Author Topic: Tertiary weapons idea thread!  (Read 6308 times)

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Offline Shivan Hunter

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Tertiary weapons idea thread!
This has been mentioned before a few times- the idea of a tertiary "weapons" system, separate from primaries or secondaries. They would be "weapons" only in the sense that they are loaded in the weapons loadout screen. These modules would use SEXPs (and maybe scripting but sexps ftw) to alter certain characteristics of your fighter. (Battuta, feel free to chime in with how these could be used in capship command! I'm sure you have some excellent ideas on that.)

I'm going to throw a few ideas out there, and I'd like this to become an idea thread for tertiary weapons (or "modules", or whatever) for when they're implemented. We have some archetypal primaries and secondaries we all rely on, so we might as well establish archetypal modules as well.

One last thing, try not to think about how it will be done in FRED. SEXPs can do almost anything as some recent mods have pointed out. I thought some of my ideas would be difficult until I realized you could swap out fighter classes at the beginning of the mission, which opens up a host of possibilities.

Fighter healing: Possibly the most trivial one to implement. If this is equipped, your fighter heals a percentage point every 1 or 2 seconds, possibly up to a maximum.

Speed augmentation: Increases your max speed and maybe acceleration by a factor of about 1.25 to 1.5.

Afterburner capacity: Increases your afterburner capacity or recharge rate by a similar factor. Might also upgrade weapon energy for a general "upgraded reactor" module.

Secondary capacity: Increases the capacity of one or all secondary banks by a factor of about 1.5 to 2.

Weapon overload: Increases power (damage) of weapons. Possibly also increases energy consumed. Possibly temporary: increases weapons by a factor of 4 or 5 which then burn out for a while. Maybe one-time-use or with a long cooldown time before you can use it again.

AWACS: increases your sensor range in a nebula or other hostile conditions, or hell, maybe just gives your fighter the "awacs" flag.

Electronic warfare suite: A complicated one. Allows stuff like sensor or beam jamming akin to that seen in WiH, but less powerful. Obviously not always on: controlled through a spellcasting system, or maybe coming out of weapon energy until it's switched off.

Gun turret: Swaps out your fighter class for one with a gorram turret bolted to the top. Yes, for fighters as well as bombers. Um... the turret would need to actually be useful, not like the ones we normally deal with.

Those are just some basic ones, since I'm tired atm. There are all sorts of other possibilities. Remember by swapping out the ship class of your fighter you can change ANYTHING found in ships.tbl.

 

Offline 666maslo666

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Good idea, something like abilities in Sins :)

More ideas:
Sabotage subsystem, Shield anihillator pulse, Shield restore, Telepathic attack (temporary lowers target AI to lowest class), Telepathic conversion (changes target IFF), Repair bots (as healing, but can be used on other friendly targets), Subspace inhibitor field projector (temporary makes target unable to jump), Tactical microjump (changes player position coordinates in the viewing direction + 5000 m, and adds jump effect).

Customizing turret weapons before mission would be also very cool :)
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Offline Black Wolf

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
I like the tactical microjump idea. I'd also add some kind of hyper afterburner module, and a sniper type gun (narrows down the fov, high damage, long refire rate).
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
War in Heaven R2 has an equipment system implemented, and most of the modules from the first post are already in-game in one form or another. The only thing to note is that they replace a primary or secondary weapon instead of going in their own slots - however, it's easy enough to have a bank on a ship which only accepts equipment items.

I'll post details on how they work so other mods can take them.

Here's the original thread where the idea was first publicized.

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
as far as i know this is actually supported but you have to use scripting to defined the behavior, i haven't had a chance to play with it yet.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
as far as i know this is actually supported but you have to use scripting to defined the behavior, i haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

What is actually supported?

A third weapon slot (not primaries or secondaries), or simply equippable weapons in primary/secondary slots that behave in these fashions? Because yes, the latter is definitely supported, the former would be cool.

 

Offline JGZinv

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Would be nice to be able set a wep flag or make a separate slot type. Ideally bind a flag to a generic subsystem "equipment" type, that we could
setup in PCS2. Dedicated equipment slots is how Tach did it... although the ship table in that game it was essentially a "no mount" list and whatever
wasn't listed you could equip. A lot of the ideas mentioned we've had in mind for Fringe since 06 in one form or another.

The problem with equipment type add-ons... is then you start seeing people in multi use one particular setup as "the best" and everyone else has to be taught/told
how to setup their ship. I can't begin to explain how many hundreds of new players I've had to run through the "intro speech" because they waltz into multi with a stock
un-setup fighter. When you're missing boosters, lateral thrust, extra shield/ammo/energy reserves, and nebula radar... you might as well just park and wait to explode.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Just add a primary or secondary weapon slot to the ship that only accepts the equipment items.

Voila, tertiary equipment.

 

Offline JGZinv

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Yeah but you're talking about something that sits in the HUDs weapons block then and would be able to be activated by a player.
Two issues with that:

1. It looks rather poor to do it that way rather than have it's own section. I'm not sure if the latest HUD code can do that or not.
You'd have to somehow make a gauge that displays some of the weapon slots but not others. It'd be great if that did work though.
The way the weapons block cycles & links items is also a problem (at least for our mod particularly).

2. It's not an always on type effect for some equipment and not others. Like say you wanted a 25% shield increase all the time, instead of
having to trigger the equipment. You could almost have two groups, passive equip' (non interactive items that always produce effect X) and active equip'
(requires some input from the player to produce an effect). It boils down to triggers.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Passive equip is easy. Most of the equipment we have implemented is passive rather than triggered.

 

Offline Shivan Hunter

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
@JGZInv: WiH and WoD r2's are already using these, so I assume there's an elegant, non-interface-screw way of doing this even without a proper implementation.

Sabotage subsystem, Shield anihillator pulse, Shield restore, Telepathic attack (temporary lowers target AI to lowest class), Telepathic conversion (changes target IFF), Repair bots (as healing, but can be used on other friendly targets), Subspace inhibitor field projector (temporary makes target unable to jump), Tactical microjump (changes player position coordinates in the viewing direction + 5000 m, and adds jump effect).

Customizing turret weapons before mission would be also very cool :)

Sabotage subsystem and Shield annihilator pulse sound too much like weapons- if those are available, why would I have weapons that do the same thing? But they could be useful.

Shield restore is a good one.

Telepathic attack and telepathic conversion seem sort of like something the electronic warfare suite could do to drones or turrets, but some ability to affect normal ships would be interesting as well.

Repair bots sounds nice. Deploy them, maybe they heal any fighter within 200m at a steady rate.

Subspace inhibitors seem like they'd break missions unless they could only affect ships below cruiser or freighter size. Could be doable with a well-designed mission that considers it though.

Tactical microjump.. hmm. I actually have an idea for an FTL system, not related to FSish in-system jumps. that allows travel at long distances but with not much precision. Once you entered it, most of the screen would look like a HUD showing icons for ship locations and planet orbits, and you'd move around sort of like in that ME2 thingy, then exit at roughly your new position. I dunno how either it or tactical microjumps would work as a module though since it seems like a mission based on it would require it.

A couple more ideas I had:

Control assault drones: If a friendly capship releases a wing of assault drones to assist, you could take control of the wing leader and give orders to the rest of the drones. The drones would be faster and more powerful than your fighter but much weaker, so you can use them temporarily to great effect but they go down quick. This would leave your own fighter a sitting duck, though; maybe the effect would have to be canceled automatically as soon as you take damage.

Proximity mines: Yes, a blatantly offensive one, I know, but not necessarily one that can be easily replicated using primaries or secondaries. Would drop mines (kamikaze ships with a mine model, maybe the countermeasure model if one is not available) that would home in on any enemy ships within 300 meters or so. (I've been wanting this in FS since I last played Descent)

Stealth: Hides your ship from enemy sensors until you get within 500m of an enemy ship. Works the first time, can be activated again once you evade with limited probability of success.

EMP reduction: Reduces the effect of EMP from weapons and/or nebulae storms.

 

Offline Droid803

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Isn't there a lot of ship class swapping with a lot of these?
That's...a bit messy modpack wise (a billion Ship#WHATEVER's), and it quickly becomes a headache to spread the equipment around.

I know that for WoD2, Spoon chose to only allow the "equipment" on one ship (so far at least).

this is the primary thing in the way IMO, I'd like to hear solutions if there are any...
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Yeah, I'd prefer to stick to stuff that doesn't require ship class swaps.

 

Offline Shivan Hunter

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
It would get messy when you have several versions of each ship. Do ship templates work? You'd still have a crapload of ships but it'd save space in the tbl, and in FRED if you make the variants non-placeable.

If there's an easier way to change stuff like max speed, afterburner capacity, etc, using SEXPs only it would be much more elegant. An alternate class would still be necessary for some of them like the turret one, of course.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
Instead of boosting afterburner capacity, afterburner enhancing equipment will refill afterburners incrementally when they're below full, effectively extending the length of one long burst.

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
as far as i know this is actually supported but you have to use scripting to defined the behavior, i haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

What is actually supported?

A third weapon slot (not primaries or secondaries), or simply equippable weapons in primary/secondary slots that behave in these fashions? Because yes, the latter is definitely supported, the former would be cool.

like i said, i havent messed around with it yet. im also not 100% sure its been committed.

seems a test build exists
« Last Edit: April 28, 2011, 03:32:04 pm by Nuke »
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Offline Trivial Psychic

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
The most obvious suggestion: Cloaking device.

I had at one point suggested that tertiaries (if fully implemented) could possibly be made to completely replace default subsystems.  For example, let's say you are during Unification War era, and you are flying a certain fighter and you only have the option to use simple sensors, but suddenly your side gets access to target locking sensors, so you can swap out the old unit for the new one, but it has a greater energy consumption.  Then you get improved navigation systems that allow self-jumping fighters so you can end the mission by jumping out rather than having to fly back to your capital ship.  Then you get engines that have afterburners so you can swap them out.  You get the idea.
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Offline headdie

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
I had at one point suggested that tertiaries (if fully implemented) could possibly be made to completely replace default subsystems.  For example, let's say you are during Unification War era, and you are flying a certain fighter and you only have the option to use simple sensors, but suddenly your side gets access to target locking sensors, so you can swap out the old unit for the new one, but it has a greater energy consumption.  Then you get improved navigation systems that allow self-jumping fighters so you can end the mission by jumping out rather than having to fly back to your capital ship.  Then you get engines that have afterburners so you can swap them out.  You get the idea.

This would be nice
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Offline Destiny

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
For me, definitely I'd love to strap a hugeass nuclear missile that's almost as long as my fighter, under my fighter. If not...a space-Tomahawk cruise missile...gah, what am I saying.

If not, maybe a disposable or attached beam cannon, lore-wise, with it's generator and capacitors and whatnot attached. You won't be firing BFReds out of it, maybe...a weaker SGreen.

Although, the Electronics Warfare suite suits my taste. I want my GTF Aurora to be able to do xxx. And xxx. Vector in SSMs without using TAG-Cs. Maybe even jam a bit of radar, making things fuzzy or prevent players from pressing T and bringing me up on the HUD.

Oh, a camera/scope with variable zoom for weapons with 3k~ range, unaffected by recoil flags.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Tertiary weapons idea thread!
For me, definitely I'd love to strap a hugeass nuclear missile that's almost as long as my fighter, under my fighter. If not...a space-Tomahawk cruise missile...gah, what am I saying.

Those are weapons. Weapons like the Sledgehammer and Jackhammer in BP2 already do that.

Quote
If not, maybe a disposable or attached beam cannon, lore-wise, with it's generator and capacitors and whatnot attached. You won't be firing BFReds out of it, maybe...a weaker SGreen.

Weapon, not equipment.