[Legate Damar]

I am thinking of a bullet time like feature, sort of like how you can turn the time compression down to 0.5 or 0.25 with cheats or SEXPs, except it will only slow down other ships and not your own, so your speed, maneuverability, weapons speed, etc. will be the same but all of the enemies will be slower, and this feature can be activated maybe for like 10 seconds at a time, then it needs a minute to recharge before you can use it again, or something.

Can this be done?

[mjn.mixael]

I imagine this could be done with clever FREDing and tabling.. but it would be a hack for sure.

I think you can change the time compression with sexps (not sure), then use other sexps to switch the player's ship and weapons to variants of the same, but with stats that are mathematically multiplied to counteract the time compression.

Like I said, ugly.. but it would work. And of course this is assuming you can change the time compression with sexps.

[Legate Damar]

I'm fairly certain you can, IIRC it was done in Transcend. I thought of the ship changing/new weapon variants idea too but I was hoping there was a simpler solution.

[Angelus]

vidmaster did it in his tbp dark chilren campaign.

[Legate Damar]

Do you mean just changing the time compression in-mission or slowing only enemy ships like I want to do?

[LHN91]

I'm fairly certain you can, IIRC it was done in Transcend. I thought of the ship changing/new weapon variants idea too but I was hoping there was a simpler solution.

IIRC In Transcend, you also slow down along with the enemy ship, so it's not quite what you're looking for. Though it has been a while since I've played through Transcend.

[Legate Damar]

Yes, I was just pointing out that changing time compression rates via SEXPs is possible, in fact I was just in FRED and I found it under the cutscene SEXPs

[headdie]

you could use ship swap to change the player ship for a version with enhanced stats so it moves like you want while under time compression

[Legate Damar]

Yeah, that was brought up before, I was just wondering if there was a simpler way but I guess not.

[headdie]

unless I am missing something balancing the bullet time ship would be the hardest part.  the main sexp you want is Models and Textures -> Change Ship Class which you call when you trigger the time compression 0.25 or what ever you are setting it to and set it back when you are done.

with the bullet time ship all it is is a duplicate of the normal ship's entry with a slightly different name (#BT after it would do the trick nicely) and reduced dampening and rotation times.

Having several player available ships would need a few more entries in the table but nothing hideous and variations on the event but not impossible to overcome.

[Legate Damar]

Yeah but I'd also have to change the rof, velocity, lifetime, etc of all the weapons, change the sounds so they're not slowed down, use variables and stuff to transfer damage, ammo, etc. when the ship is switched...

[General Battuta]

Well Vidmaster pulled it off!

[headdie]

why do you need to mess with the weapons stats?  Ok sounds I can understand, but I thought the point of a slowdown sequence such as that is to slow down weapons fire either to make it more visually striking ala matrix or make bullet dodging possible ala matrix, max pane, etc.  Either way speeding up weapons transit defeats the purpose.

as for variables, I am not sure how change class works but if they are needed then ok you need to do a little work but that's all, probably 10-15 mins

[Legate Damar]

The idea is to temporarily boost the speed of the ship and its weapons

[Angelus]

Then do exactly that.
You can set a low time compression value by which you slow down hostiles/ friendlies, and boost the stats of your ship by a equally small amount.