Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Fury on June 05, 2010, 03:09:01 am

Title: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on June 05, 2010, 03:09:01 am
List of primary feature requests

Please let us have proper missile thrusters again. We haven't seen them since retail and early mediavps. Back in retail missiles had modeled thruster cones that had a thruster effect like ships did. This is still possible to do with or without $Thruster Flame Effect, but it requires said modeled thruster cones. Since ships don't require modeled thruster cones, why missiles still do? Basically same thruster capabilities for missiles that exist for ships, pretty please. Right now you can try to simulate a thruster with particle spew, but of course you waste your particle spew effect for it, not to mention it doesn't look all that good on fast moving missiles.

Missiles may have more than one thruster and not all of them may be of same size. So setting particle spew per thruster should be possible, instead of always being generated from center of the missile. Not sure if this works on ships, haven't tried. If not, it should work there too.

Beam-like warm-up and warm-down for normal primaries. By this I mean the glow prior to firing and after firing.

Remove requirement of using pof-files for flak-type weapons and missiles. Allow use of effects for flak and missiles, like in lasers.

Allow defining when beams begin fading when +Range is used. Often beams begin fading too soon and they no longer look powerful at long range, but +Range is necessary to prevent beams from being longer than intended.


List of secondary feature requests

Make armor types work with beams that don't have "no pierce shields" flag. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=72888.0)

I would really appreciate ability to set AI classes per-AI profile. This is on Sushi's to-do-list.

For weapons I would like to have shockwave radius override, so that I can set shockwave radius independent to inner and outer radius of blast. In addition a way to control shudder caused by shockwave, again independently of inner and outer radius of blast.

Remove limitation of $Expl Visual Rad flag only affecting ships that don't have propagating explosions. The main explosions when a large ship breaks apart are often ridiculously large and this would, I assume, fix the problem. See GTD Orion for example, it produces humongous fireballs when it breaks apart, so large that it looks stupid.

Currently there is no way to turn off shield mesh if you have enabled surface shields. I would like to have this option. In addition, I would like to request a flag like $Surface shield impact effect, which would let me choose an impact effect that is displayed instead of weapon impact effect whenever weapon hits hull with surface shields and there are shield points left.

Extend $Damage Spew and $Impact Spew flags to also allow setting custom damage spew effects on per-ship basis.


List of tertiary feature requests

I would like to propose two extensions to $Hull Repair Rate flag. $Min Hull Repair and $Max Hull Repair. The first flag would control how damaged a ship can be for passive hull repair to work. For example, if you set $Min Hull Repair: 20 it would mean that if hull integrity drops to 20% or below, hull is no longer automatically repaired. Likewise, $Max Hull Repair would set a hard limit to how much passive hull repair can repair hull integrity. Setting $Max Hull Repair: 80 would mean that hull repair only repairs up to 80%.

Make icons.tbl and medals.tbl modular and campaign specific. Meaning each campaign could have its own briefing icons and medals.

Features to allow dynamic (one that doesn't need to be fredded using s-exps) electronics warfare. Modern combat revolves around electronics and technological advantage in the field. This feature is something that I haven't thoroughly thought about yet, and I need some community feedback on it. Crude idea is to have some sort of tech level flags for ships radar, ecm, eccm and stealth features. For example, if your own ship has stealth and radar level 100, but enemy has radar level 110, the enemy spots and engages you earlier and thus has an advantage in engagement range. However, if you have higher ecm level and enemy's eccm, he has harder time locking his weapons on you. Stuff like this. Levels would be in percentages where 100 is 100% and standard level. I think this would avoid the need to define tech level modifiers elsewhere.

Ability to select which weapon banks you can link. For example, if a ship has three primary banks, you can link second and third bank but not first. Right now it's only possible to either allow or deny linking of all primary banks, but not specify it per-bank.

Extending usability of eff file (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69089.0)


List of completed feature requests

Give fredders ability to control weapon damage type, weapon shockwave damage type and ship shockwave damage type via sexps. - Done by FUBAR

Extend armor.tbl functionality to allow controlling of shield-piercing through damage and armor types. For example, a beam weapon by default pierces all shields. But then you have a special shield which beams cannot pierce, or pierces only partially. - Done by Wanderer

Additional scripting capability to hook into beams. The game engine does not consider beams as weapons at all. So if I want scripting to do something on beam impact for example, it doesn't work. See Flashy weapons script (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69430.msg1375694#msg1375694) as example. - Done by Wanderer


Thank you in advance if someone goes through the trouble to implement any of those feature requests.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Sushi on June 05, 2010, 09:21:04 am

I would really appreciate ability to set AI classes per-AI profile. This could already be on Sushi's to-do-list though.


Correct. :) Although I've been agonizing over the exact implementation approach to take for a while now.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Commander Zane on June 05, 2010, 10:45:07 am
I like the hull repair idea in addition to the particle effect.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on June 05, 2010, 02:05:30 pm
Little addition to your list:

Ability to assign thrusters (tabled ones) and cones to a specific subsystem.   Ever wonder why you don't see :v: use cones on multi engine ships?  Unless you take out all engines on a ship they stay on.  Same with $thruster entries in ships.tbl.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Rodo on June 05, 2010, 03:58:34 pm
Maybe I'll be kicked in the ass because of saying this... but here I go anyways:

Is it possible to diferenciate the hull damage from overall disable damage on subsystems? I hate to see a turret blow up when being shot to "death" by Akhentons.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: MatthTheGeek on June 05, 2010, 04:27:18 pm
I'm not sure I got you well. You want a separated death fx for subsystem depending on whether you destroyed it with a disabling weapon or a standard weapon ?
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Rodo on June 05, 2010, 04:36:32 pm
I'm not sure I got you well. You want a separated death fx for subsystem depending on whether you destroyed it with a disabling weapon or a standard weapon ?

No quite, what I'm saying is that a disabled turret should not explode, not sure if that can be modded some other way though.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: The E on June 05, 2010, 04:40:16 pm
That would involve a bit of a reworking of the damage system. It would mean tracking both hull damage and "stun damage" for lack of a better term, and shutting down a subsystem if it receives too much of both.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Dragon on June 05, 2010, 04:56:09 pm
You can make it work like that for other subsystems though, with the clever use of armor tables, duplicate, untargetable subsystems and SEXPs.
I have an exact method on how to do that, but it's rather complicated and time consuming.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Sushi on June 05, 2010, 07:52:45 pm
You could also just set a threshold: below X% integrity, turret stops working. At 0%, it is blown off.

FWIW also probably already doable via FRED scripting, but it would probably be very wordy and messy.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on August 13, 2010, 01:37:34 am
First post updated. :)
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Nighteyes on August 13, 2010, 04:42:07 pm
And this gets me to my second missile related feature request, proper missile (non-particle) thrusters. Retail missiles had modeled thruster cones in which animated thruster could be applied to. Mediavps and most mods do not have those. This limits missiles to thruster glow, particle spew and trail. To imitate a proper thruster, one would have to use particle spew to do that. Which is inefficient and you lose the possibility to use particle spew for different purpose. So I'd like missiles to have thrusters like ships do.

This, I want greatly, it will allow for much nicer looking missiles, and particle spew missile trails look like crap most of the times(especially on fast moving missiles)  :yes:
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on August 13, 2010, 04:43:24 pm
If this is still a random feature requests thread, I would still love tableside control over the incoming SSM message.  :nervous:
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Mahak on August 13, 2010, 10:18:39 pm
Here's mine - allow showing of default weapons loadouts on ships in the tech room and loadout screens.  Primary & secondary.  Maybe a flag in ships.tbl or weapons.tbl or something.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Trivial Psychic on August 13, 2010, 10:39:02 pm
With the release of 3.6.12, I feel that I can bring this one up again:  Persistent Impact Explosions

Thread for reference (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=56660.0)
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on August 14, 2010, 03:21:42 pm
And one more feature request added to the already long list of mine. :sigh:
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Shivan Hunter on August 14, 2010, 08:47:40 pm
This has been mentioned several times before, but I would like more dense asteroid fields with more, much smaller asteroids (ones which don't launch themselves at escort ships, so as not to change gameplay). Asteroid fields would look much cooler with more variability (and possibly FRED-side control of asteroid sizes).

For instance, 5 asteroid sizes instead of three: the existing sizes (150-200m, 50-100m, 25-50m), many tiny ones which don't 'attack' escort ships (10-15m), and tons of uber-tiny ones with no collision at all (akin to the 'space dust' animations that whiz by your ship, but larger and visible from farther away, say 150-200m) (possibly not even counted as 'objects', so the object limit doesn't need to be bumped so drastically).

and FRED could have an option to control how many of each are in the field to begin with (as a percentage of total asteroid count).

REALISM? THIS - IS - FREESPACE

[EDIT] Frak it, you know, I'd like it if we just got an option to control how many of the three existing sizes are spawned on startup. At the moment, all I ever seem to get are the large ones, making the field seem very bland. Of course, I'd like a bumped limit to the number as well, but I'll take what I can get.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Angelus on August 15, 2010, 05:03:14 pm
This has been mentioned several times before, but I would like more dense asteroid fields with more, much smaller asteroids (ones which don't launch themselves at escort ships, so as not to change gameplay). Asteroid fields would look much cooler with more variability (and possibly FRED-side control of asteroid sizes).

For instance, 5 asteroid sizes instead of three: the existing sizes (150-200m, 50-100m, 25-50m), many tiny ones which don't 'attack' escort ships (10-15m), and tons of uber-tiny ones with no collision at all (akin to the 'space dust' animations that whiz by your ship, but larger and visible from farther away, say 150-200m) (possibly not even counted as 'objects', so the object limit doesn't need to be bumped so drastically).

and FRED could have an option to control how many of each are in the field to begin with (as a percentage of total asteroid count).

REALISM? THIS - IS - FREESPACE

[EDIT] Frak it, you know, I'd like it if we just got an option to control how many of the three existing sizes are spawned on startup. At the moment, all I ever seem to get are the large ones, making the field seem very bland. Of course, I'd like a bumped limit to the number as well, but I'll take what I can get.

The number has been bumped from 256 to 512.
I'd rather see an option to have multiple Asteroid fields ( with the total number of 512 roids in mission) instead of one and to able to set some/ all fields to be active or passive.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Shivan Hunter on August 15, 2010, 10:59:39 pm
Well, I was thinking more like 1024 (or even 2048 ;7), but I realize those are long shots given the FS engine's general crappiness to work with so I don't expect it.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on August 22, 2010, 04:17:22 am
Give fredders ability to control weapon damage type, weapon shockwave damage type and ship shockwave damage type via sexps.

Think I have this one working.  4 sexps.  First sets weapon or weapon shockwave damage type, second sets individual ship collision or debris damage type, third sets shockwave damage type for ship class.  And 4th sets asteroid/debris filed damage type.

Patch file (http://fubar5.fubar.org/fs2netd/damagetypes.patch)
SSE2 Inferno Test builds (http://fubar5.fubar.org/fs2netd/damagetypes.rar)


Found a small bug, fixed and files updated.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Goober5000 on August 23, 2010, 01:52:40 am
Well, I was thinking more like 1024 (or even 2048 ;7), but I realize those are long shots given the FS engine's general crappiness to work with so I don't expect it.
The asteroid code is a mess and in dire need of a rewrite.  And the collision code really needs a rewrite too.  Until those happen, the asteroid count is not going to go above 512.  Bumping to 1024 was tried, and found to not work very well.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on August 26, 2010, 11:20:02 pm
I just noticed that ships.tbl does not have +Tech title: like weapons.tbl does. Which means tech room displays ships names like written in $Name:. This is contrary to +Tech title: in weapons.tbl which can be used to override tech room name. Since this is already in weapons.tbl, copying functionality to ships.tbl to server same purpose should be fairly straightforward, no? Either way, adding this would be really appreciated.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Goober5000 on August 29, 2010, 01:03:33 am
Excellent idea.  Added.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on September 04, 2010, 08:45:33 pm
Give fredders ability to control weapon damage type, weapon shockwave damage type and ship shockwave damage type via sexps.

Think I have this one working.  4 sexps.  First sets weapon or weapon shockwave damage type, second sets individual ship collision or debris damage type, third sets shockwave damage type for ship class.  And 4th sets asteroid/debris filed damage type.

Patch file (http://fubar5.fubar.org/fs2netd/damagetypes.patch)
SSE2 Inferno Test builds (http://fubar5.fubar.org/fs2netd/damagetypes.rar)


Found a small bug, fixed and files updated.

 :bump:

Anyone even care about this?
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on September 04, 2010, 09:02:35 pm
Yes I do, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten to it.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Mobius on September 05, 2010, 10:36:23 am
I'd really like an option that allows FREDders to choose what interface art file they'll be seeing in Fiction X, Mission Y's command briefing, mission Z's briefing, etc. etc. :)
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Shivan Hunter on September 22, 2010, 03:12:37 pm
[BUMPITY BUMP BUMP]

I'd like to see this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71682.0) humble request added. :nervous:
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: JGZinv on September 23, 2010, 01:51:04 pm
If I may be so bold as to suggest something.

Concerning FRED specifically, I'd like to see some kind of auto-generate feature where
you can specify 2 to 4 points on the world grid, and then have the editor fill it the in between space
with models.

Options:

Selection menu for objects/models
Click to highlight scrolling menu that allows you to select one or more items to be included in the placement.

Randomize locations.
Pretty much what you're thinking.

Custom spawn location.
A menu box where you could specify a generic XYZ amount of distance that is to be applied towards every
object to be generated, that you have selected from the above mentioned menu. IE. X: 5 Y: 0 Z: 0 applies 5 meters
between every generated object on that plane alone. The starting point for calculations would be the center (or a corner)
of the cube drawn as the spawn area.


Frequency Controls.
Essentially a slider bar or a value (1 to 10?) that will tell the system how much of a given object to
spawn. Without this you'll probably end up with all of one item or other oddities. If you want 1 type only then that
can be restricted by just picking one object in the selection menu. Here I'm talking about when you have several objects
selected.


My reasoning for this is that in Tachyon we had fields of crystals, roids, space junk, etc.
The only editor we had was a text menu to place each object by XYZ, with no way of previewing it.
It took eons to make a map with any quantity of objects on a map, much less to align it at all.

FRED is vastly superior, but you largely have to still place things by hand. I'd greatly like to see it made easier
in the case of "Non-Important Stuff" of just being able to say I want a bunch of random NIS "here" and then draw
another box and add some NIS over "there."

Individual stats for each object can still be handled by FRED as it is now, and I'm sure folks can edit by hand
things for little adjustments/tweaking. I'm just looking at this as an option for getting a lot on the map very quickly,
and with the custom placement controls, you should have enough control to make shapes or things when you use
the "generator" more than once.

One example is that you could easily create a perfect formation of many fighters for a cutscene or as if they were "on parade"
showing off military strength. It'd be a lot easier than adjusting every ship individually, or setting up selection groups.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on September 23, 2010, 01:55:16 pm
We already have asteroid and debris field autogenerators. This doesn't sound too different.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Dragon on September 23, 2010, 04:50:10 pm
Would that be possible to somehow force computer controlled burst fire on player?
For example, a gatling gun which, after pressing the trigger (even if it's just a single tap) spins up and fires 10 rounds.
This is the way modern gatling guns like GAU-8 Avenger operate and I'd like to be able to create something similar in FS.
I think that it could be done as a burst flag for a weapon.
On a side note, a few requests from this thread: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71262.0 (namely recoil and overkill piercing) would also help with creating realistic cannons on FS engine.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on September 23, 2010, 10:27:57 pm
Use swarm instead of burst, it does what you want except for forced spin-up.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Dragon on September 24, 2010, 07:06:03 am
I did it and it didn't forced even a normal gun to fire in swarms.
It works only on secondary weapons, at least for player.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on September 24, 2010, 11:42:37 am
Swarm works on primaries. For it to fire, you need to hold down the trigger until first shot is fired if weapon has spin up time. Even if you release trigger afterwards, remaining shots as specified in swarm will be fired.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Dragon on September 24, 2010, 02:06:42 pm
Unless something changed recently, they won't.
I tried it on a few weapons with no sucess.
Neither of them had spin-up, but I don't think it'll affect the problem.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on December 06, 2010, 02:21:18 am
First post updated. (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=69749.msg1378185#msg1378185) Divided the post into four parts - primary, secondary, tertiary and completed feature requests.

And  I wonder whatever happened with this? I thought BP fredders were supposed to test it, did it not happen?
Give fredders ability to control weapon damage type, weapon shockwave damage type and ship shockwave damage type via sexps.

Think I have this one working.  4 sexps.  First sets weapon or weapon shockwave damage type, second sets individual ship collision or debris damage type, third sets shockwave damage type for ship class.  And 4th sets asteroid/debris filed damage type.

Patch file (http://fubar5.fubar.org/fs2netd/damagetypes.patch)
SSE2 Inferno Test builds (http://fubar5.fubar.org/fs2netd/damagetypes.rar)


Found a small bug, fixed and files updated.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on December 06, 2010, 02:26:03 am
Nope no feedback on it.  :(
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on December 06, 2010, 02:55:17 am
Does the patch apply to current nightlies? I might ask The E to apply the patch to custom BP builds so we can test it out, or at least I'll test it this time.

Edit: The E already applied the patch to BP builds. There should be some feedback on it in the near future.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on December 06, 2010, 07:14:36 am
Nope no feedback on it.  :(

If this is in trunk/nightlies I can test it. Or if it goes into BP builds.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on December 07, 2010, 08:53:50 pm
Nope no feedback on it.  :(

FUBAR - have tested your patch on BP, Darius and I got some crashes, I believe The_E has tracked it down and is committing a fix.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on December 08, 2010, 07:54:45 pm
FUBAR - seems to work nicely, at least in a test case! Awesome.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on December 08, 2010, 08:20:18 pm
Amazing.  When E brought up those bugs and I took a look I couldn't even remember writing most of that. 
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on December 08, 2010, 08:24:00 pm
Sorry it took so long.  :(
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: FUBAR-BDHR on December 08, 2010, 10:39:48 pm
No I mean I finished it at like 4:34am after drinking all night. 
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: T-Man on December 12, 2010, 06:59:41 am
Assuming this is a topic for us to post up requests (if not pitchfork away) here's a couple from me;

1 - Rearm target command: For if your ever working on the communication system at some point. I recall there's a cheat that allows you to order a target to be rearmed. Could this be implimented as an in-game command? Sometimes when you give an order you accidently stop an AI half-way through reloading, and i thought it would be nice to be able to target the fighter and have it complete the reload before it continues your orders. Would allow you to prioritise the critically damaged too.

2 - Hotkey subsystem targeting: Is it possible to extend the hotkey system (or at least the white bracket visual) to subsystems, so you can have white brackets show over them? Feel it would be useful for missions where the player is tasked with disarming turrets.

Cheers people

EDIT: Oh yeah almost forgot...

3 - Reinforcment groups: Would it be possible to create a custom-named group of ships that are called in from the reinforcment's menu? So for example you could have two cruisers as reinforcments but instead of both of them seperately you just had "Cruiser support" as one entry? Might be handy for ideas such as BPs reinforcment system they used in one mission, and means you don't have to have ships called "Saturation strike" or "5th Fleet" if you don't want to.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on December 12, 2010, 09:32:41 am
3 - Reinforcment groups: Would it be possible to create a custom-named group of ships that are called in from the reinforcment's menu? So for example you could have two cruisers as reinforcments but instead of both of them seperately you just had "Cruiser support" as one entry? Might be handy for ideas such as BPs reinforcment system they used in one mission, and means you don't have to have ships called "Saturation strike" or "5th Fleet" if you don't want to.

This is very very easy to do, using pretty much the tactics you described in the last sentence. They work fine!
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: T-Man on December 12, 2010, 02:08:51 pm
This is very very easy to do, using pretty much the tactics you described in the last sentence. They work fine!
It is? :confused: So you could have for example the Vikrant and Toreador on the reinforcment list as one entry called "Artillery Support", but in game they appear with their names?
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on December 12, 2010, 02:14:24 pm
This is very very easy to do, using pretty much the tactics you described in the last sentence. They work fine!
It is? :confused: So you could have for example the Vikrant and Toreador on the reinforcment list as one entry called "Artillery Support", but in game they appear with their names?

Absolutely. You'll note that the reinforcement items in Aristeia don't match the names of the wings you get.

Set up a stealth nav buoy at a great distance from the mission. Set it as a reinforcement ship. Set its arrival as the arrival cue trigger for the Vikrant and Toreador.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: T-Man on December 12, 2010, 02:27:08 pm
Set up a stealth nav buoy at a great distance from the mission. Set it as a reinforcement ship. Set its arrival as the arrival cue trigger for the Vikrant and Toreador.
Why did i never think of doing that? :wtf:
...
I'm going to go hide now and this topic get back on track. :lol:

(thanks a lot; neat trick, would never have thought of that. Will come in handy for a lot of project ideas :)).
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: General Battuta on December 12, 2010, 02:37:59 pm
Don't forget to check 'no warp effect'.

What you're buying in Aristeia are actually nav buoys.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Nuke on December 12, 2010, 10:40:20 pm
Would that be possible to somehow force computer controlled burst fire on player?
For example, a gatling gun which, after pressing the trigger (even if it's just a single tap) spins up and fires 10 rounds.
This is the way modern gatling guns like GAU-8 Avenger operate and I'd like to be able to create something similar in FS.
I think that it could be done as a burst flag for a weapon.
On a side note, a few requests from this thread: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71262.0 (namely recoil and overkill piercing) would also help with creating realistic cannons on FS engine.

thats not how gatling guns operate. in a modern gatling gun (non-russian) the feed system is geared to the gun itself, so if the gun is spinning ammo is feeding. the firing pins are connected to a rack system so every time a barrel passes the firing position, any round in the chamber goes off. so long as the barrels are spinning the gun is firing. the firing rate of the gun is proportional to the rpm. so during spin-up the firing rate ramps up from 0 to its target rpm, and likewise when the motors are shut off after firing the firing rate ramps back down to 0. gatling guns also produce a lot of heat, so firing more than 100-300 rounds is bad for the gun and can affect accuracy. so the pilot has a selector switch for the maximum length of the burst (old a-10s also had a speed switch, but it was found that the low setting was effective, better conserved ammo, and didnt overheat the gun as fast, so the switch was removed) and the trigger would be locked out when the limit was reached and the gun spins down.

russian gatling guns are a little bit more fun. they are gas powered so they gan get really ****ing fast. were talking 10,000 rounds/min. the problem is they are not powered, so the barrel is started spinning with a pyrotechnic charge (which were somewhat limited, so you could only pull the trigger so many times regaurdless of if you have ammo left or not). once the barrel starts spinning the gun itself provided mechanical power for the feed system (unlike the a-10 where both were driven by hydraulic power on the same drive shaft), which as far as i could tell was a simple belt feed systems. they also did not have the epic ammo capacity of the a-10. the russians considered it a secondary weapon system, and probably only equipped them because we had done the same after gunpod tests with the f-4s proved favorable (missiles back then were horrible wastes of taxpayer's money, and couldn't hit a damn thing most of the time). also the only way to stop them was with breaks, and a problem with the design is if the breaks failed with the gun firing, there was no way to stop it, the gun could have melted down and failed catastrophically if it had enough ammo in the magazine.

*edit*
that went way off topic.

what i would suggest is battletech-ish weapon heat tracking. each shot would produce a certain amount of heat, and the weapon bank/or ship would have a certain heat capacity and cooling rate. cooling rate would be the rate of heat loss. and heat capacity would be the maximum heat that can be generated before bad things start happening. bad things could be damage to the weapon subsystem, loss of ammunition, weapon jamming, weapon inaccuracy (higher fof), the whole ship explodes, etc. each of these effects would need their own $heat_threshold:, a $chance_percent:, $chance_penalty:. once heat passes $heat_threshold: there is a $chance_percent: % likelihood that the effect will occure, for every heat unit above $heat_threshold: $chance_percent: is added to (heat-$heat_threshold)*$chance_penalty:. at some point the percentage will reach 100% and the effect will happen every time. this kinda thing need not be limited to gatling guns, and could be used on all weapons. these values would be specific to the ship and would look something like:

Code: [Select]
$overheat condition: weapon subsystem damage
 +value: 10 ;amount of damage
 +heat_threshold:   1000  ;number of heat units when effect starts to be applied
 +chance_percent:   10     ;percent chance that effect will apply to a shot
 +chance_penalty:   1        ;how much extra percentage of a chance per heat unit beyond threshold that is added to chance percent

$overheat condition: weapon jammed
 +value: 5 ;how many seconds to clear jam
 +heat_threshold:   500     ;number of heat units when effect starts to be applied
 +chance_percent:   5        ;percent chance that effect will apply to a shot
 +chance_penalty:   0.5      ;how much extra percentage of a chance per heat unit beyond threshold that is added to chance percent

i would also add a flag to enable fire rate ramping based on weapon model rotation speed as well. instead of a spining delay up before firing that it uses now. this one is more gatling specific though.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Mobius on January 02, 2011, 12:47:26 pm
Amazing, reminds me of Colony Wars. It'd be nice to have something like that! :yes:
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Fury on January 08, 2011, 04:46:13 am
Remove limitation of $Expl Visual Rad flag only affecting ships that don't have propagating explosions. The main explosions when a large ship breaks apart are often ridiculously large and this would, I assume, fix the problem. See GTD Orion for example, it produces humongous fireballs when it breaks apart, so large that it looks stupid.
I wish someone could take a look at this. It's really, really annoying visual-wise and it'd be great addition to next mediavps.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Dragon on January 08, 2011, 05:11:55 am
Quote
thats not how gatling guns operate.
OK, but such thing as RPM-dependant ROF may be rather difficult to do in FS and I don't think many people would notice.
Computer controlled bursts are used on some modern fighters (for example, the F-16), not to mention allowing them in FS would in general allow some interesting ideas for weapon designers.
With the overheat system idea, usage of gatling guns could suddenly become much more interesting.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Nuke on January 08, 2011, 05:36:17 am
Quote
thats not how gatling guns operate.
OK, but such thing as RPM-dependant ROF may be rather difficult to do in FS and I don't think many people would notice.
Computer controlled bursts are used on some modern fighters (for example, the F-16), not to mention allowing them in FS would in general allow some interesting ideas for weapon designers.
With the overheat system idea, usage of gatling guns could suddenly become much more interesting.

i have realistic gatling turrets scripted out. they do operate on a timed burst and behave much like a beam cannon. when they fire it initiates a burst, spin up is done, then a sustained fire rate and finally a spin down. the gun is fired during all 3 phases and it creates a pretty badass tracer stream in the process.

heat tracking is potentially scriptable, and i would probably script it if no-one wants to code it in-engine.
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: headdie on January 08, 2011, 06:05:00 am
Is this helpful at all on the Gatling descussion

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Burst_Shots:

$Burst Shots:
FS2 Open, 3.6.11:
Defines the number of shots in a burst
Shots in a burst use shorter ( $Burst Delay: ) delay than usually
Syntax: Integer
$Burst Delay:

FS2 Open, 3.6.11:
Defines the time in milliseconds between the shots in a burst
Syntax: Integer

$Burst Flags:
FS2 Open, 3.6.11:
Defines the flags used to define the burst firing behaviour
Syntax: ( String String ), list of flags
Available burst flags:
"fast firing", acts as if same turret cooldown flag would be used between the shots in the burst.
"random length", makes AI to fire burst of random length (from 1 to burst shots).
Title: Re: Random feature requests
Post by: Dragon on January 08, 2011, 11:16:08 am
We both know about burst system and it doesn't do many important things that are needed to make them really work.