Hi, just a quick question... Anyone have any ideas on how to make a ship spontaneously explode? I've tried all sorts of shield/armor combinations, and nothing seems to work... Both shields and armor set to 0, both set to (-1), etc..
So now I'm open to other options... I want the ship to seem to explode inside, so having another ship shoot at it isn't much of an option (also, I'm out of ship resources 
) ANY ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanx...
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Sorry, it's not possible. =(
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(url="http://"http://www.blackrockmac.com/ajm/sig.html")~AM~(/url)
What about ways to fake it? I know in FH, Martin Turner put in space mines that would kill the player, and themselves in the process... What if I were to do something similar. Say, make the ship behave like the space mine does, attack a supposed escort with a very weak weapon that would barely affect the escort but kill the ship in question (the ship would of course have 1 armor and 0 shields...)
Would this work?
I need this for a mission, so any help would be REALLY appreciated...
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(This message has been edited by kberg (edited 03-01-2000).)
OR...
I'm guessing you want a ship to jump in and then blow up, and then have a mission to solve the mystery. Not that it matters.
TRY THIS: Put the ship you want to explode into the special ships field in the mission. Just leave that as it is.
THEN: Make a ship with a weapon that is really fast, invisible, and from a special government that hates whatever goverment the special ship is from. The special ship will jump in, then be destroyed by the aux ship.
Just to make sure, if your special ship is from say the confed governement, u might want to make ANOTHER confed government, exactly the same, but only used on this one ship. Still don't understand? Tell me, and I'll explain it better.
I've never tried this. Don't blame me if your computer blows up. 
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Three years and my pizza still isn't here.
Maybe I should call.
Great idea! Thanx
I'll try it. This is something that's been holding me up for awhile.
My only problem now is trying to add that special ship w/o anymore ship resources. Is there anyway to guarantee that a certain pers would show up during a mission? Say, make 20 copies of the same pers to show up only in that system when the previous mission bit has been set?
BTW: my previous idea didn't work... It's completely impossible for an AI ship to destroy itself, doesn't matter what sort of weapon you use I guess. Wonder how Martin Turner made his space mines work.
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Actually, there is no point in being secretive about this.
I'm making a new B5 plug for EVO... I contacted the original B5 guys, and they have no plans to revamp their plug. Instead they've moved to a plug-in extension model. After seeing my plug, they responded that our work is so fundamentally different that I might as well keep mine seperate from theirs.
Regarding my question, and for any of you familiar with the B5 universe, the Earth Alliance President gets assasinated when an explosive device blows up his personal transport. This is what I'm trying to recreate now.
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Do what Mardian suggested, but, DONT USE A BEAM. They are easily visible if they go over stuff, ect..
Perhaps, make these two enemy govts, give them a simi-fast weapon, but not lightning fast, and must be an invisible, unlimited fuel, smart homing thing with no sound.
Then, have them both be in/jump into the system. Both fire their shots, both blow up, ideally at almost the same second. Otherwise, there will always be something in there.
Or, you could have it be a trader Pers that is in system x 100% of the time, and that hates specialGovtB. This freighter with warship AI attacks whenever this thing comes in, ect..
I'm getting lost, oh well.
Also, for other snazzy effects, give the weapon a large impact but no radius, and small explosion. Also make sure it goes over astroids. That way, if someone watches the ship get blown up, it'll have a small explosion on one side, then go flying away, blowing up rather quickly.
~S~
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"All power corrupts, absolute power..."
"..is even more fun!"
"The meek shall inherit..."
"...what they're bloody well given. And be thankful for it."
-BOFH, Simon talking to his PFY.
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kberg wrote:
What about ways to fake it? I know in FH, Martin Turner put in space mines that would kill the player, and themselves in the process.
Would this work?
I need this for a mission, so any help would be REALLY appreciated...
THe space mines had a mega-heowge weapon which would they would fire -- effectively making them blow up.
However, your idea will work -- It is something I played around with a while back...
J~
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http://jonpearse.cjb.net
jon@jonpearse.cjb.net
- A life -- cool, where can I download one of those
I don't think the mines actually blew up. I remember struggling with this for some time and deciding there was no way. Although you (the player) can fire a missile which destroys your own ship, AIs cannot destroy themselves with their own weapons.
So the space mine blows you up and you assume it's blown itself up. But it hasn't.
Regards
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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
K, well I've sort of got Maridian's idea working now. I took a standard (wimpy) freighter and gave as it's sole weapon an invisible, quick moving, hardly does any damage, invisible thing with no outfit (I'll probably call it a warrenty or an air freshner if the player tries to buy the freighter ). I made a special dude that changed this wimpy freighter into a warship. The players goal is to protect the ship which is to explode (this mission is SUPPOSED to fail). As for the aux. ships, I put in four of these harmless looking freighters. They destroy the ship that they are supposed to quite nicely... It's just that after that, they go after the player??? Is this a result of the player's goal in trying to protect the ship? Or have I made my special governments wrong?
About an AI not being able to kill itself... That really sucks, we've already got a weapon flag for control over just this sort of behaviour. This should be considered a bug and fixed in 1.0.2 :frown:
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Martin Turner wrote:
**Although you (the player) can fire a missile which destroys your own ship, AIs cannot destroy themselves with their own weapons.
**
Rally, you sure? Perchance you had the bit set that made it not harm the firer(sp?) But hey, then again you is Martin Turner.
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-Shade
(url="http://"http://www.crosswinds.net/~shadeofblue/")EV:O Revenge(/url)
"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it"
(url="http://"http://www.theonion.com")The Onion(/url)
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kberg wrote:
**They destroy the ship that they are supposed to quite nicely... It's just that after that, they go after the player??? Is this a result of the player's goal in trying to protect the ship? Or have I made my special governments wrong?
**
Probably the fact that you're the escort.
I'm glad my idea worked. I'm going to try it now.
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Three years and my pizza still isn't here.
Maybe I should call.
Quote
Martin Turner wrote:
**I don't think the mines actually blew up. I remember struggling with this for some time and deciding there was no way. Although you (the player) can fire a missile which destroys your own ship, AIs cannot destroy themselves with their own weapons.
So the space mine blows you up and you assume it's blown itself up. But it hasn't.
Regards
**
That's right, it just disables itself -- mind you I managed to blow myself up using my own weapon (good trick if you can do it!! ) -- has anyone managed to set the mine off without it killing them...
J~
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http://jonpearse.cjb.net
jon@jonpearse.cjb.net
- A life -- cool, where can I download one of those
If you go fast enough you ought to be able to set them all off one by one without taking too much damage. I was going to try and work that into the story, but I couldn't find a way of doing it.
Actually, I always thought they were kind of weak and not much of an obstacle.
It is definitely true that in EV they couldn't kill themselves. However, I couldn't swear that this is still the case in EVO -- I may never have tried after EVO came out. There are definitely some features (like using load cargo and drop cargo text in the same plugin) that EVO does which EV didn't but which aren't documented differently.
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M A R T I N • T U R N E R
I tried REALLY hard to get something like this working... My most extreme experiment consisted of the ship that was supposed to explode shooting off a weapon similar to a forklift in power, with a HUGE blast radius destroying almost everything in the system, but not even touching this ship with 1 shield and 1 armor... :frown:
I can only assume the reason for this is that, rather then program the AI to only shoot weapons at an enemy if the enemy is outside the blast radius (like a human pilot) they completly ignore the blast radius in the AI and cover this up by using a hack to not allow the AI to die...
BTW: I've put up a very crude website for my plug... The content, and quite likely the format as well is going to change greatly. You can see it anyways at (url="http://"http://www.sfu.ca/~kberg/")www.sfu.ca/~kberg/(/url)
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No no no, not an invisible weapon, an invisible ship! Make it a 1x1 black dot, equipped with an invisible, guided and soundless weapon with armor and shield damage ratings of 50. Make the ship you want to blow up of a government that is an enemy of the invisible ship's government, and the exploding ship's shield rating 1. The exploding ship and the dot ship will hyper in, the dot will fire the guided dispersal rocket, hit the exploding ship, making it explode (make the death delay for the exploding ship somewhat long and a big mass, to make a bigger explosion)
Is this genius or what?
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I hope I didn't dain my bramage...
---Homer Simpson, after eating some Insanity Peppers with the help of a waxed tongue.
(This message has been edited by Mister Spiffus (edited 03-03-2000).)
