Golan Platforms- range and effectiveness

[nightraven1901]

Realised while posting there's another thing I should make a dedicated thread for. I have found that Golan platforms, and presumably the other defence platforms too but I haven't yet confirmed, are vulnerable to being outranged by any given destroyer-class ship. How to achieve this? Surprisingly easily, actually. Start with a decent fleet and any place the AI will cover in Golans. Be on the attack- the AI won't do this back to you. Start by edging your fleet forwards, using the stop command to prevent them moving too far at once. Hold them once they begin firing at the TIE fighters guarding the Golan, which the AI WILL provide for our convenience. If a shell/blast/missile/etc strikes a target other than the one it was aimed at in this engine, the confused game will register damage for it on the unintended target- but it will do so across all hardpoints simultaneously. It also screws up the maths some; resulting in ships with two hits worth of tank left in them still having every one of their hardpoints, but all at 0-1% integrity, or if mixed with being fired upon traditionally, with ships having half their hardpoints left when they go up. Interesting, but the point is as follows: Golans can be completely negated by parking outside normal range and sniping at their freely-replenished TIE escorts.

Easy fix: increase Golan range 20%-30% and re-test. Should solve the issue neatly. Fixed defences generally need to be longer-ranged than the mobile versions anyway in real militaries.

Harder fix: adjust how engine handles shots hitting unintended targets. I wouldn't advise it; I don't even know where to start looking for that. But you guys know what you're doing, maybe this would be preferable. Might need to adjust how long a round is rendered past it's max range (which is given some leeway in the vanilla build for a reason; if you match render range to targeting range any ship flying away from it's assailant at max range can watch each round directed her way despawn a few metres off the stern- most entertaining but doubtless not desired) Possibly adjust the TIE escort AI, but I'm guessing we want the TIEs to try to cover the Golans from bombers, and either way it looks right like this. *Shrug* food for thought, anyway,

[Corey]

Golan range increases are happening, and more importantly, we'd like to allow players to rotate Golans during battles so they don't become rendered useless if they're facing the wrong direction or something (space tugs essentially did this in the lore, though we can't get that complicated with the visuals, it'll just rotate when told)

[nightraven1901]

*** In efforts to reduce textwalling, this post has been truncated by the user ***

Awesome, thanks, legend, step ahead as always.

[t78]

Hmm....

What if a tug faded into view near each corner, with a curved line attached to that corner. Then the station (and tugs) rotates, and the tug fades away after that. The model fades in and out of view with no other animation. Not targetable, just a little way of saying 'yes, this is how it would look'. A bright engine glow so it can be seen from a distance.

Would that be doable, or still too complicated?

(apologies if that is what you meant when you said it couldn't be done)