[Stormkeeper]

Not sure if this question has been asked before, and if it has, then I apologize.

So, basically, its exactly as the topic says. If I were to equip a capital ship with shields, say the Aeoleus(sp?), using FRED, will the shields stick, or must I define a new ship totally with shield vertices? And if I need to define an area around a ship for said shields, if a fighter should enter this radius, will the shield cover the fighter too, or will the fighter be unable to get in at all?

I'm asking this primarily because I tested an Aeoleus with 64000 shields and it seemed to take damage normally, i.e its hull strength went down. Or at least, the percentage indicator in the target box dropped to 99. I poked it with a UD-8 Kayser, btw.

[Mawhrin]

AFAIK shielded ships need shield meshes defined in the .pof, unless this is set in ships.tbl I suppose that may as well be set for all ships without shield meshes, with shield values of 0 unless overwritten in FRED.

[Stormkeeper]

So I need to modify the ships.tbl as well as override the 0 shield value ?

Can i get an example of how to enable the surface shields stat, because its not under the heading of the cruiser I'm tweaking.

[blowfish]

Code: [Select]

$Flags: ( "cruiser" "blah" "surface shields" )

[Droid803]

In the table. I don't think it can be done in FRED alone.

On a related topic, is "surface shields" supposed to disable a shield mesh on a capital ship, yet keep the shields (SSD Diablo)? Its shield mesh produces fugly effects when hit, and even though I set surface shields, I still get the fugly effect.

[blowfish]

No.  I tried it (actually with the Diablo), but it still keeps the shield mesh.  The solution is go into PCS2 and remove the shield.

[Stormkeeper]

Kay. I'll try it out later when I get back home.

Thanks lots blowfish.

=edit=

Now i just repackage the .tbl into a new vp ? Or how do I use the ship in FRED?

[Droid803]

No.  I tried it (actually with the Diablo), but it still keeps the shield mesh.  The solution is go into PCS2 and remove the shield.

Ehhh...figures... PCS2 it is.
EDIT: "Editing of shield data is currently unavailable" 

[blowfish]

Now i just repackage the .tbl into a new vp ? Or how do I use the ship in FRED?

Put the TBL in freespace/data/tables

[Mobius]

Stupid question...do you think it would be possible to automatically generate a shield mesh? I don't know, maybe thanks to a new PCS2 feature?

[blowfish]

If all you want is a cheap stretched sphere, then yes, that would be possible.

[Droid803]

Erhm, how do you get RID of a shield mesh in PCS2?
It keeps telling me shield data can't be edited.

[Stormkeeper]

Stupid question...do you think it would be possible to automatically generate a shield mesh? I don't know, maybe thanks to a new PCS2 feature?

If all you want is a cheap stretched sphere, then yes, that would be possible.

Which brings me back to my question; could a fighter enter the shield if it was a sphere ? If so will the cap ship's shields protect the fighter too ?

[Mobius]

No, not a sphere...a bigger and less detailled model serving as shield.

When I played around with TrueSpace I found something like that...

[Polpolion]

AFAIK shield meshes are essentially (model_size*1.1)-greebles.

[Stormkeeper]

Bump.

I really wanna know guys. Could a fighter enter the shield if it was a sphere ? If so will the cap ship's shields protect the fighter too ?

[Droid803]

Donno, try it with the SSD Diablo.
Fly under its shields mesh and then spawn something to shoot at you. you could also shoot at the Diablo.

[NGTM-1R]

Bump.

I really wanna know guys. Could a fighter enter the shield if it was a sphere ? If so will the cap ship's shields protect the fighter too ?

No.

[blowfish]

The game behaves really weirdly when capships have their own big shield meshes.  IIRC you can go through them, but they don't behave properly once you are inside.

[Stormkeeper]

The game behaves really weirdly when capships have their own big shield meshes.  IIRC you can go through them, but they don't behave properly once you are inside.

Okay ... So I guess I should stick with surface shields. I don't think the FS2 engine was meant to handle capital shield meshes anyway.