Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: jc4jc on January 19, 2005, 12:19:45 pm
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I was just working on one of the many mods I'm apart of using a new tbl created by a another team member. I used the new Debug version of Fred2Open, 3_6_5, and I got that annoying message that the hitpoint were collectively equal to or greater than the ships total hitpoints. IS there be anyway this can be removed?
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Have we ever gotten an explanation as to why having subsystems with more collective hitpoints than the ship was actually a problem? With the subsystem damage modifier, it can be hard to balance turret and subsystem armor on a lighter ship and come in under the limit, and it shouldn't matter that their hitpoints are higher anyway.
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I don't think V added that limit only for fun. It must have a reason. I say let's try removing the limit and see how it works.
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The limit was there before, but I added the warning to enforce it. It's there basically because of the principle that the whole cannot be smaller than the sum of its parts. Removing it would lead (and has lead) to strange behavior and potential crashes.
The limit is not going to be removed. Just do some more number crunching.
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It doesn't make any sense, to me, for the subsystems of a ship to take more damage than the ship itself. Am I missing something? :wtf:
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If all hits were addressed to one or another system, it would make sense; the 'total' hp would just be all the systems added together. But its not; most fire lands on 'neutral' or 'useless' parts of the ship, doing no system damage at all but eroding its health. Oh, for a decent, wargame-style damage system...
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Originally posted by Raa
It doesn't make any sense, to me, for the subsystems of a ship to take more damage than the ship itself. Am I missing something? :wtf:
Some parts of the ship have thicker armor then the main hull. Perfect sense.
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And those are represented by higher percentages. But since all subsystem damage is also applied to the hull, the subsystem hitpoints have to be less than or equal to the hull hitpoints.
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But they are not necessarily applied to the hull at a 1:1 ratio. I could easily load up with stilletos and disruptors and take out every subsystem on a ship without dropping its hull strength below 90%.
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That's subsystem disruption/disabling. Any actual damage (the sort of damage that would be caused by firing the Stiletto against a bare hull) is caused regardless of whether it hits a subsystem or not.
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How would it crash the game, though? Or is it one of those 'it just does' things?
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I'm not aware that it actually does crash the game. The GTE Vidar from Warzone has this, but I've never had it cause problems.
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Originally posted by WMCoolmon
How would it crash the game, though? Or is it one of those 'it just does' things?
"It just does." Volition has an Assert in their original code with no commenting. I think I traced a problem back to this once, but I forget the details. And the bug may not become readily apparent with subsystems that add up to between 100% and 110% of the hull.
I've tried to determine what this safeguards against, but it may be one of those things that only becomes apparent when it's removed.
I experienced that when I recoded something with the attack-subsystem code. I changed the implementation of a flag so it would make more sense, but upon running the build I got several dozen errors from functions that "assumed" the flag would behave in a particular way. It was simpler just to change it back.
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Well I have had problems with getting ships that posess a large amount of turrets and the other "primary" systems lost a large amount of much needed hitpoints, ex. the Galaxy class. couldn't we find some way other than simply increasing the hitpoints of the ship in general. we could make a subsystem hardpoint pool or something.
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well is there actualy code that you have found to have problems? subsystems have there hitpoints set up in a seperate plane than the rest of the ship hitpoints so the retorical summis more than the total argumant is BS. sence there are a lot of ships that have realy realy big (rotateing subobject, and soon to be animated subobjects) subsystems and if you set it up so these don't get destroyed easily then all the turrets and other subsystems are going to be 'bump into them and they explode' delicate. as far as I know there isn't anything wrong with this it was just assumed that there was and it was enforced as such, V did have a habbit about warning about things that didn't realy matter while ignoreing the realy big problems.
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You forget that subsystem strength increases as hull strength increases. A turret with 1% strength on a Fenris is much easier to destroy than a turret with 1% strength on a Colossus. So while you need more turrets on the Colossus, you have more hull strength available to play with. So you can set them to 0.125% and so forth.
If you want to fix this, go right ahead. I'm not so sure it can be fixed. But for the time being, it stays as it is.
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I believe however that it should be possible to include really tough turrets. Think about it: If you have a new ship with some ridiculously powerful superweapon you'd shield the superweapon with tougher armor than the ship itself, because its more than likely more expensive than the ship!
Building upon this idea, if it is perfected, I think we need to be able to define faces in a POF model itself or in ship data that are deemed "weak" or "strong" points in a ship's geometry. For example, the Hecate would have a weak point in its "neck" at the front.
The point is that ship designers could place the weak points where most of the defenses are and make it sorta like those oldschool games where the very place you need to fire to destroy the battle cruiser is the same spot where its energy weapons come out of.
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Originally posted by Bobboau
subsystems have there hitpoints set up in a seperate plane than the rest of the ship hitpoints so the retorical summis more than the total argumant is BS. sence there are a lot of ships that have realy realy big (rotateing subobject, and soon to be animated subobjects) subsystems and if you set it up so these don't get destroyed easily then all the turrets and other subsystems are going to be 'bump into them and they explode' delicate.
Won't non-targetable subsystems largely solve this though? All you'd need was an event that blew the subsystem (or stopped it rotating) as soon as the ship had taken a certain amount of damage.
Not prefect but better than fragile turrets surely?
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Actually they'll make it worse, as there will be more things to have to divide hitpoints up among. The common solution to large rotating things is the 0% special case IIRC, which means the part gets rendered all the time but flashes like its disabled when it gets targeted.
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Originally posted by Goober5000
And those are represented by higher percentages. But since all subsystem damage is also applied to the hull, the subsystem hitpoints have to be less than or equal to the hull hitpoints.
No..it makes no sense.. Currently, you are able to destroy EVERY single turet on a ship (with normal weaponry), save one and the ship is still in tact.
For instance, take a WW2 battleship - the armor on it's turrets was so thick, that there is no way you could have destroyed them without blasing the whole ship in the process...
That limit makes sense number-wise, but simulating armor with hitpoints doesn't make sense if done that way.
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This isn't a WW2 battleship, though. Or WW2.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
This isn't a WW2 battleship, though. Or WW2.
Seriously, stop living in the past...
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Though he has a point on ship building.
However IMHO said turrets failed to operate long before it came to that when they took a direct hit near their base or the surrounding armor did - since that could damage the turrets suspensions.
You're right however about these aspects of heavy armor.
I'm also among the nitpickers whose no.1 fancy is a wargamish damage simulation.
What I came up with was making a new subsystem(s)frame. The ship no longer has a hull hitpoints, instead if any of these subsystems is destroyed (it should get a flag so anti-subsytem weapons only do normal damage against it, that way piercing/penetrating weapons would be that still do subsytem damage against it).
If any frame subsystem is destroyed the ship is dead - you could complicate it saying if frame-hitpoints
So you place this frame subsystem - deep inside the model or under the model's exterior.
So how will anything hit it?
Put destroyable non-targetable subsystems over it - actual armor plates. These just like the frame won't take subsystem damage only normal damage.
If they are destroyed the frame will be exposed.
.....
Off course I know a downside to this method: Who the hell want's to actually slice up a model and wrap it in layer after layer of submodels?!
A hell of a work - but it could lead to the ultimate damage simulation.
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if I knew how/were it was broke I would fix it but I removed the flag a long time ago had no problems, then you uncomented it, mentioning something about a divide by zero error. does it cause a divide by zero error? if so were?
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I ran into a div-by-zero error when that was enabled. I was never able to track it down, but when I uncommented the assert, it went away.
Of course, it could have been something else. But if we remove that limit, someone has to make sure it doesn't cause a crash.
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Originally posted by aldo_14
This isn't a WW2 battleship, though. Or WW2.
It was a freakin example you knuckehead!!!!
If my capship has a big, heavy turret the size of a cruiser, then it has to have the armor value greater than a cruiser.
With this limits, I am FORCED to give my capship either a kazillion hp's, or uber-weak turrets, or drasticly reduce the turret number.
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The latter of which would not be a bad thing if you're having a real problem with it. Too many huge turrets makes for an uninteresting design when you actually are trying to build a mission around the sucker.
My gripe really comes in with the limit when you get down to specific balancing, when that button anti-fighter turret on your cruiser needs to have just a little more armor but you can't afford to pull it from one of the other subsystems on the ship. Or if you've got a heavy turret on top of the weapons subsystem, and are having problems with weapons getting blown out when someone goes after the turret. Balancing in general.
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Well, duh, Trashman... if your turrets were indestructable, then game playability just went out the window. This is a game[/b] not real life. You have to be able to destroy the turrets with weapons smaller than a helios, or else the game isn't fun. :doubt:
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Originally posted by Raa
Well, duh, Trashman... if your turrets were indestructable, then game playability just went out the window. This is a game not real life. You have to be able to destroy the turrets with weapons smaller than a helios, or else the game isn't fun. :doubt: [/B]
*coughBearbaitingcough*
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Look I am sorry for causing a big word fight about this. I just hate it when I have a mod with a cruiser that has a few well armored turrets and subsystems blasts a destroyers under armored turrets and subsystems and bashes it with no oppostion, Lucifers systems. I know for the GTVA this is good but, game wise it takes from the feeling.
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It's best to think of it not as Armour, but as 'Health'. A Moloch has 80,000 units of health, 30% of which is taken up by Engines, 15% by sensors etc.
I'm pretty sure theres a sexp to set a subsystem invulnerable, if there isn't, It might be a good idea anyway ;)
I need all sorts of subsystem controls and features, I think they are massively underused ;)
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Pardon my lack of FREDding experience, but...
every-time
-- subsystem-strength < 100
-- real_subsys_hits = real_subsyst_hits + (100 - subsystem_strength)
-- if real_subsys_hits < 101
---- set-subsystem-strength 100
Okay, it's hackish, but you could improve upon it to set the subsystem strength to the 'real' percentage. Right now you get a subsystem with 200% of the hitpoints.
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Originally posted by TrashMan
It was a freakin example you knuckehead!!!!
aldo's british... forgive him, for he has seen too much red dwarf ;)
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Originally posted by Raa
Well, duh, Trashman... if your turrets were indestructable, then game playability just went out the window. This is a game not real life. You have to be able to destroy the turrets with weapons smaller than a helios, or else the game isn't fun. :doubt: [/B]
For ships and campaigns I make, ships can be whatever *I* want them to be.
Leave the balancing to me. I've made balance packs for dozens of games so far and they were all rated 9/10.
I'm not aiming for indistructable turets, but for realisticly strong turrets. take the Archangel for example - it has 9 huge turrets and I have to give tham a HP value to fit realisticly with their size. On top of that, I have about 64 other turrets on the ship.
With this restriction, it impossible to do it right.