Strange laser behavior

[SteelOrbit]

Hello dear Oolite fans,

My sad Oolite 176 story:

After some hard work, i build enough money to a brand new shining Anaconda. What to do with all this enormous cargo space? My answer was to try the mining asteroids thing. After getting 2 military lasers for the front and back of my ride, i bought 2 mining lasers for the right and left hull position and to space in roids search i go.

Found one, approach the frozen rock (like 1 km distance), stop the ship and now i run to the starboard battlestation to try minerlasering it to splinters... Put the big old stone in crosshair center and... ??????? Something is wrong! I can't hit the damned rock!!! My perfectly collimated mining laser doesn't want to touch the thing (no hit sound) and the laser animation is weird (tangled lines originating from one side, not like the standard laser fire from forward window). Note that i have used with success aft mining lasers on other ships.

Is this a common bug? an anaconda problem or something broken with my install? I am puzzled...

Help!



PS: i am using only one OXP: the excellent DeepSpace ships upgrade.

[Cmdr. Maegil]

Hi, SteelOrbit, and Welcome to the Friendliest Board This Side of Riedquat!

I think it could help if you posted a screenshot - it is said that one image is worth a thousand words...

[Smivs]

Hi SteelOrbit, and welcome.
The problem here is one of parallax. Looking at shipdata the Anaconda has the side view positions set well away from the side weapons positions, so if you're using the port view the laser beam seems to come in from way off to the left. The mining laser has a range of 12.5km. So if your rock is centered in the crosshairs at 1km distance the beam you see is aiming at a point 12.5km off to the side of the ship, and the beam is actually going behind the rock...nowhere near it!
The best bet is to try moving the view position closer to the weapon position so you are looking 'down the beam' more. As the weapon positions for the standard Anaconda are

Code: Select all

		weapon_position_port = "-37.5 -4.0 -40.0";
		weapon_position_starboard = "37.5 -4.0 -40.0";

I'd suggest something like

Code: Select all

		view_position_port = "-37.5 0.0 -40.0";
		view_position_starboard = "37.5 0.0 -40.0";

which will give a view from just above the laser along the beam.

This does work (just tested by shooting a cargo pod at 1.5km), so open the shipdata.plist and go to anaconda_player and using a text editor (NOT notepad as that breaks things bigtime) change the view figures to the figures above. Hold down 'shift' when you restart the game until you see the spinning Cobra, to clear the cache and apply your changes.

Why are the view and weapons positions so disparate? No idea

[SteelOrbit]

Hello again and thanks for your prompt replys...


Happy to be at "the Friendliest Board This Side of Riedquat!" Cmdr. Maegil Don't know if posting a picture will be necessary. I think Smivs has probably nailed it. Now i need to try the mod he suggest.


Have a nice, stable orbit