I'm glad people (mostly) liked my changes. I know some of these changes are incompatible with existing missions and even contrary to what Volition intended. Indeed, I've had to modify quite a few missions from various campaigns to make them work properly, and I've hacked the tables extensively. This is intentional. If any of this gets committed then it obviously needs to be made optional, such as with command line options and table flags. Just because I haven't done this yet doesn't mean I'm unwilling or that it's impossible; I just haven't done that yet. (I've been too busy playing it.)
By the way, I left out one feature of some importance: Beam turrets on small ships are free by default. That way, you can put a light beam turret on a bomber without changing the missions. (I added this to the Seraphim in my tables. Fun!)
Also by the way, I noticed that changing bombs to do shield damage (shield factor of 0.5 or so instead of 0.02) is
major fun -- shoot down a bomb when it's right next to a bomber wing that fired it and watch the fireworks! Yeehaw! It also means you really do have to hit your burners and get clear of the blast when you're bombing. (No, this isn't a code change, it's just my personal table modification.)
Originally posted by TopAce
But I don't understand why don't you update the fighter Ai behaviour
Because I'm not smart enough.
1. AAA flickering, the game is unplayable when you are hit
2. Any shots you get in gets throught your shield without trouble.
What? I don't follow. Could you clarify these issues?
Originally posted by Flaser
The only thing I can argue with is the matter how you chaged the weapons working *huge, supcap and ect. flags*
I didn't really change the meanings of the 'huge' and 'big ship' weapons flags. They do the same thing that they always did -- namely, 'huge' means use only on big ships, and 'big ship' means hurts big ships.
As for the change to 'supercap' (allowing non-supercap weapons to eventually destroy supercaps) is not something I'm sure is a good thing. I think the intention was that ships of type supercap have a sort of implicit big damage that affects non-supercap weapons, so supercaps can only be destroyed by supercap weapons, like 'big ship' or 'huge' weapons are required to hurt 'big damage' ships. As with the 'big ship' weapon flag, the 'supercap' weapon flag does not (and never did) impose the requirement that the weapon be mounted on a supercap; it only means that it can do full damage to supercaps.
In short, I'm thinking my change to the meaning of the 'supercap' flag should be reversed, but I'm not sure.
Originally posted by Lynx
I hope the singular shield feature is optional.
Not yet, but it will be before it gets committed.
I'd more like to have a shield system where you can specify the strength of each shield quadrant, eg: $front shields:100 , $left/right shields:80, blablabla...That would be cool since tactics are more useful(where can I penetrate the shields more easily?)
Sounds nifty. Conceivably, lateral shield generators could be smaller than the front and rear shield generators, creating a weakness to the sides of the ship. Also, this could be combined with singular shields, in that the shields take more damage if hit in a weaker quadrant. (Singular shields still track which quadrant took the damage.)
BTW cool that big ships can now only be damaged by huge weapons. Now we finally have a working system to simulate phase shields as they were in WC2.
Remember that they can also be damaged by weapons with the 'big ship' flag. So you could set the flag 'big ship' for a weapon that can hurt big ships but should be used on small ships too.
How exactly do WC2 phase shields behave? Maybe they can be implemented more correctly than this.
Originally posted by Goober5000
_argv[-1], how come you haven't been merging stuff like this into the main branch? Talk with Inquisitor if you don't have CVS access - he'll set you up.
I didn't want to commit anything without the approval of the community. That's why I posted here first. I also have to make the incompatible changes optional first.
And I'd want to talk to you about some of these, since I don't know how recently you got your code - some of these are done and some of these would play havoc with existing missions and should be made optional. Do you have AIM or ICQ?
I know. I've had to modify a few missions to behave correctly with all these changes. I've had to change the tables far more extensively than the missions, though, like giving ships appropriate power output settings.
Here's my contact information:
AIM argv minus one
ICQ 700937
Yahoo argv_minus_one
MSN [email protected] Jabber _argv[-1]@jabber.org
email [email protected]Originally posted by Lightspeed
Singular Shield
Instead of having four shield quadrants, ships have only a single shield charge, like in Descent. Shield gauges still display where shield hits are coming from, though. This means that the AI, being terribly bad at shield management, doesn't have to bother with it anymore, and neither do you.
As long as it stays optional its a good idea. This could be really useful for some of the mods out there
Yeah, I intend to make it a table flag. Still, singular shields don't generally break things. This isn't as incompatible as it sounds.
Auto ETS
ETS settings are adjusted automatically based on energy needs. This was always there for AI-controlled small ships, but now applies every frame to all ships, including the player's. This means that you might see a destroyer suddenly slow down if it fires its main guns, because of the new energy system, below. It is also much smarter than before.
Once again, should be optional -- maybe some sort of 'feature' mounted on the newest models?
This is more of a pilot convenience feature than a gameplay-affecting thing. It should be optional, but IMO, it should be en/disabled with a command line option. This may cause netplay issues, though -- I need to figure out and test that.
New Energy System
As many of you have no doubt noticed, there is a Power Output setting in ships.tbl. It does absolutely nothing right now. I've gone and completely changed that.
Power output is now distributed among engines, shields, and weapons. Power output for fighters is usually somewhere around 2 to 4; freighters and transports have around 10; cruisers have 25 to 75; corvettes have 100; destroyers have 100 to 200; supercaps have 1000. Weapon energy capacities are sized proportionately (e.g., supercaps have 10000 weapon energy capacity).
In addition to the ship having power output, all subsystems also have a power output. Subsystems without a power output line in the tbl will have a power output of 0. Most subsystems, like turrets, will not have a power output, but subsystems like engines and reactors obviously will. This is important because it is possible to disable and mostly disarm a ship by destroying the subsystems that provide its power. Destroy a Moloch's reactor, and it will quickly run out of power for its beams and lasers, leaving it with only flak and missiles to fire at enemies. If the ship has shields, it cannot recharge them without power output.
I love the idea... this is definately one of the things that should be implemented in the SCP release
It still needs to be optional, and enabled with a ship table flag.
Turret weapons now consume weapon energy. This includes everything from a Subach HL-7 to a BFGreen. Some weapons, like flak and missiles, consume no energy for obvious reasons, but most weapons do.
Not a bad idea, although if my turret would consume energy, I would like to have the ability to turn it on/off (like the auto target, or auto speed feature)
Remember that turrets fire only one gun at a time, as opposed to 2 to 8 in primary banks. In practice, the energy consumption of the turret is not noticeable. This change is more interesting on big ships, where their main guns will put a drain on their power systems. Anyway, being able to turn your turret on/off would be a lot of work, since one has to mess with Volition's incomprehensible user interface code.
Surface Shields
Most ships other than fighters and bombers do not have shield meshes. With surface shields, they can have shields anyway -- weapons fire that strikes the hull drains the shields until they are depleted, just like with normal shields. You can put surface shields on a ship of any size or type. An obvious application of this is the Lucifer in FS1, where surface shields were crudely emulated by making the ship invulnerable. To enable surface shields, just give a non-zero shield amount in the ships.tbl entry; if the ship does not have a shield mesh, then surface shields will be used instead. (Shielded Sathanas anyone?)
Nice. I suppose the shields would still actually look like shields?
No. I don't know how to do this. It would probably need some multitexture black magic like was done for the new cloaking code, and that is way out of my league.
Also, on bigger ships singular shield would have to be forced.
Why?
- Removed rate of fire penalty for linked primary weapons.[/b]
I dont like the idea. It would unbalance the game even more than it is now.
Not really. Weapon energy is supposed to be the constraint on how much and how fast you can fire your weapons, and it's consumed much faster with your guns firing much faster. This change applies to all ships, not just yours. It improves the balance somewhat, because fighter beams are not subject to this penalty.
- Weapons fire that somehow gets through shields and strikes the hull even though shields are up will still be absorbed by the shields. I think this only works with singular shields, though.[/b]
Meh i found it quite useful to shoot fighters from inside their shields
Yes, I know. It's especially useful against the Shivans early in FS1 when all you've got for primaries is the ML-16. The reason I did this is that sometimes shots somehow get through the shields even though the shields were up and the shot was fired from well outside the shield mesh. Finding the true cause of this would obviously be preferable, but in the mean time, I don't really like having some Shiv jockey's luckshot going
through my fully charged shields and dropping my hull by 10% or more.
- Ships with the 'big damage' flag are completely invulnerable to small weapons.[/b]
Well, i thought the existing system was okay. Any ship bigger than a Corvette was completely immune to primary weapons, and could only effectively destroyed with bombs.
Same thing, but before, you could damage a big damage ship down to about 50% hull before it would become completely invulnerable. For some reason, AI ships were able to damage corvettes with small weapons very quickly before reaching that invulnerability threshold. With this change, big damage ships are completely invulnerable at all times to small weapons, period.
- Bombs and beams do not necessarily hurt big ships anymore. Now, weapons only hurt big ships if they are 'huge', 'big ship', or 'supercap'. Note that, contrary to comments in weapons.tbl, 'big ship' does not mean that the weapon can only be equipped by a big ship; it only means that the weapon will hurt big ships.
- Weapons without the 'supercap' flag were unable to damage supercaps below around 75% hull. This has been changed, so they do 1/4 damage to the supercap but can still (eventually) destroy it.[/b]
As i said, i like the current system
I'm not sure about keeping the second one, but I think the first one needs some justification.
In current FS2, any weapon that is flagged with 'bomb' can hurt 'big damage' ships. What's wrong with this is that some bombs, like Stilettos and even Piranhas are flagged with 'bomb', and hence, can be used to destroy big ships. This is not good. So instead, bombs that hurt big ships have to be explicitly flagged as such. Note that all bombs intended for use against big ships are flagged in the table as 'huge', so they can still hurt big ships, but things like Piranhas cannot. Stilettos can't hurt big ships either, though they still hurt subsystems (obviously).
Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Others are definitely contrary to Volition's original designs.
I know. I made those changes because I felt Volition did the Wrong Thing. Obviously this will be a point of contention, so such changes must be optional.
Power Output Settings
Fantastic. Something that will really help with balance; we can now mount huge weapons on smaller ships realistically. Does this mean that the Colossus can fire SGreens faster and longer?
Not unless you change SGreen to have a shorter Fire Wait and give it a long beam life. If it consumes too much more energy than smaller ships can support, then their SGreens will power down before their full lifetime expires, and they still have to wait the full fire wait before they can fire again. The Colossus, on the other hand, having insane power output, can easily support thusly modified SGreens at full lifetime, in which case it could fire them faster and longer.
As it stands now, though, the SGreen has a short lifetime and a long fire wait in the tables, so a massive power output won't make them fire any faster or longer.
On the other hand, the Colossus can certainly fire a BGreen faster and longer than a Fenris, provided the BGreen is given an appropriately high energy consumption.
Since we're discussing this, I should give you an example. In the final mission of the campaign 'Aeos Affair', if the Orion destroyer Praetor is destroyed, the Hecate destroyer Accuser shortly jumps in. The Accuser carries four BFGreens where it would normally mount BGreens. Under my modification, it was only able to fire them simultaneously for about a second, and had to wait a long time to fire them again (since it still has to wait the full Fire Wait, even though the beam fired only momentarily). In the FS2 mission 'High Noon', on the other hand, the Colossus wields numerous (12, I think) of BFGreens and LRBGreens (the LRBGreen has the highest damage and power consumption in my table), and is able to fire them continuously at the Sathanas, blowing it away pretty quickly in the awesome hail of gunfire the Colossus is so well known for. :D
In short, the Colossus can fire SGreens faster and longer than a Fenris, but only given the appropriate table changes.
Surface Shields
Wonderful! This will be a godsend for the Star Wars conversion. It will also render the shielded Lucifer obsolete but that's OK. I'm assuming the shield impact effect shows up, reasonably sized, conforming to the hull.
No. As I mentioned above, this would probably take some multitexture black magic, and I simply don't know how to do that. I need some graphics guru to deal with this, though the code would probably be similar to the new cloaking effect code.
Type A (normal) and B (slash) beams are randomly swapped, so the BFGreen will sometimes slash the target, and the TerSlash sometimes won't slash, for instance.
This will be interesting, but I'd like to have a 'Noslash' flag avaliable for type A beams. For example, there are no Shivan slash weapons, and it ought to stay that way. The same is true for primary beams found on the Odin, the Golgotha, and the Archangel. I recommend weighting slash weapons to be more slashy and nonslashers to be more nonslashy, say a 60-40 ratio rather than 50-50.
Weighting can be done, of course. As for 'noslash', I'm thinking to have a 'strict beam slash' meaning type A beams with 'strict beam slash' will never slash, and type B beams with 'strict beam slash' will always slash. Note that, with the 'big guns in front' flag, you could make the Golgotha's main beam type E (no aim, always shoots straight ahead), which never slashes, and seems more appropriate anyway. Currently, there is only one type E beam, and that is the MjolnirBeam (not #home). Again, this beam type shoots straight ahead only. Since the 'big guns in front' flag instructs the ship in question to face its target, a type E beam would still work.
Weapons without the 'supercap' flag were unable to damage supercaps below around 75% hull. This has been changed, so they do 1/4 damage to the supercap but can still (eventually) destroy it.
Excellent! This is the sort of balancing we need to do for the entire 'huge' 'big damage' and 'supercap' system to stop those artificial cutoffs at certain percentages. I don't agree with your other balancings where large ships are completely invulnerable to smaller weapons (I can't shoot off turrets with the Maxim anymore?) but a system like this applied across the board would be super.
Of course you can. You can't damage the ship's hull, but you can damage its subsystems.
Turrets shoot at any hostile target, even if it is not perceived to be a threat (though apparently non-threatening hostiles are given a low priority).
Friendlies should never shoot at cargo unless ordered to. Otherwise you'd have a recovery op where all the freighters turrets are destroying the cargo they're trying to pick up!
Fixed. Turrets now ignore cargo and nav buoys.
Removed rate of fire penalty for linked primary weapons.
Definitely a no-no. That rate of fire penalty is crucial in maintaining play balance.
Or is it? Weapon energy consumption is proportionately increased (ie, a lot), fighter beams are not subject to the penalty anyway, and the change applies to all ships (not just yours).
EMP does not screw with the HUD or cause targeting of random objects. Instead, EMP prevents targeting altogether.
The random targeting and HUD scrambling is what makes the EMP effect what it is. Leave it in!
OK, OK, I surrender!!! :nervous:
The 'deactivate targeting' command does not deactivate auto targeting. If auto targeting is on when this command is used, then auto targeting will kick in and automatically target something.
This ought to be changed back; what happens if you turn off targeting when there are multiple hostiles?
Then it will intelligently target the most important hostile. That's the point. Perhaps this should be activated with a command line option, though.
Targeting a big ship will not auto-target one of its turrets.
This was implemented in the FS2 demo. (See the 'Bug Fix of the Day' on freespace2.com for details.) It was done so novice players who haven't gotten the hang of targeting turrets and subsystems yet can still shoot off turrets. What's the reason for turning it off anyway?
It annoys the hell out of me! :mad: But again, I suppose this should be a command line option.
Changed the 'beam protected' flag to mean protection from all 'huge' weapons (not just beams, and not small beams).
I wouldn't do that if I were you; sometimes you want to protect small craft from AAA beam fire, and sometimes you want large ships to weaken a smaller ship with their bombs and not obliterate it with their beams.
In the second case, remember that huge protection also applies to huge beams, so it'll only shoot small weapons (fusion mortars, lasers, missiles, etc) at the target. In the first case, I guess so, but beam protection also affects fighter beams -- do we make an exception for them, so fighters can still hit the target?
Turrets no longer fire small weapons at big ships.
I'm assuming this is linked to your Power Output modifications. That's OK, since it frees up more energy for the beam cannons, but if the beams are disabled, the ship isn't in the field of view of a beam cannon, or if the ship doesn't even have any beam turrets it should use its laser turrets. You should either remove this restriction, or modify it so it will only use small guns when all the big ones are not avaliable.
No, no, this is because small weapons won't affect big ships anyway. Laser turrets are still 'big ship' so they're still fired at big ships. By 'small weapons' I mean weapons that won't affect 'big damage' ships at all (other than damaging subsystems, which doesn't really matter when the ship isn't targeting subsystems to begin with).
I did just notice that it was causing small turrets (can't hurt big damage ships) not to fire even at big ships that are not big damage. Fixed -- it'll shoot those small weapons at cruisers and other big ships that they would still hurt.
Ships with the 'big damage' flag are completely invulnerable to small weapons.
See above on the 25% damage comment. Instead small weapons should do the full damage (as always) but do 25% damage when the ship is at 10% hull. We -must- be able to destroy subsystems.
Small weapons still damage subsystems, just not the hull.
Turrets on player's ship make sounds audible by the player. This was disabled because it supposedly gets annoying, but the lack of these sounds gets disconcerting. I want to know that my turret is firing properly, damn you!
You'll have to trust your turrets are doing their job. You can tell if the subsystem's been destroyed on the HUD, and you can always go to exterior view to watch your turrets dishing out damage.
Well, I also like the sound, but command line option...
Shockwaves do full damage to subsystems. It was scaled down, which was causing problems.
This was mentioned in the table comments; disabled because when a player is launching bombs, the shockwave would blow out your subsystems. We need the warheads to be able to destroy subsystems on the target while still allowing the bomber to be able to escape.
If the shockwave is able to get through the shields to damage subsystems, it's also going to blow the whole ship away (huge hull damage). Weapons can't damage subsystems if they are blocked by shields. In other words, this is a moot point.
Beam weapons do not fire if the shooter or target is in deathroll.
This depends on how much of a deathroll you mean. The Colossus, for example, has an extended deathroll sequence and it would be far less dramatic if it wasn't firing its beams despirately trying to fend off its attacker before it blew up. A better solution would be to disable beams once it starts to break up, since that's when the geometry moves. The solution you're proposing can be easily achieved by is-destroyed-delay beam-lock all, while altering it to deactivate at the breakup is much more useful, being based on the ship class and size.
Fixed. Beams will cut out abruptly and not fire after the ship has exploded, but will fire during deathroll. Beams will continue to fire at a target in deathroll.
Note: Deathroll is before the ship explodes (shockwaves from reactors exploding, debris thrown around, etc). Once the ship explodes and its shockwaves go off, it is not in deathroll; rather, it has exploded (and its ship flags has SF_EXPLODED on).
Originally posted by StratComm
Singular Shield
Instead of having four shield quadrants, ships have only a single shield charge, like in Descent. Shield gauges still display where shield hits are coming from, though. This means that the AI, being terribly bad at shield management, doesn't have to bother with it anymore, and neither do you.
definately needs to be optional... that's one thing that was used for play balancing to some extent... shields on the player ship can be made effectively 4 times stronger than those of the AI since you can manage them. However, since having one shield rather than 4 quadrants is effectively the same as holding down 'q', there is no reason not to enable it on certain craft. Maybe a FRED thing?
Remember that AI ships also have singular shields. The idea here is that players are good at managing their shields (and making them effectively 4 times as strong, like you said) while AI is not. With singular shields, both your and AI's shields are effectively 4 times stronger. It's a balance thing. Also, note that hitting 'q' will decrease your shield strength by 2%. Not really noticeable, but it would be if you held it down. Diverting shield power from one quadrant to another does not incur this penalty.
Auto ETS
ETS settings are adjusted automatically based on energy needs. This was always there for AI-controlled small ships, but now applies every frame to all ships, including the player's.
Sometimes you have to run away in hopes that your shields (or weapons) will recharge before your opponent gets on you, so I think you'd need to be able to control ETS specifically. However, an auto-target/auto-match style toggle for "auto-balance power" would definately be good.
When you are running, you do not have time to tweak ETS settings, being too busy evading enemy gunfire. Anyway, the auto ETS is designed to let you run away -- while the AB is engaged, all power is to shields and weapons, and while the AB is disengaged and recharging, all power is to engines so you can engage it again quickly. I have tested this in many a difficult mission involving lots of running (like loop1-3, '...But Hate the Traitor'), and you have no idea how many times this has saved my hide...
Being able to turn it on/off in mission would be good, but saving this setting requires pilot file format changes (meaning your existing pilots are gone), and there's some user interface work to be done there that I don't know how to do. It can, of course, be turned on/off with a command line option.
New Energy System
This one I really like. I always wondered why certain ships had reactors (and it wouldn't be hard to add them to the others)
It was supposed to be that shooting out a ship's reactor would prevent it from firing beams, but as it stands, reactor subsystems do exactly nothing. They still do, but you can assign power output to any subsystem, and assigning power output to a reactor subsystem is a pretty obvious thing to do.
Adding reactor subsystems is not hard at all -- Descent Manager MDLVIEW32 includes a POF editor sufficient to add subsystems.
Surface Shields
Good so long as it is optional (perhaps FRED based as well as table based) and there is some indication that you are damaging shields. This should probably be accompanied by a further bump to the shield ani limit, as we'd probably want shield animations for everything now.
It is inherently optional -- you have to specify a non-zero $Shields: value in the table, and surface shields are enabled if the ship has no shield mesh. As for indications that you are damaging surface shields, the only indication at present is that the HUD mini-shield display right below the reticle shows shield damage, and you hear the usual shield buzz sound. There is no visual shield effect because I don't know how to do that.
Beams hitting shields do not (usually) cause whacking. Small beams never whack.
The "whacking" is a good thing, it disrupts the attacking ship and was an integral part of the concept of anti-fighter beams. Some mod fighters don't bounce properly, and it just doesn't feel right.
The Right Thing would be to use the Mass value in the weapon table to determine the amount of whacking applied by the beam (same as lasers). This shouldn't be too hard to do.
Friendly beam fire does full damage.
Neither here nor there on this one, I agree that players should not be stupid enough to sit in front of a friendly beam cannon for kicks, but chasing a fighter near a capship is already bad enough through flak. Getting glanced by a fighter beam that misses its target is hardly what I call fun. However, if you've run into the need to change it, it probably needs to be changed. I guess more importantly, friendly capships can hurt each other now.
I've found that I can survive getting glanced by a BGreen as long as it's not shield piercing. Getting glanced by a fighter or anti-fighter beam is no sweat, really. Plus, you can always get glanced by huge enemy beams...
Removed rate of fire penalty for linked primary weapons.
The penelty is there for a reason, though 2 linked banks of kaysers would deplete weapon reserves extremely quickly if fired at full speed so I don't really see the problem. However, the problems this creates for play balancing (especially if multiplayer ever gets implimented again) are significant.
Remember that the penalty (or lack thereof) applies to all ships, not just yours. Also remember that the penalty does not apply to fighter beams, which creates an imbalance.
EMP does not screw with the HUD or cause targeting of random objects. Instead, EMP prevents targeting altogether.
Nah, leave it the way it was. Made EMP a true navigational hazard, rather than just an annoyance. If you want this kind, add it as an alternate effect that can be triggered in tables for weapons and FRED for nebulas.
OK, OK, I surrender!!! :nervous:
The 'deactivate targeting' command does not deactivate auto targeting. If auto targeting is on when this command is used, then auto targeting will kick in and automatically target something.
While I love this idea in theory, the reaquiring issue just doesn't seem right to me. Maybe if deactivating targeting placed all current hostiles onto an ignore list, and when new arrivals showed up then auto-target would re-aquire and reactivate targeting, but otherwise it seems really pointless to be able to turn it off and on like that.
Blah, blah, blah, command line option. Blah, blah, blah. Forget about the ignore list thing, though -- that's a lot of work.
Targeting a big ship will not auto-target one of its turrets.
Neither here nor there on this one. It's not like bringing up the box on the turret makes you shoot at it, and it really isn't that annoying. I personally will target a subsystem if I'm shooting bombs, just because it gives me a close point of reference to shoot at.
Again, command line option.
Weapons fire that somehow gets through shields and strikes the hull even though shields are up will still be absorbed by the shields.
Again, neither here nor there. The shots getting through shields is a glitch in collision detection I would assume, but you lose the shield hit animation and all. Plus it doesn't work with multipart shields (how would it know which quadrent to drain?)
It only happens once in a blue moon. You're right, though; it only works with singular shields.
Reallocated the bits in sexp operator numbers. There can now be 4095 operators instead of 256.
As long as this doesn't alter backwards compatability, then great!
No, it doesn't. Missions don't twiddle with those bits anyway, and the code only cares about the #defines.
Changed the 'beam protected' flag to mean protection from all 'huge' weapons (not just beams, and not small beams).
I'd say :no: because at least part the time you'd beam-protect something it would be a fighter (if you wanted to kill off wingmen while manuvering around a leviathan, for example) or it would prevent bombers from targeting capships that you are trying to have the player protect.
So, just make beam protection not apply to fighter beams? (Beam protection
badly screws with fighter beams!)
Turrets no longer fire small weapons at big ships.
Why not? The drain on power should be extremely small, (even more so if you use capship turret weapons, as they can be set to lower drain)
Because there is no point. Small weapons don't hurt big damage ships. (Note: I had it not fire small weapons at all big ships; I just changed that to not fire small weapons at big damage ships, which small weapons cannot hurt.)
Turrets shoot at any hostile target, even if it is not perceived to be a threat (though apparently non-threatening hostiles are given a low priority).
Exclude cargo. Definately exclude cargo. Plus make sure it is tested with stealth settings, as this might screw that up.
Cargo and nav buoys are ignored. (Another change I just made.) And yes, stealth is handled.
Turrets on bombers use same targeting code as big ships (instead of shooting only at the bomber's target). This is obviously useful for bombers with multiple turrets, like the Osiris.
I'm actually great with this, though if you can't control their firing you probably should exclude the player ship from the power drain of the turret. Else have an option (again, auto-target style) to turn it off. I mean, I'd never target a tailing fighter just to make the turret shoot at it, so this is definately a potentially great enhancement.
Remember that the turret only fires one gun at a time, as opposed to 2 to 8 in your primary banks. The power consumption of this is actually barely noticeable, so I don't see why being able to turn it off is worth the extra work.
Ships with the 'big damage' flag are completely invulnerable to small weapons.
This seems to contradict what you said you did with non-huge weapons later (or with "supercap" though they should be in essence the same) so I'd say a definite no.
Pardon? I don't follow.
Turrets on player's ship make sounds audible by the player.
Need option to turn it off, be it eventually included in the audio options or enabling the turret sounds through a command line flag.
Command line option.
Increased MAX_SPLIT_SHIPS from 3 to 16. Kaboom!! I hit this limit, and at a cost of 1K per ship, it seemed reasonable to increase.
Neither here nor there... I can't see any real reason to have more than 3 splits in a ship.
I hit this limit somehow. That's why I increased it. I think it's the maximum number of splits active in the entire mission, not just one ship.
Shockwaves do full damage to subsystems. It was scaled down, which was causing problems.
If you do this you need to exclude fighters from this. There is no reason for interceptors to get disabled just because they shot out a bomb (ok there is but that essentially ruins the interceptor role).
Shockwaves can't damage subsystems if they don't get through shields. If they do get through shields, your fighter is toast (due to huge hull damage from bombs), and your subsystems are really not your biggest problem. ;)
Damage scaling due to skill level is done for all ships, so wingmen won't die like flies on very easy.
Does this mean they die faster on hard/insane? Or is insane a factor of 1.0 and the rest scaled down from that... Still, the prospect of surviving wingmen is intreguing.
Insane is 1.0 and the rest is scaled down, but it's effectively the same thing.
Beam weapons do not fire if the shooter or target is in deathroll.
I agree with GE exactly on this one, make it at breakup instead of deathroll.
Done.
Originally posted by _argv[-1] Type A (normal) and B (slash) beams are randomly swapped, so the BFGreen will sometimes slash the target, and the TerSlash sometimes won't slash, for instance.
Maybe this could be tabled in as a "randomness" factor... A number of ships would look utterly stupid with slashing main beams (one of them is mine, I would know) This MUST not be default.
See above about 'strict beam slash'. Also, note that type E beams (no aim, always shoot straight ahead) never slash, for obvious reasons. Combined with the 'big guns in front' flag, consider making your main gun type E.
When a beam is fired at a subsystem, it is forced to type A. Slash beams are not very good at hitting subsystems...
If this is in addition to the previous setting that's fine, but maybe it should be forced to original type rather than to type A. Sometimes slash beams just seem more appropriate.
Beams only target subsystems when instructed to do so with the 'fire-beam' sexp, so I can't see slash beams seeming more appropriate -- why did you specify a subsystem for a slasher to hit?
Bombs and beams do not necessarily hurt big ships anymore. Now, weapons only hurt big ships if they are 'huge', 'big ship', or 'supercap'. Note that, contrary to comments in weapons.tbl, 'big ship' does not mean that the weapon can only be equipped by a big ship; it only means that the weapon will hurt big ships.
Again, your weapon balancing just seems off here. Sometimes it's the little things that decide the outcome of a situation (if the combined pulse shots or whatever being shot at one ship weren't damaging, then the outcome of the battle could be completely different). It'd only make sense in rare occasions, like where 2 ships end up with one destroyed and the other at 1% strength, but it still could happen.
The only reason I did this is that small missiles like the Stiletto and Piranha can hurt big ships (since they are flagged with 'bomb') and so can fighter beams (since they are flagged with 'beam'). All weapons that are supposed to hurt big ships are already explicitly flagged as such (with 'huge' and/or 'big ship'), so this is really just cheat prevention -- if you turn the Subach HL-7 into a fighter beam weapon, it still isn't supposed to hurt big ships.
Weapons without the 'supercap' flag were unable to damage supercaps below around 75% hull. This has been changed, so they do 1/4 damage to the supercap but can still (eventually) destroy it.
Great, and as has been said already, apply this to the "Huge" flag as well.
Pardon? That doesn't make sense.
Originally posted by Killfrenzy
Surface shields: YEEHAW!!! That'll make The Swarm War a lot more like what I originally envisaged....that is, as long as a shield 'hit' shows up on the ship.....Also, is there any way we can indicate that shields are drained WITHOUT having to create an ANI for it? I loved the X-Wing system of 'shlds dn' appearing in the targeting box, but that's just me.....
Something wrong with the HUD shield gauge?
Incidentally, to all coders: Is there any way we can stop weapons firing THROUGH their own hull? We can do all the tinkering with turret FOV that we like, but sometimes it still happens.....
Probably do a trace through the ship and not fire if the weapon would hit the shooter's hull. Not quite clear on how to do that one, though.
Originally posted by Bobboau
look int the decals code for simple decals for something you may wish to implement for you'r hull shields
I think I agree with GalacticEmperor
Hey, I forgot about that. Thanks! I'll have a look at it.
Originally posted by Mr. Vega
Not too many on/off features, keep it manageable.
Who cares if they're on/off, if they're specified in tables or on the command line?
BFRed. Small name, big cannon.
[size=12]
GO SHIVANS![/size]
