[Req] -Disable- all NPC fighters

[Thundercraft]

On the server where I play, it's become pretty obvious that fighters are a leading culprit of lag issues. It's such that the admin set a rule where players are only allowed 2 to 3 squads of fighters, max, in salvage yards or sectors with lots of wrecks - at least when there are lots of players online. (Server uses the carrier commands mod to have salvage fighters.) Also, we were told to try to avoid using fighters at all if the lag becomes bad.

 

Further, it's been noticed that when we find several sectors with ongoing faction wars, the lag becomes much worse. (Faction wars always seems to involve one side using lots of fighters.) The admin stated, "If you come across sectors with swarms of fighters, you have my permission to destroy them." And he said he would try to buff the stats of fighters so players won't have to use as many.

 

Anyway, the admin would gladly disable NPC fighters if a way was found to do this. Hence, this request.

[cy414]

cant help since i dont understand this stuff well enough to change stuff without likely breaking the game.

but from what i have read in the files, im guessing that removing

            ship = ShipGenerator.createCarrier(faction, MatrixLookUpPosition(dir, up, pos))

        else

from scripts \ sector \ factionwar \ factionbattle.lua might do it.

 

if someone cares to explain if that would work or break stuff i would appreciate it.

[infal]

I'd probably go to shipgenerator.lua and find the ShipGenerator.createCarrier function and delete everything in that function and replace it with a call to create defender eg:

 

function ShipGenerator.createCarrier(faction, position, fighters)
    return ShipGenerator.createDefender(faction, position)
end

 

That way any time the game tried to create an npc carrier, it will still create a ship but it will be a regular defender instead.

[akeean]

On the server where I play, it's become pretty obvious that fighters are a leading culprit of lag issues. It's such that the admin set a rule where players are only allowed 2 to 3 squads of fighters, max, in salvage yards or sectors with lots of wrecks - at least when there are lots of players online. (Server uses the carrier commands mod to have salvage fighters.) Also, we were told to try to avoid using fighters at all if the lag becomes bad.

 

Further, it's been noticed that when we find several sectors with ongoing faction wars, the lag becomes much worse. (Faction wars always seems to involve one side using lots of fighters.) The admin stated, "If you come across sectors with swarms of fighters, you have my permission to destroy them." And he said he would try to buff the stats of fighters so players won't have to use as many.

 

Anyway, the admin would gladly disable NPC fighters if a way was found to do this. Hence, this request.

 

Server admin could just mod the volume of the generated fighters, thus limiting the quantity that players & npcs can carry at once. He can do so by tweaking the fightergenerator.lua.

 

If you were to use my Better Fighter mod, just insert "template.diameter * 4" just before both "return template" lines in the that file to have 4 times bigger fighters.

 

That file also discrimiates between combat and utility fighters, so admin could make combat fighters way bigger than salvage ones to cut down on use of combat fighters over just salvage/mining/repair ones to reduce lag.

 

Keep in mind that the AI ships likely won't care about fighter types and will happily use whatever the RNG give them, just as salvage fighters will come to your defense if you use the carrier commands mod and have them salvage.

[akeean]

I'd probably go to shipgenerator.lua and find the ShipGenerator.createCarrier function and delete everything in that function and replace it with a call to create defender eg:

 

function ShipGenerator.createCarrier(faction, position, fighters)
    return ShipGenerator.createDefender(faction, position)
end

 

That way any time the game tried to create an npc carrier, it will still create a ship but it will be a regular defender instead.

 

This seems to be a more elegant way to discourage AI from spamming carriers over my fighter size suggestion. Because it prevents from AI spawning helpless ships (What use is a carrier with just 1 or 2 fighters?) You can still increase the fighter sizes to discourage player-owned fighters, tho.

[Devious]

How would increasing the size of fighters discourage players from using them, and especially from lagging the server? :p