[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by Bobboau
you know that swiching beam thig would probly best be implemented with a new beam type, rather than modifying two existing ones

I should point out that type D beams are forced to type A when attacking big ships. This is not something I invented; I just added another thing like it.

[TrashMan]

Just two things -

ONE: Singular shields are far more realistic that quadrant ones. I talked with my physics profesor (Who works at CERN!!!!) and he said that it could be possible to create a bubble like shield, alltough shaping it would be impossible.
Sine even capships can now have shields, they should allso have a shield icon. The generic icon with a circle should work fine with all capships.

TWO: How/where can I get your modifications?

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by TrashMan
TWO: How/where can I get your modifications?

You can ask me to send it to you (via email -- web board private messages suck multiple testicles), or you can wait for warpcore CVS to get up and Inquisitor to give me write access so I can commit it, and then get it from there.

[Flipside]

I look forward to see it when it's tagged on to the current SCP
One thing, someone better let RandomTiger know that theres going to be a whole new load of -extensions coming his way

Flipside

[RoniXt]

Originally posted by _argv[-1]


You know, I just had a thought -- remove the penalty only if all of the ship's primary banks mount the same weapon. That way it's fair, and should make you happy, even though I still think the penalty is dumb.

This does seem to be a better deal, but how about ships such as the Erinyes or future mod ships that have 8+ gun mounts?
This is probably a moot point with heavier weapons such as the Kayser or the Prometheus, but an Erinyes with 8 Subachs shooting at full speed can probably do a lot of damage compared to eight HL-7s shooting at reduced speed, and Subach's barely drain energy.  
I can take an Erinyes, fill it with eight HL-7s and lower weapon energy by one notch and still never run out during a dogfight, although it will eventually deplete itself when used against cruisers.

[StratComm]

Gunnery Control, target RoniXt.  Power up photon beam turrets.  OPEN FIRE!!!


Welcome to the HLPBB.  Exits are to the side and rear.  Beneath your seat you will find a personal flamethrower for use in emergencies.  If you run into a large 5-limbed creature while exploring the air ducts, don't worry.  It's just Carl, our resident Shivan.  Give him your lunch and back away slowly... you'll be fine.


To answer your concern about the 8 subach suggestion... if you actually were to fit an advanced fighter with 8 banks of subachs when you had keysers available you are really wasting your resources.  One bank of keysers does many times more damage than two banks of subachs and you can fire them for a little while before they drain.  However, it would create some issues in the early missions of the normal campaign, as there is little point in fitting your ship with the disruptors that you are given and the Myrmidon with 6 banks would be a little imbalanced.

[RoniXt]

Well, I do like to equip my ships with Subachs instead of Kaysers because the HL-7s use a lot less energy.  One Kayser mount uses 5 times more energy than a Subach mount if I'm correct.  This way I can lower weapons energy, 1 - 1.5 notches from normal and give the energy to shields or engines.
Giving the Erinyes eight Kaysers will empty your weapons out in about fifteen shots, granted you will have taken down a whole fighter by then but the HL-7s leave a lot more room for error.
I don't know--I seem to take out fighters a lot quicker by shooting streams of HL-7s at them then by trying to get 7-8 accurate Kayser shots in.

EDIT: Exagerations corrected

[Galemp]

I take the best of both worlds, one bank of each. Let the Kaysers recharge while firing Subachs.

Anyway, back on topic.. argv, do you have CVS access yet? Has any of this been committed?

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by RoniXt


This does seem to be a better deal, but how about ships such as the Erinyes or future mod ships that have 8+ gun mounts?
This is probably a moot point with heavier weapons such as the Kayser or the Prometheus, but an Erinyes with 8 Subachs shooting at full speed can probably do a lot of damage compared to eight HL-7s shooting at reduced speed, and Subach's barely drain energy.  
I can take an Erinyes, fill it with eight HL-7s and lower weapon energy by one notch and still never run out during a dogfight, although it will eventually deplete itself when used against cruisers.

The Erinyes is not supposed to be balanced against the Pegasus. It's supposed to be overwhelmingly powerful. That's the point. If you want to balance it against the Pegasus anyway, give it a low power output and small weapon energy reserve. Anyway, even HL-7s being rapid-fired from 8 gun mounts will suck down a lot of power.

[TopAce]

Originally posted by _argv[-1]

...Anyway, even HL-7s being rapid-fired from 8 gun mounts will suck down a lot of power.

not really ... I have never seen the Subachs absorb all my energy from lasers while it has at least a level 2 recharge.

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by StratComm
If you run into a large 5-limbed creature while exploring the air ducts, don't worry.  It's just Carl, our resident Shivan.  Give him your lunch and back away slowly... you'll be fine.

The resident Shivan is named Carl?!?

Speaking of which, I had a dream last night involving Shivans. I play FS2 way too much...

To answer your concern about the 8 subach suggestion... if you actually were to fit an advanced fighter with 8 banks of subachs when you had keysers available you are really wasting your resources.  One bank of keysers does many times more damage than two banks of subachs and you can fire them for a little while before they drain.  However, it would create some issues in the early missions of the normal campaign, as there is little point in fitting your ship with the disruptors that you are given and the Myrmidon with 6 banks would be a little imbalanced.

Not really. It doesn't have the power output to support anything bigger than HL-7s when rapid-firing its primaries. Once again, the 50% ROF penalty is stupid because weapon energy is a more realistic and effective firepower constraint.

Originally posted by RoniXt
Well, I do like to equip my ships with Subachs instead of Kaysers because the HL-7s use a lot less energy.  One Kayser mount uses 5 times more energy than a Subach mount if I'm correct.  This way I can lower weapons energy, 1 - 1.5 notches from normal and give the energy to shields or engines.
Giving the Erinyes eight Kaysers will empty your weapons out in about fifteen shots, granted you will have taken down a whole fighter by then but the HL-7s leave a lot more room for error.
I don't know--I seem to take out fighters a lot quicker by shooting streams of HL-7s at them then by trying to get 7-8 accurate Kayser shots in.

Two words: Auto ETS.

[Woolie Wool]

Originally posted by _argv[-1]


The resident Shivan is named Carl?!?

Yes, and he's an admin.

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by GalacticEmperor
Anyway, back on topic.. argv, do you have CVS access yet? Has any of this been committed?

Code: [Select]

$ telnet warpcore.org cvspserver
Trying 216.81.249.60...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

Originally posted by TopAce
not really ... I have never seen the Subachs absorb all my energy from lasers while it has at least a level 2 recharge.

Oh well. I still think the ROF penalty is stupid.

[Woolie Wool]

No it isn't. It makes for some interesting game play features like switching between banks depending on where you need to deliver the firepower (like switching to a bank where the gunpoints are closer together for pinpoint accuracy, or using more spread-out banks for "spray and pray" attacks. Without an ROF penalty, there'd be no reason to do this.

[TopAce]

Read one of his previous posts, he means something like this:
Thoth: 4 lasers in 1 bank.
Ulysses: 4 lasers, 2 banks.

Both have four lasers, but the Thoth fires it faster, because it has 4x1, not 2x2.

I guess it wants to be a 'better cooldown' stuff in [V]'s secrets.

Just a thought.

[Descenterace]

ROF penalty equates to firing one bank then switching to the other and firing, then switching back and firing, etc.  Basically, half the firing time is apportioned to each weapon.  Quite realistic, I'd say.  And I don't like Spray 'n' Pray, so I go for a GTW UD-08 Kayser and a GTW-66 Maxim on my Erinyes...

[CP5670]

I think you definitely have a point there on the fire wait penalty. It would certainly have a huge impact on the gameplay balance, but I think it would be for the better since it would greatly increase the available combat tactics. Currently, there is no point (except for one or two cases) in using two weapons together because they just both fire more slowly, but this mod would actually create some point of having multiple gun banks on a ship.

I would recommend that you either set the rate of fire to 75% for both guns instead of the default half (so there is some penalty, but not total loss; a compromise between both parties ), or better, leave it as it is by default but add in a table setting (maybe ship-specific) that specifies the linked fire rate, and have the game read it to be 50% as usual if the tag does not exist. This way, the game would still be compatible with older campaigns (like the main one) but would allow designers to take advantage of the feature.

[ChronoReverse]

Descenterace is correct.   That's the reason for the ROF "penalty"

In fact, if you fire one weapon and while holding it down switch to linked-fire, you can time it so that they fire right after each other and achieve double fire-rate

[_argv[-1]]

Originally posted by CP5670
I think you definitely have a point there on the fire wait penalty. It would certainly have a huge impact on the gameplay balance, but I think it would be for the better since it would greatly increase the available combat tactics. Currently, there is no point (except for one or two cases) in using two weapons together because they just both fire more slowly, but this mod would actually create some point of having multiple gun banks on a ship.

I would recommend that you either set the rate of fire to 75% for both guns instead of the default half (so there is some penalty, but not total loss; a compromise between both parties ), or better, leave it as it is by default but add in a table setting (maybe ship-specific) that specifies the linked fire rate, and have the game read it to be 50% as usual if the tag does not exist. This way, the game would still be compatible with older campaigns (like the main one) but would allow designers to take advantage of the feature.

You greatly overestimate the usefulness of this. The penalty can be toggled with a #define and is on by default. There are no compatibility issues at present -- it's just fair.

Oh, by the way, I should point out that the penalty is unfair in yet another way. If a ship has twice the gun mounts in one bank compared to the other, then it makes sense to use only one gun bank. For instance, the Myrmidon's first bank has 2 gun mounts, and the second has 4. The second gun bank by itself does 25% more damage over time than both banks linked. On the Myrmidon, it is extremely rare for the two gun banks to mount different weapons (it can't support special-purpose weapons like the Maxim, and the SDG is very special-purpose). Also note that fighter beams circumvent the penalty entirely, by virtue of being, err, beams.

----------------

New feature: Mission ship flag 'beam-free-all'

This is like the mission flag for beam-free-all-by-default, but for specific ships in the mission. Useful if you want to, say, let the NTF cruisers in sm1-03 fire their beams, but not the Psamtik. Normally, to accomplish this, you would have to use the sexp 'beam-free-all' on the cruisers, or 'beam-lock-all' on the Psamtik, since the beam-free-all-by-default mission flag frees beams for all ships in the mission.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by _argv[-1]
You greatly overestimate the usefulness of this. The penalty can be toggled with a #define and is on by default. There are no compatibility issues at present -- it's just fair.

Oh, by the way, I should point out that the penalty is unfair in yet another way. If a ship has twice the gun mounts in one bank compared to the other, then it makes sense to use only one gun bank. For instance, the Myrmidon's first bank has 2 gun mounts, and the second has 4. The second gun bank by itself does 25% more damage over time than both banks linked. On the Myrmidon, it is extremely rare for the two gun banks to mount different weapons (it can't support special-purpose weapons like the Maxim, and the SDG is very special-purpose). Also note that fighter beams circumvent the penalty entirely, by virtue of being, err, beams.

Well, nevertheless I think doing it as an additional parameter in tables is the best way to go.  The overall goal with most of the play-altering changes is to have them not affect existing mods and missions.  That's why I pushed for having to add a flag to enable beam randomizing rather than adding a flag to remove it; it would change the way the main campaign and unaltered tables work.  The same goes with this.  It's not that changing this is necessarily a bad thing (I like the 75% rate idea) but anything that alters the way older campaigns (read: FS2 Main Campaign) play has to be very carefully considered before it is incorperated into the main engine.