Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: Shivan Hunter on April 28, 2011, 12:57:03 am
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This has been mentioned before a few times- the idea of a tertiary "weapons" system, separate from primaries or secondaries. They would be "weapons" only in the sense that they are loaded in the weapons loadout screen. These modules would use SEXPs (and maybe scripting but sexps ftw) to alter certain characteristics of your fighter. (Battuta, feel free to chime in with how these could be used in capship command! I'm sure you have some excellent ideas on that.)
I'm going to throw a few ideas out there, and I'd like this to become an idea thread for tertiary weapons (or "modules", or whatever) for when they're implemented. We have some archetypal primaries and secondaries we all rely on, so we might as well establish archetypal modules as well.
One last thing, try not to think about how it will be done in FRED. SEXPs can do almost anything as some recent mods have pointed out. I thought some of my ideas would be difficult until I realized you could swap out fighter classes at the beginning of the mission, which opens up a host of possibilities.
Fighter healing: Possibly the most trivial one to implement. If this is equipped, your fighter heals a percentage point every 1 or 2 seconds, possibly up to a maximum.
Speed augmentation: Increases your max speed and maybe acceleration by a factor of about 1.25 to 1.5.
Afterburner capacity: Increases your afterburner capacity or recharge rate by a similar factor. Might also upgrade weapon energy for a general "upgraded reactor" module.
Secondary capacity: Increases the capacity of one or all secondary banks by a factor of about 1.5 to 2.
Weapon overload: Increases power (damage) of weapons. Possibly also increases energy consumed. Possibly temporary: increases weapons by a factor of 4 or 5 which then burn out for a while. Maybe one-time-use or with a long cooldown time before you can use it again.
AWACS: increases your sensor range in a nebula or other hostile conditions, or hell, maybe just gives your fighter the "awacs" flag.
Electronic warfare suite: A complicated one. Allows stuff like sensor or beam jamming akin to that seen in WiH, but less powerful. Obviously not always on: controlled through a spellcasting system, or maybe coming out of weapon energy until it's switched off.
Gun turret: Swaps out your fighter class for one with a gorram turret bolted to the top. Yes, for fighters as well as bombers. Um... the turret would need to actually be useful, not like the ones we normally deal with.
Those are just some basic ones, since I'm tired atm. There are all sorts of other possibilities. Remember by swapping out the ship class of your fighter you can change ANYTHING found in ships.tbl.
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Good idea, something like abilities in Sins :)
More ideas:
Sabotage subsystem, Shield anihillator pulse, Shield restore, Telepathic attack (temporary lowers target AI to lowest class), Telepathic conversion (changes target IFF), Repair bots (as healing, but can be used on other friendly targets), Subspace inhibitor field projector (temporary makes target unable to jump), Tactical microjump (changes player position coordinates in the viewing direction + 5000 m, and adds jump effect).
Customizing turret weapons before mission would be also very cool :)
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I like the tactical microjump idea. I'd also add some kind of hyper afterburner module, and a sniper type gun (narrows down the fov, high damage, long refire rate).
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War in Heaven R2 has an equipment system implemented, and most of the modules from the first post are already in-game in one form or another. The only thing to note is that they replace a primary or secondary weapon instead of going in their own slots - however, it's easy enough to have a bank on a ship which only accepts equipment items.
I'll post details on how they work so other mods can take them.
Here's the original thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=72487.msg1432443#msg1432443) where the idea was first publicized.
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as far as i know this is actually supported but you have to use scripting to defined the behavior, i haven't had a chance to play with it yet.
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as far as i know this is actually supported but you have to use scripting to defined the behavior, i haven't had a chance to play with it yet.
What is actually supported?
A third weapon slot (not primaries or secondaries), or simply equippable weapons in primary/secondary slots that behave in these fashions? Because yes, the latter is definitely supported, the former would be cool.
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Would be nice to be able set a wep flag or make a separate slot type. Ideally bind a flag to a generic subsystem "equipment" type, that we could
setup in PCS2. Dedicated equipment slots is how Tach did it... although the ship table in that game it was essentially a "no mount" list and whatever
wasn't listed you could equip. A lot of the ideas mentioned we've had in mind for Fringe since 06 in one form or another.
The problem with equipment type add-ons... is then you start seeing people in multi use one particular setup as "the best" and everyone else has to be taught/told
how to setup their ship. I can't begin to explain how many hundreds of new players I've had to run through the "intro speech" because they waltz into multi with a stock
un-setup fighter. When you're missing boosters, lateral thrust, extra shield/ammo/energy reserves, and nebula radar... you might as well just park and wait to explode.
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Just add a primary or secondary weapon slot to the ship that only accepts the equipment items.
Voila, tertiary equipment.
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Yeah but you're talking about something that sits in the HUDs weapons block then and would be able to be activated by a player.
Two issues with that:
1. It looks rather poor to do it that way rather than have it's own section. I'm not sure if the latest HUD code can do that or not.
You'd have to somehow make a gauge that displays some of the weapon slots but not others. It'd be great if that did work though.
The way the weapons block cycles & links items is also a problem (at least for our mod particularly).
2. It's not an always on type effect for some equipment and not others. Like say you wanted a 25% shield increase all the time, instead of
having to trigger the equipment. You could almost have two groups, passive equip' (non interactive items that always produce effect X) and active equip'
(requires some input from the player to produce an effect). It boils down to triggers.
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Passive equip is easy. Most of the equipment we have implemented is passive rather than triggered.
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@JGZInv: WiH and WoD r2's are already using these, so I assume there's an elegant, non-interface-screw way of doing this even without a proper implementation.
Sabotage subsystem, Shield anihillator pulse, Shield restore, Telepathic attack (temporary lowers target AI to lowest class), Telepathic conversion (changes target IFF), Repair bots (as healing, but can be used on other friendly targets), Subspace inhibitor field projector (temporary makes target unable to jump), Tactical microjump (changes player position coordinates in the viewing direction + 5000 m, and adds jump effect).
Customizing turret weapons before mission would be also very cool :)
Sabotage subsystem and Shield annihilator pulse sound too much like weapons- if those are available, why would I have weapons that do the same thing? But they could be useful.
Shield restore is a good one.
Telepathic attack and telepathic conversion seem sort of like something the electronic warfare suite could do to drones or turrets, but some ability to affect normal ships would be interesting as well.
Repair bots sounds nice. Deploy them, maybe they heal any fighter within 200m at a steady rate.
Subspace inhibitors seem like they'd break missions unless they could only affect ships below cruiser or freighter size. Could be doable with a well-designed mission that considers it though.
Tactical microjump.. hmm. I actually have an idea for an FTL system, not related to FSish in-system jumps. that allows travel at long distances but with not much precision. Once you entered it, most of the screen would look like a HUD showing icons for ship locations and planet orbits, and you'd move around sort of like in that ME2 thingy, then exit at roughly your new position. I dunno how either it or tactical microjumps would work as a module though since it seems like a mission based on it would require it.
A couple more ideas I had:
Control assault drones: If a friendly capship releases a wing of assault drones to assist, you could take control of the wing leader and give orders to the rest of the drones. The drones would be faster and more powerful than your fighter but much weaker, so you can use them temporarily to great effect but they go down quick. This would leave your own fighter a sitting duck, though; maybe the effect would have to be canceled automatically as soon as you take damage.
Proximity mines: Yes, a blatantly offensive one, I know, but not necessarily one that can be easily replicated using primaries or secondaries. Would drop mines (kamikaze ships with a mine model, maybe the countermeasure model if one is not available) that would home in on any enemy ships within 300 meters or so. (I've been wanting this in FS since I last played Descent)
Stealth: Hides your ship from enemy sensors until you get within 500m of an enemy ship. Works the first time, can be activated again once you evade with limited probability of success.
EMP reduction: Reduces the effect of EMP from weapons and/or nebulae storms.
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Isn't there a lot of ship class swapping with a lot of these?
That's...a bit messy modpack wise (a billion Ship#WHATEVER's), and it quickly becomes a headache to spread the equipment around.
I know that for WoD2, Spoon chose to only allow the "equipment" on one ship (so far at least).
this is the primary thing in the way IMO, I'd like to hear solutions if there are any...
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Yeah, I'd prefer to stick to stuff that doesn't require ship class swaps.
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It would get messy when you have several versions of each ship. Do ship templates work? You'd still have a crapload of ships but it'd save space in the tbl, and in FRED if you make the variants non-placeable.
If there's an easier way to change stuff like max speed, afterburner capacity, etc, using SEXPs only it would be much more elegant. An alternate class would still be necessary for some of them like the turret one, of course.
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Instead of boosting afterburner capacity, afterburner enhancing equipment will refill afterburners incrementally when they're below full, effectively extending the length of one long burst.
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as far as i know this is actually supported but you have to use scripting to defined the behavior, i haven't had a chance to play with it yet.
What is actually supported?
A third weapon slot (not primaries or secondaries), or simply equippable weapons in primary/secondary slots that behave in these fashions? Because yes, the latter is definitely supported, the former would be cool.
like i said, i havent messed around with it yet. im also not 100% sure its been committed.
seems a test build exists (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=71501.0)
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The most obvious suggestion: Cloaking device.
I had at one point suggested that tertiaries (if fully implemented) could possibly be made to completely replace default subsystems. For example, let's say you are during Unification War era, and you are flying a certain fighter and you only have the option to use simple sensors, but suddenly your side gets access to target locking sensors, so you can swap out the old unit for the new one, but it has a greater energy consumption. Then you get improved navigation systems that allow self-jumping fighters so you can end the mission by jumping out rather than having to fly back to your capital ship. Then you get engines that have afterburners so you can swap them out. You get the idea.
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I had at one point suggested that tertiaries (if fully implemented) could possibly be made to completely replace default subsystems. For example, let's say you are during Unification War era, and you are flying a certain fighter and you only have the option to use simple sensors, but suddenly your side gets access to target locking sensors, so you can swap out the old unit for the new one, but it has a greater energy consumption. Then you get improved navigation systems that allow self-jumping fighters so you can end the mission by jumping out rather than having to fly back to your capital ship. Then you get engines that have afterburners so you can swap them out. You get the idea.
This would be nice
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For me, definitely I'd love to strap a hugeass nuclear missile that's almost as long as my fighter, under my fighter. If not...a space-Tomahawk cruise missile...gah, what am I saying.
If not, maybe a disposable or attached beam cannon, lore-wise, with it's generator and capacitors and whatnot attached. You won't be firing BFReds out of it, maybe...a weaker SGreen.
Although, the Electronics Warfare suite suits my taste. I want my GTF Aurora to be able to do xxx. And xxx. Vector in SSMs without using TAG-Cs. Maybe even jam a bit of radar, making things fuzzy or prevent players from pressing T and bringing me up on the HUD.
Oh, a camera/scope with variable zoom for weapons with 3k~ range, unaffected by recoil flags.
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For me, definitely I'd love to strap a hugeass nuclear missile that's almost as long as my fighter, under my fighter. If not...a space-Tomahawk cruise missile...gah, what am I saying.
Those are weapons. Weapons like the Sledgehammer and Jackhammer in BP2 already do that.
If not, maybe a disposable or attached beam cannon, lore-wise, with it's generator and capacitors and whatnot attached. You won't be firing BFReds out of it, maybe...a weaker SGreen.
Weapon, not equipment.
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In combination with capship piloting i'd like secondary subsystems (like nav or spare engines) and warpdrives. If you had another subspace drive, you could execute another jump without waiting for cooldown.
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For me, definitely I'd love to strap a hugeass nuclear missile that's almost as long as my fighter, under my fighter. If not...a space-Tomahawk cruise missile...gah, what am I saying.
Those are weapons. Weapons like the Sledgehammer and Jackhammer in BP2 already do that.
If not, maybe a disposable or attached beam cannon, lore-wise, with it's generator and capacitors and whatnot attached. You won't be firing BFReds out of it, maybe...a weaker SGreen.
Weapon, not equipment.
I'm sure I'm not blind, because it does say' Tertiary weapons idea thread'...and I'm not sure if Sledgehammers and Jackhammers are mounted on the ship model, like how the Gattlers are. They're certainly not what I'm thinking of, anyway...
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hugeass missile with a fighter strapped to it is possable,
1 place a missile bank firepoint on the ships somewhere appropriate.
2 model a new or scale an existing missile pof file to the desired size
3 cook up a table entry for the new weapon
4 enable show secondary weapon on the bank in the ships table entry and add the missile to the ships allowed list
5 fred a mission using the missile
then equip the weapon like normal to a ship and use
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For me, definitely I'd love to strap a hugeass nuclear missile that's almost as long as my fighter, under my fighter. If not...a space-Tomahawk cruise missile...gah, what am I saying.
Those are weapons. Weapons like the Sledgehammer and Jackhammer in BP2 already do that.
If not, maybe a disposable or attached beam cannon, lore-wise, with it's generator and capacitors and whatnot attached. You won't be firing BFReds out of it, maybe...a weaker SGreen.
Weapon, not equipment.
I'm sure I'm not blind, because it does say' Tertiary weapons idea thread'...and I'm not sure if Sledgehammers and Jackhammers are mounted on the ship model, like how the Gattlers are. They're certainly not what I'm thinking of, anyway...
'Tertiary weapons' is a term for equipment, what you're describing are primaries and secondaries. And yes the Sledgehammer and Jackhammer are both mounted on the ship model.
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Hmm, weapons is quite a fickle word. Having the Sledge and Jackhammers mounted on the ship model is pretty nice, I should fly bombers more.
However...I'm thinking of this. A one-shot supersized missile that does a lot of damage to cruisers/maybe even bigger ships, and has massive AoE. Instakills fighters and bombers. A true, nuclear weapon...not...FS-lore ones with all that 3kt crap and doesn't instantly obliterate an entire fighter wing in a single hit. You get to see it drop from under your fighter and boost its way to the target. FS-sized missiles are...incredibly tiny... (http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww286/TSADestiny/Harrier.png)
Oh well, camera/scope is still my top 'want'.
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The Jackhammer and Sledgehammer are a hell of a lot bigger than that (and about the same size proportional the launch platform).
In fact the Jackhammer and Sledgehammer are closer to the size of ICBMs than that.
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Really?! Damn, the game's scale makes it tiny. I guess...what I'm imagining, it'll probably be the size of a Valkyrie/full-sized fighter without it's wings...
...haha, well. Personally I'm content with being able to launch a huge missile that I can see flying away into the enemy. The torpedoes do great at being easy to see when it launches out of your ship, but it doesn't match up to the kind of...thing I imagine. Oh well, whatever. Uhh...
Definitely, definitely want lots of chaff/flares blasting out the back of my ship, over that dull CM disc. Maybe it's like dispensing lots, lots of CMs trying to code it.
Hmm...vanguard overboost one-use boosters for needing to cross great distances ASAP without having to use subspace, or some drop tank-like thing which increases AB recharge, but eats a bit of your mobility in return, or armor kits...hell, stealth panels/signature reduction would be nice, purge it when things go wrong and you regain weapon/AB control. Lore-wise it wouldn't be as efficient as a specially-made stealth fighter, but when you 'just' need that little bit of jury-rigged stealth.
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Armor kits are in, afterburner boosters are in, but they extend afterburner duration rather than increasing maximum velocity.
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what do you mean by "armor kits"?
Just had this idea, might be the same thing.
set-armor-type is a SEXP.
Armor types can be made tertiary weapons in the same way that armor mods work in ME1 (because ME1 gameplay > ME2 gameplay trololol).
Bigger fighters could use tougher ones, they could specialize in certain damage types, and maybe even have a few special effects... but changing the armor type is as trivial as a one-time SEXP at the beginning of the mission.
I'm starting to think tertiary weapons are epic awesome leet hax.
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Yes, that's exactly what the armor kits we have implemented do.
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Mines that fire from the back of your fighter and home in on pursuers
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Hahaa, I'd rather choose rear-mounted multi-target anti-aircraft swarm missiles somehow, over mines.
...well, heat seekers don't aspect lock, so...if the addon missile bank was just...turned 180 degrees...
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again a crude mine can probably be made as is,
rear firing missiles, not sure, perhaps stick a single part turret with a limited fov on the back of the fighter/bomber and make it sbank rather than pbank, but very limited for customizing by the player though.
now having a tertiary or other slot to change the turret mounting on their fighter would be nice
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again a crude mine can probably be made as is,
rear firing missiles, not sure, perhaps stick a single part turret with a limited fov on the back of the fighter/bomber and make it sbank rather than pbank, but very limited for customizing by the player though.
now having a tertiary or other slot to change the turret mounting on their fighter would be nice
Can be done easily enough as is, and would be fun.
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Made a mission testing a few simple ideas.
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75870.0