[diamondgeezer]

What I need is an AI command which will make a ship ram its target, but without being destroyed itself like with the 'kamikaze' order. What do you reckon, code monkies?

[Taristin]

Why not just have intersecting waypoints?

Scripting could probably be editted to do whatever you want it to do...

[diamondgeezer]

No, I'm not risking ships not getting to waypoints on time. I want the rammer to drive right at the victim, so there's no chance of missing the collision.

[Solatar]

One problem I see with this: The ai already crashes and bounces off ships, why make them do it on purpose?

[diamondgeezer]

It's very hot here, don't try to make me cross

[Lynx]

Are you perhaps thinking of the Somtaaw ramming frigate?

[vyper]

No, he's probably watched Nemesis too many times.


FRED solution: make it kamikaze but also make it invunerable!

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by vyper
No, he's probably watched Nemesis too many times.

God that movie blows. I couldn't imagine someone watching it more than once. Star Trek gets worse with each new episode and movies. The awfulness started with the first episodes of the TNG series and went downhill from there. Things just aren't the same without Vulcans around to slap some sense into the scriptwriters.

[SadisticSid]

Do you do nothing but ***** about everything, WW?

Sid.

[Flipside]

Actually, apart from the Temporal Cold War, I'm quite enjoying Enterprise

As for the Ramming thing, it sounds like someone is looking for relative damage, so a Destroyer can ram a cruiser, destroying it, at the cost of about 10% Hull or so, i.e both ships lose the maximum Hitpoints of the weakest ship.

Flipside

[Support 1]

Well, the smaller ship shouldn't necessarily be destroyed. But of course the small ship would take a lot more damage than the big ship, relative to their hitpoints.

If the small ship is to be destroyed, why not just use kamikaze?

[Liberator]

Originally posted by Woolie Wool


God that movie blows. I couldn't imagine someone watching it more than once. Star Trek gets worse with each new episode and movies. The awfulness started with the first episodes of the TNG series and went downhill from there. Things just aren't the same without Vulcans around to slap some sense into the scriptwriters.

It was better than Insurrection.  I mean the only redeeming part in that one is the "British Tar" sequence, that is hilarious.  But the rest is not really all that good.

IIRC, Kamikaze does significant damage to the target, but I thought it was possible to control the amount of damage done in the ship settings in FRED.

[Support 1]

Originally posted by Liberator

IIRC, Kamikaze does significant damage to the target, but I thought it was possible to control the amount of damage done in the ship settings in FRED.

Yes. You can actually specify that the ship will do only 1 damage, or 9999999 damage.

But, in any case, when using Kamikaze, the attacking ship will ALWAYS be destroyed.

If a "ram" order was included, it may be possible for both ships to take damage, but the attacking ship will not be destroyed.

[Exarch]

Kamikaze also creates a shockwave when used. If you currently want a similar effect but don't want it to look like the ship is filled to the brink with explosives, you really have no choice but to use waypoints with distance and sabotage-subsystem sexps to do it. I can be done fairly convincingly, but it eats up events like there's no tomorrow.

[diamondgeezer]

What would also be handy is a ram-complete SEXP, which fires once the operation has been carried out and contact has been made. Perhaps this could be used to apply damage to the ramee rather than hard-wiring damage in to the ram order, ie. when ram-complete self-destruct ramee object.

While I'm here, I'd like to say that spamming in the SCP forum is most irritating, as people are trying to get things done around here. Keep the Star Trek arguments in the Hard Light section, if you please.

[Krackers87]

i fount this in the deus ex machina campaign. It could be modfied to check if the distance  is within 1 meter and if it is put a 5 second wait and blow the sucker up. Easier than adding new code. Its late and im not 100% sure what this all means but i know what it does so pardon me if this is a bit long:


+Name: check keypress
+Repeat Count: 1
+Interval: 1
+Chained: 0
+Objective:  XSTR("Plot an Exit Path", -1)
+Objective key:  XSTR("Press 1", -1)
+Team: 0

$Formula: ( when
   ( and
      ( or
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - top:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "Parvati" )
         )
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - bottom:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "Parvati" )
         )
      )
      ( or
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - top:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "SC Parvati" )
         )
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - bottom:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "SC Parvati" )
         )
      )
      ( or
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - top:1"
            )
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Shivan Cruiser Parvati"
            )
         )
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - bottom:1"
            )
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Shivan Cruiser Parvati"
            )
         )
      )
      ( or
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - top:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "S.C. Parvati" )
         )
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - bottom:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "S.C. Parvati" )
         )
      )
      ( or
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - top:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "The Parvati" )
         )
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - bottom:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "The Parvati" )
         )
      )
      ( or
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - top:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "S C Parvati" )
         )
         ( <
            ( distance
               "Alpha 1"
               "Iceni depart - bottom:1"
            )
            ( distance "Alpha 1" "S C Parvati" )
         )
      )
      ( not
         ( is-event-true-delay
            "check keypress"
            1
         )
      )
   )
   ( send-message
      "NTF Iceni"
      "High"
      "good exit"
   )
   ( ship-guardian "NTF Iceni" )
)

[diamondgeezer]

Well the short reply is yes, it could be simulated with waypoints and distance SEXPs and stuff. But there are so many things to wrong with that... you'd end up with ships waiting at a waypoint so they can get rammed, and so forth. There would be too many missed collisions and screwing about trying to get in the right palce to make it look anything but daft.

Now obviously I'm no coder, but why not look at modifying the existing kamikaze code? Same movement orders, just different applications of damage. I think this one would be right up Goober's street, being the lean mean SEXP machine that he is