[phreak]

or if a bomber has a helios stored on the outside and it gets hit.  its an anti-matter weapon so theres really no way it can be disarmed.  the AM containment fails and *boom*

[Flaser]

Am I the only one who has seen some decent Battletech/Robotech/Macross stuff?

Mechs have a decent rocket launcher system where the laucher opens up before firing and you can see the tips of the 5-20 missles/launcher before they blast off.

That kind of weaponry is the thing FS lacks now - massive missle arrays. Such a weapon would make sense for capships.

The same goes for the latest rapid fire machine guns - not gatlings, the guns with caseless ammunition with several bullets in a single barrel.

It would make sense to store those things externally - they would have heavy armor plating, but if they do blow up, it's much better to have them on the outside then the inner mechanics of the ship - your armor at least will still protect you, and you can jettison the whole turret/missle array.

I'm not asking coders to do anything - it is their time, and goodwill that has brought SCP this far so it's their choice to do whatever they want.

[Nico]

Originally posted by PhReAk
or if a bomber has a helios stored on the outside and it gets hit.  its an anti-matter weapon so theres really no way it can be disarmed.  the AM containment fails and *boom*

And what about "external missile points look cool"?
And people keep saying to give a break with realism, to remember that FS2 is an arcade game? Man...
Funny you've never asked for the ships to be redone w/o glass cockpits, coz you know what would happen to a pilot ( with a non integral helmet, should I add ) if a single shot hits the said cockpit?
Give me a break, I'm 100% ok with the fact that it can't be done code-wise, but I don't give a damn about it not being done coz someone else doesn't like it.

[gevatter Lars]

Originally posted by Flaser
Am I the only one who has seen some decent Battletech/Robotech/Macross stuff?

Mechs have a decent rocket launcher system where the laucher opens up before firing and you can see the tips of the 5-20 missles/launcher before they blast off.

That kind of weaponry is the thing FS lacks now - massive missle arrays. Such a weapon would make sense for capships.

Wasn't there a group that wanted to do a BattleTech/Battlespace Mod for FS2?
They should had made such things like an LRM20 on there caps.

[Nuke]

i would use external hadrpoints in several scenarios. the way i understand the freespace universe, the missile bay and reloading system is a gta system that the vasudans aquired during the formation of the gtva. the shivans use a similar system, they also use gtva weapons. i bet the shivans secretly buy weapons from the gtva, because i just checked the tables and couldnt find any shivan missiles. external hardpoints should be used in eighter non-gtva ships, such as pirate vessels or new species. they could be used in total conversions (such as the babylon project). or they could be used on weapons that are too big to stick in a bay (meson torpedoes ).

it would be a cool thing to have weapons that can be shot off the hull. most weapons use high explosives that are rather stable and require of energy to detonate (wich im sure a prometheus shot would provide). but that is only part of it, explosive charges are shaped to be detonated in a certain way in order to focus the blast forward. detonating the explosives in the wrong way may weaken the blast. nuclear weapons for example use precision shaped charges that must be detonated in a precise way in order to compress the fissable material and create critical mass. if the explosives detonate unevenly, the fissable material would be blown apart instead of being compressed (of cource uranium auto-detonates, meaning the liquid state exists only within a few degrees of tepurature, so if it heats up too fast it would blow up in a non nuclear way, depleted uranium is used in armor piercing shells). antimatter weapons are all about containment. if kept at absolute zero, antimatter is unreactive, there is actually and antimatter containment unit currently in existance (at some university somewhere) that uses this type of containment. it can hold several anti-atoms without destroying them. i have no idea how meson weapons work. in any  case an external weapon would need to have an unlaunched damage tag, which would be applied to the the ship should it be shot off.

[ChronoReverse]

if kept at absolute zero, antimatter is unreactive, there is actually and antimatter containment unit currently in existance (at some university somewhere) that uses this type of containment. it can hold several anti-atoms without destroying them

You know, while it's one thing to suspend disbelief for something like FS2, being completely wrong is another thing.

First.  You can't get anything to be absolute zero.  Violates the laws of thermodynamics.

Second.  Even theoretically, any time anti-matter particles comes into contact with the opposite normal matter particle, they annihilate into a poof of pure energy, the amount is governed by e=mc^2

Third.  The only way we've been holding any appreciable amounts of anti-matter (read miniscule beyong belief) is in beams of anti-protons held by magnetic fields in a vacuum inside particle accelerator facilities.

I've heard about physicisits creating anti-hydrogen but it promptly annihilated.






On the topic.  Do we have multiple dockpoints implemented?  Perhaps a sexp could be used so that the player can press a button to launch each particular external weapon.  Each warhead could be a pof docked to the ship.  Probably would be messy, but is it possible?

[kasperl]

no multiple dockpoints yet. and it won't happen, i've been told.

[Raven2001]

First, please don't turn this thread into a physics lesson... this is a game, and I really don't care, and I'm sure many of the people doesn't too, about all those physics stuff...

second, when I mentioned dock points, I meant it as a metafor.
The idea was to use the thruster coordinates (the back of the missile), to coincide with the coordinates of the sec point. That way the missile could be rendered accordingly to its place, but not using docking code, just a simple code tweak that could render the missile like that before being fired.
I am no coder, and I do not understand a thing of coding, but I belkieve it would be a simple thing to do

[diamondgeezer]

Dude, if it was simple it would be done by now as this method is proposed in every single external stores thread. Give it up

[ChronoReverse]

That way the missile could be rendered accordingly to its place, but not using docking code, just a simple code tweak that could render the missile like that before being fired.
I am no coder, and I do not understand a thing of coding, but I belkieve it would be a simple thing to do

Interesting how they all say that

[Raven2001]

well... okay I give up...

[Goober5000]

A bit of advice: Proposing a feature, then following it up by saying "I know nothing about coding but I think this should be easy" pretty much guarantees that your request will never be implemented.

[Nuke]

i just mentioned what i heard. i dont mind being wrong, in fact id perfer accurate data. id like to debate this subject but im no physicist and this thread is not about physics.

but external weapons should have non-fired damage and hitpoints tags. hitpoints would be how much damage the weapon could take before blowing up, and non-fired damage should be how much damage (or a factor of the weapons damage) would be applied to the ship, should it run out of hitpoints.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Goober5000
A bit of advice: Proposing a feature, then following it up by saying "I know nothing about coding but I think this should be easy" pretty much guarantees that your request will never be implemented.

Especially when the request has already been rejected once as being too difficult

[CP5670]

Hey, at least it's better than saying "I know much more about coding than all you losers do and I say this should be easy, so do it."

[Unknown Target]

Gotta love the way people say that it's not realistic enough when the code change is hard to do, yet never complain about realism when it has to do with small things, like glass cockpits

Anyway, it would look COOL. And what's the difference between a modern-day fighter storing it's weapons on the outside, and a space fighter? Both can get shot up. Does it happen often? Uhhh....pretty much never. The ship has to go first, then the weapons go along with it.

[Unknown Target]

Also, I just thought of a way to do this with minimal code changes. Just tell the engine to draw the weapon even when it is not fired, as long as it has a flag, such as "draw_always" in it's weapons table.
So you just set the firing points just below the wings, and it'll always draw. Seems simple enough, imho.

[CP5670]

A more plausible reason not to do it is, who's going to actually see it? You would only see it in your own external camera view since you don't see your own ship model otherwise and the AI fighters die too fast for you to get any close look at where their missiles are coming from.

[Unknown Target]

Ok, so you could only see it when you're in external. Fair enough.
So what's the point of having different ship models for the player? I mean, after all, the only difference is the external mode. And the AI fighters die too fast. Just make three or four ships for each side, doesn't make a difference. Too much work

DER---because it looks COOL! And eyecandy is all that it's for!

[CP5670]

Actually, you're right about the first part there. The thing is that almost all ships used for the player are also used by the AIs at some point, so you would actually see them in that case. But they generally fire missiles only from 1000+ distances and you would not be in an external view while fighting someone (and launching missiles), so how would you see how cool it looks?