[Akalabeth Angel]

If a model has damage features for the subsystems. Ie, a "normal" engine state and a "destroyed" engine state. What's the easiest way to remove or ignore the destroyed state? Do I have to edit the model itself or I can just do something in PCS2 to take care of it???? (or maybe even a table edit???)

[Getter Robo G]

Edit the pof in PCS2 and remove the "damage" parts of turrets or subsystems. That's what I did for the original Yamato. Works fine.

Now, why you'd want to do this though?

[Akalabeth Angel]

Edit the pof in PCS2 and remove the "damage" parts of turrets or subsystems. That's what I did for the original Yamato. Works fine.

Now, why you'd want to do this though?

Hmmn. Not sure that will work.
Basically I want to be able have a ship with its engines off and then turn them on and get the ship moving. The only way to do this as far as I know is to the disable the engines (I think there's the idea of some new SexP but I believe it's not been added yet). But all the HTL models have destroyed states for the engines and I just want them turned off, not mutilated. So the easiest thing to do is create a duplicate pof and use that for that one particular mission.

The Diemos seems to have this damaged part but the Hecate for whatever reason does not. It simply has engine and the damaged information seems to be contained with that part already. I'm not sure exactly what ships I will use for this but the Hecate is a good possibilty.

[Getter Robo G]

Ok I think I know what you want.

  There was either a mission like this in FS2 Campaign, or the Babylon 5 one...

  Try SABOTAGE subsystem on the engines... That should turn them off.
If your target vessel is immobile anyway at the start you also need make sure the starting velocity is set to ZERO.

When you are ready to turn on the engies , REPAIR subsystem should work.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Ok I think I know what you want.

  There was either a mission like this in FS2 Campaign, or the Babylon 5 one...

  Try SABOTAGE subsystem on the engines... That should turn them off.
If your target vessel is immobile anyway at the start you also need make sure the starting velocity is set to ZERO.

When you are ready to turn on the engies , REPAIR subsystem should work.

I gave it a go but it still shows the damage. It even creates a big explosion as well. The explosion doesn't matter because the ship won't be on screen but the damage is relevant. I suppose I could always just try to not use the Hecate.

[Angelus]

Ok I think I know what you want.

  There was either a mission like this in FS2 Campaign, or the Babylon 5 one...

  Try SABOTAGE subsystem on the engines... That should turn them off.
If your target vessel is immobile anyway at the start you also need make sure the starting velocity is set to ZERO.

When you are ready to turn on the engies , REPAIR subsystem should work.

I gave it a go but it still shows the damage. It even creates a big explosion as well. The explosion doesn't matter because the ship won't be on screen but the damage is relevant. I suppose I could always just try to not use the Hecate.

Copy the model, open it in PCS2 and then select thrusters and delete them.
Then add the edited copy via tbm.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Copy the model, open it in PCS2 and then select thrusters and delete them.
Then add the edited copy via tbm.

Hmmn. Okay I think the Hecate's out. The Hecate's model is such that if you delete the engines, the damage shows.
Whereas the Deimos has normal engines, and replacement destroyed engines. So, I'll just work without the Hecate.
Hopefully newer models use the Deimos's formula or the mission I make may look silly with future versions of the mediavps.

Failing that I could always copy the retail version of the ship and use that instead but that may look equally out of place. 

[Spicious]

Duplicate the engine submodel and call it <whatever the original was called>-destroyed.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Duplicate the engine submodel and call it <whatever the original was called>-destroyed.

Hmmn, that plan might actually work. Because when all I did was destroy the submodel, it jsut got rid of the damaged state. So when the ship was disabled, the engines didn't keep the undamaged state they simply disappeared all together. But if they're  both the same it might work. Will give it a go.

[Akalabeth Angel]

SUDDENLY I am reminded of why I haven't been here in half a year, and why FS2 Modding fell off the radar for me.
Why? Because it's a pain in the ass.

Okay. So I have the Deimos. I open it up in PCS2 2.03 Stable with collada. I select the the destroyed engines and delete them. Then I copy the okay engines, and rename them to engine01-destroyed for example. And what happens? I open it up in the mission, and for some reason the aft destroyed engine relocates itself to the middle engine, and sits there crashing through everything. And in the rear some random piece of debris juts out the aft of the ship and for the front engine, well I didn't even bother looking. I don't know how I can copy an engine, and get a different engines debris, and get a piece of ship debris, and whatever else.

So THEN I think screw PCS2, I'll export the model to .dae instead and bring it into Maya. I do the same thing, deleting the destroyed, copying the main, and getting rid of any extra information. So then I export it and open it up in PCS2. And now, suddenly, the "Damage" texture has replaced every other texture so the ship is just covered in damage texture. What the hell???

I mean seriously. This should not be hard. All I want, is to remove the engine glow to show the ships starting up. Something so easy, always has like problem after problem after problem to deal with just to get it to work. Aggravating.

I think what I'm going to do is just take the retail models and use them instead because I know those will work. Hopefully the updated maps for the retail models are still in the mediavps.

 

EDIT - Oh and something dumb I've noticed. Engine glow does not correspond to engine integrity. It corresponds to whether the ship is disabled or not. If I take a Deimos, retail version, or whatever version. And disable all its engines, the engines do not glow. There is no "visible thrust". But, if I repair just one of those engines, all the engines light up! If I repair Engine 02 but don't repair Engine 01 and 03 it doesn't matter, because by repairing 02 all the engines will look functional. Kinda goofy. I was trying to start up my ships engines in a random sequence and they all kept coming on at the same time and I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on.

[Getter Robo G]

Ok, this might sound stupid, but copy the table and REMOVE all engine references? OR make the table ZERO energy output? Then switch to the regular table (model) for the turn on sequence.

I never tried what you want to do so I'm guessing here...

[Akalabeth Angel]

Ok, this might sound stupid, but copy the table and REMOVE all engine references? OR make the table ZERO energy output? Then switch to the regular table (model) for the turn on sequence.

I never tried what you want to do so I'm guessing here...

Thanks but don't worry about it. I already copied all of the necessary retail or non-engine detailed models and put them in the directory. That way, the ships will the ones I chose regardless of any future mediavp changes.

I might try what you're saying though. If it works I wouldn't need to pack up these models into the VP. The engine reference one might work, I doubt the energy output would. I'm guessing the energy output is more for weapons.

Anyway might try that later. Right now I'm trying to figure out this fancy camera thing they added.

[Getter Robo G]

ok I did it successfully with an Argo transport (powered off and then on 60 seconds later).

This is what I did.

1.) First I copied the pof and then added "a" at the end.

2.) Then I edited it and reduced the engine glows to 0.0 radius (cause MV wouldn't let me delete then for some stupid reason and I wanted to try this quick).

3.) I made a duplicate table for the ship class sexp

4.) I opened fred two and picked the argo2 entry with transporta pof.

5.) I made an event that when: time-has-elapsed "60"
Change ship class Argo2 to Argo  for ship "engine Test"

I saved and booted it up, the argo looked unpowered and 60 secs later the engine glows appeared.


I hope that's what you wanted?



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