NPCs and laser temperature

[Commander McLane]

An issue which popped up in another thread prompts me to ask a question I had for a long time: How is laser temperature and overheating handled for NPCs?

In the target inspector almost each shot brings the bar from 0 to 1, where it stays without dropping until the next shot is fired. There is no visible relation between number of shots fired and laser temperature, also no sign of an effect of overheating.

Basically it looks like, although a laser temperature is defined, no sensible handling of it exists at all. Is that a correct observation?

[JensAyton]

“Laser overheating” for NPCs is modelled as a random chance of a random penalty to the delay between shots. Both the chance of this happening and the duration of the penalty is dependent on weapon_energy.

Code: Select all

    // random laser over-heating for AI ships
    if ((!isPlayer)&&((ranrot_rand() & 255) < weapon_energy)&&(![self isMining]))
    {
        shot_time -= (randf() * weapon_energy);
    }

The temperature gauge in the debug inspector shows laserHeatLevel, which was added to ShipEntity for shader bindings – it’s never used internally. The calculation is (recharge rate - time to next shot opportunity) / recharge rate, clamped to [0..1]. In other words, it will rise to 1 on a shot without a penalty, then drop to 0 over the recharge time, after which the ship can fire again. if the penalty is incurred, it will saturate at 1 during the penalty period.

As far as I can see, there is no penalty mechanism at all for subentity weapons.

[Eric Walch]

Basically it looks like, although a laser temperature is defined, no sensible handling of it exists at all. Is that a correct observation?

I think you are correct. The NPC laser heat is based on a random value, defined after each shot.

Or more precise:

Code: Select all

	[self resetShotTime];

	// random laser over-heating for AI ships
	if (((ranrot_rand() & 255) < weapon_energy))
	{
		shot_time -= (randf() * weapon_energy);
	}

And shot_time increases in seconds. An NPC can shoot again if shot_time > weapon_recharge_rate. So stronger weapons take longer to cool.

Edit: it was shot_time > weapon_recharge_rate, not shot_time > weapon_energy

[Frame]

An issue which popped up in another thread prompts me to ask a question I had for a long time: How is laser temperature and overheating handled for NPCs?

In the target inspector almost each shot brings the bar from 0 to 1, where it stays without dropping until the next shot is fired. There is no visible relation between number of shots fired and laser temperature, also no sign of an effect of overheating.

Basically it looks like, although a laser temperature is defined, no sensible handling of it exists at all. Is that a correct observation?

coincidently i found out about weapon_energy, the larger the more likely it is to random overheat.

Cheers Frame

[Diziet Sma]

As far as I can see, there is no penalty mechanism at all for subentity weapons.

Does this mean that laser subentities, such as on a Rattlecutter, will not overheat, in other words, they can just keep on firing indefinitely?

[DaddyHoggy]

As far as I can see, there is no penalty mechanism at all for subentity weapons.

Does this mean that laser subentities, such as on a Rattlecutter, will not overheat, in other words, they can just keep on firing indefinitely?

Worryingly, that's what I suspect to be the case! (I'm sure Ahruman will confirm)

[JensAyton]

Does this mean that laser subentities, such as on a Rattlecutter, will not overheat, in other words, they can just keep on firing indefinitely?

As far as I can see, yes.

This of course suggests the follow-up question, “Why don’t you fix it, then?”

The ideal fix would be for NPCs to have the full player-style overheating mechanism. However, for this to work well the combat AI would need to be revised to take overheating into account, and I frankly have no idea how to go about it.

A simpler approach would be for the random “overheating” penalty to apply to all weapons on a ship. Since different weapons can have different firing rates, this would need the cooldown timer to be separated out, but it should be reasonably easy.

[Eric Walch]

Does this mean that laser subentities, such as on a Rattlecutter, will not overheat, in other words, they can just keep on firing indefinitely?

They can't fire indefinitely as there is still the check

Code: Select all

if ([self shotTime] < weapon_recharge_rate)

that sets a minimum interval for subentity shots, based on the weapon_recharge_rate.
And yes, as Ahruman just writes there is no extra time penalty like with the main weapon. However, when a ship has both a main- and sub- laser, the sub lasers will also respect the overheat time of the main laser.

[snork]

Ah, see.
I was wondering why the only multilaser ship in my game (snark : 1 main and 2 subentity front lasers) was always stopping to fire after a while.
(They are tough enough like this )

So, as long as ships have main lasers firing in the same direction as their subentity weapons, everything is fine ?