Wow, it's been a long time since I posted a topic...

Anyhow, as some of you may remember, UE R&D; was asking last year about spöbs shooting at each other (original topic (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum9/HTML/004828.html")here(/url)); nobody had an answer to give, everybody just started talking about spöb-type ships. Well, I mulled it over for a few seconds and realized how it could be done. If you put a 0x0 spöb-type shïp right over a planet, and set the other planet to use a regular turret (spöb-hurting), will it fire at the ship? If so, it should be intercepted by the planet, right? I'm about to test it. Any comments?

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You get it exactly on top of the planet using a mission, right? Make the special ship appear directly over the chosen planet?

What do you believe will happen if the planet with the 0x0 planet-ship sitting on top of it is the first to bite it? Do your weapons have a blast radius to kill off the ship at the same time as the planet? Does the planet-ship's weapon have a ProxSafety value large enough for the shot to clear the planet before arming?

Between weapon reload and damage values, Spöb strengths and distance values, and the shields-armor on the ship, you have control over exactly how it should / will play out when you run it. You could define before hand that one side will win by just a single shot, or by a dozen... and see if what you observe matches exactly with what you've planned.

Otherwise, all I can say is... Go for it!

(Edit) What about getting the ship to open fire? Ships told by mďsn's to destroy enemy spöbs try to get in close before firing their weapon, even if it has a long range. Will the planet-ship automatically fire it's gun at the planet?

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... Of course, I could be wrong...

(This message has been edited by Eugene Chin (edited 08-26-2004).)

Hmm...I made a quick-ish plug-in to test it, and the results aren't wonderful. I didn't bother with the 0x0, it's using the Shuttle sprite. The ships are there, but the planets just won't fire. I even made one hostile and it didn't fire. I'll look more into this. Is it because of the "fire when provoked" flag?

EDIT: Well, I can see them not firing at me because I had a normal ship, but it doesn't explain them not firing at the enemy ship...

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who have friends.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga Website(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/infernostudios/search.html")Add-ons Search Engine(/url)

(This message has been edited by orcaloverbri9 (edited 08-26-2004).)

First off, yes, I know exactly how old this thread is. I'm posting this here for ease of understanding.

orcaloverbri9, on Aug 26 2004, 08:36 PM, said:

Hmm...I made a quick-ish plug-in to test it, and the results aren't wonderful. I didn't bother with the 0x0, it's using the Shuttle sprite. The ships are there, but the planets just won't fire. I even made one hostile and it didn't fire. I'll look more into this. Is it because of the "fire when provoked" flag?

EDIT: Well, I can see them not firing at me because I had a normal ship, but it doesn't explain them not firing at the enemy ship...
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It does work fairly well, when you get the planets to actually shoot.

My (nearly) complete guide to when spobs shoot:
A spob will fire its weapon at the closest target ship (see below), no matter what type (ship/planet) of weapon the spob has.

If the "fires when provoked" flag is not set,
A spob will fire at the player if either of the following conditions are true:

1. The player is disliked by the system's govt ( not the spob's!), or
2. The player's ship has an inherent combat government that is an enemy of the spob (isn't this fun , class? ).

A spob will only fire at an AI ship if the ship's dude's govt is an enemy of the spob (the attitude of the system has no effect).

A spob will never fire its weapon at another spob, even if the weapon is planet-type.

As far as I can tell from accidental testing, the "fires when provoked" flag should actually be called the "fires only when provoked". I think that it limits the spob to only firing when it (or possibly a ship of its govt) is shot at.
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With this, it's possible to get a spob to shoot at a ship.
For my test, I created two govts who mutually hated each other. The target planet/ship combo was govt 128, the firing planet was govt 129, and the system was neutral.

Both of the planets were armed with a planet-destroying weapon (with large blast area), while the ship was unarmed.
Eugene Chin's comment about the weapon's needing a high value in the ProxSafety field is still valid, however. If a planet is armed with a planet-destroying weapon, it will shoot itself if it can be destroyed :blink: .

Once all that was taken care of, I loaded the game, and watched planet 129 blow planet/ship 128 to smithereens (I love bööm 131!). It works fine.

Eugene Chin, on Aug 26 2004, 07:25 PM, said:

What about getting the ship to open fire? Ships told by mďsn's to destroy enemy spöbs try to get in close before firing their weapon, even if it has a long range. Will the planet-ship automatically fire it's gun at the planet?
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I wouldn't bother. It's easier to give the weapons to the spobs, and just have the ships there as targets.

Niiiiice, this will surely help Project Inferno.

Edwards, on Feb 22 2005, 11:13 PM, said:

As far as I can tell from accidental testing, the "fires when provoked" flag should actually be called the "fires only when provoked". I think that it limits the spob to only firing when it (or possibly a ship of its govt) is shot at.View Post

Nova Bible said:

0x0200 If the stellar has a weapon, it will only fire when provoked (i.e. only when the player is trying to dominate it)

Sweet. I was sure there was something wrong, with a topic mentioning me specifically. That hasn't happened for a while :).

Hmm... do you guys realise how silly interplanetary combat is? Since neither can retreat, they are basically within eachother's range all the time, ever. That means when you jump between systems, they fire xthousands of shots at eachother, and wait untill the moment you actually get there to kill eachother. Just seems kinda hokey to me.

Look, it's my story, I can work it into my plot however darned well I want. What if I had a mission to insert insurgents onto a station with a large anti-planetary gun? They take over the station and begin firing the gun at the planet. And that's just one example. There are literally ten more I could come up with right now if I really had to.

Neither I nor anyone else really needs anyone else to tell us how something's going to work or not work in a story we made up, without telling you how our story works. I asked about the possibilities implementing such an effect in the context of the capabilities of the engine, not storyline.

Thank you very much, and please don't tell me how to write my own storyline.

This post has been edited by UE_Research & Development: 24 February 2005 - 09:27 PM

Sorry, then, mate. Dont get into a huff.

Ok, heres an idea. add an invisible ship on top of both planets, planet type and immoble, of inherent govts such that they automatically attack eachother. When the ships die, you can use a Dxxx operator to destroy the coresponding planet in the onShipDone field, that is unless it works properly just to have the blast radius hurt the planet.

Sounds good. I'll try it sometime in the future :).

I've been mulling over this idea for a long time, but I might as well release it now.

Note: This works exceedingly well in the Gundam environment, but may be applicable to other purposes.

Basically, as you all should know ( :evil glare: ), the Gundam story lines primarily follow one guy in a mobile suit, that happens to be on board of a spaceship of sorts. Now, it just wouldn't be Gundam if you were merely to control the ship, and launch little mobile suits at your enemies... At least to start, you should have full control of a mobile suit, with your primary objective being to protect the ship.

Well, my solution thus far has been to either have a near-permanant mission-assigned escort of the capital ship, but that would be too easy. rather, I thought it would be more interesting to have the capital ship be a spöb.

Basically, you would be assigned missions from the ship, for the most part, and land and take off from one of the hangars, which would be a station overlay of another ship graphic. Where this comes into play is that the primary graphic spöb could then have additional overlays, basically battle platforms, and conceivably using visibly rotating turrets.

Now, I don't know if that made sense, or if it can be applied outside of a Gundam context, but it is, of course, a phenomenal idea in my mind.

~ SpacePirate

That would be neat, I think. Is it different spobs? Like you land on it in one system, and a message pops up that you <went into warp>* and then when you take off again from the spob it would be in a different system?

Thats the only way I could see for it to blast the crap out of planets. Sounds like a good idea. Id steal it if it were less incompatible with what I already have planned.

*translate from trek to gundam, of course.

This post has been edited by NebuchadnezzaR : 25 February 2005 - 12:21 PM

If you were simply trying to simulate a in-system war between two planets, you could simply have the planets firing at each other with no real damage, so nobody gets destroyed, though you could script it to replace the system after you left with another with only one planet, or something. I hope this makes some sort of coherent sense.

~Dimpf

Dimpfinator, on Feb 25 2005, 02:29 PM, said:

If you were simply trying to simulate a in-system war between two planets, you could simply have the planets firing at each other with no real damage, so nobody gets destroyed, though you could script it to replace the system after you left with another with only one planet, or something. I hope this makes some sort of coherent sense.

~Dimpf
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Well, I think I know what you mean, but I'd like you to know that I've managed to find the full version of your avatar.

Oh, and you could have a completely transparent image for the ship sprite, and make the ship sprite larger than the planet, then make the ship invincible. It'd be along the lines of what you'd said, except any other weapons that hit planets wouldn't be able to kill those two planets.

Of course, I could be wrong...

This post has been edited by Anaxagoras : 26 February 2005 - 02:31 PM

Anaxagoras, on Feb 26 2005, 11:23 AM, said:

Well, I think I know what you mean, but I'd like you to know that I've managed to find the full version of your avatar.
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Yeah. I found it too. LawnGnome had it on his webspace. Don't have the link handy though...

~Dimpf

Dimpfinator, on Feb 27 2005, 01:08 AM, said:

Don't have the link handy though...
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Tadaaa!