Space Engineers

Space Engineers

Black Adder
Lynnuxx  [developer] 5 Mar, 2015 @ 9:51am
Implemented features
Decoy Arms
Extendable decoy arms rotating around the craft to keep the decoys alive and missile explosions in comfortable distance.
With the programmable block this feature is fully implemented now:
- Activation/deativation with one click. The decoys have to be operated manually/seperately.
- Rotor locks are automatically and constantly released/applied => lower risk to break the craft
- Gyros are set to 25% when rotor locks are released => risk to break the craft minimised
- Rotor will stop in idle position after the decoy arms are deactivated

Radar (Mk Ie)
Currently the radar is a demo due to the lack of access to the GPS system.
Radar contacts are displayed on the two textpanels from where they can be copied manually to the GPS system (by opening and closing the public text on the left panel).
The functions implemented are:
- The radar system will be switched on when at least one beacon with the [radar(g)] tag is active
- The radar system will be switched off when all radar beacons are inactive
- The sensors will be configured for radar use when the radar is activated
- Collecting and displaying the contact data reurned by the sensors (pure textprocessing)
- Selecting a contact (up/down) via G-menu
- Tracking and locking a selected contact

Radar contact labelling is done according to the sensor setting. The numbering begins with 1:

"P": player
"O": floating object
"F": small ship
"L": large ship
"S": station
"A": asteroid

"o": owner
"f": friend
"n": neutral
"e": enemy

Examples:
"Pofn 2" = 2nd player contact who is no enemy
"LSof 5" = 5th contact of own or friendly large ships and stations
"A 20" = 20th asteroid
"Oofne 10" = 10th floating object
"Fe 1" = 1st (=closest) enemy small ship

Target selection, how does it work ?
The contacts you can see on the display are a collection of all the contacts from all the scanning radar sensors. When you step through the list you will e.g. select the 5th contact.
Now when the list is updated because contacts are entering or leaving the radar range, the marker will remain on the 5th contact (assumed there are still at least 5 contacts) but this may be a different contact now.
I.e. the marker is not staying with the selected target but staying on the same position in the list.
When a target is locked the marker will be fixed and no other contact can be selected though the list may update.

Tracking and locking of the selected radar contact, how does it work ?
There is an additional sensor reserved for tracking and locking.
So when stepping through the list you'll change at least one of the two values:
- number of contact
- number of the scanning sensor
In this case the tracking sensor is updated, applying the settings of the new scanning sensor and/or updating the contact number in the [radarg] tag. With the next update by the BlueG radar mod it contains the coordinates of the selected target.
The scanning radar sensors are operating normally i.e. if the list is updated the selected contact may change. The target in the tracking sensor will change accordingly.
To prevent this, a selected contact can be locked. I.e. the tracking sensor is not updated anymore even if the contact list is changing, having a stable target now.

Vanilla/modded turret control
The turret aims at the selected target. If no target is available or the radar is switched off the turret will be switched to AI mode.
If aimed by radar the turret has movement compensation / target leading with a slightly less accuracy than in AI mode. The turret shall stop firing is the target changes and the new one is friendly or neutral.

Radar display
First version of a radar display showing the relative position of the target on the middle textpanel. A "q" as target icon means the target is closing in, a "b" means the target is moving away and an "o" means the target is not moving in relation to your craft.
The numbers on top are:
left(-)/right(+) , elevation up(+)/down(-), target speed, speed relativ to target (+ closing in, - moving away)

Katzenlandung (cat-landing)
For help with planetary landings the ship automatically rotates its belly into the flight path. The landing gears (large maglock pads with longer range now) will be switched to autolock when cat-landing is enabled.
2 seconds after a landng gear has locked (for the first time) the cat-landing will be switched off automatically to avoid interference at take-off.
Cat-landing can be switched on via action bar 5.7 and manually off via action bar 5.8.
To do: Additionally the inertia dampeners are activated at a minimum altitude to make sure the craft is braking in time before touching the planet surface.
Can also be used in space, of course.
Last edited by Lynnuxx; 11 Aug, 2015 @ 1:22pm