So.. Many... Questions...

[Leftharted]

Hi! Just found this game on steam; and I'm tantalized. It makes me think of my ole star wars galaxies days, before the "NGE" that ruined it all... I miss defending our city, and attacking others... I miss hunting for new parts/gear via a player driven economy. I have vivid, precious, memories of me and my brother spending weeks poaching the best weaponsmiths of our server to move to our city..

SWG originally had very little "end game" but we all made our own... which I think was fed by the fact that everything of value was player crafted, decayed when used, and suffered less overall durability every time it was repaired... so we were constantly scouring player-made cities and shops for Everything... plus players had freedom to decorate and automate NPC merchants , so shopping was actually fun, while necessary.

After watching/googling Every bit of official information about starbase, im hopeful that this game will fill that void, and then some; since ive been a space engineers nerd in recent years.

I can't wait to be a mischievous mechanical han solo, with a robot wookie, piloting a truly custom millennium falcon...

All that said, I have questions, about possibilities.. especially regarding YOLOL, because i lack experience with scripting / programing languages... I can google my way through some basic things, but fear that won't suffice my dreams.

1. This question might enable me to theory craft the answer to my questions below, so I'll start here. What exactly are memory chips even for? I don't understand the usage of custom device fields, when it seems we can just freely edit fields of devices already?? Or am I mistaken? Or Maybe, is it because the YOLOL language doesn't like direct references to field names, and all devices need to be itemized on a memory chip? Or, maybe simply to save character space??

2. On top of this, do the 2 and 3 slot banks require each chip in a set to interact with each other? I guess I just want to confirm, can we give individual YOLOL chips specific I.D.s? Or is remote activation tied to the device base? For example, things that may require multiple timed actions: I might need 1 chip to control hidden turrets on my ship, and another that opens a telescoping hangar door... do these each have to have their own "base" to function independently? Or can I have both chips in a 2 slot base, and independently activate each one? Also, can a chip be bound to a keybind? Or would I Have to have a button for each on my cockpit dashboard? (Which I dont mind, but want to clarify)

3. Love the video showing the rotary cockpit controlling several turrets... But, how hard would this be to setup? I'm afraid that it's going to require some extensive sin/cos/tan equations, since it was specifically mentioned that the high tier chip can do trigonometry.

4. The turret cockpit I assume is steered via mouse input, because aiming a 2 axis rotary with WASD/QE sounds awkward. So, through YOLOL, would it be possible to have a forward facing rotary turret, that I can aim with mouse input, while still controlling my ship with WASD/QE etc. ? And plausibly lock it to the forward 180°/90° angles? Im imagining Jango Fetts ship Slave 1, in ep2, when he's firing/aiming his nose turrets independent of his trajectory.

5. Similar to above, a question about cockpit(seat?) keybinds and automation... mainly, do we have freedom to bind, unbind, rebind keys with YOLOL? I'm picturing flying along peacefully in your cockpit, and suddenly get hit from behind. I want to lock my throttle (or program custom evasive maneuvers?!?) and via a keypress, have a rail system move and rotate me to a rear facing cockpit, and now aim a rear facing turret? If #1 is possible, then maybe even control the ship in reverse, while mouse aiming turret; and be able to freely flop back to the front cockpit???

6. Inertia. Can we kill thrust, keep trajectory, and rotate to a new angle? im assuming not, given what ive read/seen about space drag. But, will this ever be a thing, after EA etc?

7. If #6 is a no-go, then my follow up is, can/will we ever get any kind of afterburner/thrust burst? Similar to the maneuver Rey pulls in the falcon in ep7; she kills the motor, rotates, and bursts it on as soon as she cleared the 'tunnel'. Even if it takes obscene piping for a second expensive fuel, dedicated thrusters, and risks of heat damage and explosions, my piloting prowess will be 10x if this is ever plausible; so I'll engineer and install that risk. 8P

Of course, I understand my questions (dreams?) are premature, the game isn't out yet, and (unless I get a dev to answer?!?) we can only speculate... my questions are more or less about what's even possible to accomplish... although I also hope that these questions spark others ideals; and maybe even find my robot wookie companion, who happens to be good at YOLOL, and needs an ace at the wheel while he tinkers.

Looking forward to any/all responses!! TYVM!

 

[Vampiricdust]

1. YOLOL chips don't have player viewable ID's that I know of. The closest you can do is rename their Chipwait field to something unique to identity it. The device fields are just network variables the devices reads & writes to. Each chip runs on it's own through it's code. They do not work together or in sequence unless you code them that way. Chips just run unless you change the Chipwait value to 0 to make it pause or 1 to resume. Values greater than 1 are multiplied by .2 seconds for the delay between lines. Chips otherwise are working 24/7 and loop forever. Devices do not need YOLOL chips at all to function. You can say name a Buttonstate field and the Doorstate field the same name and using the button will open the door whenever the button is on.

2. Chips don't have IDs, they just work. You don't want to control chips individually as it's a huge pain. They would just constantly try to do their job.

3. Rather difficult. The devs have access to the coordinate system in game and can use exact values to refine each turret's code to fit it's relative position to the gunner. It'll take some tries to get it right.

4. The keybinds in Starbase are keyboard only for controls otherwise you need to interact with it with the mouse. Mouse & joystick support might come eventually. Limit to what you can do is mostly your ability and how slowly it'll execute.

5. YOLOL has nothing to do with keybinds. The keybinds are stored in the pilot chair and interact with controls near it. You have to setup controls for any features you want. Again, mouse does not control anything other than your player view.

6. There is only inertia of resisting motion. Ships will continue at their speed for a few seconds before the ship begins to slow. So yes, you can, but without more thrust, eventually the ship will come to a stop on it's own.

7. Afterburners and burst thrust is more how you setup things than extras on top. I don't believe the engines have any red lining feature that would do that. With fuel economy in mind, those could just be thrust levels above the ideal fuel economy.

 

[ElluFB]

Vampiricdust already answered to the questions, but I asked the dev team for answers to these as well.

1. Memory chips are for sharing information between YOLOL chips or systems, so you can split complex calculations between multiple chips for example. Worth noting that memory chips are not necessary for devices to communicate directly, they are just extra memory storage. They are useful for YOLOL systems specifically, devices themselves are able to communicate without YOLOL.

2. The chip racks are just a convenient way to house and store chips, they don't need to interact with each other. Chips can be paused and started from the chip's own UI or by changing the chip's pause-field value remotely - either through YOLOL or from a button like he suggests.

3. Depends on the requirements of the specific system. Simply matching turrets' yaw and pitch to a gunner seat's is simple and requires no YOLOL at all. If you want the controlled turrets to all point at the same point, or you want to change which turrets are controlled from which chairs, that's going to require more extensive math, YOLOL, and device network design.

4 & 5. When sitting in specific chairs, players can freely bind nearby buttons and levers to any keys they wish. The current system only supports key inputs, but the bind system and UI has some planned updates and mouse bind options are something we'll consider when we get to that.

6. One could kill thrust, and rotate to a new angle without essentially changing the trajectory of the mass center (if the ship has been designed to maneuver comprehensively), but yeah there's always a drag that will slow that velocity down.

7. I don't really have an answer to this one. I'll come back to this if I get any answers. : )

 

[Leftharted]

Thank you both very much for the responses

Sounds like memory chips are going to be beyond me without some hands on exposure and experimentation, heh. I think i understand, but seem like they'd only be necessary for things like the giant automated factory video clips.

Interesting about the flight seat interaction for keybinds; and also renaming field values to get, I imagine, Anything to activate as long as it's on the same network, I assume. I think I also now understand how I can easily use yolol/buttons to automate a few timed sequences for retractable turrets, folding landing gear, etc... I can't wait! Also, is there a range for what controls the seat can access? Or does the seat need to be cabled up to the network?

Happy to here that setting up at least 1 rotary gimbal turret would be easy, and based on the other responses I think I understand how without YOLOL... via matching field names of gimbal seat + gimbal turret movement so they mirror, and then tie those movements to levers, and the seat essentially is only affecting the levers, which in turn affect the gimbal, because I made each respective field the same ID?? Ami on the right track? I hope I explained that well.

I can see how multiple turrets triangulating onto a single point would take some trig to figure out.. which might be a smidge beyond me, but I think I know where to start, alongside learning how to format it into YOLOL, but I'm decent with Excel so I'm imagining with a little patience and experimenting I can eventually get it right. I assume range finders are going to play a big part. Now that I think about it, this is likely where the memory chips would come into play? Since scripts are on the 0.2s delay, a chip could, say, separate the different axis of rotation of each turret for slightly faster movement; and further to bind multiple turrets to the same "aim" controller... hmm, maybe I'll have to buy that faction ship with the turrets already and reverse engineer it before I get ahead of myself

Otherwise I'll seek out the local station math wizard and have him figure it out for me 8)

But im already daydreaming of some specialized ships!! Can't wait.

Also, I saw on the wiki that 2way levers can spring back to center? Does that mean I could make a gimbal cockpit that pans my flight seat with my pitch/yaw and springs back to center when I stop giving input? Ooo, that would make a glass dome cockpit super fun.

Hmmmmmmm. I'm looking forward to starbase surpassing my space engineers and ark played times. Heheh.

Please lawrd release it Asap!!! I must commence tinkering. Need Moar Input.