Is this possible?

Is it possible to have a ship with only rear-firing weapons with an AI that purposefully runs away from the player, firing as it does so? Sort of "Hey, Chase Me!" and get a missile in the face

There re two ways, I think, of doing this. First you could make a turret and check the boxes that preventit from firing forward and to the sides. Also, you could make a weapon, set it's inaccuracy to -180 and make sure the exit points are not in the middle of the ship, have nonzero x and y values.

As for the AI part, you'd probably want to set itto wimpoy trader or something that isn't going to try to rush them head on.

The problem with Wimpy Trader is that it will try to escape which is not what I want. I want the ships to run away with the intention that the enemy will pursue it. But if the enemy breaks off, I want the ship to come back and try to harass it into giving chase again.

It's unusual - but can it be done in Nova?

Or you could use the "rear-quadrant turret" weapon type (8), or use a forward-firing weapon and set it to have negative velocity. the second method, like Keldor's negative inaccuracy, may not work for the AI.

For your second question, you might try a different AI type. "Warship" runs away when you get close, but should come back if it gets too far away and has no long-range weapons.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 01 August 2005 - 11:07 AM

Edwards, on Aug 1 2005, 04:04 PM, said:

For your second question, you might try a different AI type. "Warship" runs away when you get close, but should come back if it gets too far away and has no long-range weapons.

Edwards
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But this ship has no forward weapons...

Use the TIAS approach

(Try It And See :p)

maybe instead of making it fire backwards, you could make it move backwards. if you give it a negative speed, it would end up going backwards, and shooting forwards, which would be like moving forwards and shooting backwards. when the ship tries to rush head-on, it would end up accelerating backwards.

phyco with power1, on Aug 1 2005, 02:06 PM, said:

maybe instead of making it fire backwards, you could make it move backwards. if you give it a negative speed, it would end up going backwards...View Post

Sorry, I've tried that, and it doesn't work in EVN (it worked in EVO, however). Giving a ship negative speed and/or negative acceleration merely results in the ship having 0 speed and/or acceleration.

Edwards

phyco with power1, on Aug 1 2005, 08:06 PM, said:

maybe instead of making it fire backwards, you could make it move backwards. if you give it a negative speed, it would end up going backwards, and shooting forwards, which would be like moving forwards and shooting backwards. when the ship tries to rush head-on, it would end up accelerating backwards.
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Cheers for the headache! :laugh:

Edwards, on Aug 1 2005, 06:18 PM, said:

Sorry, I've tried that, and it doesn't work in EVN (it worked in EVO, however). Giving a ship negative speed and/or negative acceleration merely results in the ship having 0 speed and/or acceleration.

Edwards
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It would work if you gave the AI ship a reverse thruster turret with very long range that fires every frame. If you make the ratio of recoil to acceleration just right then it'll fly forward normally and backward when in combat. Tack on whatever rear-firing weapons you want, and voila.

What if you make the ship use stand-off tactics? Those ships run away when you get too close. I'm just not sure if they'll fire rear shooting weapons.

They will. I have Klingon ships with rear-firing torps in SFA that do exactly that. Edwards' idea is only half-right, though, and Flish is correct in that you need to make sure they've got the stand-off attacks flag checked.