[StargateSpankyHam]

I'm in the process of making a mod, and consequently, making a Shivan area-effect missile that launches a spray of homing plasma bolts. So far, the weapon looks quite cool when fired, but it's quite underwhelming when actually used to kill things. Only a few plasma bolts (if any) ever hit the surrounding targets. All of the other Shivan weapons are quite powerful, about on par as depicted in the beginning of FS1.

What makes a good area-effect missile? Keep in mind, this is a weapon that both the enemy AI and the player will be using (along with all of the other custom Shivan primaries and secondaries).

In BP: WiH, the Slammer is a nice little chunk of awesome, primarily because ALL of the child weapons spawn in a narrow cone (and thus, do not have to turn much to hit their targets), along with a high speed and fast turning rate. This immediately begs the question: "Has anyone screwed around with having Slammers launched at them?" Is this a survivable event? This really wasn't an issue in BP: WiH, because the player never fights any UEF fighters.

The Infyrno/Pirhana seem to suffer from the issue of most child weapons not hitting. Do omnidirectional area-effect missiles inherently suck, or can they be made useful without becoming freakishly overpowered?

Upgrading the Pirhana and Infyrno to make them useful in combat is another design goal.

[TwentyPercentCooler]

I actually remember in retail FS1, I would fly an Athena loaded up with the Piranha, and it would actually rack up quite a few kills. It's no longer possible in FSO (likely due to better AI, use of countermeasures, etc.), which makes me think that the main issue is the capability of the submunitions. Missile-like submunitions would probably need a wide homing cone, good maneuverability, and resistance to countermeasures if you wanted any of them to actually hit.

As for alternatives, something that I definitely haven't seen before: would it be possible to make deployable turrets? Like, a weapon that would spawn a small sentry gun for a limited time. Could be interesting if the player placed them correctly, and would help with slower, heavier ships in escort missions, where you could place some sentries around one area and guard another yourself, without having to lurch between the two. Ah well, just a random idea.

[General Battuta]

Slammers were tried out in BP Multi and were a devil and a half to deal with. However, more powerful countermeasures could help.

[JGZinv]

Well it was a while ago there was a hack so the the player could drop mines...

[General Battuta]

As for alternatives, something that I definitely haven't seen before: would it be possible to make deployable turrets? Like, a weapon that would spawn a small sentry gun for a limited time. Could be interesting if the player placed them correctly, and would help with slower, heavier ships in escort missions, where you could place some sentries around one area and guard another yourself, without having to lurch between the two. Ah well, just a random idea.

This is easy - we've been playing with minelayer warships in BP2 and it'd be easy to extend to the player ship.

This is in fact a simple extension of the BP/WoD equipment concept. You can extend it even further to create all sorts of silly stuff - psi emitters that lower enemy AI levels, for instance.

[Scourge of Ages]

I made a bomb that spawns a bunch of Shivan Super Lasers. It's pretty cool looking, but as you've noticed doesn't do a whole lot (unless you drop it inside a docking bay or something). The only ways to make a submunition bomb actually effective would be to have a narrow spawn cone so that every baby goes roughly toward the target, give all babies a decent blast radius and short range, make them all heatseekers, or spawn 50~200 or however many you can manage without crashing the game and hope enough hit.

[bigchunk1]

You seem to be getting a lot of advice, but I have another alternative you might want to try:

I made a missile for 'The Antagonist' called the Rose. Emerald and K-10s launch them. It's a not easily dodgeble and fast moving warhead which explodes roughly 150 meters from a target and spawns several, specialised bomblets. I like to call these bomblets mines because they move slowly and hit hard. They also will explode on a timer which does not allow them to move more than 200meters away from their spawnpoint. The missiles do not trigger by proximity iirc. One of the only ways the player can avoid this missile is to move away from the impact zone. Another way, which is more risky, is to quickly boost through the impact zone.

You can see a picture of the rose cluster missile exploding here on moddb. Note how fast they turn, but they move quite slowly and impact on a timer.

[StargateSpankyHam]

Hmmm, the Rose missile sounds fun and interesting - specifically, the idea of a small number of very deadly child weapons. I had considered going in the opposite direction - a nightmarishly huge number of child weapons spawned, useful only if large numbers of them hit - but ultimately, the variance of that would be much lower. With such a huge number of homing projectiles dispersed evenly, the same number of them would regularly hit no matter what the player did. Keeping the number of projectiles low means that only one or two will come after any individual target. Not to mention, a lower number of projectiles is much less prone to make people's PC's burst into flames.

I can just copy-paste the homing stats in from the Shivans' dogfighting missile, which already performs very well at tracking interceptors, and is dodgeable with afterburners.

I'll probably apply the same to the Pirhana and Infyrno, with the Infyrno being a Slammer-style shotgun missile (though with far fewer projectiles that are easier to dodge). Of course, neither will be as impressive as the Shivan version.

[Scourge of Ages]

Question: Can aspect seeking missiles be used as children? Or just heat-seeking? Will they behave as aspect seekers and track the original target?

[X3N0-Life-Form]

One thing you could try is increasing your subprojectile blast zone, so that it doesn't need to actually hit the player to deal damage.

[Colonol Dekker]

Set pirannha to spawn pirannha for INFINITY BSOD.

[CommanderDJ]

Set pirannha to spawn pirannha for INFINITY BSOD.

I did this once. Didn't BSOD, but the game definitely crashed. It even warned me about infinite recursion beforehand. I ignored it.

[StargateSpankyHam]

Dang, meant to post this on Freespace Modding instead of the FREDing subforum.

Just out of curiosity, what happens if the "small only" and "bomb" flags are used? Will this make the AI use the weapon on fighters and bombers, but allow it to be shot down as a method of countering the missile?

Right now, the Shivan area-effect missile has a large blast radius and can inflict very heavy damage on a dense cluster of fighters. The child missiles' turning speed and velocity is such that they're not very effective at all against fighters that are close in, and really only work well at 1000+ meters. There's a definite 'blind spot' in the missile's effective range, between 300 and 1000 meters. In this mod, the ship and weapon speeds have been increased significantly. The 300-meter inner blast radius isn't really all that large. With afterburners, any space superiority fighter can travel 300 meters in under one second.

Being able to shoot the missile down would offer another counter to an otherwise extremely powerful Shivan weapon.

If this is viable, then would it also be viable to make it so that if the missile is shot down, it would not spawn child weapons? In the tech room description, it's noted that it is less of a missile and more of a weapon platform that discharges a shockwave of plasma and an omnidirectional spray of guided plasma bolts. It just happens to have its own engines, and burns itself out after a single use. Technically, if it is shot down, neither the plasma shockwave nor the plasma bolts should be fired.

[bigchunk1]

Just out of curiosity, what happens if the "small only" and "bomb" flags are used? Will this make the AI use the weapon on fighters and bombers, but allow it to be shot down as a method of countering the missile?

You can always test these things yourself if you're curious, but I have confirmed that using both of those flags works as you want it to. It seems 'small only' overrides the ai priorities that 'bomb' sets.

In responce to your second question, I am fairly positive the weapon must detonate to spawn child weapons.

[Quanto]

Set pirannha to spawn pirannha for INFINITY BSOD.

I did this once. Didn't BSOD, but the game definitely crashed. It even warned me about infinite recursion beforehand. I ignored it.

That's so awesome I came.

[redsniper]

I once edited the Harpoon to spawn ten Harpoons. Things crashed in a hurry.

[Snail]

Anyone tried making the Rockeyes spawn Harpoons? And made Harpoons spawn Hornets? And then get the Hornets to spawn Tornados? And then get Tornados to spawn Rockeyes?


oh and before anyone says it, missileception/supdawg

[MatthTheGeek]

Wasn't that whole spawn recursion thing already old news half a dozen years ago ?

[Snail]

Yeah I think takashi did it