can this be done?

I was wondering if asteroids could cause damage, say, if you ran into them. It would make for a cool plug if smaller ships had to avoid asteroids but larger ships had a constantly firing weapon that destroys them at zero range... so it looks like they just run them over. (or if the damage is inconsequential to larger vessels.)

How would AI handle this? Could you make them avoid asteroids, or only attack ones that are nearby without actually actively seeking them out? Could a ship deploy asteroid-mining fighters that are set to "defend" but shoot asteroids that come near, to give the appearance of clearing the path?
I would have no jump routes out of systems with asteroids, use hypergates instead. This makes more sense than having ships get destroyed each time they jump.

Also, could a tractor beam manipulate the path of an asteroid, so you could say, launch one into a ship?

next set of questions:
If you have fighters with zero speed (deployable turrets), would it be very hard to recall them into the bay, or would you just have to hover over them and it should work just as easily as boarding a ship?

How would you explain their ability to travel with you during jumps? Or is there a way to make them stay behind?
I'm no expert, but say they always fired a weapon that was invisible and did zero damage, but when the weapon was released it somehow damaged the ship itself, making it explode. When it tried to jump, it would instead destroy itself, and I could explain this away as a "self destruct feature" for when the player has to make an emergency getaway. A final effort to save the commander.

Please tell me which if any of these ideas are possible. I will have systems separated by graphic asteroid belts that you cant jump through because they can't be navigated, but then eventually you will unlock hypergates that let you pass through them, to new governments, etc. But it would be nice to find some way of adding game elements related to that.

I seem to remember someone releasing a plug that caused the player to run into asteroids... I really can't remember much beyond that.

As for escorts, the project I am working on has a deployable "fighter" with 0 speed, 0 acceleration, and 0 fuel, armed with nothing but a PD weapon (which sounds somewhat like what you're after). It doesn't stay in formation with me or follow me in hyperspace, but I lose it when I jump out of the system.

QUOTE (Crusader Alpha @ May 16 2010, 07:48 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As for escorts, the project I am working on has a deployable "fighter" with 0 speed, 0 acceleration, and 0 fuel, armed with nothing but a PD weapon (which sounds somewhat like what you're after). It doesn't stay in formation with me or follow me in hyperspace, but I lose it when I jump out of the system.

That's great! I want them to stay behind. So you just lose them automatically, nothing special?
Is it easy enough to return them to the hangar when you hover over them, or is it a pain?

I'm pretty sure PlugPack had something like this. It's not too hard to pick them up. Press the return key and they'll automatically go in your bay if you fly over them, unless you give them another order.

Correct. Simply order them to return and fly over. How easy or difficult it is depends on the size of your ship; the smaller your ship is, the closer you need to get for them to be picked up.

I am unsure on the prospect of asteroids that can hit you...

On that, Polycon had asteriod ships that were untargettable and zapped you with pretty powerful lasers. I think their in the resoucres under Draconen Mine... though it's been forever since I looked.

Oh well, the asteroid thing isn't too important.

one other thing though. I want there to be a "floating space debris" asteroid, in different flavors, one of which, would explode rather nicely when destroyed, like a fuel tank or fusion reactor. Can asteroid explosions be fireball types and cause damage? Or are they just limited to little colored dots and cargo?

The space debris roids will be awesome. You can collect weird things from them to sell. And the sub-roids will just look like twisted metal.

QUOTE (Insomniac @ May 16 2010, 04:05 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh well, the asteroid thing isn't too important.

one other thing though. I want there to be a "floating space debris" asteroid, in different flavors, one of which, would explode rather nicely when destroyed, like a fuel tank or fusion reactor. Can asteroid explosions be fireball types and cause damage? Or are they just limited to little colored dots and cargo?

The space debris roids will be awesome. You can collect weird things from them to sell. And the sub-roids will just look like twisted metal.

If you look at the Nova bible, you'll find that asteroid appearance and properties are controlled by the ROID resource. The ROID resource contains a field for a BOOM resource, so yes, you can have a particular explosion occur. It's been done multiple times, in fact.

If you want to see a good use of ROIDs as space debris, play Polycon and go to the N 1 and N 8 Systems, a couple jumps southwest of Polycon City. I plan to do a similar thing in EVN:UGF.

You can also use ROIDs for nebular gas clouds (seen in Polycon and Starfleet Adventures ).

Unfortunately, I know of no way for asteroid explosions to do damage. An exploding starship's damage is controlled by the mass field in the SHIP resource, but the ROID resource's mass field doesn't do that. Mainly it controls the asteroid's inertia.

This post has been edited by StarSword : 16 May 2010 - 03:50 PM

I believe it was Guy who made an experimental plug-in who made a asteroid collisions plug-in. I also believe he used an invisible ship with a weapon that had the "causes 10x damage to asteroids" and "passes over asteroids" flags set. The former caused the ships to use it in an attempt to mine asteroids, while the latter prevents it from doing so successfully.