As Guy said, it's very hard to see what's going on in that plug. However, after a minor graphic replacement (I changed the PD Laser's sprite to use the main menu rollover), I can't replicate your bug. What I have run into is that the PD Laser stops firing when the player's ship is reduced to 50% armor (1 out of 2 total armor). I suspect that this may be an odd effect of the engine being confused as to whether the ship is alive, disabled, or dead. It has nothing to do with the sound format, as I also tested this after removing all sounds.

Edwards

Okay, I've done some experimenting.
Firstly, I mentioned sounds because while in x2 mode it sometimes flicks off for a moment and I was sure there was some issue regarding weapon sound formats and x2 mode. After searching though I find it's caused by a lack of snd 129, or in your case it's the opposite caused by a lack of snd 128. Why did I think it was the format of the weap sounds? :huh:
Second, there is another more obvious question than the PD problem which also needs asking: Why the heck is the Krait near indestructible? It has two points of armor and no regen.
Finally, both the indestructible Krait and the bad PDs can be fixed by removing the Plunder flag from govt 129. I have no idea why :huh:. I'll note though that I never saw the PD firing only while firing secondaries.

Oh, I also noticed that if you remove all the weapons from the ships then they just sit around motionless

This post has been edited by Guy : 26 August 2006 - 05:30 AM

@guy, on Aug 26 2006, 03:24 AM, said in Point Defence:

Second, there is another more obvious question than the PD problem which also needs asking: Why the heck is the Krait near indestructible? It has two points of armor and no regen.
Finally, both the indestructible Krait and the bad PDs can be fixed by removing the Plunder flag from govt 129. I have no idea why :huh:.

AHA!

Point #1: Pirate AIs can decide whether their weapons disable or destroy, if the "disable only" flag is not set.
Point #2: A ship with less than 3-10 shields cannot be disabled.
Point #3: If the AI has decided to disable a ship, and that ship has too little armor, it will be neither disabled nor destroyed.

Now, I can see two reasons why the PD weapon would stop firing:

1. When a ship has 1 armor, the game gets confused about its alive/dead status, and disables the automatic weapons.
2. When no enemy is trying to destroy you, the game fails to tell the PD AI that it has any targets. This one seems slightly more likely, given that the problem went away when Guy removed the "Pirate" flag from gövt 129, but guess #1 could be checked by removing that flag and making all weapons disable-only.

Edwards

@edwards, on Aug 27 2006, 05:12 AM, said in Point Defence:

Point #1: Pirate AIs can decide whether their weapons disable or destroy, if the "disable only" flag is not set.

Cool

@edwards, on Aug 27 2006, 05:12 AM, said in Point Defence:

Point #2: A ship with less than 3-10 shields cannot be disabled.

Er, you mean armor? And do you mean 3 or 10 depending on 10% or 33% disable?

@guy, on Aug 26 2006, 07:02 PM, said in Point Defence:

Er, you mean armor? And do you mean 3 or 10 depending on 10% or 33% disable?

Yes (oops) and yes (although I'm not certain of the exact numbers).

Edwards

@edwards, on Aug 27 2006, 05:12 AM, said in Point Defence:

1. When a ship has 1 armor, the game gets confused about its alive/dead status, and disables the automatic weapons.

After giving my ship a shield regen of 10000 I can confirm it's not this one as the PD still won't fire.

Sheild regen or sheild capicty? What would the regen do if there was no shield capicty?

There is already capacity - enough to mean a regen of 10000 makes me invincible.

All the graphics were made by someone else I just put
them in photoshop to change the colors around to suite
my needs.
Also the PD doesnt fire with all secondary weapons, only
the Ion Arc(when its firing at ships that is).
Well thanks for trying to figure it out anyway.
This has been helpful for other things too so I can start
fixing some of the other things now too.