Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Assassin714 on January 31, 2021, 12:01:13 pm
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In the X-Wing and TIE Fighter game series, there is an option to have a tractor beam on your ship that can prevent enemy strikecraft in front of you from turning to evade your weapons. You can even force them to crash into a capital ship. Would there be a way to implement this in the Freespace engine? I want to make the Hammer of Light kamikaze into their own ships for once.
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Ah lol, remembers me of the Grappling Hook days in the Colony Wars TC for FSO back then.
Even it did not worked as you describe the Tractor Beam.
But well, nice flashback nevertheless.
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If we are going that road, a jamming beam would be great too: same thing as the tractor beam, except instead of preventing a ship’s movements, it jams a ship’s primaries and secondaries (prevents firing).
Both weapons work by line of sight (get the craft in your sights and sustain the beam). The beam itself is invisible and does not « impact » enemy craft.
As a matter of fact, is it even possible to create a weapon in FS that does not impact enemy craft?
Novachen: a colony wars TC truly is the bee’s knees. What happened? Was it compromised by a cease and desist? Any chance we could at least save a ship pack?
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What happened? Was it compromised by a cease and desist? Any chance we could at least save a ship pack?
Yep.
That simple happens if you have too much contact with some of the orignal developers of the game, i think.
That is the reason i am total out of such developments and are very sceptic about such mods in general, as the effort is better placed in original work.
I actually still have all the files of course. But well, D&C means that not even parts of it should be released.
But well the Ships are totally low-poly by today's standard anyway, as this was 10 years ago. I think to create them from scratch today would give better results :D
Did not want to capture this thread. Only the Tractor beam remembers me of these old days.
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If we are going that road, a jamming beam would be great too: same thing as the tractor beam, except instead of preventing a ship’s movements, it jams a ship’s primaries and secondaries (prevents firing).
Both weapons work by line of sight (get the craft in your sights and sustain the beam). The beam itself is invisible and does not « impact » enemy craft.
As a matter of fact, is it even possible to create a weapon in FS that does not impact enemy craft?
Novachen: a colony wars TC truly is the bee’s knees. What happened? Was it compromised by a cease and desist? Any chance we could at least save a ship pack?
This could probably be done via sexps or a script solution. Create a dummy weapon the player can select. If that weapon is in bank N and bank N is selected, lock primaries, else unlock. When trigger key is pressed, check for target in line of site and within range. If yes, do a thing to that target (lock weapons, ship-lat-maneuver, or whatever). If no, don't do a thing.
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Hold on, you're telling me there were two Colony Wars TCs being worked on? Ages ago I found a guy somewhere on the internet who was good enough at modeling and eventually came out with a WIP Navy Frigate from CW2. Said guy eventually became a FreeSpace fan. I was supposed to take care of the FREDding part of this CW TC but, unfortunately, the project didn't go past that early stage of development. A Colony Wars TC has truly been one of my most desired projects.
Back on topic, tractor beams and similar weapons have been considered a serious possibility several times, but I don't recall any successful attempts at creating them in FSO. If anything, just like in CW, they could serve many purposes and add more degrees of variability to the game. The player could perform several additional tasks thanks to a tractor beam.
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Have you tried combining +new style $Electronics (https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Electronics:) parameter with a high $Mass (https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Mass:) parameter? - could give you a fake if mounted on an invisible beam... that is if beams can trigger $Electronics
(Electronics to disable engines, high mass so the targeted ship doesn't stop dead)
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If we are going that road, a jamming beam would be great too: same thing as the tractor beam, except instead of preventing a ship’s movements, it jams a ship’s primaries and secondaries (prevents firing).
Both weapons work by line of sight (get the craft in your sights and sustain the beam). The beam itself is invisible and does not « impact » enemy craft.
As a matter of fact, is it even possible to create a weapon in FS that does not impact enemy craft?
Novachen: a colony wars TC truly is the bee’s knees. What happened? Was it compromised by a cease and desist? Any chance we could at least save a ship pack?
There was also a "decoy beam" that would prevent enemy missiles from locking onto your ship, and any missiles that were already locked on would lose their target. IIRC, it was a bit OP.
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Yeah, although this one’s comparatively easy compared to other Star Wars beams, and doesn’t qualify as a weapon, more as a player activated stealth suite.
Out of all the beams this one was the least given it’s ability to shine (as were the beams in general, despite their minimal support in x wing alliance). Tie fighter featured the tractor beam extensively, the jamming beam very minimally, and the decoy not at all (a shame)
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Yeah, although this one’s comparatively easy compared to other Star Wars beams, and doesn’t qualify as a weapon, more as a player activated stealth suite.
Out of all the beams this one was the least given it’s ability to shine (as were the beams in general, despite their minimal support in x wing alliance). Tie fighter featured the tractor beam extensively, the jamming beam very minimally, and the decoy not at all (a shame)
Like I said it was OP though. When I used it in XvT I would never get hit by missiles, unless they were fired at point-blank range.
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Could have used it in tie fighter though, for instance in the missions where you protect the asteroid base from all the muurian transports. This one was close to impossible.
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I could see a small ship using these to lob Tractor captured asteroids at a Cap ship. Imagine you have to chase down and shoot the ship AND Asteroids as well. Might be fun :)
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It'd make some fs port missions a bitbmore interesting.
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So a tractor/pusher beam then... is this even doable?
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So, I just made a SEXP based solution to pick up containers and move them... which probably can be developed into a holding beam of some sort.
Slight hick-up with weaponizing it ATM - because of SEXPs I used it bypasses collision checks ATM.
EDIT - video evidence
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This will feature in a jad tribute/huge game of orion/omega jenga..
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I've done this before with a negative $Mass and a very high rate of fire. That might be the simplest approach, if it meets your use case.