More variable radar ranges

[Falcrack]

Every ship, no matter what it comes equipped with, has the same old boring radar range of 40 km. Why even have the stat on the ship ordering page if it will never be any different for different ships? Here's some ideas I think would make sensor ranges a bit more interesting.

1. Long range scanner (LRS) dictates regular radar range. The Mk1 version gets the standard 40 km radar range, the Mk2 version gets maybe an 80 km range.

2. LRS is a module that can be installed on ships, not a software item. As such, it requires wares (scanning arrays, advanced electronics, etc) to build on to ships. Not having even MK1 LRS installed at all would only give a basic 10 km radar range.

3. Some larger capital ships can have multiple slots for scanners, and scanning ranges are additive (maybe each additional scanner gets a 50% increase in range instead of being simply additive).

4. Radar modules can be added to stations to extend their sensor ranges. They would have longer ranges than ship-based sensors.

5. Ships may be able to install stealth modules instead of sensor modules. This would make them somewhat blind and reliant on sensor data from other ships, but would decrease the range at which they are detected by maybe a factor of 4. For example, sensors that normally detect ships out to 40 km would only detect it at 10 km.

6. Related the the LRS, NPC ships using the "explore" command should be able to use the long range scan function. If they detect stations, anomalies, and data vaults, they can have the behavior to fly to stations, drop satellite, mark locations of interest with named nav beacons, etc.

[Moonrat]

I agree, I have this as an extension which varies the range based on ship size, seems not right a tiny fighter has the same scan range as a huge battlecruiser!

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<diff>
	<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_s']/properties/radar">
		<radar range="30000"/>	
	</replace>		
	<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_s']/properties/statistics/max/radar">
		<radar range="30000"/>
	</replace>
		<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_m']/properties/radar">
		<radar range="40000"/>	
	</replace>		
	<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_m']/properties/statistics/max/radar">
		<radar range="40000"/>
	</replace>
		<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_l']/properties/radar">
		<radar range="75000"/>	
	</replace>		
	<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_l']/properties/statistics/max/radar">
		<radar range="75000"/>
	</replace>
		<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_xl']/properties/radar">
		<radar range="100000"/>	
	</replace>		
	<replace sel="//dataset[@class='ship_xl']/properties/statistics/max/radar">
		<radar range="100000"/>
	</replace>
</diff>

[Kadatherion]

On paper, yeah, it's dumb how it's now. Reality, however, is different: radar range is one of the major causes of massive performance loss mid to late game. Increasing the radar range of even part of your assets is going to kill long term playability. Yeah, even on a monster CPU. So, it's ok for mods (there's at least one that already did this months ago), a big no go - currently at least - for the vanilla game.

[Falcrack]

On paper, yeah, it's dumb how it's now. Reality, however, is different: radar range is one of the major causes of massive performance loss mid to late game. Increasing the radar range of even part of your assets is going to kill long term playability. Yeah, even on a monster CPU. So, it's ok for mods (there's at least one that already did this months ago), a big no go - currently at least - for the vanilla game.

Eh, I don't think adding a little variability to radar ranges would cause the problems you describe.

[radcapricorn]

+1. As with all other equipment, this should have variability, including perhaps even differences at manufacturer (faction) level.

[Kadatherion]

Eh, I don't think adding a little variability to radar ranges would cause the problems you describe.

It does. We tried. It did.

[radcapricorn]

Eh, I don't think adding a little variability to radar ranges would cause the problems you describe.

It does. We tried. It did.

Were they any different from just having tons of ships, stations and satellites?

[Kadatherion]

Eh, I don't think adding a little variability to radar ranges would cause the problems you describe.

It does. We tried. It did.

Were they any different from just having tons of ships, stations and satellites?

Not technically: basically, increasing the radar range of your ships (or satellites) is the same as... having more ships (or satellites). A normal ship has a 40km radar radius, so basically it covers about 5.000 square km. Doubling that range to 80 km would result in 20k square kilometers of space area being scanned by the radar. So, this means that a ship with double the radar range roughly has an impact on perfomance - for what concerns radar - as 4 normal ships would. Radar coverage seems to be one of the main causes of galaxy map lag: the more data the map UI has to update because it's being "seen" by your assets, the more it slows to a crawl, and as we know that map UI becomes incredibly sluggish late game if you have too many satellites and the like, to the point of being unplayable to many (unless you deactivate several filters, at the very least).

This is why satellite mods have gone the "do the same thing with no radar range" route after first trying to increase their range to get to the intended result (IE: uncovering more stations and their offers with fewer satellites) the simpliest way: it made the game unplayable for pretty much everyone who tried. Of course if you limit such a modification only to the biggest ship classes the impact would be relatively lower, and those players who don't build really big fleets (or if they keep them mostly stationary) wouldn't notice that much of a difference. But be one of those players who build dozens of destroyers, and have fleets flying around on patrols and such, and it would become a serious issue. Which is why I believe it's definitely something that can be done only via modding: the vanilla game has to be balanced to be as playable as possible for as many players as possible. If you have a CPU that's far better than the recommended specs, and/or if you know your playstyle wouldn't fuel such an issue, then you can use the mod to do it yourself.

[radcapricorn]

...Which is why I believe it's definitely something that can be done only via modding: the vanilla game has to be balanced to be as playable as possible for as many players as possible. If you have a CPU that's far better than the recommended specs, and/or if you know your playstyle wouldn't fuel such an issue, then you can use the mod to do it yourself.

I propose an alternative, for the devs - fix the atrocious map performance

[Kadatherion]

I propose an alternative, for the devs - fix the atrocious map performance

Heh, from what I could gather in previous discussions, I'm afraid it would need a complete rewrite from scratch of the whole map system and UI (and of everything else that was done having such a system in mind). An UI that is dumb as a rock and the guy who thought it should go back to serve Big Macs, we all agree it's unacceptable in its state, but... it's not something Egosoft seems to be willing (nor realistically able) to do at this stage of development. That should have been done well before launch, simply realizing a seamless map for the entire galaxy was too much for the current tech and then going back to a sector by sector system. This approach is probably also one of the main reasons why we have so few sectors when compared to previous games, it already can't handle 50 sectors, let alone ~200 as we had in the past (and I'd bet the very small radar ranges on all assets have been intentionally done this way for this same reason: Egosoft really tied their own hands being so stubborn about the whole "seamless" thing).

Some improvements have been applied since then, and probably more optimization will come in the future (pretty much by lowering its update rates and streamlining how it gathers some of the data it has to monitor), but the underlying issue won't go away, it will just be delayed a little bit more. Plus, more sectors have got to come with the Split and Boron expansion: they'll probably be just a few for these very reasons, but in the end what we will gain from optimization will be balanced by having a dozen more sectors for the map to digest, so we'll be back to square one.

[radcapricorn]

"But we may have to redo it from scratch" is not a very good excuse, especially when performance is concerned. It's not a space shuttle.

[Kadatherion]

"But we may have to redo it from scratch" is not a very good excuse, especially when performance is concerned. It's not a space shuttle.

Might not be an excuse (it's not: they simply should not have launched the game this way), but it's just reality. When a game is "complete" (well, in a sense, we know X4 isn't complete at all, but that's another matter) it's usually too late to do any really major rewrites. Because of the domino effect, mostly: even when the engine would allow you, reworking from scratch a major component of the game would require you to also rework in turn several other game components that had been thought, tailored and balanced for it. It's much harder than adding content on top of a solid foundation. Long story short, the amount of work required can get fairly close to what would be needed to do... a standalone new game. There simply usually isn't the money to do such a thing after launch (as 90% of the money comes from it), unless you are really doing a new game, or an expansion so big and hyped you can foresee sales relatively comparable to a whole game launch. A few notable exceptions are known, but they usually happen only when the devs have a lot of saved money and/or are investing at a loss to do some major damage control to save their reputation and future (NMS comes to mind, and still even that didn't exactly rework much from scratch, it still was mostly about adding things that were sorely missing).

Now, I digress a little, but add to this Egosoft doesn't seem to be in a good position at all. X4 hasn't sold very well according to steam stats. According to the unofficial steamspy estimates, it's settling at roughly half the sales Rebirth had (most likely, *because* of the very trainwreck Rebirth was, which might have scared away a good chunk of the playerbase: the proverbial "fool me once"). Going to official stats, active players have plummeted after just a few weeks: it's not just these forums, the game's virtually dead, it had already lost 90% of its players by january, only one month after release. These last weeks X4 is consistently well under 1000 concurrent players peaks, we are at 7-800 players peaks right now. By comparison, X3 AP was still doing ~500 up until december, and still is doing ~300 since the release of X4; if you add TC and Reunion to that it would pretty much even the score, which should hint how mindblowingly bad the situation is for a game that's less than 7 months old against games that are 10 years old. Not as much money as hoped has likely come from the launch, and sure as hell with these stats not much more is going to come from the expansions. Even if they wanted to, there aren't the conditions to afford major rewrites of the game. It would be either that, or having any chance to stay afloat long enough for X5.

[radcapricorn]

Nah, it's never too late, at least as far as programming is concerned; that's what patches and updates are for. Economically, may be, but then we're already 8 months after release, and the game is, as you point out, rather sad.

Bottom line is: they've sacrificed gameplay experience to poor design decisions. Without fixing the latter, I don't see how the former can improve, mods or no mods.

[mr.WHO]

At this point I'd love to just have X4 map, but downgraded to full 2D.

3D is just a gimming that has almost no use on X4 map. I almost never use anything that default top-down view.

[dholmstr]

Adding to the map functions I wish the map would center on the sector I'm clicking. AND maybe have some kind of standard zoom even thou the sector is the size of the whole solarsystem.

[phrozen1]

I think Kadatherion is right on thisl
Most likely it's an root-issue thats causing problems with handling many dynamic objects.
In the long term egosoft needs to address this for upcoming games but for X4?
I wish there would be an easy fix but i'm afraid thats not the case...

[Kadatherion]

At this point I'd love to just have X4 map, but downgraded to full 2D.

3D is just a gimming that has almost no use on X4 map. I almost never use anything that default top-down view.

According to CBJ when we talked about it in a thread a few weeks ago, it being 3D has little to no part in its performance issues (and I'm prone to agree from my experience: it looks almost 100% CPU bound rather than GPU bottlenecked). The issue is how much crap it has to monitor and show at any one time, the whole galaxy, and everything updates in pretty much real time (instead than in full 2-3 seconds skips as it happened in X3): even if you make it 2D you wouldn't see much of a perfomance gain. Proof of it is the FPS can plummet simply by activating a filter (that just adds some fluffy text overlay, which is 2D by definition), or by opening a tab that lists all the visible stations: the issue lies with the raw data, not with how it's represented. Which is why radar ranges are an issue: the more radar coverage you have, the more raw data the map UI has to process.

What would have needed to be done was to make it so when you zoom out the map STOPS following what happens in each sector and only feeds you macro information. Which would basically be the same as X3, a sector by sector based map that you navigate with zoom rather than by clicking sectors, only "simulating" the seamless thing. A good compromise between how it feels and how it really works under the hood. They didn't go this way though, and everything else was designed to work with such a system, so it seems hardly feasible to go back to the drawing board now.

A possibility might be to lower the update rate down to X3 standards: the map would refresh at a second or two intervals, which would still... kind of work, I guess. There would still be a few things that would become a nuisance as they weren't designed with this in mind, though, like following a ship that's traveling on the highways: if it moves by "blinking" it's gonna be a nightmare to track and interact with it when it travels at such speeds, it could become a game of whack a mole.

[Falcrack]

I think a lot of the problems with map performance degrading, especially late game, is if egosoft changed their system to one closer in line with the sector satellite mod

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/4

In that mod, only a single satellite is required per sector in order to receive trade update data from all the stations in the sector. This was how it worked in X3, and it was fine, nobody had a problem with it. If it was that way again, then you would not need 10 satellites per sector, meaning you would not get nearly the amount of map vision, and thus you would get much better map performance.

[Kadatherion]

I think a lot of the problems with map performance degrading, especially late game, is if egosoft changed their system to one closer in line with the sector satellite mod

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/4

In that mod, only a single satellite is required per sector in order to receive trade update data from all the stations in the sector. This was how it worked in X3, and it was fine, nobody had a problem with it. If it was that way again, then you would not need 10 satellites per sector, meaning you would not get nearly the amount of map vision, and thus you would get much better map performance.

Yeah, we know that mod, we were talking precisely about it - among other things. And yet satellites already aren't needed to get trade offers, you can buy subscriptions for them and not use a single satellite anymore: seriously, late game you are not supposed to have satellites anymore, not for trading, that is. And still map performance is a major issue for everybody. Because, you know, it's not just about that. It is with satellites if you place too many of them for whatever reason, it is with ships, as they are pretty much... moving satellites. We could get rid of autotraders, for instance, handling all trading with numbers only, that would help as well, wouldn't it?

BTW, in X3 we still placed satellites so that we could have radar coverage over the whole sector, from one corner to the opposite, on all 200 sectors in the galaxy, for several reasons other than trade offers visibility, and it didn't hurt perfomance. At all. Because that data wasn't always been processed, and it wasn't being processed in real time. Sector satellites - although a very smart and awesome mod - isn't the solution, it's a workaround, and only barely scratches the surface of the problem. Sure, it makes satellites playable. But they ain't satellites no more, they are cheaper trade subscriptions. And there's the entire rest of the game, with those dozens, hundreds of ships and stations we are supposed to have, still causing the very same problem.