[Starman01]

Hello,

Could someone pls link me to a complete list of all currently existing ships.tbl flags ? I only find the weapon-flags through the search-function.

Thanks

Starman©

[WMCoolmon]

Wiki opportunity alert

no_collide
player_ship
default_player_ship
repair_rearm
cargo
fighter
bomber
transport
freighter
capital
supercap
drydock
cruiser
navbuoy
sentrygun
escapepod
no type
ship copy
in tech database
in tech database multi
dont collide invisible
big damage
corvette
gas miner
awacs
knossos
no_fred
ballistic primaries
flash
surface shields
show ship

[Starman01]

Thanks, but I think i did not write my first post very precisive. I remember seeing this list here somewhere, but do you have the description for the flags too ? A few I already know (more or less), but I would appreciate a complete list with descriptions.

[Grug]

What does ballistic primaries and surface shields do?

[Trivial Psychic]

Originally posted by Grug
What does ballistic primaries and surface shields do?

Ballistic Primaries is needed if the fighter can carry a primary of that type.  You would need to include a line for primary cappacity.  If for some reason you don't know what we mean by a Ballistic Primary weapon, it simply refers to a primary with depleatable ammunition, like modern guns.  The Maxim technically is one and Lightspeed made it so in his weapon upgrades, but it didn't work for multi, so most people revert to the standard, non-depleatable configuration.

Surface Shields are new.  I can't recall his name (argv something) had a few builds up demoing this.  It basically calculates that a shield is present on a model that either A doesn't have a shield mesh, or B has a one but is there to prevent a phenomenon of weapons slipping through somehow, when they shouldn't.  IIRC, there is no hit-effect for surface shields, but Bob says that he might take a stab at it.

[karajorma]

I still don't know why they didn't call them projectile primaries and make the whole thing a lot clearer

[aldo_14]

What is flash & no type?  And are all these ships.tbl entries?  

If so, does the ballistic primaries tag mean all primary weapons on the ship are set as ammo fed?

[Goober5000]

All it means is that the ship can carry them.  I suppose this is redundant with the allowed-weapons list, but it's the way I originally coded it.  Sometime I really should check to see if that flag can be removed.

[WMCoolmon]

no type means that the ship isn't really anything. (Not a freighter, destroyer, fighter, knossos, etc).

[Grug]

So do I need a specific build or command line to make 'surface shields' work?

What's the deal with it?

Lets say I have a fighter with no shield mesh, I give it the flag and a $shield value above 0. Is this all I need to do?

[WMCoolmon]

I think so.

Edit: I think my new auto-HUD-shield code will appear for ships that have surface shields too.

The surface shields don't actually show up though, it just means that damage is applied to the shields instead of the hull.

[Grug]

Kewl.

Ok I tried it, and when I'm shooting at fighters with surface shields it has the little icon under the aimer with the shields and Hitpoints, but there is no indication that the players ship has any.
ie. No 3rd Shield energy distribution icon shows up.

And will the distribution still work (ie presing q to spread it evenly or dumping energy onto the front shields.

-Thanks for the help btw.

oh and what does the auto-HUD-shield code do...?

Thanks agian

[WMCoolmon]

The auto-HUD-shield code should show a top-down render of the ship along with four green bars above, below, to the left, and to the right of it. It's the same thing as a normal shield gauge, just generated on-the-fly by the code.

The downside is that it looks pretty bad, IMHO. I need to figure out a good way to toggle it on/off - maybe another ship flag. It should show up if you target a support ship.

[Goober5000]

Make it a command-line argument, like the other HUD stuff.

[Trivial Psychic]

Instad of those ugly bars for shield quadrants, might it be possible to use a mesh's own shield grid (if one is present, like the support ship) to display the position of the shield quadrants?

[WMCoolmon]

Unfortunately, no. I don't have the sk1llz to do that, I'd either need to figure out the edges, or figure out some way of rendering the mesh so that it didn't completely cover the ship. And whatever method used would have to differentiate between the shield quadrants, which would be a pain in the ass or nigh impossible, depending on how the shield quadrant is divided up.

Re Goob:
This isn't really a graphical improvement, it's more of a replacement in case someone doesn't want to make/use an ANI for a shielded ship. It'd be fine to just have it switch on if no shield ANI were present and a ship had shields, except that's how the support ships are in Retail FS2.

[Goober5000]

Yeah, but I'm used to having either a custom-made shield ani or none at all.  It's not only support ships, but drones, cargo, freighters, and capships too.

[WMCoolmon]

Hmm, well, it's a ship flag for now, so backwards compatibility isn't broken

[Goober5000]

Oh.  Well, a ship flag is fine too.

[Grug]

Whats the flag then?
I'm confused, so is it for the player ship or a targeted ship?

Can it be for a player ship? How would one do so?

And does the surface shields flag work on the player ship?

Is all this activated by default with FSO 'fs2_open_T-20041230.exe'?