Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Krom on September 23, 2003, 02:20:46 pm
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Most likely someone has already thought of or attempted this, but I'll ask anyway since it is a cool idea (IMHO). Is it possible without wasteing days of work and time that could be otherwise be spent fixing bugs, eating pizza or servicing the girlfriend?
Think about it, your flying along and get a aspect lock on a shivan bomber at 3000-4000 meters away and let loose a single beam for about .5 seconds or so that kills it, at which point you have to wait 4-6 seconds before you can fire at the next bomber.
The advantages of a fighter beam setup like that would be considerable for balence, you can severly limit the ammo, require a long lock on time (4+ seconds), and prevent dumbfire. All of those options would drastically reduce the effectiveness of a fighter beam at short range which is a good thing because point and shoot fighter beams are unbalenced just because of the way the game is.
The problems that someone attempting this would probably bump into would be how to make a player weapon fire in a direction other then stright forward (from a secondary gunpoint no less!) and how to make a secondary bank fire a beam weapon and use up ammo. The first one could possibly borrow a bit from beam turrets code (I'm not famalliar with the code at all, and I'm not much of a programmer either so dont shoot!). The second one, well you guys got ballistic primarys to work, so I bet you could do it. ;)
KTHXBYE!!1:D
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beams with ammo, interesting.
might be a very cool feature, but it sounds like a b*tch to code.
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Can't you just use the ballistic primary tags to give it ammo? :O
Fighterbeams aren't really worth including ATM because you can't define them in FRED, and I think the loadout screen doesn't show them either... hope the SCP team get that sorted out soon. Oh, and the loop sound doesn't seem to play when they're fired either.
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You dont need the beam loop for a half a second fire, anything longer wouldnt be pratical for a fighter beam, I mean comeon, where is a fighter going to get the power to fire a beam for more then half a second?
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Fighter beams have no warmup/warmdown or firewait. They are continuous-fire weapons.
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i'm still waiting for regular lasers as aspect seeking secondaries.
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Originally posted by Carl
i'm still waiting for regular lasers as aspect seeking secondaries.
Amen to that.
Though if I want to be fussy, you wouldn't see laser beams in space (*unless your're in a nebula) only particles that travel slow enough and most of all - are radiating!
BTW I had an idea - how about setting up special sensors or sensors displays, so you could see the heat view of everything or a low light view for those pretty dark "Behind the Moon" scenarios.
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Originally posted by Flaser
(*unless your're in a nebula)
not even. nebulas are millions of times less dense than the earth's atmosphere.
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I say let's not even call them lasers, not even the ML-16. They don't look or act like lasers. Let's call them pulse cannons or particle cannons or something like that,
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Before delving into the Mod community myself, I had an idea for a fighter mounted beam weapon, but I'm not sure if it its possible. It would be loaded as a secondary with its own power supply and infinite ammo, just like a primary. If you select it in single fire mode, it acts like a dumbfire weapon, firing down the centerline of the craft in about 0.33 sec. bursts with a 0.75 to 1 sec. recharge time. If you select twin fire mode, it acts as an aspect seeker weapon, more suited to firing on bombers, and anything larger, though you could use it on heavy fighters. It also features a reheat time in this mode, so you can fire every 5 - 7 sec., in a 2 - 3 sec. burst of higher power... better suited to knocking out specific subsystems and turrets.
Later!
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I like the idea of using ammunition for a beam turret.
Even a cruiser has trouble using them, so there's no way a fighter's reactor would handle the job.
So it takes the power in a compact form instead, something like a depletable fusion core, that's filled with expensive and volatile isotopes, so high degree one-time fusion can be easly achieved.
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Exactly, beam cannons requireing some sort of ammo because the massive power requirements are well beond that of a fighters reactor output. I think the hard part of getting a aspect locking beam cannon on a fighter will be getting it to shoot in a direction other then stright forward and convinceing a primary to lock. Why someone would want normal lasers to fire from a secondary bank doesnt make much sense but if someone got a beam cannon to fire from one, it probably wouldnt be much of a stretch to make a laser fire from it also. Infact it would prolly require the ability to fire a laser from the secondary banks before you could get a beam to fire.
-Krom
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this would be interesting... i had a plan for an upped terran huge turret, put in the secondary bays after a bug did that to me in fs1, and just say that you had limited power...
I'd like to see the beams though... :yes: :nod:
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This would be a cool feature for low power interceptor weapons. You target the bomb and a very low damage beam fires at it and takes it out at long range. It would look mad if we could make the AI do it properly (envisage a wing of Perseus' flying through a cloud of bombs with beams shooting all around them taking them out). You could probably even adapt it as a sort of 50% chance point defense weapon to take out incoming missiles (if anyone's played USA in CnC Generals, it'd be kinda like that tank they have). Having Shivan bombers that can take out incoming missiles (like Trebs, which are only fired as one or two and so would easily go down to such a system) would make them soooo much more deadly, yet so much more cool.
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Ahh...yes like the Paladin tank (and the upcoming Avenger Humvee) in C&C Generals. That is cool...its a slow firing laser that essentially provides point defense against incoming missiles.
Saturation fire gets through but single shots don't.
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bah Particle Beam owns all in C&C Generals. Refit the colossus with one of those =) there your aspect seeking beam
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going with flaser's idea and assuming we get this to work, we should set it up to when a fight is destroyed and it has the beam weapon on it, it would have a larger than normal shockwave, due to the energy source of the beam weapon.
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Good idea!
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That sounds awesome, kamikazie fighters in multiplayer >=)
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Why is it that everyone says that no fighter can use beam weaponry for long? Aren't you guys forgetting mods and total conversions? In those things can be very different from standard FS universe.
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Originally posted by ##UnknownPlayer##
(envisage a wing of Perseus' flying through a cloud of bombs with beams shooting all around them taking them out).
I tried imagining that, and you know what came to my mind? what you said, but the beams were slashers that were sweeping many bombs at once ( like in many animes ). it's cool :D
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Mr. Fury most of us are thinking along the standard freespace/2 lines where available power is limited, but assuming they got beams to fire the way I suggested it would be very easy to make a beam fire for a very long time, just make it long in the tables.
Now making a single beam sweep around and track multiple targets...that sounds hard.
-Krom
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Beam Fighters are totally possible, example.. Ion Fighters the bentusi used in Homeworld Cataclysm (bad example really because I myself dont like homeworld cataclysm) the fact remains fighters can use beam weaponry, its not so far fetched. Just dont expect anti-cap/slash beams they would be foreward focused. Aspect seeking I dont see how that would be done.
What would be really sweet is some fighter to fighter and fighter to bomber beams (specificly 1 set of beams would be massive damage in close, the second set would be low damage with long range to essentialy snipe bombers)
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Not that I want to get into a argument about it but, that is Homeworld Cataclysm...this is Freespace 2. ;)
Getting the engine to make fighters fire many powerful beams would be no problem, but if you want to put beams that powerful on a fighter you might as well just type www.freespace2.com and then hit ~K to kill your target, because the gameplay balence will be right out the window. :D
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Not that I want to get into a argument about it but, that is Homeworld Cataclysm...
;7
Anyways...
So give the beams a longer fire wait to simulate a recharge after each shot. Theres your balance, give them a very short range 20-40m or so with high damage. make them so they can only be mounted on the heavier fighters and bombers.
So you wont have a fighter flying at mach 6 firing a beam up somebodies arse.
You have to think of checks and balances not just wait for them to hit you upside the head with a lead pipe :p
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Heh, beams are no fun at 20 meters away, thats what Fusion is for! ...err wait, wrong game... ;) What I was thinking when I came up with the aspect seaking beams was kinda like a sniper mission, something that is extremely accurate to a really long range, you have to lock on to fire, hogs ammo like a cyclops in a pegasus, and can take down virtually any fighter/bomber in one good hit. If they got zoom view working that would really make sniper missions fun, like you have to take out some specific fighter or cargo container without being detected. Warp in, lock on, fire beam, warp out.
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We could make it so that the more powerfull the beam, the less ammo you have.
Also - NO REARM for this one.
Beams were not meant to be put into a figher, so there's no way yet how the ammunition could be replenished.
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OK Krom so your talking like a long range tactical sniping beam, which would logicly from a fighter be very low damage and have an ammo count?
what about this
you have maybe a capacitor that has x ammount of charges/shots (ammo) when it is exausted it has to be replaced and cannot be done in the field (i.e during a mission) makes them good but costly.
Thats in line with everything volition said about some repairs and can be done in the field others must be done when you return to the ship (aka mission ends)
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You got it, but it would have very high damage. Think of it like a beam that does exactly the same thing as the Trebuchet, lob two off in single player at a fighter ~4000M away and it takes that fighter out in one shot. After all, what fun is a beam that doesnt punch through shields? ;7
It would have to consume a lot of ammo space for whatever powers it (plasma cores?), because with a one hit kill weapon you want it to consume a lot of ammo so you can only get 2-4 shots tops before needing a reload.
I think field reloads would be fine, you could make a shorter range version like your idea, you lock on just like you would with a aspect seeking missile, but instead of a missile you get a beam that fires directly at the target even if you arent pointed directly at the target. The beam would also be very useful if you needed to quickly destroy a turret on some ship thats a long ways away.
If you want to weaken it even more you could use the existing "miss factor" in beams to make it miss sometimes but I think that would take away from the fun, after all aspect seaking missiles never miss a big ship.
Want to explain how the targeting system works? Simple, anyone know how a CRT computer monitor works? A capacitor powers an electromagnet that bends the beam from the electron guns at the back of the monitor so that the beam points to the correct pixel on the screen and lights it up. You could say that the fighter beams are particle beams and that the targeting system uses powerful magnets to bend the beam so it is pointed at the target.
-Krom
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Hmm...
The only problem is that there's no defense right now against beams, so a any cap ship would be a sitting duck.
Now, I had an idea:
Dust bomb.
It creates a fine curtain of smoke that dissipates any energy attack - icluding beams, because it's filled with volatile isotopes that absorb the power and then release even more radiation in the face where the beam is comming from nullyfying the effect through interference.
The isotope is chosen wisely, so only the beam or other high energy weapon can set it off, so it won't trigger a chain reaction.
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easy solution flaser, increase the range on capship AAA beams.
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BAH, than no fighter without beams would have a chace.
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cap ships arent meant to be easy :p
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Your going in a way too Infernan path for my taste.
It could be fun, but that's not my style.
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hehe im just trying to give Krom a plauseable idea