[SaltyWaffles]

Sorry if this is actually on the wiki and I just can't find it, but there doesn't seem to be some basic info/clarification on:

1) What exactly each subsystem type does, what happens to it/you/the target as it gets progressively damaged, and what effect it has when completely destroyed. In particular: NAV, Weapons, Sensors (on ships, not craft), etc.

2) What the deal is with the differing rates of fire when using both weapon banks at once (versus just one at a time), why/how to get weapons to fire in an alternating order or simultaneous shot pattern (especially when dealing with using two banks simultaneously, or one at a time). Is there a way to manually switch that shot pattern in-game?

3) Apparently bombs do twice the damage stated in the tables (and wiki pages)? I was told this on the BP forum section, but in a way that suggested it was like this in general (all of FSO).

4) The energy cost (as indicated in tables) of firing a weapon--is it per shot fired, or per second, or something else? If per shot fired, then how does that factor into the differing rates of fire when using a weapon single-bank or double-bank-simultaneous?


If these questions are answered in several different obscure places, I would suggest putting them together and either creating a page related to them or adding them to an existing page on (relatively) basic gameplay aspects.

Sorry, again, if this turns out to be a failed-spot-check question(s). Thanks for any answers you can provide.

[niffiwan]

Here are some answers - to be honest I'm not sure where I accumulated most of this info...

1) Nav - I don't think this does anything unless mission sexps are setup to do something when it's destroyed.  Weapons - blob turrets accuracy is reduced when this is destroyed - beams are unaffected though.  Sensors - I think this is like the Nav subsystem.  In all cases I don't believe anything happens until the subsystem is destroyed.

2) I think that by default the weapon firerates slow by 50% when you link two banks.  This behaviour can be changed (see WoD for one example) but I'm not sure how to do it.  As for the shot pattern, the wiki suggests that this feature will be in 3.7 (perhaps for FotG?)

3) I was that guy on the BP forums   I confirmed this behaviour when I was tracking down the Delenda Est/Karuna self-damage bug (it was also the subject of a different 3.6.14 RC bug) and as far as I know it applies to all FSO as it's coded into the engine.  The damage from the shockwave can be overwritten with this flag - if this is done then the relevant weapon will do tabled damage plus this value to anything hit by the weapon.  I've been meaning to update the wiki weapon comparison tables with some of this info, but haven't got around to it 

4) sorry - don't know this one.

[CommanderDJ]

Sensors affects your radar I believe, and nav affects... your ability to jump? Some memory from my FREDding days leads me to believe that neither of them are useless.

[niffiwan]

Sensors affects your radar I believe, and nav affects... your ability to jump? Some memory from my FREDding days leads me to believe that neither of them are useless.

I should have clarified - in point 1 I was only talking about non-player ships...

[CommanderDJ]

Ah, right. My bad.

[Legate Damar]

I believe the linked shot fire rate setting is in ai profiles.tbl. There is also a setting there that can make any ship unable to jump out if its nav subsystem is destroyed.

[Qent]

1) A few more effects are: damaging engines reduces ships' maximum speeds; destroying weapons prevents turrets from even attempting to shoot down bombs; I think that destroying comms stops their messages from appearing, but I'll check that one.

2) The typical time before you can fire your weapon again is 1 * (Refire delay) if unlinked, 1.5 * (Refire delay) if two banks are linked, and 2 * (Refire delay) if three banks are linked. IIRC it generalizes to (1 + #banks) * (Refire delay) / 2 or something like that.

By alternating order do you mean the cycle flag like the BP Balor has? That can be added on a per-weapon basis and without FRED magic cannot be changed in game. Or do you mean just alternating banks? You have to link your banks (with the same refire delays) in the middle of a shot and continue firing.

3) For any weapon with an explosion radius (not necessarily a visible shockwave), the default damage done by the explosion at its center is equal to the impact damage and added to it. I've also heard that visible shockwaves (e.g. from the EMP Adv.) can destroy large ships, but I've never verified that.

4) Per shot per firing point. So a bank of four Maxims will use 4 energy per shot.

[SaltyWaffles]

1) A few more effects are: damaging engines reduces ships' maximum speeds; destroying weapons prevents turrets from even attempting to shoot down bombs; I think that destroying comms stops their messages from appearing, but I'll check that one.

2) The typical time before you can fire your weapon again is 1 * (Refire delay) if unlinked, 1.5 * (Refire delay) if two banks are linked, and 2 * (Refire delay) if three banks are linked. IIRC it generalizes to (1 + #banks) * (Refire delay) / 2 or something like that.

By alternating order do you mean the cycle flag like the BP Balor has? That can be added on a per-weapon basis and without FRED magic cannot be changed in game. Or do you mean just alternating banks? You have to link your banks (with the same refire delays) in the middle of a shot and continue firing.

3) For any weapon with an explosion radius (not necessarily a visible shockwave), the default damage done by the explosion at its center is equal to the impact damage and added to it. I've also heard that visible shockwaves (e.g. from the EMP Adv.) can destroy large ships, but I've never verified that.

4) Per shot per firing point. So a bank of four Maxims will use 4 energy per shot.

Thanks for the info--I have some further questions on this stuff, but that's for tomorrow. Just this one for now: why does the RoF automatically decrease when using two linked banks? It doesn't make any sense; the whole point of using linked banks is to be able to use two banks at once at the cost of increased energy consumption. If you lower the RoF on both banks when using them simultaneously, you make the "More Dakka" option fire "Less Dakka" instead...it just seems like an arbitrary (and nonsensical) "feature" that kills a lot of the balance/fun/usefulness of having multiple gun banks (or just being able to fire two at once).

[niffiwan]

Blame - it was their design decision 

And in most cases, it's still more dakka, just less than you might expect (excluding ships with 4/2 bank layouts, like the Ares)

[NGTM-1R]

1) A few more effects are: damaging engines reduces ships' maximum speeds; destroying weapons prevents turrets from even attempting to shoot down bombs; I think that destroying comms stops their messages from appearing, but I'll check that one.

IIRC the first one is flag-based and not standard.

Destroying weapons greatly reduces accuracy and fire rate, not sure if it stops firing at bombs; it'd be hard to tell.

[Qent]

Alright, some revisions:

1) Damaging engines below 50% starts to reduce maximum waypoint speed. I got an Aeolus down to 12m/s. Destroying weapons does prevent turrets from shooting at bombs at all: that Aeolus didn't fire a shot, and before it had been shooting at bombs like no tomorrow. Destroying comms failed to suppress a message, regardless of message priority.

3) You can destroy a Moloch with EMP Adv. missiles. You can destroy a Sathanas with just EMP Adv. too, but it took me about four hours of game time of continuous firing just to take down the last 10%.

All tests were in RC7 with no mods.

[niffiwan]

3) You can destroy a Moloch with EMP Adv. missiles. You can destroy a Sathanas with just EMP Adv. too, but it took me about four hours of game time of continuous firing just to take down the last 10%.

All tests were in RC7 with no mods.

 

Is the EMP Adv. tabled with the huge flag?  If not - sounds like a bug

[Droid803]

3) You can destroy a Moloch with EMP Adv. missiles. You can destroy a Sathanas with just EMP Adv. too, but it took me about four hours of game time of continuous firing just to take down the last 10%.

All tests were in RC7 with no mods.

Can you do it in retail FreeSpace2.exe?
If so, not bug.

(and if this is fixed you will never be able to kill that Moloch in that one nebula mission because the Aquitaine always bugs out before it finishes it off, goddamn Hecates and their worthless anti-warship capabilities)

[mobcdmoc3]

For fighters/bombers, damaging the weapons subsystem below 70% causes both primary and secondary weapons to fart on some shots, meaning sometimes they'll fail to fire. The more the subsystem has sustained, the more frequent these farts will be. You won't really notice it on secondary weapons unless you're using the Tempest/Fury, but it can be really annoying on primaries.

I forget what threshold it is for sensors, but when sensors sustain damage, the targeting box will sometimes flicker and the radar will flicker as if under the influence of EMP.

[niffiwan]

Can you do it in retail FreeSpace2.exe?
If so, not bug.

(and if this is fixed you will never be able to kill that Moloch in that one nebula mission because the Aquitaine always bugs out before it finishes it off, goddamn Hecates and their worthless anti-warship capabilities)

So *that's* how you're supposed to destroy it!!!  I've managed to get it to 1% hull on a few occasions before the Aquitaine bugged out, I just thought I needed to be a slightly better pilot in order to kill it 

ps - not sure I agree with your 1st statement, e.g. Hercs vs Lokis in "Place of Chariots", long secondary bank reload times when you empty a bank of bombs and it auto-switches to another bank, etc. 

[Droid803]

Hmm I guess it could be a retail bug.
I have no clue what the possible implications relating balancing would be though, since...just possibly, some mods may rely on weapons with visible shockwaves being able to kill bigdamage ships. Retail should be fine (except that Moloch will now never die ), but I'm not sure if any campaigns would be affected.

[Mongoose]

I'd say the EMP thing qualifies as intended behavior, not a bug.

(Also you can apparently kill that Moloch if you're on Medium or harder, since then the Aquitaine's beams can do sufficient damage.)

[SypheDMar]

I thought that EMP Adv. being able to destroy Huge ships was common knowledge (and hence not a bug).

Sometimes for me, even on Medium and Hard, the Aquitaine is still awful at killing Molochs, so it still goes down to 1% for me.

[Mongoose]

Supposedly, getting your fighter close to the Moloch helps the Aquitaine target it more accurately, though I'm not sure how that works on the FRED side.  Coincidentally, that also leaves you open to more beam fire.

[SypheDMar]

Can anyone confirm that getting close to the Tiamat will actually help the Aquitaine target the Tiamat more either FRED-wise or gameplay-wise? I have a gut-feeling that the Wiki Walkthrough is misleading.