Curious FDev decision(New FSD)

Still not gone to pick any of these up yet. However I am planning to do so in the next few days.

I have no intention of changing any of my settings, and frankly the thought of doing so to change the performance of a module makes me uncomfortable.

The fact that this overcharge comes with the expense of fuel usage and heat doesn’t worry me of itself as my image of it is like the afterburner on an old military jet so not something to run for minutes at a time but just for a fast and furious few seconds.
Well, I wasn't interested in them, but I figured why not try it to see if I was wrong.

And I too don't want to change settings to improve performance of a module, seems to break the spirit of everything to me. However, if I can't use it at all when FPS is at it's natural levels, that to me means the thing needs a pass from programmers and devs to get it working properly. I'm currently building a very cold Dolphin with quite a bit of Engineering to see how it runs at high FPS, just so I know how this thing is going to fit into my fleet.
 
I run at 144 fps, and even in my beluga, I was pretty much able to keep up for normal use with heat sinks. Obviously, I would prefer it if I didn't need to use quite so many, but it's not a game breaker for me. Certainly not less than how bad it is to play the game at 30 FPS. Honestly, after playing at 144 for so long, 30 is unbearable.
 
Current build situation and results https://edsy.org/s/v58eBU4 I tested this mostly interested in how it could aid in exploration.

Uncapped FPS which is roughly 150 in space was roughly 7 seconds from button press to heat damage

60 FPS cap was about 20 seconds from button press to heat damage

30 FPS was going to be notably over 20 seconds but I ran out of gas around heat slowly climbing in the 60s, and I don't think a full figure is necessary to show the incredible disparity here. This is very imbalanced.

Obviously the build isn't completely G5 rated, but it's a solid test piece I think, and shows that this module could be game changing at one setting, but basically just a bump in speed in another. I'm not sure if it's worth using for exploration yet, but the thing is, if the 30 fps figures were the actual intended figures, then this thing could even be used for exploration without heat sinks. 20+ seconds of cruise could be super useful assuming you can work with the lower jump range.
 
The most powerful answer is to decouple the physics engine from the render engine.

There's no indication this is a general problem with the physics engine, is there? It's not like projectile speed, rate of fall under gravity, and so on are affected by fps (right?)

It seems a better point of comparison would be silent running, which increases heat over time when a certain status applies. It would be interesting to see if silent running's effect on heat has a similar framerate dependence issue (I suspect not, but haven't tested).

If not the fix would be to do what silent running code does - probably just using delta time as noted previously, something like new-percent = old-percent + (increase-per-second x seconds-since-last-update), but then with whatever arcane thermal calculus FDev came up with thrown in.

(Seconds-since-last-update, the time delta, would be 0.0167 (16.7ms) at a steady 60fps, for example.)
 
So if I understand your theory Mr. Scott, the cooler we run the ships computer the less chance we have of overheating the warp drive at full speed? Fascinating. 🤔
Something like that, hahaha. Though I did figure out how to make the game look good at 60 fps, so now I'm headed out into the black to explore with the SCO until Oya gets into it's last week. This drive could be sweet for exploration, especially around Colonia. Not heading back out that way though until this Thargoid stuff is wrapped up so I don't miss anything, though.
 

StefanOS

Volunteer Moderator
The next question would be if the heat calculation in game is done generally the same way - adding some x.xxx% per frame.
This would have implications in normal flight mode also - especially if you use weapons which produce much heat - like the GAUSS CANNON and many more. SILENT MODE would be another situation where the impact would be crucial, and fuel scooping in SC....
 
The next question would be if the heat calculation in game is done generally the same way - adding some x.xxx% per frame.
This would have implications in normal flight mode also - especially if you use weapons which produce much heat - like the GAUSS CANNON and many more. SILENT MODE would be another situation where the impact would be crucial, and fuel scooping in SC....
While I haven't done as dedicated testing on this as I did with the SCO on my engineered Dolphin (further back in the thread) I did hit Oya this morning in a G5 titan bombing Krait. I used to do this at uncapped FPS, so it would have been over 100 - I think*. I have since locked my FPS at 60 (my tv caps at 60 anyways) for the heat benefit (using SCO - I feel like it's not cheating since the tv doesn't break 60 anyways tbh) and the ship performed about as well as I would expect. I still needed to manage heat with a laser, would exceed 20% on boost, and heated up notably when the Titan Pulse hit me.

Not as scientific, but everything seemed quite normal based on my long experience with cold and stealth builds.
 
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The next question would be if the heat calculation in game is done generally the same way - adding some x.xxx% per frame.
This would have implications in normal flight mode also - especially if you use weapons which produce much heat - like the GAUSS CANNON and many more. SILENT MODE would be another situation where the impact would be crucial, and fuel scooping in SC....
Luckily that does not seem to be the case.

Had the same thought yesterday, so I did a couple of quick tests:

heat generation vs fps:
Source: https://youtu.be/CB543qzswxI


module damage vs fps:
Source: https://youtu.be/CB543qzswxI
 
Sight.... hate to be that guy again, sounding like a broken record... but....

Did anyone create an issue on the tracker yet (that can be loaded and voted on)?

I'd do it myself but I don't have any media evidence and I don't like taking someone else's work and showing it as my own. I think someone who already took the time to record the tests should do it.
 
Greetings from the future!

The special feature of the Python Mk2 is that is a hologram over an Asp Scout.
Like this?
Aspython.jpg

(Yes, this is an actual screenshot I made about 7 years ago, when it was not unheard of to be spawned in a hangar with an NPC ship…)
 
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