[Bushwacker]

After being ignored on the VBB, here's my question (for the millionth time it seems):

What the heck does that +Zadd: part of the beam section do anyways?

[Setekh]

Where is Shrike when you need him?  

[Bushwacker]

Yeah, and what was he saying about the $Swarm: thing on a capship turret?  Did he put it in the cannon part in weapons.tbl (as I suspect) or did he graft it in the ships.tbl section for the actual turrets? (doubtful, but anything's possible)

[Setekh]

I think he put it in the weapons.tbl. But as I remember, the swarm only works for turrets that are a separate subobject, otherwise they only fire straight without aiming, along their normal. But don't quote me on that, I don't know exactly what I'm talking about.

[Bushwacker]

I think I know what you're talking about.  Give the laser a $Swarm:  3 or the likes, then put that on a multipart turret (ie turret01a thru turret05a on an Orion) and it fires the lasers in salvoes of three shots.  Stationary turrets just shoot straight out since they don't have any way of altering the firing vector...I'm starting to get it, but maybe Shrike should tell it as he did it.

[Setekh]

That's it! A multipart turret. Yep. He was having a lot of problems with that.

[Shrike]

You could say that again......multi part turrets tracked god-knows-what, firing at nothing.  Pile of......

Anyhow, +ZADD is a value (I've never tried partial values, I see no point in it) that increases the 'Z,' which is essentially how 'popping out' the object seems.  So the reason you'll see the outermost (largest) beam section with 0 and the innermost (smallest) with 4 or 5 is to give a 3-dimensional appearance to the beam.

Make sense?

[Robin Varley]

I was gonna ask that question too, I thought it had something to do with the width of the beam when it flickered, but now I know better.

You're right about the swarm thing, I made some of the cap ship turret weapons in the weapons.tbl fire in salvos of three, it looks pretty cool.  The maxim is also a good one for that, you get semi auto fire.

Shrike, are you having problems doing multipart turrets if so I know how to get them to work fine so ask away.

[Starwing]

Swarm turrets are cool, but the engine seems to treat them as missiles. I tried to alter the FOV of the Aeolus' turrets to test my theorie, but either I'm stupid or you cant do that in FSMM

------------------
Beyond Earth Campaign

The truth is out there...

[Shrike]

 

Originally posted by Robin Varley:
Shrike, are you having problems doing multipart turrets if so I know how to get them to work fine so ask away.

I was using existing ships.........

Also, I have never gotten a fighter primary to 'pulse fire' with $swarm: X.

[This message has been edited by Shrike (edited 02-10-2001).]

[Robin Varley]

Well, I "cheated" by making the maxim a secondary weapon 'cos I wanted it to use ammo, same with capital ship turrets, though they don't ever use ammo.

[This message has been edited by Robin Varley (edited 02-11-2001).]