Ship Control

[JJFUSA]

Late night wishful thinking. Is it possible to use YOLOL to program ship controls similar to ship controls in EVE Online?

I mean, manually flying spaceships in the future doesn't seem too realistic to me but rather issuing commands to a ship like in EVE to execute certain actions like lock target, fly to point/location, mine an asteroid and so on.

I'm totally dumb in programming at this point, yet I would eagerly learn YOLOL if all that is actually doable.

 

[Askannon]

The issue is vision for the ship, not yolol.
If you have a task that does not require avoidance or seek behaviour you can quite easily do it, but as soon as you need your code to know what's infront (or rather if something's infront) you need to think of range finder placement and how to read them into your code.

However, nowadays you get quite good asteroid avoidance systems and flying from point A to B is becoming more feasible away from origin as systems get developed who do not require knowledge from outside (ISAN requires transmitters only found at origin, while newer positioning systems use a combination of components to keep track of local coordinates, which is useful to get back to a position), and automatic mining ships have been developed (though they are slow due to the need to sweep for asteroids and require an endo to keep them loaded in), and an extreme example of a lock-on has been shown off last EosCon (or I have seen it around that time).

So everything is possible, but if it is practical is another question.
It also depends on what components get added in the future, but that's that.

Though I don't think a fully automated ship will be ever possible (and therefore giving commands will not be that useful), as for one you need to keep the ships loaded, and when you are already on a ship, bar afk needs, you want to do stuff, and two yolol has a 0.2 second delay for each command line, meaning a human will most likely be able to outplay your automation, unless you help out by flying your ship and possibly overriding said automation to push those 0.2 seconds down. And at that point it's becoming a question of "is this worth it?" outside of a few (civilian) applications.

That is however a question everyone needs to answer for themselves and pretty much boils down to preference.

 

[JJFUSA]

The issue is vision for the ship, not yolol.
If you have a task that does not require avoidance or seek behaviour you can quite easily do it, but as soon as you need your code to know what's infront (or rather if something's infront) you need to think of range finder placement and how to read them into your code.

However, nowadays you get quite good asteroid avoidance systems and flying from point A to B is becoming more feasible away from origin as systems get developed who do not require knowledge from outside (ISAN requires transmitters only found at origin, while newer positioning systems use a combination of components to keep track of local coordinates, which is useful to get back to a position), and automatic mining ships have been developed (though they are slow due to the need to sweep for asteroids and require an endo to keep them loaded in), and an extreme example of a lock-on has been shown off last EosCon (or I have seen it around that time).

So everything is possible, but if it is practical is another question.
It also depends on what components get added in the future, but that's that.

Though I don't think a fully automated ship will be ever possible (and therefore giving commands will not be that useful), as for one you need to keep the ships loaded, and when you are already on a ship, bar afk needs, you want to do stuff, and two yolol has a 0.2 second delay for each command line, meaning a human will most likely be able to outplay your automation, unless you help out by flying your ship and possibly overriding said automation to push those 0.2 seconds down. And at that point it's becoming a question of "is this worth it?" outside of a few (civilian) applications.

That is however a question everyone needs to answer for themselves and pretty much boils down to preference.

Very interesting and informative, I appreciate a lot your detailed response.

Going straight to the discussed points, 0.2 sec delay could be a dealbreaker, my initial intentions to let the ship execute certain operations, such as locking the target in fight, were exactly in purpose to achieve the opposite - to overcome human's brain delay in extremely time intense fighting conditions.

Now speaking of that YOLOL "lag" that was my concern as well, since YOLOL goes on top of the existing preprogrammed game code of the ship control therefore it should introduce a certain delay naturally, I just didn't expect it could be as big as 0.2 sec - big for fighting conditions only indeed, since other operations like mining doesn't require such a swift control response obviously, but it still could be quite useful to control a support fire group like turrets or similar automated weapon systems during the fight.

But most important thing you mentioned is that everything is possible in Starbase, that's exactly why I love this game dearly, devs gave us a universe with the basic tools and with unlimited possibilities to advance and to do and create virtually anything, that's priceless, thanks again. O7

 

[Askannon]

I will add, that yolol is not the be all, end all of programming in Starbase.
You can get much effect out of using hardware components, as they don't have delays.

 

[ChaosRifle]

No you can not - not quickly enough for PvP/PvE that FB might add in the future.

Locking targets is mostly out of the question, the best case is parallel turrets with many RF's to keep on target. Possible, but not optimal. Also has issues leading targets without a large enough array, and the larger you make it the less able you are to make a target leading array that is capable of resisting damage in yolol (reading/writing to public variables that no longer exist due to battle damage will skip the rest of said line)

You CAN move around at origin(about 1000km) by three cartesian plane system (gps like IPS), and you can issue orders remotely via laser designator. These are both slow, with varying speeds traded off for precision. Using a gyroscope can help, but you are flying at a pretty slow refresh rate via yolol. I have however made a few systems capable of fully autonomously mining asteroids, but they are not as fast as a player - even the drone swarm I made will likely never reach player levels of speed due to scanning speeds (of which I have made significant advances in speeding up over previous peoples attempts) If we were honest with ourselves, for mining, it would be faster for a player to command the swarm than automate it, which would be something similar to what you are asking for.. but only for mining really. There are military applications for this tech of course, but typically against static targets alone.

Yolol can only operate existing devices, so anything you can do as a player, can be done with yolol. You can parallelize some operations to speed them up, but more yolol chips means yolol timings get sloppier and slower. At a certain point there is a limitation in how many screens can be loaded at one time (progress bars, text panels, yolol screens) so adding too many will affect your ability to even see data outputs on screens. The limitation of tick rate leads us to often using outside solutions when possible, for faster calculations times than 0-250ms.

 

[JJFUSA]

I will add, that yolol is not the be all, end all of programming in Starbase.
You can get much effect out of using hardware components, as they don't have delays.

Got it, I will keep that in mind for sure, my goal is to build the most advanced ship with realistic controls, as we all know even current RL space modules are not operated manually to the certain extent of course, the more realistic it gets the more joyful it's for me to play, 'cause it's challenging.

 

[JJFUSA]

No you can not - not quickly enough for PvP/PvE that FB might add in the future.

Locking targets is mostly out of the question, the best case is parallel turrets with many RF's to keep on target. Possible, but not optimal. Also has issues leading targets without a large enough array, and the larger you make it the less able you are to make a target leading array that is capable of resisting damage in yolol (reading/writing to public variables that no longer exist due to battle damage will skip the rest of said line)

You CAN move around at origin(about 1000km) by three cartesian plane system (gps like IPS), and you can issue orders remotely via laser designator. These are both slow, with varying speeds traded off for precision. Using a gyroscope can help, but you are flying at a pretty slow refresh rate via yolol. I have however made a few systems capable of fully autonomously mining asteroids, but they are not as fast as a player - even the drone swarm I made will likely never reach player levels of speed due to scanning speeds (of which I have made significant advances in speeding up over previous peoples attempts) If we were honest with ourselves, for mining, it would be faster for a player to command the swarm than automate it, which would be something similar to what you are asking for.. but only for mining really. There are military applications for this tech of course, but typically against static targets alone.

Yolol can only operate existing devices, so anything you can do as a player, can be done with yolol. You can parallelize some operations to speed them up, but more yolol chips means yolol timings get sloppier and slower. At a certain point there is a limitation in how many screens can be loaded at one time (progress bars, text panels, yolol screens) so adding too many will affect your ability to even see data outputs on screens. The limitation of tick rate leads us to often using outside solutions when possible, for faster calculations times than 0-250ms.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience and for the practical suggestions. Good to know about loaded screens limitations, quick question: those limits are on the client side (on my computer) or they come from the server side or/and game code itself?

Considering the rest, I definitely don't want to create AI to fully substitute pilot's duty and delegate decision-making to YOLOL, instead I want to automate the basic routines of the processes, e. g. mining: I see the asteroid, I target it (simplified scenario just to explain the idea) and YOLOL does the rest: activating mining laser, mining, collecting ores, just it, I don't need YOLOL to wander around the belt looking for the proper rock for mining, that would be too excessive and unpractical but could be useful if we're talking about afk mining.

The same goes to the moving around, instead of manually flying the ship I would just choose the destination and YOLOL would deliver my ship over there and I would do something else during travel time since speed of flying is relatively low, plus we can move inside and on the ship during the flight - this seems like a practical and useful.

I will do more research on cartesian plane system and the rest of the navigation options, thanks for mentioning it, this subject is particularly interesting to me as moving around is the cornerstone of all other automated mechanics.

 

[Askannon]

There're already those systems (mining/auto-navigation), and they work reasonably well (edit: so you can definitely manage to do those).
Navigation is finnicky outside of 1000km range around origin, but I know at least one guy has managed to build a return to base ship, though flying to a specific point outside those 1000km will definitely be a challlenge (and it's probably easier to have a timer that turns your ship off after a given time (and therefore distance) has been reached and just aim yourself, leaving the rest to asteroid avoidance systems)

 

[JJFUSA]

There're already those systems (mining/auto-navigation), and they work reasonably well (edit: so you can definitely manage to do those).
Navigation is finnicky outside of 1000km range around origin, but I know at least one guy has managed to build a return to base ship, though flying to a specific point outside those 1000km will definitely be a challlenge (and it's probably easier to have a timer that turns your ship off after a given time (and therefore distance) has been reached and just aim yourself, leaving the rest to asteroid avoidance systems)

How can I get access to those systems (blueprints?), I want to try them out and see if they are what I'm looking for, otherwise I would try to build it myself.

Oh an idea, what if someone could put stationary beacons powered by solar panels outside 1000 km range all over the space till the further moon to make the whole system navigable.

P. S. Sorry about all those silly questions/comments, LOL I'm fairly new to the game and you guys are like titans with so much knowledge.

 

[Askannon]

How can I get access to those systems (blueprints?), I want to try them out and see if they are what I'm looking for, otherwise I would try to build it myself.

Oh an idea, what if someone could put stationary beacons powered by solar panels outside 1000 km range all over the space till the further moon to make the whole system navigable.

P. S. Sorry about all those silly questions/comments, LOL I'm fairly new to the game and you guys are like titans with so much knowledge.

Don't worry about that, it is in fact better to ask questions (and I enjoy answering).

Regarding the systems:
I personally don't have them, due to me building my own ships and being lazy in terms of how much effort I put into them (so no intricate rangefinder front for asteroid avoidance or asteroid eating laser arrays).
I know, however, that you can look for around the last EosCon flyer for those systems (link). (I know Thaccus has a penchant for asteroid avoidance, navigation systems and mouse controlled mining lasers)

And when in doubt, post your question over on the discord in the respective channel and someone who knows will answer/help.

 

[JJFUSA]

Don't worry about that, it is in fact better to ask questions (and I enjoy answering).

Regarding the systems:
I personally don't have them, due to me building my own ships and being lazy in terms of how much effort I put into them (so no intricate rangefinder front for asteroid avoidance or asteroid eating laser arrays).
I know, however, that you can look for around the last EosCon flyer for those systems (link). (I know Thaccus has a penchant for asteroid avoidance, navigation systems and mouse controlled mining lasers)

And when in doubt, post your question over on the discord in the respective channel and someone who knows will answer/help.

Thanks a lot for the info and references, captain, I visited EosCon on July here is my post on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starbase/comments/wca18r It was an amazing experience and I made myself a promise to build a very special advanced ship and present it to the public on one of the following EosCon.

So true, building a ship in Starbase takes a lot of effort, I never built one, but I played a bit with Spaceship Designer, it's the deepest and most complex building system I've ever seen considering I played Space Engineers and Empyrion, plus learning YOLOL, it takes time indeed.

 

[Askannon]

It really depends. I have made a series of quite large ships (though in the grand scheme is probably more of a medium size), and all I did was create "walls" of frame that I reused for outside and inside (resulting in 4 iterations with 3-4 decks, two decks fully walkable in all variants).
If you are ok with creating a small ship or a box you can get things done quite quickly.
But yes, the game does not limit you to boxes, but allows you to build ships that actually have internals and can pretty much have any shape.
(and with enough finesse you can build fully functional ships (shuttles really) your endo can carry around (if weight < 40t ))

 

[ChaosRifle]

Thank you very much for sharing your experience and for the practical suggestions. Good to know about loaded screens limitations, quick question: those limits are on the client side (on my computer) or they come from the server side or/and game code itself?

Yes this is client sided and render-only, so you might loose the ability to read a progress bar, but the code running it works just fine, and likewise the yolol chip with no 'screen' is still running fine too. Usually when you get to that many yolol chips the tickrate can get a bit sloppier, but it will run just fine yes.

Yes, semi-automated is absolutely a lot faster, and automation-enhanced (ie drone swarm following and commanded by player rather than by a drone mothership) is also much faster.

Some resources for your 3 cartesian plane navigation:
https://github.com/Tmktahu/IPS IPS uses true range multilateration with the network receivers to create a 3 cartesian plane coordinate system
https://github.com/Aersaud/YOLOL/tree/main/Waypoint System Waypoint system lets you make/save waypoints of that system, using encryption to protect the data. Very solid work

Sorry about all those silly questions/comments

Never apologize for being curious and trying to learn, it is a wonderful thing. Questions are ALWAYS welcome.

 

[JJFUSA]

Yes this is client sided and render-only, so you might loose the ability to read a progress bar, but the code running it works just fine, and likewise the yolol chip with no 'screen' is still running fine too. Usually when you get to that many yolol chips the tickrate can get a bit sloppier, but it will run just fine yes.

Yes, semi-automated is absolutely a lot faster, and automation-enhanced (ie drone swarm following and commanded by player rather than by a drone mothership) is also much faster.

Some resources for your 3 cartesian plane navigation:
https://github.com/Tmktahu/IPS IPS uses true range multilateration with the network receivers to create a 3 cartesian plane coordinate system
https://github.com/Aersaud/YOLOL/tree/main/Waypoint System Waypoint system lets you make/save waypoints of that system, using encryption to protect the data. Very solid work




Never apologize for being curious and trying to learn, it is a wonderful thing. Questions are ALWAYS welcome.

Totally awesome stuff, I watched the videos it works kinda like airplane flight management system (FMS) navigation and such, truly amazing, thank you very much. O7

I started to build my first ship in spaceship designer and I will experiment with these systems, combining with semi-auto and enhanced operations it could make the ship more realistic and conveniently flexible in terms of controls.