Hard Light Productions Forums
Community Projects => The FreeSpace Upgrade Project => Topic started by: General Battuta on January 30, 2014, 09:47:58 am
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Hey! We had a cool idea. Modders have been using the subsystem name capability of recent FSO builds to good effects - for example, a warship's big obvious forward beams can be 'Main Beam' instead of 'Beam Turret', Inferno's railguns can be 'railgun' instead of 'laser turret', a Karuna can have 'VLS Launcher', so on, so forth. Since this doesn't alter the turret's model name, it doesn't break missions or require any pof changes.
What would you guys think about implementing this in the next MVPs release? Specifying turrets as 'AAA Beam', 'Main Beam', so on? It might provide some minor convenience to players cycling rapidly through turrets looking for something specific in a retail mission.
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+1 from me. It's an additional feature that wasn't available in retail, and I guarantee you that there's not a mission made by anyone (let alone [V]) which took into account the balancing effects of having to scroll through the turrets. It's a convenience thing, and I think convenience is worth having.
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Good idea - if someone plays AOA for the first time for example, and has not played FS2 before, it is not immediately clear which beam turrets they need to take out.
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Oh yes, yes, YES! Trying to find the right beams on ships can be so frustrating!
I have wanted this for so long!
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I concur; let's bring the MediaVPs up to the community's modern turret-naming standards! :yes:
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Please rename the Sath's forward turrets in Bearbaiting as follows:
****
YOURSELF
AND
DIE
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Would you call the beams SRed and LRed and such?
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"Heavy Beam"
"Light Beam"
"AAA Beam"
"Plasma Turret"
"Pulse Turret"
"Flak Turret"
"Laser Turret"
"ASM Launcher"
"AAM Launcher"
SRed doesn't seem like a name the player is "supposed" to see.
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Yeah, those are good names, except 'plasma turret' should probably stay 'laser turret', 'pulse' is BP only, and ASM/AAM are too technical - best to stick with 'missile launcher' for the MVPs.
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I guess it could be Light/Medium/Heavy/Super for the anti-capship beams.
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Yeah, "missile launcher" would be good enough, as there aren't that many ASMs in FS universe. Just the Fusion Mortar and VFC, I think. The latter is never used anyway, and the former is restricted to Fenris/Leviathan.
Light/Medium/Heavy/Main would be my choice for beams. Light=S and below, Medium=Slash, Heavy=B/L and Main=BF/LRB. Laser Turret for blobs and AAA Beam for, well, AAA beams. Flak Turret for flaks. Now that I look at it, in the end, the rename would mostly concern beams. TBH, we could probably get away with just designating AAA beams. Besides that, the current FS system of Laser/Beam/Flak/Missile works quite well for canon ships, IMO.
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I don't like Main, because it implies it's "regular", if you know what I mean, when it's irregular. That's why I went with Super.
EDIT: I could also go with Small/Medium/Large/Huge.
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Please rename the Sath's forward turrets in Bearbaiting as follows:
****
YOURSELF
AND
DIE
I second this!
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I don't like Main, because it implies it's "regular", if you know what I mean, when it's irregular. That's why I went with Super.
EDIT: I could also go with Small/Medium/Large/Huge.
Note, though, if we were to go by defaults, in Mediavps only Sathanas and Miolnir would have "Main" beams, and I think that it sounds better in that case. LRB and BF Greens are not assigned by default and LRBGreen is only assigned to Colossus in one mission, I think. So, the turrets on Colly would be "Large/Heavy/Big/whatever-we-use-for-L and B", because it had BGreens there by default.
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The only super duper tinsy winsy minor issue would be some confusion in regards to dialogue. Command calls beams and turrets different things throughout the campaign "Forward Beam", "Main Beam Cannon", "Anti-Fighter Beams", to the point that having obviously general names like "beam turret" could apply to any name, whereas if we get it wrong, players could be confused when command asks them to take out the "Main Beam Cannon" and they see "Large Beam Cannon", or what have you.
That being said, I think we just need to play through the game and get a true list of every silly name command has for turrets and ensure that our new names wouldn't cause too much confusion. The only remaining issue would be the same issue in the many, many mods out there.
But yeah, all that aside, I'm down.
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I don't like Main, because it implies it's "regular", if you know what I mean, when it's irregular. That's why I went with Super.
EDIT: I could also go with Small/Medium/Large/Huge.
Note, though, if we were to go by defaults, in Mediavps only Sathanas and Miolnir would have "Main" beams, and I think that it sounds better in that case. LRB and BF Greens are not assigned by default and LRBGreen is only assigned to Colossus in one mission, I think. So, the turrets on Colly would be "Large/Heavy/Big/whatever-we-use-for-L and B", because it had BGreens there by default.
Main beam sounds like a ship's best beam. A Cain's little beam would be it's main beam. So I think it's a bad idea. You couldn't just call all such beams main beams because some ships have different types on them.
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Megafunk. :headz:
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The only super duper tinsy winsy minor issue would be some confusion in regards to dialogue. Command calls beams and turrets different things throughout the campaign "Forward Beam", "Main Beam Cannon", "Anti-Fighter Beams", to the point that having obviously general names like "beam turret" could apply to any name, whereas if we get it wrong, players could be confused when command asks them to take out the "Main Beam Cannon" and they see "Large Beam Cannon", or what have you.
That being said, I think we just need to play through the game and get a true list of every silly name command has for turrets and ensure that our new names wouldn't cause too much confusion. The only remaining issue would be the same issue in the many, many mods out there.
But yeah, all that aside, I'm down.
I don't think "forward beam cannon" will be confusing, AAA and anti-fighter should be fairly easy to figure out. The confusing things that command says about beams for the most part are already confusing. I think any more specificity on the subsystem target-er will makes everything as confusing, if not less confusing.
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As I understand it, there are currently 2 ways to define custom turret names. The first is with subsystem info in the ships.tbl file. The second is via sexps in FRED. Is it possible to have it also defined on a per-weapon basis in the weapons.tbl file? Currently, on a per-subsystem basis, if I were to swap out a default heavy beam turret with a AAA, the display would still indicate that its a heavy beam cannon, unless used sexps to adjust it. Having this defined on a per-weapon basis would automatically swap out "Heavy Beam Cannon" with "Anti-Fighter Beam Turret" or whatever you've defined. Its not a serious thing, but it might reduce the workload for some mods.
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I don't think it's possible on a per-weapon basis. Any FREDder who swaps out a main beam for a triple-A beam can trivially use SEXPs to adjust - it's super easy.
Names like 'forward beam cannon' are too long for the available space. 'Main beam' is great because it fits and is clearly distinct from AAA beams.
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Main beam sounds like a ship's best beam. A Cain's little beam would be it's main beam. So I think it's a bad idea. You couldn't just call all such beams main beams because some ships have different types on them.
Note, "main beam" would be reserved for "unclassified" main beams. Meaning, in reality, Miolnir beams and Sathanas BFReds. In the former case, it's a bit irrelevant, since there's only one turret on Miolnir anyway. In case of Sath, I think that it'll help during Bearbaiting and High Noon, since the beams in this case are clearly mains, and that'd make them distinct from Sath's "stinger" LRed.
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What we're using for BP is 'beam cannon' for either light beams (cruisers) or secondary beams (Orion's slashers) and 'main beam' for beams that are both large and clearly the centerpiece of a warship's arsenal. So the Ravana's LReds would be 'main beam' and its SReds would be 'beam cannon'.
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Yeah, those are good names, except 'plasma turret' should probably stay 'laser turret', 'pulse' is BP only, and ASM/AAM are too technical - best to stick with 'missile launcher' for the MVPs.
torpedo vs. missile launcher seems pretty obvious and unambiguous
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Yeah, but no retail ship has a 'torpedo launcher' - the closest you get is fusion mortars.
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What we're using for BP is 'beam cannon' for either light beams (cruisers) or secondary beams (Orion's slashers) and 'main beam' for beams that are both large and clearly the centerpiece of a warship's arsenal. So the Ravana's LReds would be 'main beam' and its SReds would be 'beam cannon'.
Well I guess that would work. I prefer them all to be distinct, but it would keep it simple.
What would you do with the Sathanas secondary beam then? Would that be a beam cannon?
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This seems like a re-imagining of the retail turret names and probably doesn't belong in the mvps :nervous: :warp:
/s
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What we're using for BP is 'beam cannon' for either light beams (cruisers) or secondary beams (Orion's slashers) and 'main beam' for beams that are both large and clearly the centerpiece of a warship's arsenal. So the Ravana's LReds would be 'main beam' and its SReds would be 'beam cannon'.
Well I guess that would work. I prefer them all to be distinct, but it would keep it simple.
What would you do with the Sathanas secondary beam then? Would that be a beam cannon?
Yes. The BP system seems reasonable enough. Oh, and did you notice that the question of "more specific turret names" has boiled down to "rename main beams and AAAs"? :) The retail system wasn't that bad, it turns out. :)
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I once asked about something similar :hopping:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=79904.msg1583078#msg1583078
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Oh, and did you notice that the question of "more specific turret names" has boiled down to "rename main beams and AAAs"? :) The retail system wasn't that bad, it turns out. :)
I would actually have been surprised if the other turrets had come under discussion.
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What we're using for BP is 'beam cannon' for either light beams (cruisers) or secondary beams (Orion's slashers) and 'main beam' for beams that are both large and clearly the centerpiece of a warship's arsenal. So the Ravana's LReds would be 'main beam' and its SReds would be 'beam cannon'.
Well I guess that would work. I prefer them all to be distinct, but it would keep it simple.
What would you do with the Sathanas secondary beam then? Would that be a beam cannon?
I'd prefer it to be even less distinct. All cap beams should be 'beam cannon' and anti-fighter beams should be 'anti-fighter beam' or 'AAA beam' if the former is too long. I think my idea is more consistent. I believe that it is better to adopt a conservative approach in order to be more neutral.
On second thought, I take back what I said since my idea would do very little to making turret targeting more intuitive.
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Shadow Genesis has this system from the first release and AFAIK I think we were first :P. We have Main Beam for the biggest cannons, Prim. Beam [Primary Beam] for other heavy beams, but not main, like triple Boreas' spinal beams, and Sec. Beam [Secondary Beam] for secondary ones. Anti-air weapons are divided into many other categories. The problem with this is custom turret setup, like in The Game of TAG. Where the Warspite has 2 AAAh or something else, this turrets will remain as "Main Beam"s even after we change the weapon in FRED, so it deprive us very important balancing tool. While I personaly find it ridiculous [imagine Hecate with her big beam dishes equipped with SGreen for example], many FREDers use this. Proper made system may require attention of some coders.
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Nope, a lot of mods have used it - it really doesn't matter who was first. This topic is just about extending the system to the MVPs.
That system's pretty good, but you missed something important:
The problem with this is custom turret setup, like in The Game of TAG. Where the Warspite has 2 AAAh or something else, this turrets will remain as "Main Beam"s even after we change the weapon in FRED, so it deprive us very important balancing tool. While I personaly find it ridiculous [imagine Hecate with her big beam dishes equipped with SGreen for example], many FREDers use this. Proper made system may require attention of some coders.
This isn't an issue at all. Any time you alter a turret's loadout in FRED, just change the turret's name with the change-subsystem-name SEXP.
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So as long as someone is willing to go through the retail FS2 campaign and insert these change-subsystem-name SEXPs as appropriate, sounds kewl!
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Right, but it's a lot more efficient to just do that in the MVP tables.
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This is possible? please MVP go ahead!
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I just realized what Droid was saying and lol yes, obviously I should have just agreed: that is a necessary step.
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I always thought this was an engine limitation.
+1 for changing. No longer will I wonder if a turret I'm trying to treb is an LRed or an AAA.