[Nuke]

i want a tag that allows you to fire several shots in rapid sucsession and then cuts out for a set period of time, kinda like the way an m-16 works. of course the time between vollys is tweakable.

[Bobboau]

you mean getting the swarm to work on primaries

[Pegasus V]

Hey, that sounds like a good idea. I've been wanting that feature for some weapon mods I've wanted to make for he last 5 years.
Do you mean like how the Defiant in Star Trek fires its pulse phasers?

[Nuke]

now that you mention the swarm effect, can you tweak it to let us set the time between each missile's launch.

for the supression tag the fire wait works as normal, then you specify the max number of shots that you can fire before you have to let the guns cool off (or recharge) and the max time before the gun lets you fire again (this is scaled with the number of shots, for example if you can fire 10 shots at a time, but fire only fire 5 then you only have to wait half as long to fire again).

[aldo_14]

Hmm.... can't you do this already though?  With a fast fire / high energy use gun which drains power quickly?

The only thing different would be 'forcing' it to fire multiples, I guess.....

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Nuke
now that you mention the swarm effect, can you tweak it to let us set the time between each missile's launch.

That is determined by the $Rearm Rate: token in the weapons.tbl.  A rearm rate of 20 will arm (and thus fire) missiles at a rate of 20/second.  Note that the number of missiles is determined by the $Swarm token, and if it is only set to 4, then only 4 missiles will be fired.  The rearm rate affects only how quickly they are fired.

[Nuke]

Its always good to learn something new about the existing freespace engine.

[Bobboau]

funny I thought the rearm rate determined how fast they were rearmed

[Nuke]

i think i will play around wit it and see what happens.

[Nico]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Hmm.... can't you do this already though?  With a fast fire / high energy use gun which drains power quickly?

The only thing different would be 'forcing' it to fire multiples, I guess.....

nope, coz whatever you do, the recahrge rate will always e slow ( I know, I already tried, no idea is new in this world ).
yeah, that's something to fix: the recharge rate for primaries.

[Fineus]

Along with this could we implement blindfire? That is to say in any mission where sensors are inhibited (nebulas, asteroid fields, subspace) you can have AI ships (more likely capital ships that fighters or bombers) fire blind in the direction of a hostile group, thus they dont' actively target individual ships but do send as many weapons as they can bring to bear (that aren't firing at aquired targets) in the general direction of un-targetable ships.

I think perhaps the best way to do this would be by making the targeting on ships really badly and then making that selectable through a SEXP, when turned on all weapons will have an unlimited targeting range but will use ****ty targetting untill they enter the normal targeting range for that weapon - when they become more acurate as standard.

The result being supressing fire in the general direction of enemy targets but with the effect of not actually knowing where the ship is. This is also useful for Stealth and Tag missions where lock has not/can not be aquired on the target.

Would this be hard to do? I don't think so (just saying when the SEXP is on it uses a different set of rules for weapons targeting and distance than normal). And has a lot of handy applications...

[Sesquipedalian]

Originally posted by Bobboau
funny I thought the rearm rate determined how fast they were rearmed

It is kind of odd, but then, so is a lot of stuff in FreeSpace.  $Firewait determines how long a time will pass before another volley of a weapon can be fired, while $RearmRate does as I said above.  A Helios, for example, can only be fired once every 30 seconds because its $Firewait value is 30.0.

$RearmRate really only makes a difference in swarm weapons, since in all others only one "shot" is generated per volley (or two at once on double fire, but you know what I mean).

[Bobboau]

if it dose determine the delay between swarm missles it must be a secondary becase I know for a fact that rearm rate is how long each missle takes to be loaded on your ship from a suport craft

[Sesquipedalian]

Hmm.  I'm pretty sure that's how I got a super fast firing swarm weapon.  Maybe I'm wrong...

*runs off to check things out again*

No, that's how I did it.  Hmm, interesting.  I guess someone at decided to use that value for both things.  Learn something new everyday.

[Nuke]

dude, rearm rate has nothing to do with how swarm weapons  work, i tested it, yet they still launch at the same interval.

i think blindfire should be avalible on both a weapon by weapon and ship by ship basis. if both the weapon and the bank it is in are blind fire, then the tracking speed and view cone of both the weapon and bank are added to produce a larger field of view and faster seek time. it would be tricky but would be really cool if it is done. it should have absolutely nothing to do with sexps.

the porpose of fire suppression is to allow weapons to be more powerfull and have faster fire rates, yet perserve game balence. hopefully to reward those with aiming skills (like me).