While it's certainly cool that the outcomings of missions can change stellar objects, it could be even cooler if a mission could also change ships and outfits... imagine that after completing the Azdgari mission arc, the ship stats of the stock Azdara would be changed to incorporate the new shield generators... or that Igadzra ships would have plasma siphons added to their weaponry... or a weapon that used to be rather weak would be upgraded after completing a technical development mission...

Of course, these changes wouldn't affect the ships and weapons in your personal fleet. You'd have to sell the outdated stuff and buy the new stuff.

-- Cinga

BTW, could anyone respond to my two previous posts with engine improvement suggestions? I'd rather be told that my ideas are utter crap than just sit in the dark. Especially the one about custom weapon effect graphics should be a no-brainer, since it wouldn't take much work to implement, and it would add more depth to scenario designing.

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This may not be what you were looking for, but nevertheless, I'm posting it:
-Create the ship or outfit for a weapon that is available before the mission
-Set the said mission to set a certain bit (say, 153)
-Create a ship or outfit for a weapon that is identical to the previous, except for the improvements, and that the new ones are available only after bit 153 is set.

Tada.

Oh, almost forgot;
-set the original ship or outfit for a weapon to be available only if bit 153 is NOT set.

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"I don't know, Marge; trying is the first step towards failure"
-Homer Simpson

(This message has been edited by ConfusedGuy (edited 05-08-2000).)

This is quite correct: these features have been built into EV since 1.0.4 or earlier. They are also easier to use than Visbits.

Example:
In Frozen Heart, the tachyonic fighter becomes available after you complete the early Emile missions. Later on, you acquire the IMP missiles, and after Emile is dead, the ship is no longer available.

What very few players (if any) notice is that, after Emile is dead, you can get the folks at DTE Unit to run you off a Tachyonic fighter. Because you need the IMP missiles, and because I didn't want players buying them and fitting them to other ships, the later version TF comes with the IMPs as standard. You can carry on using this trick right up to the point that you have used up all the slots for ships or weapons. You can also do the same thing using visbits, by having a planet appear on which the new version of the ship is available replacing the one on which the old version was. I'm not sure if there are any advantages to using this method, but it's sort of elegant.

Does anyone know how the story with using ship spins as planets worled out?

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**
Does anyone know how the story with using ship spins as planets worked out?
**

Didn't you do something like that? Rendering a 3D view of an alien wreck, and using it as a picture of a planet?

If not that, what do you mean?

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Zacha K
(url="http://"http://users.aol.com/zachakplug/sigdir/index.html")The Zacha K Space(/url)
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Yeah, he did that with the alien wreck. Not hard. But I don't think that was a ship spin...

What's really fun is making kamikaze pilots as weapons. Cruel, but damn, they're tough.

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You say I'm an @$$hole? I say get in line.

AOL/AIM: EVmaridian

Website: (url="http://"http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/utopianvenality/index.html")www.angelfire.com/scifi/utopianvenality/index.html(/url)

Since this has obviously turned into more of an idea post than an answer to someone's question, I thought I'd mention this:

A ramming weapon.

I'm not sure if anyone else has tried this, but it certainly seems feasible. Simply create a beam weapon with a VERY low range, and you've created the illusion of having a ramming weapon in front of your ship.

Speaking of new weapon ideas, is there any way to create a new type of weapon (rear mounted beam, etc.)? I don't mean for the common plug-in developer, I mean for an experienced ResEditor. Is it possible?

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"I don't know, Marge; trying is the first step towards failure"
-Homer Simpson

Quote

Originally posted by ConfusedGuy:
**Since this has obviously turned into more of an idea post than an answer to someone's question, I thought I'd mention this:

A ramming weapon.

I'm not sure if anyone else has tried this, but it certainly seems feasible. Simply create a beam weapon with a VERY low range, and you've created the illusion of having a ramming weapon in front of your ship.

Speaking of new weapon ideas, is there any way to create a new type of weapon (rear mounted beam, etc.)? I don't mean for the common plug-in developer, I mean for an experienced ResEditor. Is it possible?
**

I've been planning a "graviton blade" weapon some time ago, which would project a pointed gravitic force field in front of the ship's bow for use in ramming maneuvers. I'd use a projectile weapon rather than a beam, though, so you could see the blade field. I would only come installed in certain ships and would not be available, mainly because it's coordinate offset would have to be carefully adjusted to the ship's dimension for the effect to look good.

BTW, Frozen Heart has a "Collision" weapon which works more or less on this principle. Its graphics are somewhat weird, but it seems to work.

I also wonder if an AI could use the weapon effectively... it would have to time the use very precisely, just as with the defence pods... has anyone ever witnessed a Miranu vessel using DPs against fighters?

-- Cinga

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I've seen Miranu freighters use defense pods. They do this rarely, but usually succeed at it. Actually, a ramming weapon would suit the AI's tactic quite well; observe how effectively heavy rockets and javelins are used. Just head for the enemy and fire.

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God. Root. What is difference?
-Pitr

AIM: obormot345

Quote

Originally posted by ConfusedGuy:
**
I'm not sure if anyone else has tried this, but it certainly seems feasible. Simply create a beam weapon with a VERY low range, and you've created the illusion of having a ramming weapon in front of your ship.

**

You're too late to be first. Download Martin Turner's Frozen Heart, get yourself stuck in an asteroid storm, and marvel at how quickly your shields go from 100% to 0%.

Some gripes, though: The AI, even when it only has "Collision" as it was aptly called in FH, doesn't always use it very well. It can take four passes for a single ship with only collision to use it at the right time and destroy me, so it is only truly effective in fairly large swarms.
The asteroids in FH did some weird things. Instead of turning around right away and trying to collide again, most of them travelled a quarter of the way to the other side of the stellar system before coming back. A few, however, turned PDQly on the screen.
?

Have fun experimenting
-- Zacha K

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Zacha K
(url="http://"http://users.aol.com/zachakplug/sigdir/index.html")The Zacha K Space(/url)
(url="http://"http://users.aol.com/zachakplug/sigdir/azach.html")Find out more about the Zachit(/url)
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