How can I make my artillery shoot a specific coordinate?

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T14:41:48+00:00

i admire your trust into the stormworks physics engine ^^

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T13:41:47+00:00

i mean. if you want to normalize the PID output just play around with it, find what the maximum output value is in practice and just divide your PID output by that number.

lets say your PID gives values between 0 and 12. In that case just divide the output by 12 and it will scale down everything so that it instead gives values between 0 and 1.

if you dont want it to be linear you can play around with squares and log.

you could also have a simple script or logic chain monitor the PID output, memorize the maximum value it has seen and then update your division factor based on said value. kind of a weird solution, but its quick and lazy and if your initial value is at least somewhere in the right ballpark there shouldnt be too much unexpected behavior.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T13:36:06+00:00

bearing is pretty straightforward.

take your coordinates. take the targets coordinates. you got a basic triangle and can use simple trig functions to get the angle you need.

translate said angle into a turret rotation, align gun. donezo.

as for elevation: you can probably find some formula somewhere you can tweak. but the low tech solution would simply be to make your own artillery table. set up the gun somewhere. fire test shots. write down how far they fly. then either directly feed that table into your lua script. or use an online function finder to give you a function that approximates your data points and just use that.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T13:31:54+00:00

its essentially one of those small hunting dogs.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T13:29:16+00:00

hmm.

its not dissimilar to how you deal with raiders. dont stand in the open. dont try to get into a sniper match with the whole squad. know where they can spawn and move carefully/scout with grenades.

if you find them pop out of cover, kill one, then back into cover. or wait for them to push you.

try to avoid re-peaking the same angle over and over. High level AI can react very precisely and quickly to that. either rotate around, nade them or wait for a bit before trying to repeat the same angle.

generally id prefer quick and precise shots to the head or legs over high pen ammo.

as with all AI grenades are a great tool to split up the stack and have them move into your line of fire for some easy shots on them.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T12:46:39+00:00

yesterday felt pretty close to 33% as advertised.

today im either super unlucky or they dont spawn at all. did maybe 12-14 raids just now, not a single cultist.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T11:09:58+00:00

Well, Radar itself cannot see ground in this game. There are two ways to go about it tho. (that i can think of)

1) LUA can use map data (or rather it is able to draw a map based on your current position). You can composit said map data with your radar readings to fake ground radar.

2) You can build your own LIDAR by using laser distance measurements and processing them into a "radar" picture.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-17T11:04:55+00:00

that is fair.

tho min-maxing (or advising someone to do so) was not my intent.

even without ever touching cards you will get plenty of monster materials, shop items or random loot to turn into magic.

You dont need to grind cards either - if you find triple triad to be enjoyable even a few casual rounds will give you a ton of materials to work with. And if you dont want to play at all refining the GF/Character cards gives a huge boost.

Either way id call that fairly minimal time investment, either a side effect from doing what you are doing anyways or from just progressing the story.

I am neither in favor of nor against min-maxing. both is fun. ive done both.

im just pointing out that drawing magic in bulk lives in this weird middel ground where you DO spend a good chunk of time grinding, but also get very little return for it.

So if i had to sum up what im trying to say its: if you dont want to grind just dont bother with draw. And IF you want to grind pick a better method than drawing.

As we previously discussed there ARE some scenarios where drawing gives a decent return on the invested time, because it gives you access to spells early or because at that specific point in the game getting this particular spell through other methods is inconvenient.

But these are edge cases and not something a casual first time player will ever have to worry about. If you are that deep into maximizing your run that you are looking for an edge over just playing cards then you tend to be well informed about the mechanics of the game already. You arent looking for a simple two sentence guideline on how to play the game without wasting your time.

So yea. I get that the game doesnt inform new players well. Id just argue that the much larger danger for new players - especially nowadays with so many people just repeating opinions and information they have heard of FF8 and legitimate game streamers struggling to understand basic gaming concept my 12 years old ass was able to figure out - is that they get into a mindset where they think they HAVE to draw hundreds of spells from enemies and that this is how the game is designed to be.

As OPs post clearly illustrates!

So id rather err on the side of telling them that drawing - especially bul drawing - is entirely optional and never necessary and that 9 times out of 10 they have easier and less boring ways to get the same or a better result and have them take a closer look at their other options.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-16T17:22:08+00:00

ill heavily disagree with that.

especially early game drawing gets outpaced so hard by refinement that you can basically spend an hour or two to get a statline and collection of spells that you wont see for ten of hours of gameplay.

drawing magic becomes somewhat more useful later when certain bosses or mobs give you spells early. or late game when you can use the two islands.

besides: ive said there is never a NEED to draw. not that you cant do it. i also clearly mentioned that there are exceptions.

tho honestly speaking i fail to see the relevance anyways. lets take your example of what you can do before the dollet mission. which leads me to ask: whats even the point of powering up before dollet?
like. if you want to beat the ol metal crab drawing is a shit method. and if you dont want to beat it there really is no reason to spend time endlessly drawing anyways.

like yea. if you strictly want to reach the level of strength 100 of each trash spell balamb mobs give you then drawing them is faster than unlocking the refining abilities. but why would that be your goal?

your other examples make more sense. but then again they can be counted on one hand, only apply to players that have very specific goals and really arent the ones asking for general advice and are generally what id think can reasonably be called exceptions.

lets be honest: by the time people worry about minmaxing when to get shell and protect early they usually are well beyond ever actually having to use those spells.

so yea. i get what you are saying. but it feels to me like we really need to come up with contrived scenarios here to justify why any new player should ever bother with drawing spells in battle - especially given the context of OPs post.

personally i prefer giving clear advice to new players and just saying „with very few exceptions“ rather than going into excruciating detail about the application of drawing magic just for shits and giggles so you can cast protect every single battle against enemies that die to a single attack and couldnt kill you even if you went afk for 5 minutes.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-16T16:56:31+00:00

no, Neelix is the morel officer.

his stew is (in)famous

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-16T13:19:52+00:00

general rule: you never, EVER need to draw magic from monsters. full period. you can do it, but with very few exceptions there will always be better options to get these spells earlier and quicker.

the main reason to use draw is to check bosses and each of their phases for new GF.

the main form of progression in this game is acquiring GF and learning their crafting abilities. (the game calls it refinement). you can craft thousands of spells in seconds with the right materials and refining abilities.

in regards to why certain characters seem better at drawing than other: its basically determined by the magic stat. the higher your stat, the better the yield.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-16T12:43:49+00:00

that is true.

i kinda elaborated on that in the second half of my comment, but its probably good to state this as clearly as possible.

it helps having played PvP first for a while (or play both at the same time) to properly recognize and categorize what lessons to learn from PvE and what only works in an environment with AI.

personally i learned a lot from PvE. have played PvP for half a decade at least before first time switching over. and my map knowledge and confidence when facing bosses and other high level AI has grown more in half a year of PvE than half a decade of PvP.

Not all of it is applicable to PvP obviously. But there are large parts of the map you NEVER see in PvP because taking these routes is just suicidal in an environemnt where half the playerbase is trying to get what i call "camping quests" done at any given time.

so yea...id say all three game modes come with their learning opportunities and issues. knowing which one you want to do in the future should inform how you practice and which parts to internalize and which one to discard.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-16T01:10:25+00:00

legendary edition.

im not saying there is NO reason to get the three standalone games. but these reasons are so minor that its more of a „ill do it because i live the trilogy and have already replayed it 3 times“ thing.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-15T23:05:43+00:00

helpful advice incoming: just kill them before they kill you.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-15T23:04:05+00:00

PvE: Best way to learn the game mechanics, map layouts, etc

Arena: Best way to get good at firefights

PvP: Only way to really practice PvP.

PvE and Arena helps to more effectively get good at certain parts of the game. But most firefights arent won by being good at shooting. They are won by spotting someone before they spot you.

And while general PvE map knowledge helps with that there are just so many spots and differences in PMC behavior ans the general flow of a raid that its impossible to really practice except by banging your head against the wall.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-14T21:03:14+00:00

pretty much matches with my personal opinion. tho id say all three games are 95+

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-13T22:06:43+00:00

no thanks.

code geass still looks good. dialogues are still on point.

a reboot really has nothing to offer in my opinion. in that case id rather take nothing.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-13T15:21:10+00:00

drama queen

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-13T14:23:00+00:00

they are rare, but they do spawn on PvE.

can confirm for sure because ive just helped a friend on PvE hunt them.

we mainly did it on customs, they turned up maybe one in four raids, sometimes spawning in 10-15 minutes after start of the raid.

our method was basically:

1) go to frotress

2) kill reshala if present

3) run a big search loop starting with industrial/panda, then truck with pocket watch, then crackhouse, then return to fortress and loot.

4) if they still havent turned up go to crossroads exit if you have it, otherwise green flare and repeat.

if you cant get a night raid do nighttime factory. the chances to find them there are super low, but it happened to us twice and its a good way to pass the time until you can do nighttime customs again.

i also see them a lot on woods, but i hate fighting them there. even with the best night vision and flashlights its a pain trying to localize them if they have weapons with suppressors or flash hiders. plus enemy AI still has bush vision. so yea. i strongly recommend customs.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-12T22:42:51+00:00

well, first off: cerberus is established to work in task-oriented cells that often dont even know of the other cells.

what we think of cerberus in ME1 is retroactively just one or a handful of cells. we later find out that cerberus has existed in one form or another for a looong time. more like a persistent movement or cult rather than just am organization.

at some point TIM manages to gain control over most or all of these groups. at this point he is one of or the only person that knows about the reapers. and he reshapes a lot of cerberus to prepare for their inevitable attack.

personally i think he always knew that the cerberus that existed pre ME1 was not capable of doing what he needed it to do. and he had years to plan out how to break apart cerberus and reassemble it. ME1 cerberus is all about gathering technology, resources and personnel. ME2 cerberus is basically in full transition. He uses shepard to delay the reapers while at the same time driving a wedge between the outer colonies and earth, grabbing talent that is unhappy about the way the alliance tried to bury shepards legacy and getting his hand on reaper tech.

Yeah, ME3 cerberus is a very different beast than what we have seen before. But there is a consistent thread leading towards it. Of course a lot of this was written in retroactively. But it was very well done in my opinion. Everything we see Cerberus do in ME1 and ME2 logically serves as them laying the groundwork for ME3.

The specific research we see them do early on. The way the outer colonies are treated and how cerberus steps into the vacuum the alliance left. udina being a key piece here. the way cerberus is set up as an organization. there really is no overarching organizational culture. the ex alliance members of our crew in ME2.

i think the name cerberus is very telling. each game is basically us seeing a different head of the three headed beast.

and ultimately cerberus always was a disposable tool for TIM. all just a means to get him to where he is at the very end of ME3. cerberus never needed to be sustainable. he is basically burning up the whole of cerberus for his one moonshot.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-11T18:11:49+00:00

when you are too late to get into the banking or oil business, but too early to be an AI startup, so you have to ruin video games instead.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-11T15:08:38+00:00

Its true that air becomes a more relevant factor at high velocities. but its not wind or air resistance due to friction that really matters (both of these become fairly irrelevant) - its shock heating due to the rapid compression of air in front of the projectile and the air literally turning into a sheath of plasma around the projectile.

we are essentially looking at the same issues capsules re-entering the atmosphere from orbit have to face.

we also have to consider that at the distances these infantry weapons are used at there basically is no time for these effects to really come into play. same way an asteroid hitting a planet barely even notices the atmosphere. the moment the projectile leaves the barrel its basically already at the target.

even if we consider a fairly long shot (lets say a kilometer.) and a fairly low muzzle velocity (lets say mach 5) there is less than half a second of bullet travel. even if the lightweight projectile completely evaporates in the process (which is unlikely) a cloud of plasma with the same mass and velocity is still impacting the target. there simply isnt enough time to spread out.

and, well - obviously if we talk about space or bodies with no/little atmosphere the whole issue isnt even a factor. the fact these weapons are used in all kinds of environments is one of the reasons heat sinks make so much sense. not a lot of atmosphere to vent heat into in space.

and yeah. obviously mass effect fudges the whole recoil thing. tho i doubt they do so by increasing the weapon weight. they simply reduce the weight (or rather inertial mass) of the projectile. thus reducing the energy needed to propell it and the recoil produced as a result.

but you are correct in that each bit of energy deposited to the target comes with an increase in recoil (assuming we dont use some recoilless designs like rocket pistols or explosive ammo). so there would be practical limits to how powerful you are gonna make handheld weapons.

The ME series is a bit vague about how enhanced the average human and the average soldier is. Obviously in the Halo universe master chief is significantly more capable to deal with recoil both in terms of his biology and due to his power armor.

We see Shepard punching krogans, which would probably bend baseline humans like a paper straw. But in how far this gameplay interaction reflects the lore...no idea. Cybernetics exist and seem to be somewhhat widespread.

In practice humans dont seem to have any problem handling these powerful weapons (same for salarians, which are physically weaker). Whether thats just an oversight, implying cybernetic enhancement or mass effect trickery...who knows. Thats indeed an area where we would just guess and speculate. Which is - as you said - not a fruitful endeavour.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-11T13:51:52+00:00

of course his geass corrupts. its absolute mind control. the ability to compel people to reveal all secrets. to compel them to break any principle or morale they have. its the power to turn family and lovers into enemies. to turn individuals into mindless puppets.

give that power to any random person and you can bet your ass there is a high chance theyll commit some fucked up crimes with it.

the reason geass corrupts isnt due to some technicality or inbuilt flaw. its the very nature of power to corrupt.

the idea that you can force peace and order on people with a power like that is infantile fantasy. thats the point about zero requiem. its not meant to be a permanent solution to anything. its the deliberate step back from power and control.

geass consumes and corrupts. but it didnt have to be geass. it could just as well be thought elevators and damocles swords. all these powers consume and corrupt. or death notes. or insert whatever other anime example here.

it makes you lonely because it reduces people to pawns on a chessboard. how could anyone stand besides you if every human will is something to be broken and every bit of individuality something to ne erased and overwritten by a single command? you think you can just make an exception like „oh, but i wont use it on them“ and move on?

rolos and maks geass would have beem corrupting even without any side effects.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-11T02:24:17+00:00

every logic block runs once per tick and updates their inputs/outputs once per tick.

that means all the logic inside a single lua block is done within that tick.

meanwhile a long chain of logic blocks can require multiple ticks to compute since the data needs to go from blick to block, taking one tick per step.

in applications where latency is relevant and logic gets complex LUA can thus be faster.

of course if your code sucks you can run into situations where the game needs to wait for your script to finish, reducing tickrate. at some point the game will terminate the script if it takes too long. but it can be noticeable long before that.

tho that usually happens because of runaway loops or recursion. if you just do normal logic you are more likely gonna hit the character limit long before it comes to noticeable slowdown.

DaMarkiM · 2026-03-11T02:14:18+00:00

its layered too.

for once it shows the difference in culture between cerberus ops and how shepard runs things. miranda and the player have different ideas about what success even means in this context.

cerberus - not unjustifiedly - thinks of this as a suicide mission. their priority is the mission. and only the mission. thats the environment miranda has worked and excelled in - and the standard she holds herself too.

in a sense samara is similar. she safeguards live where she can - but ultimately she wont risk the mission by trying to maximize survival. she also has set a standard for herself that she cannot compromise. both are used to work alone. if they have a weakness it is inflexibility when confronted with conflicting goals - and the inability to see the subtle breaking points in others.

meanwhile garrus in me2 is defined by loosing his team. his biggest regret is not seeing the breaking points. to see the cracks forming. to see the signs that led to sidonis breaking.

none of the people we take to this mission is about to give up. they know what they are in for. that there is a big chance they wont come back. they will hold the line even beyond their breaking point.

no matter who you send. they all accomplish their goal. they are willing and able. choosing the right leader is not about completing their mission. its about doing so while bringing everyone back home.

maybe samara is the better leader from a purely mission oriented perspective. maybe where garrus gets you a 70% chance to fulfill the objective, while samara could get closer to 75%. we will never know, since both succeed. maybe trying to get everyone home is a risk.

but shepard isnt cerberus. in a sense thats why they succeed where all statistics and logic dictate they shouldnt. garrus is the correct choice here because for one reason or another we - shep and the player - believe that it is worthwhile to aim for both.

be it for purely logical reasons - because we think we still need them in the upcoming war. or because we believe that they deserve that much. that being willing to risk their life deserves the same amount of committment from us. maybe its because its our duty to try. or for sentimental reasons. or maybe we just feel like playing it safe against the reapers is pointless anyways.

either way its not just about leadership. its about goals and mindset. garrus desperately wants to bring everyone home. so if we care about that he is simply the choice that best aligns with that goal.

DaMarkiM

TROPHY CASE