One of the most useful features of EV Classic was the use of flare dispensers. A good supply of those made those big, scary corvettes not so big and not so scary. Sadly, in the days of EV Nova, there are no such things. Instead, we have point-defense turrets. I wanted to try to bring countermeasures to Nova, but there is no such feature.

What I have done so for is make a freefall bomb that, when fired, imediately submunitions into a point-defense shot. It can sometimes accomplish the job of a flare, but only if the missile is really close or I'm not turning at all. It just doesn't attract missiles like it used to. Does anyone have any ideas here?

Thanks.

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"You can't catch Jesus, he's the gingerbread man."

Sadly, I'm pretty sure flares as they used to exist are impossible. This should be added back in, but it probably won't.

The closest you'll get is probably an ammunition-based point defense system with unguided projectiles or a bay of 'decoys' that act as fighters and are deployable.

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The flares were dumped in favor of PD weapons. I personally wish this had not happened - flares gave a totally different feel and a different selection of options for the plugin maker.
-Az

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here's a possible solution:
redo missiles so that they submunition (w/o explosion) after a suitably short period of time (5-10 frames or so; call it their acquisition interval or something), and use the submunition recursion limit to set their range. each time it subs, it should fire toward the nearest target (you'll probably have to play with this to get it to only go after hostiles or something like it. even better if it can be set up to only fire toward the nearest target within a given arc- forward, wrt. its original heading).
then make a ship with very low speed and no turning, give it low armor and all the other stuff you would expect from a decoy. make the appropriate bay, outfits, etc, and you should have a decoy launcher, some decoys, and missiles which will go after them (and can also be stopped by placing a ship between them and their target, which i think is a good thing- it's fairly standard for lesser fleet ships to try to put themselves between a cruise missile and the carrier)

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Unfortunately, nighthawk, that won't work. The only way a weapon changes it's target with that flag is if it isn't guided; the identity of the original target is passed on from the parent missile through each successive submunition down the line until it hits its sublimit, or until it hits the target. I know, since I once tried something similar.

Read (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/004783.html")this topic(/url).

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Quote

Originally posted by Eugene Chin:
**Unfortunately, nighthawk, that won't work. The only way a weapon changes it's target with that flag is if it isn't guided; the identity of the original target is passed on from the parent missile through each successive submunition down the line until it hits its sublimit, or until it hits the target. I know, since I once tried something similar.

Read this topic.

**

Try out the cluster torpedo in polycon. It submuns into 6 guided submunitions, each of which fires at the nearest ship! Its a great way to make enemies cause they immediately go hostile on you even if you didnt mean to target them
-Az

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Ok. So, in other words, it's not gonna work. I have a different idea. Chaff. Works on the same principal as what I have so far, but in stead of the original shot submunitioning once, it does it about five times to create a little cloud of missile-stopping countermeasures behind your ship.

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"You can't catch Jesus, he's the gingerbread man."

That should work quite well.

~ SpacePirate

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Eat blazing electric death!

Quote

Originally posted by Sam_the_Smart:
Ok. So, in other words, it's not gonna work. I have a different idea. Chaff. Works on the same principal as what I have so far, but in stead of the original shot submunitioning once, it does it about five times to create a little cloud of missile-stopping countermeasures behind your ship.

I've got a similar-functioning idea in (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/jonathanboyd/evn/Missiles.sit.hqx")a small test plug(/url) with explosive reactive armour - a small cloud of PD submunitions flies out and stops a missile.

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(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/jonathanboyd/evn/index.html")Classic4Nova plug-in(/url)

Close to on-topic, do blast radii work for PD?

I was thinking of a "reactive armor" weapon that would basically have no range, but a huge blast radius, and be a PD weapon. Would it take out all the missiles in it's blast radius? Think the EMP from The Matrix, but for missiles. I don't have the time to properly test this right now, though.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
**Close to on-topic, do blast radii work for PD?

I was thinking of a "reactive armor" weapon that would basically have no range, but a huge blast radius, and be a PD weapon. Would it take out all the missiles in it's blast radius? Think the EMP from The Matrix, but for missiles. I don't have the time to properly test this right now, though.

**

That's a good idea too. I was actually thinking of making a shockwave generator that would work on the same princaple. Except this one would do minor damage (both to you and your enemies, its one downside) but mostly be useful for a high impact value, which would scatter a swarm of fighters and let you escape.

EDIT: About blast radii, I checked and no, it doesn't do anything. I guess the PD shot just kind of disappears while the missile explodes.
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"You can't catch Jesus, he's the gingerbread man."

(This message has been edited by Sam_the_Smart (edited 01-07-2004).)

I have an idea that might simulate flares. Correct me if I'm wrong (don't know if PD's can fire from the secondary weapon key)

Give the PD turret of your choice the ammo of some sort of missile or something that you wish to act as a flare. Set the turret to fire by secondary key and be blind to sides and front.

Give the missile a graphic that resembles a flare (I think the original EV flare or the railgun explosion would look good) and make it a freefall bomb.

If this is correct, when you fire your PD turret from the secondary key, it will launch these flares at your ship's speed and if a fighter or PD vulnerable ship or a PD vulnerable missile hits the flare, the flare destroys the missile, or damages the ship.

Will this work to simulate the flare?

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When viewing a Terrapin for the first time, I realized that anything flies-if you throw it hard enough!

Not exactly, I don't think. PD turrets ignore the trigger settings- they only fire when they want to fire. You could make a controllable weapon (any-non-PD type) that immediately subs into a PD weapon, or a freefall bomb, or whatever.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
**Not exactly, I don't think. PD turrets ignore the trigger settings- they only fire when they want to fire. You could make a controllable weapon (any-non-PD type) that immediately subs into a PD weapon, or a freefall bomb, or whatever.

**

And that's what I did, if you'll read my original post.

Since there seems to be no way to get the PD shots to attract the missiles like the original flares could, I've made it so that the original shot submuns into a cloud of flares, thus providing ample protection.

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"You can't catch Jesus, he's the gingerbread man."

LOL... Flare barrage. There should be a weapon that does something like that to every ship.

When a fast ship is chasing you, fire a spreading flare or something and hit him with a high-recoil, low damage weapon (but with lots of submunissions to make the "barrage" effect evident)...

That would be a cool weapon, great for the fast string-end ships that don't have good armour, or can't stand up to the barrage of trying to take over one of the Starbridge launching planets (cheap Federation protection...) with no waves on.

Speaking of weapons, is there anyway to make a weapon that submunitions in a perfect circle (say the radius of the the ringworld graphic) and then halts, effectively mining an entire planet?

I don't you can get things to launch in a perfect circle all of the time...

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When viewing a Terrapin for the first time, I realized that anything flies-if you throw it hard enough!

Quote

Originally posted by Zzap212:
**Speaking of weapons, is there anyway to make a weapon that submunitions in a perfect circle (say the radius of the the ringworld graphic) and then halts, effectively mining an entire planet?

I don't you can get things to launch in a perfect circle all of the time...

**

I finished making a weapon like that

The way it works is the fired shot immediately submunts into about 20 shots. It has a submunt angle value of 180 so the shots go in a perfect circle. After about 3 seconds of slow traveling each shot submunts into 1 shot that is a freefall bomb (the rest were unguided projectiles) with a speed of 0, so it stops. And there you have it! A planet that no one's landing on for a while!

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"You can't catch Jesus, he's the gingerbread man."

(This message has been edited by Sam_the_Smart (edited 01-07-2004).)

Quote

Originally posted by Sam_the_Smart:
**And that's what I did, if you'll read my original post.;)

Since there seems to be no way to get the PD shots to attract the missiles like the original flares could, I've made it so that the original shot submuns into a cloud of flares, thus providing ample protection.

**

So you did... I misunderstood on the first read.

Oh, about the perfect 360- perfect use for negative subTheta values. Have launch X submunitions, and enter the subtheta as -360/x, and it will make a perfect pattern every time.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
**Oh, about the perfect 360- perfect use for negative subTheta values. Have launch X submunitions, and enter the subtheta as -360/x, and it will make a perfect pattern every time.

**

What's a subTheta value? I'm on a PC, and so the exact terminology might differ from yours. I read about using negative values in the inaccuracy field to have an angular offset, but other than that, I have no idea what negative values might do.

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"You can't catch Jesus, he's the gingerbread man."

Quote

Originally posted by Sam_the_Smart:
What's a subTheta value? I'm on a PC, and so the exact terminology might differ from yours. I read about using negative values in the inaccuracy field to have an angular offset, but other than that, I have no idea what negative values might do.

The SubTheta is exactly the same as the inaccuracy field, except that it's for the submunitions.

This is mentioned in the Bible, by the way.

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Quote

Originally posted by Sam_the_Smart:
**What's a subTheta value? I'm on a PC, and so the exact terminology might differ from yours. I read about using negative values in the inaccuracy field to have an angular offset, but other than that, I have no idea what negative values might do.

**

It's what EVNEW calls Submunition angle.
-Az

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