Satellite "logic"?

[Stooge]

I'm really confused at this point. How and in what possibly way would any "logic" help find a satellite link when the SignalID is always 0 and is not writable and Signalstrength is always -1? What the hell is the logic I'm supposed to use? Even if I make contact the dish in NO WAY tells me that I have done so. The PC does not output any logic data that would let me know it had been established.

Right now this boils down to me randomly moving the dial and crossing my fingers and hoping. I'm about to stop bothering with it and if I need anything just generate it via console mode.

The other option is I aim the satellite. Save. Reload. It instantly moves the satellite to whatever position I set. Which avoids the insanely long time to move the large dish, but it's very frustrating when there is zero explanation on how you try and aim at a target.

The Trading page does not help with instructions like this:
"If the contact is resolving too slowly, it likely indicates you are not close to the target at all and should try a very different angle. Alternately, the contact might have a very high expected wattage and your current dish is not strong enough to resolve it in a reasonable amount of time"

So, maybe you're aiming wrong, or maybe you're not, or maybe you need more power, or maybe you need more power and a better angle, and we won't tell you ANY of that, not through logic, yet the very PC you connect to magically knows all this information but just screw you, good luck, keep guessing, and you only have 20 minutes before it goes away.

Fun!

No, not really

[bond069wr]

I do not like the new way the Satellites work either, way too bothersome and over complicated for nothing, the older way was MUCH better.

[Rigben]

Why do you need to use logic? Do you need that many traders constantly?

I just setup my first trader setup and it was probably one of the easier things I have had to figure out in this game.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by Rigben:

Why do you need to use logic? Do you need that many traders constantly?

I just setup my first trader setup and it was probably one of the easier things I have had to figure out in this game.

I don't. It just said we could so I wanted to do it because ... I thought it would be fun to come up with a solution to do so. Most of the things I find fun in this game serve no real purpose other than "to see if I can do it" ... like plant genetics. I have had a blast trying to figure that system out and make the perfect plant. For what? It serves no purpose. I can grow anything with ease already and a couple of tomato plants feed you .. forever.

It just frustrated me that it seems all the ways to do it with "logic programming" don't actually work in any way that makes it possible to establish a connection without manual intervention. So, why did they bother saying so? Did they not try to use the logic themselves and realize "oh wait, this won't work?" or is there a secret I'm missing. I love to solve puzzles, even if they are totally unnecessary. In fact, those are the most fun for me to solve. :)

[YamatoPower9000]

I see a way for IC chip to triangulate through signalstrengh. Are you sure it's always -1? or it's on small logic chips?

[Rigben]

This is not totally related to this topic but does anyone know landing pad sizes for the various trader types? I assume the ones you need a sealed hanger for are larger.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by YamatoPower9000:

I see a way for IC chip to triangulate through signalstrengh. Are you sure it's always -1? or it's on small logic chips?

Both the medium and large show -1. Even after rebuilding them. I don't know if they somehow accidentally bypassed this or if it was intentional and related to the new "distance" concept or whatever the terrible game mechanic they introduced.

I've spent all day trying to work out what they use to calculate it the offset, but I can't make it work out. I'm missing some variable to make the math work. Or they just tossed a RNG in there for giggles.

Then I decided to dig through some of their DLLs and I found a method that does "DishContactAngleCheck" but it made no sense to me. So .... I decided what the hell. let me ask ChatGPT. It started to actually explain it to me. Which kind of freaks me out...it was like I was asking a seasoned programmer in the Unity game engine. I started to have the uncanny valley type reaction and just stopped at that point. I had not used that before, and so I really did not expect much.

Mind blown.

[Bonny01]

i aggree !
And first of all, i need to understand WHAT THE HELL IS going on ?
Why we have this Barsystem? what was wrong whit the "old" nummbers ?
Why does the bar somtimes gets down when i increase the energy-Output ?

In General, the Docummentation of essential things from this game is nonexistent.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by Bonny01:

i aggree !
And first of all, i need to understand WHAT THE HELL IS going on ?
Why we have this Barsystem? what was wrong whit the "old" nummbers ?
Why does the bar somtimes gets down when i increase the energy-Output ?

In General, the Docummentation of essential things from this game is nonexistent.

After more experimentation and with the help of ChatGPT (that thing is mind blowing amazing) it appears that the rotation (much like the daylight sensors) of how you place the satellite is used to compensate for predicted values. ChatGPT and I had determined that the value to a lock on a target would be approximately 50 degrees with some plus or minus expected.

In fact the value was 262 degrees, which is around 150 degrees off. This leads me to believe that if I rebuilt the satellite turned the opposite way it would have been closer to 50

To determine if this was the case I built an additional satellite and had the controls on the opposite side. I set them both to 0 horizontal and ... the point in precise opposite directions.

If you are facing the controls and your compass is pointing due north, then all the calculations would align with the predictions ChatGPT was suggesting to me. I did not realize, nor did it, that the orientation of the satellite controls would matter. I assumed if I said point 0 degrees the damn thing would rotate and aim at due north. I never bothered to pay attention to where the dish was pointed. Mostly because I was working with the large satellite which does not have the type of dish that you can see easily where it is aiming.

If you don't take that into account in any formulas you come up with you won't get accurate readings. This made more confusing if you have multiple satellites setup (I had a large and a medium) and the medium was oriented so that 0 degrees for it was actually pointing due east, and the other was set to where 0 was pointing due west.

This is why the same coordinates on the satellites were not even seeing the same targets!

[Stooge]

With this new information I have found that you can build a small dish, medium dish, and a large dish. The small can be used to rapidly orient towards a target (it does not often have enough energy to reach it, but it can help you pin down the precise area of the target, then set the medium / large to home in.

If you want to get really super fast build four large. Set each one to a different compass point. Then use a small to home in on the target location. use the large satellite that aimed in the direction of the target. This means your four satellites can orient faster as they don't need to rotate horizontally the full 360 degrees, but rather each one handles a quadrant of the area. Those damn things move so slow to turn them 180 degrees takes FOREVER

Edit: Or you could just build 4 and orient them all the same since that means the controls would all face you. Then just manually set one to face due north. One to face 90 degrees (due eash) another 180 for south, and 270 for west. Then put a sign down in front of them
The "north sattelite" would be a sign saying 315 to 45 (Northern hemisphere), The next for 45 to 135 (eastern hemisphere) 135, the next would be 135 to 225 (Southern hemisphere) and the last would be 225 to 315 (western hemisphere). Moving the satellites in 90 degree is a lot easier than waiting for one to do a full rotation. Plus it will help track multiple targets

STILL NONE OF THAT CAN BE DONE WITH IC CHIP LOGIC. LOL

EDIT2: You probably only want to turn on the one you need for whatever hemisphere you're searching as they can draw a lot of power

[Stooge]

I will work on it again some other time. I have wasted hours on this, and for no other reason than to try and figure out what they have done. I also think they aren't done with it yet, so deep diving too much more into it might just result in them coming along later and saying "we fixed some issues with the satellites not behaving as expected" and then I toss a keyboard against a wall. :D

[Vyrx]

Originally posted by Stooge:

I also think they aren't done with it yet

Good news: they are not.

When game devs test things they are often doing so in ideal circumstances and not testing all of the permutations. That is where we (the players, aka chaos) come in to provide this valuable feedback.

[Stooge]

HA! ChatGPT and I figured it out. As I fed her (I call it a her, so whatever) more and more information we finally arrived where she told me that it's not possible to home in on the target if the only result returned is the offset value. She said specifically and I quote

"Without the direction vector of the target, it is not possible to calculate the direction that the dish needs to be pointed. You will need to use some other method to locate the target, such as moving the dish in different directions and measuring the resulting signal strength or some other indicator of the distance to the target."

So since the signal strength now always reports -1, we can't do anything but move it in small increments to home in. I also realized it always reports zero for signalID.

I checked this with both the IC and the configuration tablet board (which may or may not be a mod, I can't recall)
So, they broke it.

or ... one of the mods did .. damn. I did not think of that. Shall report back soon.

[Stooge]

Originally posted by Vyrx:

Originally posted by Stooge:

I also think they aren't done with it yet

Good news: they are not.

When game devs test things they are often doing so in ideal circumstances and not testing all of the permutations. That is where we (the players, aka chaos) come in to provide this valuable feedback.

I just read your message, I missed it when I made my last post.

Well, that is good news. It was still fun to try to figure out the problem, even though most of it was outside the game and I was -- with the aid of ChatGTP -- dusting off the very old, old memories of advanced math.

That thing is spooky, though. It gives me that uncanny valley feeling from time to time. I have failed several time to remember she's an AI and not another person on the other end of a chat. Who would be a seriously fast typist. LOL

So I also got my first taste of interacting with that new tool as well. I'll consider both of those good use of my time.

[Vyrx]

Yeah I know what you mean with the AI. I am a developer myself so I played around with some of the early release models a while ago and I felt that uncanny feeling. So much so that I would type my stuff into a notepad app and paste it into the chat just to make sure some human wasn't formulating a response in real time while I was typing. We are in the early days of the tech too! I think using 3 antennas to triangulate a signal would lead to finding the target vector too.

Back on topic though, I have also been working towards automating my antennas and noticed the same issues that you did. Once we have signal strength and ID working it should be feasible. But I think they (... or we) need to figure out which of the three active contacts we are trying to focus on.

Now that I'm typing this.... is SignalID Read/Write ?? Maybe we just need to set SignalID to select a possible contact? I will have to try that later...

[Stooge]

Originally posted by Vyrx:

Yeah I know what you mean with the AI. I am a developer myself so I played around with some of the early release models a while ago and I felt that uncanny feeling. So much so that I would type my stuff into a notepad app and paste it into the chat just to make sure some human wasn't formulating a response in real time while I was typing. We are in the early days of the tech too! I think using 3 antennas to triangulate a signal would lead to finding the target vector too.

Back on topic though, I have also been working towards automating my antennas and noticed the same issues that you did. Once we have signal strength and ID working it should be feasible. But I think they (... or we) need to figure out which of the three active contacts we are trying to focus on.

Now that I'm typing this.... is SignalID Read/Write ?? Maybe we just need to set SignalID to select a possible contact? I will have to try that later...

On the AI I do agree. I also came to realize something else. She would not have been able to determine the core problem without my ability to add to the trouble shooting. It was a collaborative effort between the AI and myself. We worked through the problem together, and neither of us were able to do it alone. Many times I would prompt her and say "well, what if we tried this" and then we'd explore that course of action. She never once came up with an idea as she doesn't have an imagination to make those logic leaps.

It is still a tool and like any tool the quality of the output is heavily influenced by the wielder of the tool. Give someone the best paintbrushes and paints ever made, and if they've never painted before ... they'll still make crappy paintings. What she does do is make it easier to explore the ideas that a human might suddenly have because of our ability to make connections between different things.

if you can't come up with original thoughts and aren't any good at problem solving, the AI we have now is not going to be of much use to you in that area.

It's not remotely ready to replace humans, but rather a powerful tool to enhance what we can do. That's my take so far.

A bit off topic, I know ...