...when do they fire them?

I have some nifty workarounds that, in order to be easily implemented, depend on AI ships firing their weapons constantly.

I hear that AI ships will not fire their weapons unless they are in range of the target. Is that true? How can that be circumvented?

And I have one more question. Is there a way to force a ship to fire all of the shots in a burst weapon in one continuous stream even if the player releases the 'Fire' key? For example, fire- twenty missiles stream out in pairs, and then the player can go about doing something else. I'm not sure if 'burst fire' just means that the weapon will fire quickly as long as the trigger's pressed before having a long reload, or if the weapon will fire all of the burst even if the trigger is released.

Burst is just a timing thing. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to force a full burst- if the player lets up on the trigger they stop shooting. If they stop and then start again, though, it still counts as the same burst. Example: your machine gun fires 10 round bursts, and the player shoots 6 rounds. When he shoots again, he can only fire 4 rounds before having to wait for the burst reload.

Edit: Oh, I know you know this, but for clarity and the new developers: burst fire (in EVN) has nothing to do with rapid fire, necessarily. I've had several occasions for a slow-firing burst weapon. For instance, a weapon where you get ten shots out of each bit of ammo you buy. Probably best modelled as a weapon where the burst reload time is 0, and the reload time is however fast you want the weapon to shoot.

This post has been edited by Masamune : 24 September 2004 - 03:54 PM

Quote

I hear that AI ships will not fire their weapons unless they are in range of the target. Is that true? How can that be circumvented?

Increase the range of one of the weapon. That's pretty much it.

Quote

And I have one more question. Is there a way to force a ship to fire all of the shots in a burst weapon in one continuous stream even if the player releases the 'Fire' key? For example, fire- twenty missiles stream out in pairs, and then the player can go about doing something else. I'm not sure if 'burst fire' just means that the weapon will fire quickly as long as the trigger's pressed before having a long reload, or if the weapon will fire all of the burst even if the trigger is released.

I wish... Closest I can get is using submunitions.

Hmm... what if you set reload time (not burst reload) to zero? That might make all the shots in the burst fire at once...

-Brindy

This post has been edited by brindyblitz : 24 September 2004 - 07:02 PM

Additional thought...

On the first question, if you wanted a weapon to seemingly have a shorter range than it really does, I have an idea. First, your weapon would have to not have a large blast radius. Nor would it have to be triggered by proxy. Finally, you would have to deal with flak-esque behavior.

If you set the proxy distance to an absurd value, the shot will detonate instantly. If there is no blast radius, the shot will appear to expire instantly. So what if you set the prox safty to a certain value. The shot will "expire" the instant after the weapon is armed. You can then set the weapons actual count value to a higher number and the AI will fire it.

Just an idea....

Cheers,
Brindy

(on continuous AI firing)

..or make it a primary weapon, and add a new weapon thats invisible and does no damage but has very long range. Then im pretty sure they would fire their primary weapons thinking the second one would hit.

This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 24 September 2004 - 07:50 PM

NebuchadnezzaR, on Sep 25 2004, 12:50 AM, said:

(on continuous AI firing)

..or make it a primary weapon, and add a new weapon thats invisible and does no damage but has very long range. Then im pretty sure they would fire their primary weapons thinking the second one would hit.
View Post

Erm. Don't think this'll work. AI's can fire their primary weapons independently. So if only one of two weapons is in range, only one of two will fire.

Raventhief, on Sep 24 2004, 11:33 PM, said:

Erm. Don't think this'll work. AI's can fire their primary weapons independently. So if only one of two weapons is in range, only one of two will fire.
View Post

Exactly right. The AI cheats like that.

~ SP

Quote

Increase the range of one of the weapon. That's pretty much it.

If you want to protect the player from a near-infinite-range attack, give it some damage decay

brindyblitz, on Sep 24 2004, 04:58 PM, said:

Hmm... what if you set reload time (not burst reload) to zero? That might make all the shots in the burst fire at once...
-Brindy
View Post

Unfortunately, a reload of 0 acts like a reload of 1- they weapon fires really, really fast, but not simultaneously.

Ah.

So while my techique might be effective for shorter bursts, its not good enough for 20.

-Brindy

Yeah, you can understand though. Imagine making a weapon which didn't use ammo and then setting the reload to 0.