttle is 70 pixels tall, so 35 in-game. So from center to edge is 17.5. If it has the exact same 90 degrees/second turn rate, that means the nose of the shuttle is moving 27 pixels per second.

If my assumption about the game using half the natural size is wrong and it is full size, then those figures become:
Carrier 90 degrees per second translates to the nose moving 314 pixels/second
Shuttle 90 degress per second translates to the nose moving 55 pixels/second

And let's try the Emerald Sword:

Emerald sword is 590 long, so the usual half that is 285. Put that into the formula, and divide by four to get the distance covered in 90degrees, and we get 224 pixels/sec. And if my vague memory about ship sprites is wrong and they are used full size, then the emerald sword at 90 degrees per second translates to the nose moving 463 pixels/second.

So, final results:
If the game does use the sprites at half size, then a 90 degree/sec turn results in the nose moving:
shuttle: 27 pixels/second
carrier: 157 pixels/second
emerald sword: 224 pixels/second

And if I'm wrong on that assumption and the game uses the sprites full size, then a 90 degree/sec turn results in the nose moving:
shuttle: 55 pixels/second
carrier: 314 pixels/second
emerald sword: 463 pixels/second

And now I have concrete numbers to backup what before was "just a feeling:" Due to physics, our larger ships, despite technically turning a lot slower, actually move significantly faster. This probably contributes to how weird large ships act.

Now, some interesting thoughts on this.

Firstly: This doesn't affect how fast the ship can change direction. It doesn't matter how many hundreds or thousands of pixels per second the nose of the ship moves, it's strictly the degrees per second that matter. Anything that involves the ship needing to turn around is going to directly depend on the degrees per second.

Secondly: This does affect how well it can aim or respond to ships that are sliding or jinking while they come in to attack. Basically, the Emerald Sword can adjust the position of its main gun in space (assuming that all three ships were, in fact, at 90degrees/second) back and forth at about 40% faster than a carrier, and about 900% faster than a shuttle. This may give large ships a considerable advantage.

[ravenshining]

It seems you're focusing a lot on how a ship looks, rather than how it it's controls feel.

I agree, that spinning a large sprite too quickly can look bad, and this is why I have consistently advocated for rotational acceleration, whether in the form of inertia or "slow to start but still instantly stops." I would not say, however, that the rotational speed of any ships in 0.9.x vanilla was too fast in absolute terms, certainly not when weighted against gameplay.

It is the feel of the ship's controls that dictates minimums, as far as I'm concerned. Not combat mechanics or aesthetics, simple "I tell my ship to move in a direction, it should start doing that" and "when I don't tell you to move, don't move." What Delta's current dynamics give me as a constant feeling of lack of control, ships moving about in ways I am not telling them to and failing to respond to my commands.

If we had joystick controls, where you could put the stick in a direction and have the ship were it smart enough perform whatever combination of things it needed to do to go in that direction, it would not matter so much, but we can't expect players to have joysticks and mouse control is a terrible substitute. If we had to type in heading for it to do the same and the camera were not locked to the ship, it would not matter so much, but that would require a whole new interface.

As it is, we have simplistic, arcadey, fighter-style arrow key controls, and as long as ships do not respond in an arcadey, fighter-like fashion, its going to be frustrating.

---

Now, I'm much more forgiving when it comes to a ship's ability to accelerate. Once you're pointed in the right direction, now thrusting can make progress, however slow, and if you know you can point in the right direction at will there's far less anxiety about knowing when to attempt to start coming around for counterthrust.

The way you've crippled ships with excessive mass has killed both acceleration and turning, but the two need not be married. Simply doubling the turn/ton ratio for steerings might help allow ships to have that differentiation in mobility that you seem to want for some reason, while still allowing ships to feel okay to fly.

[Zitchas]

I think it might be more accurate to say that I am trying to quantify what I feel. All those calculations about how fast that the nose of the ships move? That's just putting numbers to what I have felt. It's not about looks, really. It's about the fact that, all else being equal (particularly turning speed), a longer ship has the advantage a distinct advantage in tracking a target.

Here's some fun numbers:
This all assumes that the game isn't halving the size of ship sprite, because that's simpler for now.
Assume our ship is stationary, armed with an electron beam. (range 450).
The target ship is circling our ship at a distance of 450 from the nose of our ship, and we are rotating to stay pointed at the target.

Our first ship is a Shuttle. For the purposes of this thought experiment, it has a rotational speed of 90 degrees per second. It can maintain perfect tracking of the target ship up to a speed of 761 as it looks around us.

Our second ship is a Carrier. In order to track the same target moving the same speed around us 450 out from the nose of our ship; it only needs a rotational speed of 67 degrees per second because of its increased size pushing the radius out farther, and that target ship needing to cover a lot more distance per degree.

Our third ship is the Emerald Sword. In order for it to track that same target moving at 761 out at 450 distance from our nose, we now only have to rotate at 58.6 degrees per second.

This is why fighters (and any ship that is supposed to have an agility advantage and do things like circle its target) need to have such a massive superiority to larger ships. Namely, because to avoid turrets they have to stay away from the ship, and to avoid the guns they have to circle it faster than it can turn. and the farther that distance is out, the faster the fighter needs to go to overcome even a very weak turn on our ship.

Now, if we're using a shorter range weapon, say, a laser, then the number become smaller.

Our shuttle is still turning at 90 degrees/sec, but now the speed the tip of the beam moves through the sky is only 526. Which means we can track a target at that distance at up to that speed.

To track the same target going the same speed, our carrier only needs 60.3 degrees/sec; and the Emerald Sword only needs 50.7.

[ravenshining]

That would be why smaller ships would need an advantage one-on-one, which is simply ridiculous. If a shuttle could effectively attack a carrier, the Navy would not waste money building carriers. For gameplay, all a lone shuttle needs to do is avoid the carrier, not shoot at it.

A better comparison is to pit your Mark II Carrier against 115 Finches. That represents an equivalent material and human investment. I don't have any way to test this, but while a Carrier's four guns, turrets, and missile launchers may be able to mow through a decent number, I bet it'll eventually succumb. It's a pity we don't see pitched battles involving such quantities of small craft.

Another assumption I might challenge here is that the angle required remains constant. A ship that comes in for a high speed pass will have their angle-off rapidly increase as it approaches weapons range.

When smaller ships achieve dramatically higher accelerations, this type of engagement becomes common. Fly in, fire, fly out, recuperate while others continue to harass the target. With three fighters, you can have one recuperating, one drawing fire, and one attacking. In an engagement where the fighters have an operable carrier, this may happen naturally despite not being programmed to do so.

[Zitchas]

My numbers have nothing to do about a 1v1 fight between a shuttle and a carrier. And I agree, a shuttle should not win against a carrier in any scenario.

The numbers were strictly an analysis of how a ship's size impacts its reach and its ability to track targets moving either across its field of view (perpendicular to the shortest route line between the ship being observed and its target) or in a circular around the ship being observed. With the somewhat counter-intuitive result that being bigger results in the larger ship being able to magnify its reach, and thus results in being able to track higher-speed targets in those situations. The fact that the ship has larger reach isn't surprising. I think we all knew that. But the fact that extra reach due to ship length translates to such a large expansion of at-range tracking capability was interesting to quantity.

And of course, this is irrelevant to some attack patterns. If the target is jousting instead of circling or passing by, then the carrier could have a turn speed of 10 degrees per second and still maintain a good line up with its guns and the approaching target; at least for half of the jousting pass. And I really don't think a carrier should be able to (or want to, or even care about) spinning 180 to line up with the fighter again for the other half of the joust.