[Akalabeth Angel]

When you make an asteroid field (passive), and specify its size and number of asteroids, is the number equal to the objects in the _entire_ field? Or just within an area around the player.

   Thing is, my mission has a BIG asteroid field, with the maximum number of rocks but the player is lucky if they see a rock. I figure the rocks must be spread to hell and back all over the field. Which is no big deal, but vaguely annoying none the less.

[Taristin]

Can't set up multiple asteroid fields, can you?

[Akalabeth Angel]

Doesn't look like it. There's an outer and inner field, but beyond that. A person is limited to just two.

[Solatar]

Inner field has no asteroids in it IIRC, you can make sort of a hollow square to hide things in.

[StratComm]

That's the problem with huge fields.  They do tend to spread out.  You can fake it by making it thin if it's for the edge of the map, but if you're supposed to be in the middle the 'roids just aren't going to be that dense.

IIRC, the inner field doesn't necessarily have no rocks in it, it's just a passive area of an active field.  Could be wrong though, as I haven't messed with Fred for anything other than ship testing in ages.

[NGTM-1R]

Inner field, in my experience, has no rocks. But I just use a passive field with non-moving 'roids most of the time.

It's a pity about the low number...I really wanted a supah huge asteroid field to hide a whole destroyer battlegroup in, but it just doesn't feel like an asteroid field that way.

[StratComm]

Are you (the pilot) supposed to be inside the field or outside?  Inside is going to cause problems, but if you're supposed to be outside you could make the inner field as big as the outer field in two directions, and just have a plane of rocks in front and a plane behind the destroyer group.  You might be able to push the density up high enough for that to look convincing.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
It's a pity about the low number...I really wanted a supah huge asteroid field to hide a whole destroyer battlegroup in, but it just doesn't feel like an asteroid field that way.

Notepad is your friend.

[Roanoke]

The inner field is a safety zone where no asteroids will be chucked at ships.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by ngtm1r
It's a pity about the low number...I really wanted a supah huge asteroid field to hide a whole destroyer battlegroup in

You can edit the .fs2 file in Windows Notepad and pick a higher number of asteroids. Or steal the asteroids.pcx background from The Babylon Project. Mission 4 of the Raider Wars campaign has a mission set in a big asteroid field and uses asteroid backgrounds to create the effect. Not sure how successful it is though...

What really needs to happen is that the game engine needs to make better use of the number of asteroids it has at it's disposal. Currently the game engine places many asteroids way out of the visual range of the player. Which is fairly pointless.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Is there a limit to the number of asteroids I can put in there?
      I've used the asteroid bitmaps before, and they're actually in my campaign, but for the purpose of this mission they're not being used as the field is supposed to be less dense.

[StratComm]

You can bump the limits, yes, but IIRC asteroids get the full-fledged ship state check.  There's a fairly well known bug that can occur if you've got too many things onscreen where the newest objects don't get collission detection, typically this means you lasers and it's quite annoying when your guns pass right through their target.  It's been known to happen more in dense asteroid missions, much like the one you're trying to make.  Don't let that stop you; just keep it in mind and don't go overboard.  You might find that double or less the max amount allowed in FRED is fine, so try that before you put in a 10,000 rock field.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Well, there won't be any combat within the field anyway, so that shouldn't be an issue.
      Thanks everyone.

       Hey, here's an offtopic question. The Red Alert Flag. Do you put it in the Red Alert mission, or the mission preceeding the Red Alert? I'd assume the latter but I usually hit it for both to be sure

[karajorma]

You put it in the mission with the red alert SEXP not the mission you move on to. To be honest though it won't make the slightest bit of a difference unless the third mission in the chain is also a red alert

The problem with the collision bug Strat mentioned affects the whole mission though not just the area around the asteroids so be careful

[Lukeskywalkie]

Originally posted by StratComm
You can bump the limits, yes, but IIRC asteroids get the full-fledged ship state check.  There's a fairly well known bug that can occur if you've got too many things onscreen where the newest objects don't get collission detection, typically this means you lasers and it's quite annoying when your guns pass right through their target.  It's been known to happen more in dense asteroid missions, much like the one you're trying to make.  Don't let that stop you; just keep it in mind and don't go overboard.  You might find that double or less the max amount allowed in FRED is fine, so try that before you put in a 10,000 rock field.

That happened to me. Yarr, wanted to keel haul th' design'r, I did.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Originally posted by karajorma
You put it in the mission with the red alert SEXP not the mission you move on to. To be honest though it won't make the slightest bit of a difference unless the third mission in the chain is also a red alert

The problem with the collision bug Strat mentioned affects the whole mission though not just the area around the asteroids so be careful

      Well, I've got quite a few 3+ mission file red alert chains planned in my campaign. Though in all cases, no more than two involve real combat and for the most part they're back to back (one exception I believe).

[TopAce]

Originally posted by StratComm
You can bump the limits, yes, but IIRC asteroids get the full-fledged ship state check.  There's a fairly well known bug that can occur if you've got too many things onscreen where the newest objects don't get collission detection, typically this means you lasers and it's quite annoying when your guns pass right through their target.  It's been known to happen more in dense asteroid missions, much like the one you're trying to make.  Don't let that stop you; just keep it in mind and don't go overboard.  You might find that double or less the max amount allowed in FRED is fine, so try that before you put in a 10,000 rock field.

This error occured to me in FS1, without any asteroids.
So, be careful with notepad. Do not make the asteroid field extremely large, know where the limit is. Look, I have always been honest: I haven't tried editing with notepad, but I know that every limit can be manually bumped with FRED, but crashes are more than possible.

Gameplay > Fanciness

Always, in my book.

Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel
Well, I've got quite a few 3+ mission file red alert chains planned in my campaign. Though in all cases, no more than two involve real combat and for the most part they're back to back (one exception I believe).

Ah, triple mission chain. So familiar. Just be careful to make ALL the chained missions easy. Nothing is worse than realizing you would take an other kind of fighter and you can't switch back of the first mission of the chain if you are in the third one.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Originally posted by TopAce


This error occured to me in FS1, without any asteroids.
So, be careful with notepad. Do not make the asteroid field extremely large, know where the limit is. Look, I have always been honest: I haven't tried editing with notepad, but I know that every limit can be manually bumped with FRED, but crashes are more than possible.

   Well I'm not going to bump it up to 10,000 or something. I may just double it to . . . . 512 or whatever double the normal limit is. Shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Ah, triple mission chain. So familiar. Just be careful to make ALL the chained missions easy. Nothing is worse than realizing you would take an other kind of fighter and you can't switch back of the first mission of the chain if you are in the third one. [/B]

      In most cases, the player won't have a choice of fighters anyway . . . and in some, won't even have loadout support. There's really only one extended combat with a non-combat inbetween, the others are something differen't.
     
      Circumstances of the story dictate that there will be some 3+ chains, but under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't do that.