Well, I've reached the hurah. I'm finally able to start testing, in a limited fashion, most of the elements of my plug-in. Two points so far

1. Does anyone know of a way to get AI's to use beam weapons?

2)Upon playing and killing a single ship, my combat rating goes from nonexistent to above average, and almost every government labels me as at least an offender and bars me access to their spobs. I know your combat rating is dependent on the crew complement of the ships you kill, but is that also dependent on your evilness?
I check out the govt resources, and all are almost identical to the values in EVO. I'm guessing the one ship I destroyed had a large crew complement, and was supposed to be difficult to kill but wasn't (probably because I hadn't given it any weapons at that point).

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Gage Stryker
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It's coming - Visible Menace for EVO! Current as of 03/08/02 | | v 0.2.3 | | 9.2 MB | | 34% to Beta
gage2stryker@yahoo.ca

Quote

Originally posted by Gage_Stryker:
Does anyone know of a way to get AI's to use beam weapons?

Just giving them the weapons has always worked for me - can you elaborate? Just a thought: it's possible that you've given the ships in question other weapons that the AI considers more useful then their beams.

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David Arthur
(url="http://"http://davidarthur.evula.net/")davidarthur.evula.net(/url): MissionComputer and the Talon plug-in for the original Escape Velocity
(url="http://"http://www.ev-nova.net/")EV-Nova.net(/url) : Forums Now Open

Quote

Originally posted by David Arthur:
Just giving them the weapons has always worked for me - can you elaborate? Just a thought: it's possible that you've given the ships in question other weapons that the AI considers more useful then their beams.

The AI tends not to use beam weapons unless that's all you give them as a primary weapon. The Rebel Beam Cruiser in Final Battle, and the Stingray fighters it is equipped with are good examples of this model, as are the Alien Fighters/Crusier in EV.

Anatole.

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Not all angels have halos. - QW12

I would try giving the beam weapons a slightly longer range and duration; those might factor into the AI's decision whether to use them or not. I don't think the AI likes to use beam weapons until it's very favorable (I've noticed you have to be going face-to-face with it generally before it'll fire on you). I've gotten beam weapons to work when other primary weapons are present; it's just seldom used.

Another very important thing is that if you make the weapon use up fuel (like the particle beam in EV), the AI will only use 100 units of fuel (1 jump) before it stops firing that weapon.

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Mike Lee (Firebird)

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Originally posted by Gage_Stryker:
**..
2)Upon playing and killing a single ship, my combat rating goes from nonexistent to above average, and almost every government labels me as at least an offender and bars me access to their spobs.

**

Combat rating and government reactions are two different things. As you say, combat rating is based on the number of people killed. Apparently the ship you destroyed had a very large crew, you could check the ship resource to verify that.

Legal status depends on several factors. If the ship you killed belonged to a government, then of course that government would react negatively to the destruction of the ship, based on the "KillPenalty" value in the govt resource. Any govt allied to the govt that owned the ship, or any govt allied to an ally, would also give you a negative legal ststus for destroying a ship belonging to a friendly govt. You need to determine which govt owned the ship you destroyed and then check the relationships of other govts to that govt in order to find out what is going on. Generally it is safest to attack ships of govts that have no allies, such as the Renegades.

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Joe Burnette
"I find that humans can be divided into only two meaningful categories: Decent Humans and Sonsofbitches; both types appear to be evenly distributed
among all shapes, colors, sizes, and nationalities." -- Keith Laumer

Thanks for the solution for the beam weapons. Right now I have one ship that uses beams and a cannon weapon, however, the cannon weapon, although it does large amounts of damage, is fairly slow to reload. I'll do some tweaking to get the beams to work.

The interesting thing about the gov't problem - I attacked the independent government. Does this raise my evilness universally, as I suspect? I remember, even playing EV and EVO, that I didn't tend to attack independent ships at all. I started a new pilot file to check if that's the case.

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Gage Stryker

This post is subject to all the protections and benifits of the posting code
It's coming - (url="http://"http://www26.brinkster.com/bdprod/index.html")Visible Menace for EVO!(/url) Current as of 03/12/02 | | v 0.2.5 | | 11.7 MB | | 41% to Beta

Quote

Originally posted by Gage_Stryker:
**Thanks for the solution for the beam weapons. Right now I have one ship that uses beams and a cannon weapon, however, the cannon weapon, although it does large amounts of damage, is fairly slow to reload. I'll do some tweaking to get the beams to work.

The interesting thing about the gov't problem - I attacked the independent government. Does this raise my evilness universally, as I suspect? I remember, even playing EV and EVO, that I didn't tend to attack independent ships at all. I started a new pilot file to check if that's the case.

**

I'm not sure, but I think it either raises your evilness universally or it only affects independent worlds, as they get pissed off if you attack anything but pirates or renegades (kind of annoying killing Confeds and getting bad standings in Independent systems, but that's how things go).

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Mike Lee (Firebird)