Just wanted to share: I was messing with some outfits last night and ended up getting nowhere because I had forgotten how outfits worked.

The idea was to make an outfit that would be like shutting down a ship's power to hide from an enemy. I had thought I could pull it off using a general cloaking-type outfit. Ideally, when the user "shut down power" to their ship, they'd lose shields (no prob there) and not be able to move the ship.

Initially I thought, "Oh, no prob. I'll just put some thrust and turn mods into modtypes 2 and 3." After setting it up I remembered that if an outfit has multiple mod values, they Just Work. It's not like they work only if modtype1 is engaged.

So sad. I tried messing around and make a weapon that would simulate the same thing, to no avail. I'm fairly sure I won't be able to to make "divert power to shields" kinds of things either.

The lesson: read the EVN Bible.

-STH

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"Create enigmas, not explanations." -Robert Smithson

No, this is quite doable, if you accept one slightly annoying limitation- you'll have to shut down the power and then activate the cloak. Two steps. But if that's OK, it's no problem.

Make an outfit that does nothing, called whatever- this is what will let you shut down the power. If you want, you could skip this step and just use the next, assuming your ship doesn't need an extra outfit to shut off the power.

Make a mission called "Shut Off Power"- it has no goal and no time limit, so once given, it always shows up as an active mission. In the OnAbort field, have it G(Your Outfit) and S(Turn Power On).

Make a mission to turn on the power, which works exactly the same as above, but has D(Your Outfit)

"Your Outfit" is the same one you described, which grants a cloak, as well as a velocity/accel/turn penalties.

Viola! The first, buyable outfit should start "Shut Off Power" and do nothing else- although it should have Fail(Shut Off Power) Fail(Turn On Power) D(Cloak Outfit) in it's onSell as a safety measure.

You shouldn't be so hasty...

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

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Originally posted by Masamune:
**No, this is quite doable, if you accept one slightly annoying limitation- you'll have to shut down the power and then activate the cloak. Two steps. But if that's OK, it's no problem.

Make an outfit that does nothing, called whatever- this is what will let you shut down the power. If you want, you could skip this step and just use the next, assuming your ship doesn't need an extra outfit to shut off the power.

Make a mission called "Shut Off Power"- it has no goal and no time limit, so once given, it always shows up as an active mission. In the OnAbort field, have it G(Your Outfit) and S(Turn Power On).

Make a mission to turn on the power, which works exactly the same as above, but has D(Your Outfit)

"Your Outfit" is the same one you described, which grants a cloak, as well as a velocity/accel/turn penalties.

Viola! The first, buyable outfit should start "Shut Off Power" and do nothing else- although it should have Fail(Shut Off Power) Fail(Turn On Power) D(Cloak Outfit) in it's onSell as a safety measure.

You shouldn't be so hasty...**

The moral: If Masamune wants a feature, and it is humanly possible in any way, shape, or form to implement it with the Nova engine, he will implement it.

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Or maybe he just spouts enough gibberish until everyone gives up and goes away. I had to read that five times to understand just what he was going on about. :rolleyes: I get it now, though. To shut down the power, one must open the mission dialogue box and abort the mission, which seems to be a really odd way of doing things. Although it seems to be a rather clumsy solution for something which is essentially pointless in the first place - sorry, seant, but I really don't see the point at all, besides some crazy attempt at semi-realism. If they have cloak scanners, then they'll spot you anyway, and if they don't, then they wouldn't have seen you after all. Plus, if there's a shot heading towards you when you activate the mission, then it will leave you completely unable to move, unshielded and uncloaked.

(Another solution is a disable-only weapon which does a lot of damage, has a large blast radius, and damages the player - just fire the weapon to explode right in front of your nose, and instant power down. Trouble is, it also leaves you uncloaked...)

Regarding diverting power to shields upgrades, I've already explained in the Nova boards why that will be impossible using conventional means, but now that Masamune has suggested his crazy solution to your main problem, the solution to this idea also presents itself pretty quickly. Refusing the misson would grant an outfit which increases shield capacity (and possibly recharge rate) while either reducing your energy capacity by a certain amount, or draining energy at a certain rate.

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Originally posted by Belthazar:
Or maybe he just spouts enough gibberish until everyone gives up and goes away. I had to read that five times to understand just what he was going on about.:rolleyes:

Now that's a little uncalled for. Masamune answered the question quite helpfully. No need to complain just because you didn't understand at first. People should be commended for finding solutions to difficult problems.

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I get it now, though. To shut down the power, one must open the mission dialogue box and abort the mission, which seems to be a really odd way of doing things. Although it seems to be a rather clumsy solution for something which is essentially pointless in the first place - sorry, seant, but I really don't see the point at all, besides some crazy attempt at semi-realism. If they have cloak scanners, then they'll spot you anyway, and if they don't, then they wouldn't have seen you after all. Plus, if there's a shot heading towards you when you activate the mission, then it will leave you completely unable to move, unshielded and uncloaked.

It could be done for storyline reasons, or because you want to differentiate between different types of cloak. Plenty of reasons out there.

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W00T! Boyd's Back!

As to the current mission screen being an odd way of doing things: It is. However, it provides the only place where we can provide extra options to the player during game-time. If we had an OnFire field in weapons, you could do it there, but as it stands, weapons are pretty useless for anything but weapons. Just to set the record straight, your suggestion of using a weapon to disable yourself wouldn't work- all it would do is disable you, and since there is no way to test for this condition, you can't give the necessary outfit. Or were you just being sarcastic?

If the current mission screen is used this way often (as in my project) it becomes normal- if you're worried about it, mention something about it in a tutorial. If they don't play the tutorial and still don't get it, it's their own damn fault!

My/My Teams' project uses this system for many things, such as controlling the date while in space, and defaulting on loans. The diverting power application does follow pretty naturally from the main application though- something to consider adding, seant, if you do go this route with your plug.

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

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Originally posted by Masamune:
W00T! Boyd's Back!

Nice to see you too :^) how's the plug coming along?

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As to the current mission screen being an odd way of doing things: It is. However, it provides the only place where we can provide extra options to the player during game-time. If we had an OnFire field in weapons, you could do it there, but as it stands, weapons are pretty useless for anything but weapons.

Actually, weapons have a few uses. Each ship could have a 'Reactor Core' for an engine. It would be ammo type, with a speed increase. You then have a weapon called 'Eject Core' with secondary flag enabled, using the reactor core as ammo. Give it a whopping big explosion and in a desperate situation, a player can eject their engine to destroy a pursuer, but cripple their ship in the process. Similar things could be done to divert power from engines to shields - have an ammo that increases engine performance, but decreases shield performance. When you fire it, you get a permanent change. You'd have to explain why it can only be done a limited number of times and have some sort of servicing misn to replenish the ammo, but it does give you options. Similar to the 'Eject Core' idea, if there were no fuel tanks for ships and every ship had 0 internal fuel (you could make 2 versions of each ship - one player purchasable with no fuel, one AI version with fuel that gets swapped for the player version when captured), then you could have hyperdrive outfits, with only one allowed per ship, which provide fuel, enabling you to jump. Ejectign that would be a pretty big penalty.

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I've experimented with a few outf/weaps like this as well, (mostly carried ships/bays, but I think it would have similar issues), and found that Nova will not recognize the outf change until it is forced to make an evaluation. Such as hyperjumping, landing, bringing up the player info or mission info dialogue. It can work well, but the player would have to know that they need to hit the 'P' or 'I' key when in flight for the desired effect to take place.

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Indeed, I was a little hasty in my evaluation of weapons. I've used them for some cool things as well. I made a great retro thruster using a forward-firing gun. The shot looks like an engine flare, and it uses energy- works really well, and you can pull off some really cool maneuvers.

Carried ships seem the most versatile, IMHO, since they can be retrieved later. I use them for cargo pods- eject them to shed some weight and speed up. Problem with the pods is that any actual cargo stored in them is lost on the eject.

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

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Originally posted by seant:
**Initially I thought, "Oh, no prob. I'll just put some thrust and turn mods into modtypes 2 and 3."
**

Only problem with this is that the values you put into the modtypes will have to be the exact opposite of the values your ship already has. If you just throw in some large negative numbers then your ship will end up moving backwards and stuff. But if there's only one ship you'll plan to use this feature on then it will be alright.

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Originally posted by Belthazar:
sorry, seant, but I really don't see the point at all

That's ok. As long as I do, that's all I care about.

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Originally posted by Masamune:
As to the current mission screen being an odd way of doing things: It is. However, it provides the only place where we can provide extra options to the player during game-time.

I believe one could write a plausible storyline in which one shut down power via the mission window. I mean, you wouldn't want to accidentially shut down power while tooling about a system or in battle, so one would have to "override system lockouts" or something like that.

As for ships that have the ability to see cloaked ships: so what? It makes sense that such a risky move as shutting down all power would fail in a big way once in a while.

-STH

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"Create enigmas, not explanations." -Robert Smithson

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Originally posted by Guy:
**

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Originally posted by seant:
**Initially I thought, "Oh, no prob. I'll just put some thrust and turn mods into modtypes 2 and 3."
**

Only problem with this is that the values you put into the modtypes will have to be the exact opposite of the values your ship already has. If you just throw in some large negative numbers then your ship will end up moving backwards and stuff. But if there's only one ship you'll plan to use this feature on then it will be alright.

**

Nope- this is one thing Nova is actually smart about. Negative values equate to 0.

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

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Originally posted by Masamune:
**Nope- this is one thing Nova is actually smart about. Negative values equate to 0.
**

Aw, nuts. This was a great feature of EVO for making ships that run away from you when they're hostile.
Is this the same for weapons in EVN?

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams

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Originally posted by Masamune:
Just to set the record straight, your suggestion of using a weapon to disable yourself wouldn't work- all it would do is disable you, and since there is no way to test for this condition, you can't give the necessary outfit.

Hate to say this, but that's actually wrong. Invisible mission, that's always on, set to fail if destroyed or disabled... Use the onFail field.

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The way to do it is to find out the maximum value for that particular field (many are 32767). Then, add the correct amount to the maximum value. I don't know whether 32678 in a field with a maximum value of 32767 will go to -1 or -32768, but a little experimentation should tell you.

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Originally posted by Ephialtes:
**Hate to say this, but that's actually wrong. Invisible mission, that's always on, set to fail if destroyed or disabled... Use the onFail field.:D

**

Doh! Very true... mission failure is so bizarre/buggy I usually overlook it... Darn. Good going Ephialtes!

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

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Originally posted by Masamune:
**Doh! Very true... mission failure is so bizarre/buggy I usually overlook it... Darn. Good going Ephialtes!

**

Hehe, thanks
And people tell me I'm useless... See! Lurkers can be useful!
I tried to use it to simulate a training mission. If you kill the drones, you win, if you get disabled, you lose. Unfortunately, though I could test for being disabled, I couldn't really work out where to go next

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"They can swivel on this middle digit, swivel unti they squeal like two pigs on their honeymoon!" - Kryten, Red Dwarf series 5, episode 6, "Back to Reality"
'I just wish I could translate my humour to the boards without some old person going "oh, #ev3 is so horrible, blah blah, I have a fork inserted in my anus and think I'm better than you"' - scythe

(quote)Originally posted by Ephialtes:
**Hehe, thanks:)

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"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." — Douglas Adams
**