Fleet Turn x 3 Engines Appear Broken

seraphantilles

I picked up the Advanced Fleet Combat Impulse Engines Mk XII [Turn]x3 [Spd] but they do not seem to actually give a noticeable improvement to turn rate.

For example Impulse Engines Mk XI [Full]x3 engine gives a VERY noticeable boost to Full Impulse speed, and have the following text in the Engines' description:
+45 Flight Turn Rate
+15.2 Full Impulse Flight Speed
+15.2 Full Impulse Flight Speed
+15.2 Full Impulse Flight Speed

However the [Turn]x3 engines do not give a noticeable boost to the turn rate of the ship. In fact I only noticed an increase of 1 degree per second! The text only shows this:
+54 Flight Turn Rate

Obviously 54 is not anywhere close to 3x greater than 45. One would expect to see:
+54 Flight Turn Rate
+54 Flight Turn Rate
+54 Flight Turn Rate

It would seem that only one of the turn bonuses is being applied.

I mean Full x 3 engines increases Full Impulse Speed from 160.58 to 207.72, a 29.35% improvement.

So why does Full x 3 grant a 29.35% improvement to speed, while Turn x 3 only grants a 6.5% improvement to turn speed? Why doesn't Turn x 3 grant a 29.35% improvement to turn rate, at the very least?


I did some further testing.

Time to complete 360-degree turn at max engine power in Chimera Heavy Destroyer with a single rare Mk XI RCS console:

MACO Engines Mk. X - 10.5-10.6 sec.
Fleet [Turn]x3 Engines - 9.9-10.0 sec.

I.e. the rate of turn is increased only slightly, nothing close to what "x3" would make you think. Nothing similar to what you would imagine based on the effect of [Full]x3 on the Full Impulse Rate.

TO use these Fleet Turn engines, you are giving up any possible set bonus or other bonuses from using set engines or other specialized engines. So unless the Turn bonus from them is substantial, then they're totally pointless.

You only get 2.2 deg./sec. improvement over the MACO Mk. X's, to 35.7 deg./sec.

+493.4% flight turn rate of Evasive Maneuvers increases the turn rate to 87.8 deg./sec. using the MACO, and 90 deg./sec. using the Turnx3. So there is no 'proportionally increasing' gains here, just the same extra 2.2 deg./sec. difference -- completely not effectual.

Now, one would think that "3x" (which in all forms of math means 300%) would increase the turn rate by at least 3/5ths of the amount that a ~500% improvement does.

Therefore by my calculation the turn rate of the ship should be 68.28 deg./sec. with the Turnx3, not 35.7 deg./sec., because ((90-35.7)/5)*3+35.7 = 68.28.

Please fix these engines... I felt rather deceived to get them and find out that they did virtually nothing. It really seems like a bug. I hope this was not the intended behavior. I think the bonus which should have been 30 degrees per second got added in as 3 degrees per second -- a simple "power of 10" error, decimal point in the wrong place, etc.

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EDIT: Note that I did read the formula for how the game supposedly adds the [Turn] bonus into the mix. It seems it's directly proportional with the ship's existing base turn modifier. The ship that needs such an engine the least gets the most bonus from it, in this scheme. Whereas the ship that needs it the most, gets almost nothing out of it. This seems very backwards to me. If anything, the [Turn] bonus should be *inversely* proportional to the ship's base modifier.
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doffingcomrade

Not quite a bug: Each [Turn] adds +3, according to the numbers you have. Remember, an engine ALREADY adds a base amount of turn, just as it adds a base amount of +impulse. That is why you are seeing +15.2 x3. However, the turn rate display of the engine is rolled together into a single number, so you see only a single value of X + 3Y.

Plus, you appear to be standing on the ground or something, which means those numbers are BS.

seraphantilles

doffingcomrade wrote: »

Not quite a bug: Each [Turn] adds +3, according to the numbers you have. Remember, an engine ALREADY adds a base amount of turn, just as it adds a base amount of +impulse. That is why you are seeing +15.2 x3. However, the turn rate display of the engine is rolled together into a single number, so you see only a single value of X + 3Y.

Plus, you appear to be standing on the ground or something, which means those numbers are BS.

Please don't simply assume "it's a feature, not a bug," just because someone has managed to figure out how the turn rate formula works -- because I'm not debating that there is some formula for determining the bonus stat, nor am I questioning what the formula is.

You may already know this, but, from a software development perspective, every mathematical formula is part of a "method" or set of "methods" (AKA "functions") which are pieces of code that serve a particular purpose. Well, they're supposed to serve a particular purpose, but sometimes the outcome does not serve the purpose as intended.

Especially when you're dealing with complex sets of variables, effects-over-time, geometry and angles, pseudo-physics-modelling for realism, etc., it is easy to see how you might use a formula in a method and although it *kind of* serves the purpose you wanted, it doesn't serve it adequately.

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Example:

For instance you might have a method that controls the speed of a volume control TRIBBLE motor on a home stereo system. When the user presses an analog rocker switch on the remote, it rotates the TRIBBLE at a variable speed depending on the degree of pressure with which the user presses the rocker switch. Now, you might have a switch on the remote that increases the speed of the rotation, and it says, "3x Volume TRIBBLE Speed." So, you have to modify the angular velocity of the TRIBBLE by some amount so that for each possible degree of pressure value, the resulting speed is faster with the 3x switch turned on, than it would be with the 3x switch turned off.

But there's a bug you didn't notice: you misplaced a decimal point in your formula. This results in the 3x switch having only 10% of the effect you meant it to have. The result is a BARELY noticeable 2.2 degrees per second increase to the rotational velocity when the switch is activated.

Is there a formula? Yes. Does the formula do what the formula does? Yes. Is it still a bug? Yes, because the formula did not serve its purpose as intended. It may not be the kind of thing that users write bug reports on, because the 3x switch doesn't cause a crash, and it doesn't have an opposite effect to what was intended. However, no one will actually use the 3x switch because it doesn't serve a useful purpose.

/example
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My point is this: I am saying that there is a bug in the formula because the end result is inconsistent with the purpose of the effect. The only reason to have put into the game an ultra-rare engine with a stat like "[Turnx3]" would be to give a *significant* improvement to the turn rate of a ship. The people who would likely need this improvement are people who fly slow ships.

So if the engines DON'T give a significant improvement to such ships then there must be a bug in the code, because I refuse to believe the developers would go to the trouble to add an item with such a specific purpose while fully intending it NOT to actually serve that purpose!

The effect is so minimal that it makes the engines totally pointless. Therefore I conclude it's a bug, because the intended effect is just not happening, due to a problem with the way that the formula works.

Your simplification of the turn rate calculation formula is a good way of explaining where the bug is: X + 3Y. Of course there is a much more detailed way of explaining the formula here. However for the purposes of this discussion your simplified version is very useful for isolating wherein the bug lies.

Because the problem is inside of Y. The above website explains what Y is:
"In general, it appears that each [Turn] in the engine?s name gives an Engine Turn Bonus of 10% of the Turn Modifier of the ship the engine is equipped on."

Therefore: Y = 0.10 * (Listed Turn Rate of Ship - 3.0)

The Sovereign has a listed turn rate of 7, so Y = .4. 3*.4 = 1.2 degrees/sec. Can I express how totally lame that makes the [Turn] modifier?

There's no way that could possibly be the intended effect, because that's such a minor increase that it makes the [Turn] modifier worthless in gameplay. Unless the bonus is significant you're better off going with a different type of bonus, where the amount of the bonus is enough to actually help you in some other way, whether it be a set piece bonus or a sector space warp speed increase, or whatever. Anything would be more useful than a [Turn] bonus in the current setup.

So, something is very wrong here. Perhaps in the code they put 0.10 when they meant to put 10.0. Or perhaps they forgot to convert radians to degrees -- a very common source of bugs! Maybe someone just got confused as to what the variables meant, and thought they were increasing the current turn rate of the ship by 30%. The developers may never be able to determine why this bug made it into the game but the only thing to do now, is fix it.

zenstrata

I believe you are right in your calculations. I have also notices that the improvement in turn rate seems minimal or possibly not even present for the [turn]x2 and x3 engines.

seraphantilles

zenstrata wrote: »

I believe you are right in your calculations. I have also notices that the improvement in turn rate seems minimal or possibly not even present for the [turn]x2 and x3 engines.

Thank you. So when is this going to get fixed? I'm tired of staring at these broken engines in my inventory, knowing how much they cost.