Sheap,
1. To help keep things organized could you post ship/fighter requests in the "Ship Definition Requests and Errors" topic. This will help Aaron see them more easily.
2. If you could list which specific ones you needs Aaron might be able add a few quickly.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Saturday, April 02, 2011 - 08:00 pm: Edit

Unless there is a rule that only Aaron is allowed to make ship definitions I will just make the ones I need (since my opponent still hasn't decided )

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, April 02, 2011 - 08:49 pm: Edit

William,
No rule. You are free to create your own.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, April 02, 2011 - 11:10 pm: Edit

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Sunday, April 03, 2011 - 12:01 am: Edit

It's important to not group weapons from different units together, because those could be from different directions and would thus be separate volleys on separate shields, or at different ranges and require different damage calculations. The summary doesn't do any good if relevant information is left out, or weapons with different effects are grouped together; but redundant information should be removed where possible.

So it would need to be something like:
CC Kongo fires at D6 Destruction (range 4):
2 Photon (overloaded-16)
2 Photon (overloaded-12)
6 Phaser-1

NCL Repulse fires at D6 Destruction (range 2):
4 Photon (overloaded-16)
4 Phaser-1
1 Phaser-3

(It is a good day to die)

Here the ranges and firing units are only specified once, but the individual weapons are grouped together.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, May 13, 2011 - 06:13 am: Edit

I had a couple ideas for enhancements that would help track damage and fix dac mistakes, when there noticed after a volley has fired.

If there was a tab above te map window for a damage log, that listed the imp and weapons summary of what killed what and the systems that destroyed on that impulse.

This would really help for multi session games and save considerable note taking in terms of repair, when you play say 4 games in 1 day and 3 are multi session long bloody fights its sometimes really hard to figure out when a phaser or other key system was destroyed.

Also in the catagory of repairs, if there could be in tournament games say a notes column that was specifically for CDR damage control, that locked at the time you submit ea. It would make it impossible to on imp 15 decide you want the Disr back, or 2 ph 3's in a choice arc for the start of the next turn. Im certainly not saying anyone is doing this but if you use notes they can be changed mid turn. I just think it would be an easy think probably to add 1 eaf line, and like other ea lines it could lock that value in. Could be a good feature in a competitive tournament environment.

I suppose the ultimate would be having to submit notes, that are time stamped into the ea and unchangeable. Then any notes line would work, and you could varify at the end of the game if a weapon thats got to be armed at point of fire had any batteries assigned to that function.

I have no idea how hard any of this would be to impliment. If you had the Damage log that showed the shield situation after fire the 30/30/24/24/24/30 display thats shown at allocation of damage and the systems destroyed, with the ability to undo volley or last x number of damage points. It would be very helpful. If each volley was stored this way into the client it would make reversing damage to correct a mistake really easy.

I also think Sheaps comment above is useful, I think that summary should maybe go into any damage log if one is ever programed into the client.

Another thing for Tournament games would be making the shuttle fighter speed plotting a bit easier and also making it unchangable. Ive tried many display settings but cant get the shuttles to display correctly in my speed plot at eaf. I don't know what Ive not tried, but if that could be made easier to get at ie the top window a bit bigger when expanded fully. It would be great, also a line under each shuttle maybe so speed plot would be recoreded over multiple turns in the ea form. If would have to be set at ea or the previous speed would be its starting speed, and it would only get mid turn speed changes. Admins can be coaxed into a bit of extra movement but the speed changes have to be plotted in ea, since i cant reach the current speed plot for them mine just arn't keeping up with the Enemy. When manned of course.

I suggest adding a line under the fire allocation display showing phaser capacitors discharged, as a reminder to reduce it in the eaf, its a shame it cant deduct the fired amount from the eaf phaser capacitor used line. That would be ideal.

As a Charts and Tables addition suggestion possibly you could add the fireing arc diagrams especially the ones showing racial arcs. It would be really cool if when you say right clicked your ship counter and selected highlight fireing arcs, a popup window had your weapons display from fire allocation, and each weapon would have a check box as in fire allocation. When checeked the weapon arc of the weapon selected could be highlighted on the map. No idea how hard that could be, however im very sure it would look really cool, and be incredible on the Klingon especially.

Also do you or anyone else have any ideas on how best to teach the client. Thats almost worthy of a discussion topic. Its great to get new players and I enjoy teaching them but alot of things are really hard to explain even to old vets returning. They catch on eventually, but you may want to consider the new SFB players also, for them its harder than in face to face where you could show them your eaf or help them in any number of ways. It would be nice if the client had a new gametype say called demo teaching mode or something. Since its simpler I and demo's only fly the FED TCC and Klingon TD7C an interface just like tournament would be nice. What would be great is to have the controller be the first to make the game, and have as part of the ship selection screen the various teaching modes or options you choose to program into the new game type. I could suggest many. If some rules were to not be used for instance those segments of IA could be unavailable. EAF's could be made visable from the Controller or teaching player to the new player and vice versa. Or kept private as they begin to pick up on new rules.

In the new player startup process you could add a couple things. One would be setup of special mission shuttles, they should select them as option mounts are selected, also expendables should be set with the ship in the case of the Klingon. Another would be to have that ship selection screen show the SSD of the ship, with a pulldown like the SSD tab has, for assigning guards mostly when transporters are turned on as an option for the controlling player. The ability to manipulate the learning players interface would be great. If somehow the controlling player could say hey let me show you how to do that, and then activated the special mode that switched their view including say mouse position was, and made it yours temporarily, then you could move the arrow to do whatever is needed, and it would show say with an arrow like on drone targeting where theres a red arrow and line tracing the path the controller moves the mouse over, like to get to an activity phase. Or to show them some other feature of the client. Its funny but a draw function could be useful on the map that was erasable of course. Its an interesting concept. Maybe in both windows. Then the controller could draw intructions. And send it to the new player, it would go blank and be able to be redone each imp or segment maybe if needed but not slow the game with a prompt. Unless one was needed.

On a different topic, can the client save a replay of a game, that could be played back at whatever speed you wanted. It would be very cool to be able to say save a slideshow of each game, if you wanted, it could maybe work with an every impulse autosave. It would playback the log and chat, and damage etc. Is that possible now or ever.

It would be useful if you could squeeze in the thinknking ready wait and next imp buttons somwhere on the other window with say the last 2 lines of chat. That would work well in any of the game types I play SFB and SFB tournament. Sometimes you get to looking at energy allocation and expendables etc, you dont see you opponent ask you something, the next and previous would be optional additions somwhere on the map window.

A button that was previous and undo last impulses move that could roll back over many impulses would be nice. In just for fun and teaching games it could be very handy to be able to roll back the clock 8 or more impulses or even a turn when trying to learn better tactics. You could let them try it a different way. If the impulses were backed up over a turn break it would need to add a new ea column, and show that its not the next turn, perhaps with a different background color or something.

Oh one other idea I had for the turnament setup window in net kill games you could have a setting where both players add their callsign at ship selection then are prompted for password when your destroyed or concede the game and hit report loss. Maybe put it on the game menu or somewhere of the map window. It could even send game statistics to the nk desk automatically, like in when you hit feedback. It would even be nice if the game records for nk games and even for the RAT's and others showed a game length in turns played. If there was a submit game report button any number of game stats could be collected.

In some you could have it save the impulse by impulse recording of the game. That way if people missed the championship game of something or whatever they could watch it later.

Just a few ideas, what do you all think?

Josh

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 01:43 am: Edit

Not sure I understand the "what killed what" summary.

I've suggested before a client distinction between notes that were made during EA and notes that were made after EA but during the turn. It could be as simple as highlighting in different colors. The client already prevents you from changing notes after EA is submitted, but since there's no way for an opponent to verify which notes were added when, it doesn't actually solve the problem.

I don't want to have to submit notes separately from EA, this will cause more problems than it solves.

Currently it is possible to cheat in the way you suggest. I have made other suggestions in the past to try to, if not exactly make cheating hard, at least make it less easy. Nobody is really interested in trying to protect against cheating. That is also generally true in live games. SFB is a game requiring some trust.

Shuttle speed plots are not supposed to be unchangeable because fighters can make unplotted speed changes, even decelerations. For non-fighter shuttles, most people treat them as being unable to change speeds, although manned shuttles actually can. I usually put manned shuttle speed plots in my notes (essentially, making it the same situation as damage control notes).

I do not think a technical solution to helping teach the game will work. A better walkthrough (similar to the walkthrough in the MRB, but including hints on how to use the client) might. Walkthroughs are better than manuals because nobody will ever read a manual, but people will follow a tutorial sometimes.

There was a game replay feature in the client at one point. It didn't work, and even if it had, it didn't include the chat. I don't know if it was fixed, removed, or is still there in its original state. I don't expect that this is ever going to really be finished.

Next, Previous, Thinking, Ready, and Wait are all available in both the map window and the Game Control window. I try to make sure I can always see the chat, even if I have my EA up, but it really depends on how much monitor space you have.

Support for rolling back the game shouldn't be necessary. I don't think rolling back to before an EA should ever be done, rolling back more than a couple of impulses should be very rare, and rolling back one or two impulses is already pretty easy.

I don't hate the idea of integrating tournament result reports into the client, but I'm not sure the current system is all that bad. There are a lot of things I would do first.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 05:53 pm: Edit

By What killed what I was thinking say the first turn you take 12 internals, if the client could remember that they were destroyed on say imp 1.25, then you would know after several turns of taking damage what could be repaired. Its not that hard to do now, its true, but its hard to explain to the demo guys, hey you just have to remember when each thing was hit. And Im mostly talking about a 2 or more session game. Its those times when I get confused.

If only the chat was preserved between sessions, then you could go back and see what had happened but it disapears.

Thanks Sheap, just some crazy ideas.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 10:06 pm: Edit

I always try to save the chat, but if the client gets disconnected, it takes it away without giving a chance to save it.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, May 19, 2011 - 12:21 pm: Edit

Actually, all chats are saved into the log directory. The location depends on what OS you are running.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Friday, May 20, 2011 - 05:53 am: Edit

yep, one of those little known things about the client.
Note that the chat files are not exactly easy to browse because the client, IIRC, don't make a distinction between games and general chat.
Best is to search in files saved at the date you played (Important number to write down!).

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Friday, May 20, 2011 - 09:55 pm: Edit

I have a Mac with a magic mouse. The touch pad zooms on the board, which is inconvenient, as I always am expecting that it will scroll. Is there an option to make it scroll instead?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, May 22, 2011 - 08:38 pm: Edit

David,
You can turn off the zoom. Go to the Board\Options\Zoom menu and select the "Use Scroll Wheel Zoom" to uncheck it. That will disable the using the scroll wheel for zooming or in the case of the Mac using the scroll gesture for zooming.

Paul Franz

By Aaron M. Staley (Awwwdrat) on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 - 06:25 am: Edit

There needs to be a way for the Drex to keep track of Hypercannon ammunition. They have Implosive rounds and Enveloping rounds. These will have to be manually defined in the defs somehow, as each type of ship seems to have a different allotment of those rounds. I've decided against putting check-off boxes on the graphic part of the def (like we have for the HET and Breakdown).
I could add a note to the def and the players could keep track with notes, but I would think that this needs to be an expendables feature. For ease of player set-up, the amounts of ammunition that a ship has would somehow already be in the expendables when the ship is added to the game room.
I'm setting the Drex to the side until this is figured out (they are done with the exception of this issue.)

By Ken Lin (Old_School) on Wednesday, June 01, 2011 - 08:24 pm: Edit

Help!

I recently updated. I used to be able to use the scroll wheel on my mouse to move the map up and down. Now the scroll wheel zooms in and out - is there a setting to make it the old way?

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, June 01, 2011 - 08:33 pm: Edit

Ken,
You can turn off the zoom. Go to the Board\Options\Zoom menu and select the "Use Scroll Wheel Zoom" to uncheck it. That will disable the using the scroll wheel for zooming.

Paul Franz

By Ken Lin (Old_School) on Wednesday, June 01, 2011 - 08:36 pm: Edit

I tried that. When I turn off the zoom, now the scroll wheel does nothing.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, June 01, 2011 - 08:49 pm: Edit

Ken,
Try to save the setting and then restart the client.

By Ken Lin (Old_School) on Wednesday, June 01, 2011 - 08:53 pm: Edit

Better! Thanks Paul.

By Kerry E Mullan (Nomad17) on Thursday, June 02, 2011 - 03:36 am: Edit

Trying to outfit an Xship drone fleet and ran across a few things:


My understanding from the MRB is that a TVII X-drone contains 1.5 spaces but takes up 1 drone space in the rack.

A TVIII X Drone contains/carries a payload of 2 spaces but takes up 1.5 spaces in the rack.

Currently in the pull down avail on expendables tab under seeking weapons where I am trying to set up drone loadouts I get:

A TVII is a 1.5 carry and a takes up 1.5 spaces in the rack.

A type VIII drone appears to have no conditions or parameters set. IE I can add nothing to the drone but the drone takes up 0 space in the rack so there is at least that.

Any possibility that the Type VIII drone can be set up to accept 2 spaces worth of "load" and only take up 1.5 spaces in the rack as well as having the type VII go down to taking up 1 space in the rack(ie otherwise the TVII is accurate)?

If I am using antiquated X rules then pls let me know as well(My MRB is 2004 edition I believe).

By Aaron M. Staley (Awwwdrat) on Saturday, June 18, 2011 - 03:18 pm: Edit

Paul, need an answer on the Romulan early years shield cost issue.

By Chad Carew (Blackhawkckc) on Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 12:33 pm: Edit

I have a couple things here. First: when adding units to the client, it should not steal focus from other things. Im adding a piece to the map in a game room and cant even type in the bullpen in a separate window. Thats annoying.

Second: Would it please be possible to list Year in service and base BPV in-line next to a units name in the add piece list window? So instead of "Hydran CRU-Crusader Frigate Leader" we would also see YS-150 BPV-76. Just those 2 things would make setting up pick up games in non-tourn rooms a lot easier. Its not like the info isnt already in the client. This way we would see it in the library though, and not have to add unit, check stats, remove unit, repeat. Please?

By Aaron M. Staley (Awwwdrat) on Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 02:32 pm: Edit

Actually, I think Chad's second suggestion is a good idea. Anything I can do to help with this Paul, just let me know.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 04:47 pm: Edit

1) I will see what I can do.
2) This one of the long term projects. That is to go through the library of ships that is on a person's machine and process them so that the metadata info is available outside the definition. Because I don't think you want me to load every definition in the library to get the information, which is the only place that it exists.

By Aaron M. Staley (Awwwdrat) on Thursday, June 23, 2011 - 06:36 pm: Edit

So, when a player goes to add a piece, when he's scrolling the list he would see entries like:

Federation CA - Heavy Cruiser - BPV - YIS

That would be pretty cool. And it would make a lot of things easier. Or did you have something else in mind?