[Omniscaper]

I had set the energy consumption high so they dont fire for more than 1-2 seconds.  I'm getting a sound loop problem with these fighter beams when they exhaust their energy. The sound would keep playing till they fire again without hitting the empty energy mark. Its quite annoying to destroy a fighter which was firing the beams and sound keeps looping indefinitely since their dead.

I was curious if it were possible to have beams that have a cut off point (like 1 sec) and have the ability to aim instead of have it locked to forward position. Because of this sound loop problem and the AI's insistence to keep firing with no energy, I had to change my approach with AI controlled fighters.

I have to setup a turret subobject in addition to the gunpoints, so I can give them type 1 or 3 beams. That solves the AI attempt to infinitely fire beams as well as the sound loop problem. My issue with this is that they have no control over what to aim at. I would assign those fighters to destroy a particular subengine, but they just keep firing at random things inside the FOV.

In a nutshell, I have two questions. Is there away to put a cutoff point and wait time for Type 2 beams? Or alternatively, is there a way to control what the turret point shoots at?

[Bobboau]

due to nobody seeming to use them, development on fighter beams was cut a little short, the sound loop bug was one of the remaining bugs (actualy I thought it was fixed), so I guess I, or someone should try fixing it

[Trivial Psychic]

Figherbeams were planned to be incorporated under the proposed tertiary system... I say "system" rather that "weapon", since you don't necessarily have to mount a weapon in it.  There's a list of the proposed tertiary devices in the SCP forum, but I think that fighterbeams should have the ability to be used either as a primary, or as a tertiary.  The two would be differentiated by their tracking ability, or lack thereof as the case may be.  If its a primary, then it would be the straight dumbfire as normal primaries, though tertiary beams would be able to lock on target like an aspect seeking missile.  If this were implimented, it could do wonders for campaigns that include gunship style craft that use only beams.  In the case of the Star Trek mods, the forward poloron beam of the Dominion Attack ship should realy be capable of target locks.  These should however, retain the ability for dumbfire, since you don't HAVE to have a lock to fire.

Later!

[Omniscaper]

Every since I heeded to the cry for controllable Trek ships, I've been doing my research and experiments with fighter beams. Since I've made them playable, its the beam problems that are killing me.

Unless there is away to tweak capship AI, I prefer the AI of the fighter classes because they do more than just travel in circles. Though many times they just sit there and fire at a capship when not attacked. When 2 Trek ships battle with the "cruiser" class assigned they simply try circle each other and end up STUCK on each other in many occasions. Well, at this point I'd like to keep the smaller vessels controllable and leave the larger ships to their quaint AI.

From what I've seen in Trek shows, phasers have both abilities, dumbfire and lock on. I recall a shuttlecraft being able to avoid getting fired at by phasers because the capship couldn't acquire a lock due its maneuverability.

If lock on beams were implemented, fighters can actually use their maneuverability to their advantage vs getting vaporized by Starship phasers easily. I have to create 3 different types of target types for phasers on these Trek ships:

1. For fighters - type 3 for some level of miss value and weaker damage infliction to give them at least a fighting chance of more than 2 seconds

2. For capships (type 1 with uber damage).

3. For playable capships - #2 without the "huge" flag

These are annoying and is makes a mess of the weapons.tbl



What is the status of Tertiary weapons anyway?