[JGZinv]

So ok I've got fighters that have such n' such amount of hitpoints and shield
values, and I have weapons values for damage they inflict.

The result is that instead of blowing up at the prescribed number of hits,
I'm seeing the ships die with an incorrect number of hits. Very strange since math doesn't lie.

A ship example:

$Shields:            38500
$Hitpoints:         26000  

No types of armor is specified.

Most of a missile entry for one such malfunctioning weapon:

Code: [Select]

$Model File: swarm.pof
$Mass: 0.1
$Velocity: 173.825
$Fire Wait: 0.6
$Damage: 17000
$Blast Force: 0.2
$Inner Radius: 10.0
$Outer Radius: 20.0
$Shockwave Speed: 0                                        
$Armor Factor: 1.0
$Shield Factor: 0.703117647
$Subsystem Factor: 0.35
$Lifetime: 19.0
$Energy Consumed: 0.0
$Cargo Size: 1.0
$Homing: YES
+Type: ASPECT
+Turn Time: .50
+Min Lock Time: 2.0
+Lock Pixels/Sec: 63              
+Catch-up Pixels/Sec: 100
+Catch-up Penalty: 30
$LaunchSnd: 172                                    
$ImpactSnd: 88                                    
$FlyBySnd: -1
$Rearm Rate: 1.0
$Flags: ( "Corkscrew" "in tech database" "player allowed" "lockarm" )            
$Trail:
+Start Width:           0.25                                      
+End Width:             0.25                                      
+Start Alpha: 1.0
+End Alpha: 0.0
+Max Life:             1.0                                  
+Bitmap: swarm1
$Icon: MSLSWARM
$Anim: swarm
$Impact Explosion: ExpMissileHit1
$Impact Explosion Radius: 5.0
$Corkscrew:
+Num Fired: 4
+Radius: 1.25
+Fire Delay: 0
+Counter rotate: 1
+Twist: 3
This takes 9 salvos of 3 or 2 missiles (should be 4 but why it doesn't show up..?) to kill the ship.

11953 (shield) and 17000 (hull) damage should mean it takes 3.22 hits for the shield
and 1.52 hits for the hull. So roughly figure 5 salvos to kill the ship.

Here's another weapon:

Code: [Select]

$Tech Model: SunspotMissile.pof
$Model File: SunspotMissile.pof
$Mass: 0.1
$Velocity: 153.375
$Fire Wait: 1.0
$Damage: 14000
$Blast Force: 0.2
$Inner Radius: 10.0
$Outer Radius: 20.0
$Shockwave Speed: 0
$Armor Factor: 1.0
$Shield Factor: 0.710928571
$Subsystem Factor: 0.35
$Lifetime: 30.31784841
$Energy Consumed: 0.0
$Cargo Size: 2.0
$Homing: YES
+Type: ASPECT
+Turn Time: 0.4
+Min Lock Time: 0.5
+Lock Pixels/Sec: 70                                    
+Catch-up Pixels/Sec: 100
+Catch-up Penalty: 30
$LaunchSnd: 192                                  
$ImpactSnd: 88                                    
$FlyBySnd: -1
$Rearm Rate: 2.0
$Flags: ( "in tech database" "player allowed" )
$Trail:
+Start Width:   0.25                                    
+End Width:             0.5                                    
+Start Alpha: 1.0
+End Alpha: 0.0
+Max Life:             2.5
+Bitmap: sunspottrail
$Icon: MSLHEAVY
$Anim: sunspot
$Impact Explosion: ExpMissileHit1
$Impact Explosion Radius: 7.0

This takes only two hits to kill the same ship.

Should be 3.86 (S) and 1.85 (H) so figure...  it should be roughly 6 shots.


This isn't limited to one ship, it's similar for several others.
Any ideas?

[ssmit132]

Maybe because a shield quarter is depleted? I don't know how the shield hitpoints are distributed between quarters, so it could be that. It can also be that the missiles are applying hull damage even if the shield hasn't been depleted yet.

[Sushi]

It can also be that the missiles are applying hull damage even if the shield hasn't been depleted yet.

This, I think.

It's not uncommon for weapons to partially penetrate shields and damage the hull directly even when they're at full strength. This especially happens with high-speed weapons. I'm not sure if this effect is intentional or not.

[Stormkeeper]

I think it is. Certaintly seems more realistic.

[Droid803]

Shields are divided by 4 due to there being 4 quadrants. Any damage that does more than one quandrant worth will deplete that quadrant and essentially bleed over to the hull.

Also, sometimes damage bleeds over with the shield not being depleted at all. That might be an issue with the shield mesh (the Seraphim had this problem - a gaping hole at the front), or high weapon velocity.

[JGZinv]

Well the shield mesh I know is fine, made that myself.

The high speed part is necessary since we're converting over from Tachyon which
used large distances and mammoth structures.

So what's my recourse to fix this? Pump up the shields by some factor?

Originally Tachyon used a 2 quadrant system, front and rear, with all the same transfer
and smart shield capabilities. Which I don't have smart shields enabled btw.
So all the hull, shield, and dmg values are a carry over.

[Spoon]

shield mesh problems can be 'fixed' with a surface shield flag

[JGZinv]

Shield mesh does not contain holes, is properly formed, etc.

Would prefer to use standard style shields if at all possible.
Original game only used surface shields on cap ships.

[Stormkeeper]

Well, it does seem like the high velocity of your weapons is causing the spill over. Since Tachyon uses a 2 quadrant system that would split a shield value of 10 5/5, right? But in FS it would be 2.5/2.5/2.5/2.5. Maybe doubling your shield value might solve the problem?

Though I don't think its a long term solution, because if you enable smart shields, a wily player would simple keep shunting shields around.

[JGZinv]

Yeah I'll try to give that a shot. Don't have much choice.

I have to ask the question though, why don't we have some kind of setting to
control the spill over? Seems rather necessary if you're going to be modifying
many different weapons. It's not something you can account for numerically
in order to predict how it'll react.

I've only got 28 fighter based weapons from Tachyon, an additional 2 are cap based.
This is before we do any expansion over and above the original game's arsenal.
Our add on's will probably be around 10-15 or so once we get going.

[General Battuta]

I've always been curious about Tachyon's capship weapons. I recall the capships kind of sucking, but they looked really pretty. Didn't they have FS2-style beam weapons, but they hardly ever got used?

[Commander Zane]

Last I remember capital ships (GalSpan) had nothing but Deimos Heavy Lasers up the ass, and nothing else at all.
That weapon is lethal as all hell, and the Destroyer could mess up a ton of ships.

[Stormkeeper]

I have to ask the question though, why don't we have some kind of setting to
control the spill over?

Feature request, right there.

[JGZinv]

I've always been curious about Tachyon's capship weapons. I recall the capships kind of sucking, but they looked really pretty. Didn't they have FS2-style beam weapons, but they hardly ever got used?

Tachyon caps have beams for cap on cap fights... turbolaser esque batteries for anti fighter.
Each battery was very similar to a deimos shot, but the weapon model was slightly different.

Cap beams were even fitted to fighters using some hex hacking, which are one hit kills with infinite range.

I'm sorry that I don't share your sentiment on their quality though. Tach had no ability to account for lats, and
the spacing was such that you could easily disable the weapons and shield plants.  Only en mass were they any threat
and most vets learned how to avoid even the large groups.

I made at least one mission on the fringe of a rotating black hole, with the purpose being just to get as much laser fire going
as possible. Wasn't bad... but we hope to do much greater things using FSO.

Tachyon was unfinished, the devs have said as much to us directly. It was essentially kicked out the door long before it was near completion, a project that wasn't really cared for in the first place by the powers that be. It was the baby of the dev team, and it was abandoned as the devs had to split for greener pastures. So we're picking up the pieces 10 years later.


Anyway... I think a feature request is on order indeed,

[Stormkeeper]

Wanna do it? Or I do it and credit it to you, which comes to the same thing.

[JGZinv]

Look in the scp section... made already.

I'm not much for who gets credit, I am more concerned with solutions. 

[Akalabeth Angel]

Shield mesh does not contain holes, is properly formed, etc.

Would prefer to use standard style shields if at all possible.
Original game only used surface shields on cap ships.

My advice to you would be just go with what feels right. People aren't going to know or care about the numbers behind the game, just as long as the game itself feels like a port from Tachyon to Freespace. People are more inclined to think "hey those fighters are too weak" as opposed to "hey that thing needs 50 more hitpoints".

[JGZinv]

Perhaps, but I need a base line too.

Technically the weapons system in Tachyon for registering damage is impossible to deal with.
It calculates damage based on what ship fired the weapon, how fast the weapon is going, what ship
was hit with the weapon, what part of the ship was hit, how fast the ships were going for inertia, supposedly
it get's a chance calculation to bypass the shield, and according to the devs... they also wanted to implement
armor types but probably didn't get the chance. Bottom line is that each ship will deal different damage based
one what is being hit and who's shooting, even if it's the same rocket...

So I ended up getting the only game guide in existence which has stock damage and DPS numbers for all weapons
since I can't access the weapons values (buried in the exe somewhere). They "are" accurate when compared in game though.


Tachyon was an odd beast, some things worked very well and we have to be careful not to upset the balance.
Others were a disaster that needs a major overhaul.

There's a lot of people that don't actively play, but have Tach in their veins.

This last week I was comparing side by sides of one ship and noticed a couple things were different with our version.
The next day I got into an IM conversation with a guy who's not played in years, used to be a clan leader. Showed him
only the new picture instead of the comparison - he picked out like 7 things different and he was completely accurate.

So yeah, I'm sitting here with stopwatches, two computers side by side, making sure it's all perfect.

[Wanderer]

What exactly are you requesting?

Both 2 segment shields and per segment shield strengths are already doable


If you are getting excess amount of damage please note that damage and shockwave damage are applied separately.

[JGZinv]

If you came from the other thread, in the SCP section, I'm asking for some way of either
controlling the damage bleed over from high velocity weapons, or a on/off switch.

As is there is no way to account for how it'll react, and it's making creation of weapons
very difficult when trying to calculate damage it will inflict.


*Edit on a side note I'd like to hear how 2 segment shields are possible. Although it figures
that I "just" did remake all 30 some odd shield icons with 4 segments.