It's time to start working again!

Warning: Very Long Post, read on at own risk!

Hello fellow EV enthusiasts, I'm very happy to say after nearly a year of languishing in my own personal development hell, the Kestrel Shipyards plug is finally back in development!

Alright, I know it's not a big deal to you guys, but I'm very excited to be working on my plug again, finally!

Anyway, since it's been a long time and things have changed a bit anyway, I think I'd better post a brief outline of what I hope this plug will be, eventually. I've decided, against my better judgment, to try and make this a whole new storyline complete with missions, new dudes, at least one new planet, and a bunch more outfits and a few more ships that all fit into the new storyline in a very smooth and understandable way.

The basic premise of the plug is that the second Kestrel in the EVN universe (the one you can buy at S7evyn) originally had tons of advanced "alien" outfits and technology that is on par with and even better than some Polaris tech. However, it was immediately purchased by a wealthy businessman (former trader or something) with the intent to start a company to reverse engineer and begin building ships and outfits based on the Kestrel's technology.

Now, when I said the man who started the company is wealthy, I meant filthy rich since he had enough money to buy the Kestrel, find an undiscovered and uncharted world in Federation space to set up shop, purchased all the tooling and orbital shipyards to actually start manufacturing, and hired the scientists and engineers to actually understand and innovate on what they were building!

The bread and butter of the plug is the new ships and outfits built by Kestrel Shipyards and how they affect the balance and political order of the galaxy as a whole, particularly between the Federation (or should I say the Bureau?) and the Polaris. The Kestrel-derived ships and their weapons and outfits are very powerful and expensive, and are also exclusive to the mission string (or at least they will be!).

The storyline is fairly simple and involves you, the player, working for Kestrel Shipyards just like in the Sigma string. After doing odd jobs for them for awhile, and gaining more access to their ships and outfits, you finally start hitting pirate and auroran targets on behalf of the Federation. After doing this for a little bit, you begin scouting Polaron space and learn about the Raven. This scares the crap out of the Feds and your superiors at the Shipyards, so they tell you they're going ahead with their most ambitious project yet to combat this new threat (I won't reveal what it is outright but you'll figure it out). After a few more minor missions, it's revealed that the Polaris are preparing for a preemptive strike on the Federation out of fear of the new Kestrel-derived tech, especially since it's already been "tested" on lesser foes (pirates and Aurorans). After this startling (and confusing to the player, who's already begun doubting the true motives of both the Polaris and your own superiors) revelation, you're sent out with the shipyards most powerful creation along with a fleet of other Kestrel-type ships to attack the polaris fleet before they can launch their own offensive. After going to Kel'ariy and battling the polaris (and winning!), they inform you of the true nature of the Federation and the bureau and that you've been working for them all along. After being horrified to learn this terrible truth, you vow to turn their greatest weapon against them and lead a joint assault with the Polaris against the Bureau Headquarters on New England. After swiftly dealing with them, you head back to Kestrel Shipyards to speak with the founder (with whom you've become friends with over the course of the mission string) and see if he knew what his company was really building his ships for. After being convinced that your friend genuinely did not know he was being manipulated by the bureau, you convince him to turn the powerful and dangerous technology Kestrel Shipyards has developed over to a joint Federation-Polaris-Rebellion government that will ensure that it is never used to put one faction at the mercy of another again.

This is just a general outline, so any comments, questions, or just general feedback would be much appreciated! Please let me know what you think and if anyone has any suggestions, I'm very open to new ideas at this point!

Ok, apparently I went about this entirely the wrong way?

At this point, I just need to know how to make a point defense beam turret that fires in quick bursts, as in the beams themselves are like flickers but there's like 3 or 4 shots quick shots in a burst.

In addition, if I can make it a point defense weapon that will fire at normal ships, or at least be usable as a normal weapon somehow in addition to point defense, that would be awesome.

I'd be really grateful if someone could help me figure out how to do this.

Hey ShaneSerris.

A beam weapon that fires individual beams in bursts, eh? Simple. First, give it a low count so each beam only stays on screen for a little while. A value of 1 or 2 should work for starters, you can experiment to find the value that's right for what you have in mind. Second, the reload needs to be higher than the count. If you use a count value of 1 or 2, I'd say try a reload value of 5 or 6. Maybe 4 if those are too big. This will make the beam fire quick shots that don't last long, and you can see they're separate. For the burst feature, you need BurstCount. Set that to 3 or 4, depending on how many shots you decide you want in the burst. Then give it a BurstReload value of, say, 10 for starters. The end result is a beam weapon that will fire 3 or 4 short pulses in quick succession and then wait a while before firing any pulses again.

Now, turning it into both a PD turret AND a standard weapon is slightly tricky, but still doable. First you'll need two copies of the weapon; one in PD form, and one in standard Beam Turret form. You'll also need two outfits, one for each beam. However, one outfit should be created normally so it shows up in appropriate outfitters while the other outfit will be invisible. To make an outfit invisible, give it a Random Factor of 0, flag it so it can't be sold and also so it appears in the Ranks/Honors screen, and leave the lower-case name fields entirely blank. It doesn't matter which outfit is invisible, just as long as one is and the other isn't. Lastly, have the non-invisible outfit grant both itself and the invisible outfit on purchase, and have it remove itself and the invisible outfit on sell. This is accomplished through Gxxx and Dxxx bits. For example, say the visible outfit has an ID of 128 and the invisible outfit has an ID of 129. The visible outfit should have G128 G129 in the OnPurchase field and D128 D129 in the OnSell field. Now you have a burst beam weapon that can be used directly by the player and will also act as a PD weapon. The only continuity issue would be that it's still possible for both beams to be firing at the same time, i.e. the player could be firing on a Fed Destroyer with the standard version while the PD version hits missiles fired from a Fed Patrol Boat.

Equipping both as standard on ships, though, is a simpler process. Whichever version of the weapon (standard or PD) is linked to the visible outfit should be equipped as normal in the ship's weapons field. The other version that's linked to the invisible outfit, however, should have its outfit listed in the standard outfits field for the ship. This will allow player to see that it has the weapon in the shipyard info dialog while not seeing the extra version of the weapon, simulating one weapon.

I'm glad to see you're expanding this into a full-fledged storyline. I could use a real reason to play EVN again instead of just TCs.