[Akalabeth Angel]

    These are just some general questions I thought up with regards to like the Engine for those of us (ie not me) who know the code.

1. RE: Subsystems/Subobjects

    As I understand it now, Subsystems are basically not modelled into a ship rather they're represented by an area defined by a cube which when it takes damage affects both the relevant subsystems and the ship's hull itself. Is it possible to basically have a subsystem only take damage when the relevant polygon geometry is hit and have that damage not affect the hull? For example, on the Faustus, could it be set up such that the rotating radar only takes damage when the geometry is hit and that damage doesn't affect the ship's hull itself? (so a Cyclops, for example could hit the radar, and the only damage to the ship would be the blast wave)

   I was just thinking about armour for fighters. Some universes, like Renegade Legion and Wing Commander (??) have different armour values facing different directions. I was thinking since that may not be representable in the code, a person could basically add say four-six subobjects which are invisible/transparents shells wrapping around the ship. If it could be made such that a subobject/system only took damage when the geo was hit rather than the "cube area", a person could effectively wrap a ship in different invisible subobjects of varying strengths to represent the armour. But effectively, that's just shields made out of subsystems


2. Shields

  As I understand it, shields are at the moment just one value. But the engine clearly has the ability to track each shield as four seperate quadrants. In combat, it takes say a shield value of 100 and divided it into 25 each and tracks each fighter's shields as four of 25 (or so it appears) Could it be made such that each quadrant has a different value in the table? So instead of just "Shields" have "fore shield" "rear shield" etcetera . .. Furthermore, could a ship have more than one shielding system?
 
  Again with regards to armour of varying strengths (and/or shields). If a ship had two shield systems, one of which did not regenerate, the second inner system could act as "armour". Even one with a unified value all around would still be interesting as basically the "armour" would stay damaged in the specific section throughout the mission, like a shield which did not regenerate and could not be "equalized". Or if a ship were allowed multiple shield systems, a fighter could have say 8 shields, 4 for each quadrant of shielding, and 4 for each quadrant of armour. Then each shield could be given the appropriate value.

   So yeah basically my questions might be:
   1. Can a ship have more than one shield?
   2. Can a shield be forced not to regenerate (or equalize as per the player's command)
   3. If the system tracks quadrants in the game, can those quadrants be assigned in the tables?

[blowfish]

1. Subsystems are spheres.  Anything inside the sphere is counted as part of the subsystem.  To get a subsystem to not carry damage to the hull, you need to give it the "carry no damage" flag in the table.

[Droid803]

   So yeah basically my questions might be:
   1. Can a ship have more than one shield?
   2. Can a shield be forced not to regenerate (or equalize as per the player's command)
   3. If the system tracks quadrants in the game, can those quadrants be assigned in the tables?

Don't know about 1 and 3 since I don't know the inner workings of the source code.
However, it is possible to have a shield not regenerate, because IIRC, SF Dragon (weakened) doesn't regenerate shields.

[Akalabeth Angel]

However, it is possible to have a shield not regenerate, because IIRC, SF Dragon (weakened) doesn't regenerate shields.

     Is that the bad boy in FS1 that the player has to fight for a half hour to capture it? Hmmn, should check out the table maybe . . .

1. Subsystems are spheres.  Anything inside the sphere is counted as part of the subsystem.  To get a subsystem to not carry damage to the hull, you need to give it the "carry no damage" flag in the table.

    Blah, darn spheres are a huge limitation. I suppose someone could cover a fighter in little pieces everywhere, but I imagine if the "armour" wasn't skin-tight it would look pretty dumb. Most someone could do is to cover the fighter in a tight as a box as possible. So if someone makes a very flat sphere, essentially a circle, the corners of the box are then open holes as far as subsystem hits go right?

[blowfish]

Anything that hits the ship within the sphere is counted as hitting the subsystem.

EDIT: If you want something other than a sphere, it needs to have actual geometry; eg. needs to be a destroyable subsystem.

[Droid803]

You could use model parts as subsystems.
The HTL Hecate uses submodels for some of its subsystems, and their hit box is, well, the model.
You could probably just put ablative plating for your effect (using the "carry no damage" flag for the subsystems)

[Akalabeth Angel]

Anything that hits the ship within the sphere is counted as hitting the subsystem.

EDIT: If you want something other than a sphere, it needs to have actual geometry; eg. needs to be a destroyable subsystem.

           Yeah, so if I just put like an outer-skin around the fighter and made it invisible (like the cockpit glass used on the HTL fighters) that would work more/less? So have the main fighter hull, and then in the same shape as the fighter another piece overtop of that, though I think it would probably have to intersect with the hull somewhere, just like turrets are slightly subset. not sure if any visual glitches would arise from some piece of invisible geo sticking into the hull.

[Droid803]

Yea, it would work

[blowfish]

Wait.  I'm confused.  What are you trying to do?

[Droid803]

He's trying to have have imbalanced armor ratings if attacked from different angles, which can be done by having a basic hull strength, plus a thin layer of transparent armor set to carry no damage with the additional armor for that angle.
Just make sure to put "carry no damage" for the subsystem and NOT to set "no collide invisible".

[Akalabeth Angel]

Wait.  I'm confused.  What are you trying to do?

        Fighters in Renegade Legion have different armour values (and shield values for that matter).
        A fighter for example might have 90 armour on the front, 50 on the sides, and 70 in the rear. Once the armour is breached, the fighter starts taking internal damage and is quickly destroyed. As far as I know, a person cannot simulate this in FS2. A person can't even do "uneven shields". A fighter simply have X amount of hitpoints, and X amount of shields.

       But basically, instead I'll take a fighter and give it say 50 hitpoints. Then to represent the armour, I'll add say four subsystems, which are invisible but basically completely enclose the ship but they're not that far from the hull (unlike shields). The front armour for example, might have 400% value for hitpoints so instead of 50 it gets a value of 200 hitpoints as a consequence. So after the shields are breached, the next thing which can be hit, the only thing which can be hit is the armour itself. So the armour then takes damage, then once the armour is destroyed (it's just an invisible layer) then the hull of the fighter itself can be hit which will be destroyed fairly quickly.
 
       So effectively what does that do?
       Most fighters have less armour on their sides than on their front and back. So if you breach the shields, you can effectively kill a fighter faster by hitting it only on the side than if you hit on the rear or the front. Because the side armour subsystem will be destroyed quicker, allowing shots to hit the weak hull beneath.

[blowfish]

OK, that makes sense.

[Akalabeth Angel]

OK, that makes sense.

      Actually sounds like they're working on some armour code, so this may be all uneccesary but dunno yet what their code is intended to do.

[Wanderer]

The way i see there seems to be no real problems (apart from interface/hud graphic things) that would prevent the use of different shield strengths for each quadrant and/or as well as doing multiple 'shield' systems for ships (like recharging shields and non-recharging armor). However it would need quite a lot of coding to do it - especially as it has to be made so that it retains the original behaviour as well.

[Flaser]

Actually instead fitting invisible subsystems onto the ship, you could make the ship from destroyable-subsystems with "no carry damage flag" in the first place. This also has the added bonus, that once the armor is gone (the subsystem is blown) the actual "internal systems can be exposed".

By placing several layers above the internals you can do true damage modeling.

[blowfish]

Invisible subsystems could actually be a problem because AFAIK weapons don't collide with invisible geometry.

[Droid803]

You could make the geometry look indentical to the geometry directly below it, so that even if you blew off a layer, it'd look the same.

[Nuke]

id give the armor a different texture as the internals, so you can see where theres no armor. shoot the armor off and you can see wiring and tubes and whatnot. i think it would be pretty cool.

[Akalabeth Angel]

id give the armor a different texture as the internals, so you can see where theres no armor. shoot the armor off and you can see wiring and tubes and whatnot. i think it would be pretty cool.

       That would be pretty cool but it also sounds like a ****load of work. 

[Nuke]

well yea, if awesome is what you want you gotta work at it.