[Starman01]

Hello,

I have a question regarding this Fred-flag. I'm using this for all our characters who shouldn't die, but for a little reality they shall still receive damage, but stay undestructable (like the flag is already doing).

Now, I don't know when this flag was introduced or who has first requested it, but it must be from the earlier days of SCP,  so I don't know the purpose behind it. But my problem is, that a ship that is set to guardian can still be disabled or have it's weapon-system destroyed.

Since WCS-Weapons and game-balancing are very different from freespace, I ran into some problems in our dogfights, when Guardians-characters get disabled or disarmed.

Of course I could create an additional SEXP with an everytime-argument to repair them anytime it happens, but that would require two (maybe one) SEXP per Guardian-Ship (2-4 ships per Mission), and I usually don't have this amout of SEXP-Nodes left.

Could you update the guardian-flag, so that either engine and weapons can't be damaged completly, or like the hull, no subsystems can't be damaged to more than 1 % ? That would be really great.

Starman©

[karajorma]

What ship guardian flag? I'm only aware of the SEXP which has been around since retail.

FRED 3.6.5 (which is what I'm using at the moment) doesn't have a ship flag like that as far as I could see.

Either way I'm very much against alterations to either this flag (if it does exist) or the SEXP it was based on. For a start it would break any missions which use ship-guardian but expect or even demand that a ship can be disabled (I have several such missions and I'd be pissed off if changes were made that broke them).

Making a similar new SEXP/flag to do this is another matter of course.

[Kie99]

*waves a big sign saying Invulnerable tags after X amount of damage.*

[karajorma]

Starman is trying to save SEXP nodes by setting things up at the start of the mission.

Doing things that way round eats up SEXP nodes, adds the risk of the ship getting blown up anyway if it takes more damage than the threshold at which you've set it to trigger (for instance getting hit by a pair of harpooons) and still doesn't protect against subsystem destruction unless you risk it triggering when the wingman nearly loses a subsystem regardless of what the hull damage is (which has unfortunate knock on effects).

[Starman01]

I mean the following SEXP in Fred:

change => ship-status => ship-guardian

I'm not sure if this is already used in retail. If so, then it would certainly be no good idea changing it's behaviour, I agree on that.

And like karajorma said, "indestructable at % hull left" isn't usable, i.e. a light fighter can't survive a single missile-hit, so there aren't many chances the SEXP will take effect before the fighter gets destroyed. I need another way of creating "indestructable" characters.

Would another SEXP be possible, or is this too much work ? In another thread I also asked for getting this "guardian-flag" into the ships-misc-editor, so not to confuse anyone, these should be
combined when you are already at it ( that means, if we really gonna get those )

[karajorma]

That SEXP has indeed been there since retail and is used all over the place.

I remembered your request to make it a ships editor flag which is why I was wondering what you were on about when you called it new

I'm always in favour of new SEXPs that make life easier for mission designers

[WMCoolmon]

Depending on a number of things, it sounds to me like the best solution would be to add some sort of subsystem flag that, when set, would basically act like ship-guardian for a ship's hull. It'd be awesome if the hull is actually considered a subsystem by the code.

[Trivial Psychic]

Um, the repair-subsystem sexp has an option of "hull", which seems to be classified as a subsystem to me.  What I see as a good alteration of ship-guardian is the following

1st argument - the ship to apply the guardian flag.  This applies to the Hull by default and stops at 1% if no further arguments are present (all following are optional)
2nd argument - the subsystem (or hull) which the flag should be applied to on the subject ship (if 3rd argument is not present, then dammage will stop at 1%)
3rd argument - the percent dammage of the subsystem at which dammage should stop (set to 25 and the designated subsystem will not drop below 25% strength)
Additional entries repeat as with the 2nd & 3rd so that you can set multiple subsystem minimum dammage thresholds on the same ship in one sexp.

[karajorma]

If I've understood Goober correctly on how SEXPs function that isn't possible.

As Ship-Guardian currently works the second and any further arguments are additional ships that you also want guardianed.

eg
when
-true
--Ship-Guardian
--Alpha 1
--Alpha 2
--Alpha 4

AFAIK There's no way to have the second argument also be the name of a subsystem so if you alter Ship-Guardian you'll break existing missions. You can make new SEXP that will do this but you can't amend the old one


The thing is even if someone invented a new SEXP that does what you suggest (and it's not a bad suggestion TP) you still wouldn't solve Starman's original problem because he needs a flag to do this rather than a SEXP because he's running low on SEXP nodes.

[Sesquipedalian]

This isn't an ideal solution, but it may work well enough for your purposes, Starman.

Assigning a Special Hitpoints value to the hull of a ship in the Ships editor also affects the hitpoints of it subsystems.  So if you increase a ship's hitpoints from 200 to 500 (a 150% increase), the hitpoints of the subsystems also increase by 150%.

Since the ships are not supposed to die or be disarmed/disabled, this solution might do the job for you.  

I'd also put a ship-guardian on them as an emergency backup.  You can do this in a single event if you use the every-time-argument sexp instead of a when sexp.

[Starman01]

Also a good Idea. Will not solve the problem 100%, but with the other workarounds we created, it would certainly reduce the possibility that this error will occur.

Unfortunately there is always a chance for this error left, so I'm forced to make the repair-SEXP nevertheless. A destroyed weapon-system results only in strange behaviour (they follow the enemies, but don't fire ), but having one disabled breaks the mission (they need to follow you into autopilot, otherwise the events on the next navpoints might not be played or you communicate with a fighter 50.000 klicks behind of you, which would be rather strange).

But thanks for the idea Sesquipedalian, I will try it. The beta-test will show, how often this stuff happens at all with all these workarounds