Funny you should say that 101181920, because we were just talking about weapons of the same name, but that's not how the work, unfortunately. The reason that outfits fire the same weapon is because they link within the outfit resource to the same wëap resource. For example, you could have (assuming they were all available) three different instances of "Wraith Cannon" in your secondary list, but they would not fire together.

While you can't get exactly this effect (having it as a secondary weapon makes it harder), here's what I would recommend. Render the image for the missiles, but render it with a lot of extra black space around it. Then, rather than have the missile in the center of the spin, have it placed in some corner. I may be wrong about this, but I believe that the AI always thinks that a particular object, be it a ship or a weapon, is placed in the very middle of that object's spďn. Therefore, if it tries to fire at the incoming missile, the shots will largely go right past it, through the black space in the spďn. You could even have the missile move around in the black a bit in the spin animation (so if it's facing 0° it's in the upper-right corner, but if it's facing 90° it's in the bottom).

Of course, this is a double-edged sword (if it even works). If fired at a smaller ship, there's a chance the missile will blow right past since the middle of the missile's spin will seek out the middle of the ship's, and the actual physical missile will miss it.

Like I said, I'm not even sure if that's where the AI aims for, but if it is, that would be a method of simulating what you described. As for actual decoys, I think that's impossible (I entertained the same notion a while ago but never found a way to do it, either).

Told you I was wrong. But I noticed another problem with your idea: how your ship fires it. I think that the ship will always fire from the middle of the spin, meaning that the missile is going to be somewhere off to the side of your ship.

@0101181920, on Jun 27 2008, 11:41 PM, said in I need some help please:

Told you I was wrong. But I noticed another problem with your idea: how your ship fires it. I think that the ship will always fire from the middle of the spin, meaning that the missile is going to be somewhere off to the side of your ship.

True. Maybe if the black region is small enough and you set the missile to fire from the ship's center, that could be managed.

No, I don't think so. It would appear to be firing on the wing of the ship, but it all depends on the size of the ship. On a Viper, it would probably be way out to the side, but on a Fed Destroyer, it would be perfect. And if you make it small enough so it'll make sense on all ships, it won't help at all, because of the innaccuracy on the defense turrets. QLBT has 10 degrees, Storm Chaingun has 20. Because of that, it'll have enough spray to hit in a fair radius around the intended target, destroying a missile even if it's a bit away from the target point. This might be an un-solvable problem.

Isn't there some field that you can use to make a weapon graphic start one way and then change?

Technically, yes. I think you're talking about the option to have it constantly rotate the sprite. There's a problem with that idea, though: it won't be able to over all change the sprite. It'll switch it to the next frame, and the next, with no restrictions. It'll go through the whole sequence. And you can't just make a bunch of extra frames in between all of the standard animation, because then it'll access those instead. Darn it, I can think it, but I can't explain it.

I can't either.

However, if you wanted to make it a really bloody wacky weapon and ditch the missile aspect (it would need to be radially symmetrical for this to look right (think Krypt pod)) is just make the turn animation dance around in weird patters, or even just a circle, and then have it spin continuously. Of course, you'll end up with it coming out of random spots on the ship unless you made it start in the middle of the black space and checked the "always start on first frame" box, but still, that would be pretty awesome.

Hmm...sounds like for the most part this weapon is uncodeable. I suppose I could make the missile sprite be three missiles crisscrossing eachother, but then I have no bloody idea how in practice it'd be more than a fancy looking missile with some lame science behind it. xD

You could just change it to a bunch of small micro-missiles that swarm so it's harder to shoot them. Shotguns are much easier to do.

Yeah.... I know. But its such a cool idea. Oh well. New question: can I make outfits that trigger some sort of timer (probably those darned crons I still have no idea how to use) so that when the timer expires the outfit itself (that started the event) will dissappear and outfit(s) will become available because of the cron it triggered? I want to make a planet with a technologies developer but to purchase anything made by them you need to do a ) missions, or b ) "invest in research fields", paying the company substantial ammounts of cash in order to fund them in their production of related outfit technologies.

Example: Outfitter contains a few average outfits (solar panels, maps, etc...) as well as some rarer ones (vectored thrust, thorium reactors, etc...) , but the main focus is the research outfits that are sold immediately after purchase and begin a cron to release related outfits into the spobs special technology outfit regulator number. So you say spend 1.6 mil on cold fusion research outfit, and it triggers a cron of ___ number of days where it has released cold fusion II outfit with a description somewhat like a scientific journal: "progress is slow. we have had several problems with....blah blah blah" and continue with the cron releasing an outfit which if bought hides the first and begins the next, etc etc until eventually you have a purchaseable outfit of immense usefulness.

This post has been edited by Match : 28 June 2008 - 02:07 AM

Sounds familiar... :laugh:

But yeah, that would be really easy. Just make the outfit remove itself after purchase and make it set a bit that 1) kicks off the research crön and 2) makes that particular outfit unavailable. Then it's just a matter of writing the missions that tell you the progress. Same thing goes for missions.

Cröns are really easy. For what you're doing, all you'll need to put in is random chance (which you'll want at 100%), enable on (done just like a mission's availability string), and then what bits to set at what times and duration. It's pretty much just a mission with many fewer fields and a couple of timers.

If you want more specific information, feel free to send me a PM. I spent a lot of time getting used to cröns in Anathema. (Not to volunteer anybody else's help, but) Pace is also very experienced with cröns.

Thank you Archon, I may when it isn't 12 in the morning and I haven't worked a 10 hour day. xD My brain is fried. But I am curious, is there something similar to what I'm suggesting in Anathema, or did I miss your irony altogether?

Yeah, that's somewhat of a huge part of the theme... After you're director of the Bearou (can't spell it for the life of me), you can choose how to spend funding, including weapons research, espionage, and directing it into your own pocket (want an extra million credits? Take it from the government.) Good job explaining that, Archon, I was trying to, but I can't explain that sort of thing for the life of me.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 28 June 2008 - 02:30 AM

Don't worry, I spelled Bureau wrong every time in the Teaser before I ran the whole thing through a spell-checker. That would have been embarrassing.

I do like the approach of spending your own money for research, but with how easy it is to get money in Nova, I'd suggest that you also put another constraint on development (e.g. you can only do one research every 6 months, or some lock you out of others). Or you could do it MOO2 style and have a few options under the same category and decide which avenue to explore (e.g. Anti-Matter Torpedoes, Anti-Matter Bombs, or Anti-Matter Drive). I'm just afraid that the player-driven research would become a moot point if a few million credits were the only factor. Also, you may want to do something to address the fact that research is likely somewhat more expensive than a Sigma upgrade. Perhaps the player is a big-name investor and where {g "he" "she"} places {g "his" "her"} money, suddenly becomes the next big thing. Or something to that effect.

Very good idea though; I like the approach. And doing it via outfits is certainly a good way of going about it.

This post has been edited by Archon : 28 June 2008 - 04:04 PM

Alright some new frustrations I need some help with: oddly, I don't ever see the thorium reactor or emp torpedo and tube ANYWHERE anymore.... Whats up I wonder? Is there a limit to how many outfits an outfitter can hold? I know they have the exact same outfit codes as they did in vanilla EV Nova because I checked against the core file backup I did before I started making plugs. Maybe I'm just ignorant and I'm not doing what triggers the release of these outfits? I have no idea.... I thought that at least in the case of the thorium reactor it just shows up after a set ammount of time like the hellhounds do.

Secondly, I've decided I want to make the polaran capacitor pulse laser a front quadrant turret but I know for that I need to make the beam a rled graphic and point the graphic field at the appropriate corresponding spin. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to make a sprite sheet, much less it's mask. So how might I go about doing it? Screenshot the beam from ingame and then....? I'm most confused about how to make a mask really... Or how much grey space should be in between the rotated weapon graphics on the sprite sheet itself.

Actually, I do have one more question: I made a point defense weapon that is quite powerful but since it's based on a weapon (yes, I have made a new weapon for it, changing most of the stats needed to make it a good point defense weapon) that has far more range than PD weapons ingame do, it starts shooting at missiles and ships that aren't even on screen yet... How do I tell it how many pixels within my ship the target has to be before it starts firing off?

This post has been edited by Match : 03 July 2008 - 12:59 PM

@match, on Jul 3 2008, 10:25 AM, said in I need some help please:

Alright some new frustrations I need some help with: oddly, I don't ever see the thorium reactor or emp torpedo and tube ANYWHERE anymore.... Whats up I wonder? Is there a limit to how many outfits an outfitter can hold? I know they have the exact same outfit codes as they did in vanilla EV Nova because I checked against the core file backup I did before I started making plugs. Maybe I'm just ignorant and I'm not doing what triggers the release of these outfits? I have no idea.... I thought that at least in the case of the thorium reactor it just shows up after a set ammount of time like the hellhounds do.

Unless you modified the data files, the Thorium Reactor should only appear during the Federation storyline. The EMP Torpedoes and the Tube should appear at Viking and Harbor.

Actually, all you need to do to make the CPL into a front-quadrant turret is 1) change the weapon type from "beam" to "turreted beam" and 2) check "has blind spot - sides" and "has blind spot - rear." Aside from the firing arc, beams and beam turrets function identically. The one minor bug I've found with >360-degree beam turrets is that if their count is greater than one, if they fire and then turn, the beam will stay locked on to the target until the end of its duration (even if that makes the beam fire in the blind spot).

(Question: why on earth would you need to make the CPL more powerful??? :blink: )

For the final question, a weapon's range calculation varies depending on what type of weapon it is. For beams, the range is exactly as it appears in the "beam length" field. For everything else, it is calculated by multiplying the weapon's count by its speed and then dividing by 1,000. So if you want a non-beam weapon to have the same speed but only half range, just halve the count value.

To be answerful (I apologize for the erratic nature of my answers):

Thats odd, the thorium reactor always appeared to me when I played the original nova about the same time hellhounds came through regardless of faction choice. Actually, they appeared before I had done any missions for any faction... But nonetheless, question answered. Thank you.

Ah, the CPL in my current build IS indeed using the trick you describe already. The advantage of making it a front quadrant turret rather than a turreted beam with side and rear blind spots is that it will fire foward by default when not locked onto a target (which turretted beams do not do) and it has a slimmer tracking arc than a blind spot boxed turret. I don't want full 180 degree tracking field, just slight foward tracking.

Indeed you are right Archon, the CPL is deadly. The main reason in me doing this is the rather frustrating blind delta the CPL has when mounted on a Polaran Raven. Due to the positioning of the beam exit points in a considerable advance of pixels in front of the ship, there is a blind diamond formed behind the weapon glow triangle and the mandibles sweeping into a shallow curve of the body. Due mainly to the Raven's sheer size, and the fact it is inertialess, it is VERY difficult to hit a target that can stay behind the weapon glow of this Polaran behemoth. I'm actually hoping to make an unbuyable CPL variant that uses the front quadrant turret system JUST to be mounted stock on the Raven due to its targetting weakness combined with the fact the pulse laser is a primary weapon and thus drains valuable energy should you have turretted biorelay lasers onboard.

Finally, what exactly do you mean by count...? The number of the weapon I have on board?

In the wëap resource, "Count" refers to the number of frames that the shot stays in play before expiring (with one frame being equal to 1/30th of a second).

As for the non-beam CPL, there's no way to do it. There are ways to simulate the effect, but you can not make a non-beam weapon look or act like a beam. In my humble opinion, you're better off just going with what you already have and assume that people won't really mind having to target someone before their weapon fires. Besides, adding a 90° firing arc won't make the weapon hit things in the area between the mandibles anyways; it would need to fire at a 90° backward arc to do that. Plus, if part of the point is to make it not drain your energy when it isn't needed, doesn't making it fire when it won't hit contrary to the original intent?

Finally, while the Raven is certainly not without weaknesses, it is my personal opinion that it's fine as it is. Especially when you take the Mantas and Multi-Torps into account.

The Raven's definitely not lacking firepower. It's got that big area where it doesn't hit on purpose, so that it isn't too OP. IMO, it doesn't need buffing. Wow, did I just use three forum/AIM abbreviations/words in two sentences? NOOOOOO!