why don't they always work?
Quick question: when I'm using submunitions, why do they only reliably work when the shot explodes on its own, because sometimes when the bullet hits a target there aren't any submunitions. It always works normal if the shot explodes because of range, just not when it hits a ship or asteroid.
The bible reads...
SubCount The number of submunitions to create when the shot reaches the
end of its life or detonates because something wanders into
its proximity radius. Set to 0 or -1 if unused.
... which doesn't state that subs should be launched if it directly impacts an object rather than having its prox radius triggered. This is good in some cases like recursively submunitioning weapons where the weapon would otherwise repeatedly hit the target until it reached the sublimit. In other cases it's rather unfortunate because the prox radius is in fact all but completely useless since it works only on the center of a sprite rather than any point around the edge (this is probably because it would be rather processor intensive).
This post has been edited by Guy : 08 March 2007 - 02:11 AM
So if i set a large proximity radius it will work? Or am I just confused..
Ok, got that to work. They still don't show when it hits an asteroid though, even with the "prox trigger not set off by asteroids" button unchecked.
@phantom_phist, on Mar 9 2007, 01:27 AM, said in Submunitions:
Ok, got that to work. They still don't show when it hits an asteroid though, even with the "prox trigger not set off by asteroids" button unchecked.
That's because that's not what that flag does.
If you set that flag, it means that the weapon will not explode because it comes within ProxRadius of an asteroid (but only when within ProxRadius of a ship). Nothing, directly, to do with submunitions. Nor does it affect whether or not it hits an asteroid - that's another flag again.
This post has been edited by pac : 10 March 2007 - 06:55 AM
Here's a quote from a useful document I wrote a while ago that may or may not help to clear things up for you:
View PostThe Complete Guide to Submunitions said:
Proximity to Target:
Submunitions will not appear unless their parent shot detonates at some distance from whatever they hit. Therefore, a weapon with a ProxRadius of 0 will not produce any submunitions on impact. Also, Point Defense weapons impacting Guided weapons cannot produce submunitions, as PD-Guidance collisions do not use proximity fuses.
It seems that the parent shot needs to explode at least at the edge of the target ship (in order to generate submunitions). I am not certain just how ProxRadius impacts are calculated, but I think I recall a statement that (ProxRadius) needs to be around 40 in order (for submunitions) to work properly with most ships in Nova. What I have tested is that 10 works about 80% of the time on a squarish ship 40 pixels on a side.
On the topic of asteroid collisions, what's the ProxRadius for the weapon when it fails to launch submunitions when hitting an asteroid, and how far away from the asteroid does it explode?
Edwards