@weepul-884, on Mar 26 2006, 10:39 AM, said in System guarded by de-cloaking homing mines:
What do I think?
I think I'd like a mine weapon which would track and impact on any ship in the system, not just the player or whichever target happens to be hostile to the generator ship.
I think the player would get a warning klaxon right away (though that's not necessarily a bad thing).
I think I might have a good use for this, even more so if that first request of mine can be worked out... 
Wouldn't a Xenophobic government for the dude work?
Alternately, you could have drifting mines that have a prox triggered by any ship.
Anyway, here is a demo that I was working on while you posted.
System Mines
(Use with AbsoluteMinimum)
This has three different ways of generating mines.
- Dude over a specific spob misn
- Cloaked dude mine layers
- Spob weapon laying mines
Also, I have included not only cloaked mines, but also asteroid mines.
This plug was a bit picky for me, sometimes the dudes weren't working. It seemed that if I simply shifted the resources around, it would suddenly work again. This might indicate some kind of corruption, but it was working when I zipped it up...
Instructions:
First, land at the starting planet and pick up the mission in the mission bbs, this is to generate the dude over the other stellar in your current system.
As long as you don't get too close, you are safe. Go wander over to the other planet and see what happens.
Pros: The mined spob doesn't apear hostile.
Cons: uses up an active misn.
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Next you can warp to some other systems.
The one south on the map has three planets.
The on in the center of the system is supposed to be friendly but because the system is owned by a hostile govt, it appears red. Anyway it won't fire on you.
The planet to the south-east is protected by mines, the planet is firing them at you.
The planet to the south-west is uninhabited (so it appears grey on radar) but it also belongs to a hostile govt and is firing mines too.
See how close you can get to the planets.
Pros: fairly easy to control placement of mines, easy to set up.
Cons: whole system is hostile.
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The other two systems both have a single planet.
In these systems there are cloaking dudes to warp in and out laying mines.
One has cloaked mines similar to what you already saw, but they will appear system wide, not just local to the planet.
The other has mined asteroids of three types.
- Medium asteroids that drift in a random direction.
- Small asteroids that home in your direction, then de-cloak into an asteroid moving towards where you were at the time of de-cloaking.
- Tiny asteroids that are initially launched as an unguided projectile. This is because the AI will try to lead its shot to impact where you are headed. Though it doesn't always do a good job of this...
While sometimes you can catch asteroids as they de-cloak, the -1 falloff produces a fade-in that looks very natural. (if you land and take off from the planet in this system, you have a good chance of seeing this effect.)
Pros: Can use in planet-less systems
Cons: Harder to set up. Getting the dudes to behave properly is difficult.
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Though I didn't include it here, you could also use a planet to distribute mines system-wide.
Have a weapon that subs thus:
Speed: 0
Life: 1
Sub into 36 parts
theta: -10
Speed: 20,000
Life: 5
sub into 1 or 2 parts (36 or 72 eventual mines)
theta 180
Speed: 10,000
Life: 5
theta: 180
Speed: 25,000
Life: 1
-
Armed and waiting stage
Sub or Detonate on prox trigger
-
Homing stage (if not already detonated)
This will give a fairly random dispersal in a 3500 x 3500 area in 11 frames
Giving a lower range in stage 2 would make overlap a possibility in the later stages, allowing for a higher mine density the closer you get to the system center.
Alternately, you could skip a stage by making stage 2 the initial state. Control the number of mines with a reload of 1, and a high burst reload, with the burst ammount being the initial number of mines you want. Just give an inaccuracy of 180.
How these dispersal patterns will differ would take some testing.
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Another thought...
In Override there was a way to ensure that a particular weapon sprite would always appear under a different one. That is, one mask will cover the other.
(Either it was related to RID order, or the player's shots were always on the bottom)
If you have mines that don't de-cloak before detonating, that would make a system very deadly indeed.
(use a black sprite, but keep the mask in the siloutte of the mine)
So you could also have a special mine detector outfit... simply a weapon with a large sprite looking kinda like a broad flashlight beam. (reload 1, life 1) Make the flashlight appear below the mine masks, and in this manner it will illuminate any mine sprites you point it at.
