[Molaris]

I'm making a cutscene for fun (like my own mini movie) and was wondering if anyone knew the range of most standard beam weapons. I've got mostly TerSlash on the Terran side and Sred's on the Shivan side. I wanna know how I far I should put them apart to give myself like 10-15 seconds from warp in and positioning, to firing.

[Qent]

4,000 m

http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/SRed
http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/TerSlash

All anti-fighter beams have a range of 1,500 m except for the ULTRA Anti-Fighter Beam, which has a range of 4,000 m like most heavy beams.

Juggernaut beams sometimes have even longer ranges. The BFRed on the front prongs of the Sathanas have a range of 7,400 m. The overloaded BGreens in High Noon have a range of 8,000 m.

By the way, the wiki is generally a good place to look for info like this.

[bigchunk1]

Rather than using distance to determine when the ships fire at one another, why not use sexps? You will have a greater level control over the percise moment the two ships activate their beams.

You could have the ships warp in an then call the sexp ( an event in the events editor):
When
-has arrived delay
Deimos
3
->beam-free-all
Deimos

Perhaps you are aware of using sexps already, since in order to make cutscenes, you need them anyways.

[Qent]

And the maximum range for using SEXPs is around 30,000 m I think, for most beams...?

[bigchunk1]

That's if you use the fire-beam sexp. That sexp manually tells a specific beam turret to fire at a specific target one time. You might want to use that one instead, depends on what you want to do.

[JCDNWarrior]

I tried going over the 8.000m limit with beams but they just become invisible for me after a while, so I wouldn't suggest raising it above that . And yes, SEXP is a better and simple solution, else every time you start the cutscene you get different endings for instance

[Qent]

Yeah, that's the 30,000 m limit. You can increase that with the +Range field or $Lifetime * $Velocity; I forget which applies to retail beams.

[Molaris]

i'm still learning the sexps and all of the FS2O stuff in general. just thought I'd start simple.

so, to clarify, if I use a Sexp to have a certain turret target an enemy ship, it's only good for one shot?

That's if you use the fire-beam sexp. That sexp manually tells a specific beam turret to fire at a specific target one time. You might want to use that one instead, depends on what you want to do.

kinda sounds it. just looking for clarification. if I want multiple shots, I gotta program em one by one?

[bigchunk1]

If you use the fire-beam sexp the short answer is yes, but this should be seen as a good thing for you since you can control exactly when you want the beams to fire. If you want a beam to fire somewhat regularly, you can set the 'trigger count' (a small box in the events editor which holds a number) of the event to a number greater than 1. Set the trigger delay to the ammount of time you want to set between beam shots.

If you would prefer not to activate beams this way, you can let the computer(AI) take control of the beams by using the beam-free-all sexp. Once active, the computer will fire beams from the given ship at any hostile ship which is roughly 4,500m away depending on beam type. The wait time between AI controlled beam shots is dependent on the AI class and beam type set for the ship.

Cutscene sexps usually take some getting used to if you are new to FRED. Do you understand how to use the set-camera and camera movement sexps? You might want to just try making a fun dogfighting mission or similar just to get started.

[Molaris]

i've figured out how to set it and point it where I want it to be. I think I saw (in one of the wiki-tutorials) how to get it to follow a moving target.

by camera movement, do you mean I could have it facing open space, then turn to face a small guarded installation somewhere to the left? that'd be cool to know.

derp >.< I forgot about the repeat trigger.

[bigchunk1]

You can make the camera face ANY object. That means you can place a waypoint(invisable) object and have the camera face that waypoint to make it look like the camera is viewing open space. Cutscenes do it all the time.

By movement I mean you can use set-camera-position to slide the camera towards an object while viewing another object. This is like being on a train and looking at tree or something in the distance. It creates nice cutscene effects. You have to be a little careful how you set the timing fields as they are all in miliseconds.

[Molaris]

15000 milliseconds is 15 seconds right? just as a referance

and no, I don't know how to do that. it might come in handy.

also, is there anyway to save this once it's done as a movie? or would I have to use a program to record it while it's playing in FS2?

[headdie]

also, is there anyway to save this once it's done as a movie? or would I have to use a program to record it while it's playing in FS2?

you would have to use something like fraps as FS has no built in recorder

[Molaris]

ahh, ok. I didn't know if you could just save it as a different file format (though I doubted it was that easy). so I will have to use a program. k. thanks.

[Molaris]

now I want to make 2 Corvettes move to 2 way points, but can't find how to order them to go their in the Event builder. what would anyone recommend? i just want em to turn and go a small distance to the other side of an Arcadia station.

[bigchunk1]

The easiest way to set ship orders in the ship's editor. You can set 'initial orders' by clicking the box in the box for the specific ship you select using the ships editor.

Another way to do it is by using sexps. Replace do-nothing with change-> ai and iff -> add-goal. This sexp will add an additional order to a ship. Ships have no AI orders by default until you set them somehow.

I don't mean anything by this, but did you find the help documentation in fred? It's quite helpful and you get faster results using it.

[Molaris]

no worries, I get that a lot. I haven't looked in there much, but will start now. thanks by the way. I just needed a way to give a ship orders in my cinematic.

what I'm trying to avoid is having the corvettes move prematurely. I want them to do so after a small shivan attack fleet warps in. otherwise, when the scene goes to show them turning and preparing for battle, they will be long gone. so I figured maybe a sexp might work faster, possibly even delay the order until the clip shows the vettes so you get the full scene.

[Molaris]

just looked at it. the sexp was EXACTLY what I needed. thanks :-D