witchspace blocking capacity of entities (rev 4514)

[Commander McLane]

I just noticed that the witchspace blocking capacity of massive entities is handled differently for the player ship and NPCs.

As you know, entities with huge masses block ships from jumping in their vicinity. The bigger the mass, the bigger the block radius.

However, for the player ship there seems to be an upper limit equal to scanner range (25600 m). If the blocking entity is out of my scanner I can immediately jump.

The same is not the case for NPCs, it seems. I'm testing with an entity of a huge mass. I just followed an NPC that tried to jump while it flew away from the blocking entity. The jump only took place about 40000 m from the blocking entity, which I guess is concurrent with the jump-blocking-distance formula.

But for myself the jump-blocking-distance seems to be capped at 25600 m.

Is there a reason for the unequal treatment of player ship and NPCs in this regard, or is it a bug?

Another question: what is the current formula for jump-blocking-distance?

[Eric Walch]

I just noticed that the witchspace blocking capacity of massive entities is handled differently for the player ship and NPCs.

I think it is a wrong observation. I wrote several AIs in the past for ship jumping out near the buoy-repair station and ear a torus station. They all managed to jump when outside of scanner range.

For npc AND player is the formula for a blocker:

(0.1 * [ship mass] > d2) && (d2 < SCANNER_MAX_RANGE2)

d2 is here the squared distance. SCANNER_MAX_RANGE2 is the squared range.
(For efficiency are squared values used as is saves taking the root from of the value)

[Commander McLane]

I just noticed that the witchspace blocking capacity of massive entities is handled differently for the player ship and NPCs.

I think it is a wrong observation. I wrote several AIs in the past for ship jumping out near the buoy-repair station and ear a torus station. They all managed to jump when outside of scanner range.

When I last checked the Torus station had a blocking range of about 23000m, which is firmly within scanner range.

But I'll do some more checks. The NPC which was blocked by my new Witchspace Jammer was a Behemoth 2 which has rather long AI-pauses between jump attempts. That may have influenced the final distance.

[Commander McLane]

After another test with an ordinary trader it seems that my observation was indeed an artifact of using a Behemoth.

The normal trader with exitingTraderAI jumped out successfully as soon as he was out of scanner range.