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Has anyone ever tried to make warp interdictors? i.e. a device that prevents you from making a hyperspace jump.
In the sence that, if a particular enemy ship is close to you, you can't warp until you get away from it or kill it.
The other use would be to create gravity wells around planets in a system no mater where they appear. That is, the no-jump zone is not just centered in the system.
I haven't yet figured out the former, but the latter is doable.
It's a bit clunky, but by using a self-destruction spob you can get it to grant you a jump zone modifier that increases the radius of the jump zone to something huge. By tweaking the range of how close you must be before the planet fires, you can change the range of when the no-jump mod will be given to you.
Making it so you can jump again when you move away from the planet is a bit trickier, but when the spob dies it also starts a misn that calls a self-destructing dude. When the dude dies it will resurect the spob and start another self-destructing dude that removes the jump zone mod. If the player is still close to the spob when it resurects, it will fire again and also abort the second dude, preventing the jump mod from leaving your ship.
Basicly, it will prevent you from jumping as soon as you get close to the planet, but the timeing is such that it takes a couple seconds for you to be able to jump again as you move away from the planet.
As far as getting an enemy ship to appear to be preventing you from warping.... I'm not sure, I'm thinking maybe you can get a special invisible mission ship that hates you. It is very fast so it will basicaly cling to you. Now the Interdictor ships could hate the special ship, so they chase it and shoot it when they get in range, but it looks like they are chasing you. When the special ship dies it could give you the no-jump mod and re-start the spacial ship misn and also start a self-destructing dude to act as a timer. The dude will remove the no-jump mod in a couple secs when it dies. But also have the special ship abort this misn when it dies.
So, if the Interdictor ship gets close enough to kill the invisible special ship, you won't be able to jump. The special ship will re-appear and keep getting killed if you stay close to the interdictor ship. If you move away or kill the interdictor, the special ship won't die, and the self-destructing dude timer will get to complete, and you can jump again.
I'm not sure this will work in practice though. If you fire on the Interdictor it will stop targeting the special ship. Maybe if I gave it a weapon with a blast radius so it could still hit the special ship.
Maybe the special ship need to be a planet-type ship, so regular weapons don't hurt it. Then I'd need to give the Interdictor 2 weapons. A regular weap that subs into a planet-type weapon so it can hit the special ship when it fires at you. And a planet type weap that it can fire directly at the special ship.
Someone tell me if this has been done before, or if there is a totaly easier way to do this. In the mean time I'm gonna tinker with it.
@desprez, on Aug 18 2006, 10:09 PM, said in Gravity Wells:
Give the ship an invisible tractor beam with an impact of -1. This should not significantly affect the ship's movement, but will prevent it from jumping.
That would work, but will the AI always use it?
@desprez, on Aug 18 2006, 07:09 PM, said in Gravity Wells:
Heh. I'd been thinking this idea over myself just a few days ago. However, I'd ended up going the other way- it's impossible to jump from anywhere except within designated "jump zones". If combined with fast-jump outfits, this might be very interesting (except that it won't affect AIs). Have fun working on your versions!
Making it so you can jump again when you move away from the planet is a bit trickier...
I take it you never managed to replicate that plug where you thought you had a self-resurrecting spob? Or was it just that a self-resurrecting spob grants/removes outfits too fast (my current problem)?
@chronodrago, on Aug 18 2006, 08:47 PM, said in Gravity Wells:
I believe so. However, simply making an invisible "leech" ship keep the player from jumping does not have the same visual effect as a ship chasing the player and keeping them from jumping. For that, your best bet may be to simply give the "chaser" ship a long-range weak tractor beam, and a greater mass than any player-flyable ship.
Edwards
@edwards, on Aug 18 2006, 10:12 PM, said in Gravity Wells:
But if it has a greater mass than anything, that would mean either an invisible ship, or editing all the ship resources. And then theres the fact that the invisible ship will also somehow be seen on the radar and on the ship select. So it owuld seem alittle odd trying to shoot an inisible ship thats keeping you from jumping. If there is some way to always have the AI use a tractor beam, then that is probably your best bet. I think...
We could give the ship a cloaking device and have the tractor beam fire while cloaked.
And what would that do? You still have to get either out of range of the beam or destroy the ship. And if you can't see a cloaked ship, then how are you going to get out the system?
You make a weapon sprite that indicated where the ship was and then have it submunition into an invisible tractor beam. But either way, this would solve the problem of having the ship on radar.
This post has been edited by JacaByte : 19 August 2006 - 02:29 PM
@edwards, on Aug 19 2006, 05:12 AM, said in Gravity Wells:
I still don't know how I got the spob to die/reseruct each frame... right now I've got it to cycle every couple seconds. Maybe I had a continuous date-posting misn? And a cron? Dunno.
My initial problem with the planet based solution was that the outfit wasn't getting removed/granted fast enough. In order to get the gravity well to work seamlessly, I had to have two self-destructing dude misns. Because if you hang around the planet, the first misn will complete and you'll get a scant moment to jump before the planet fires again and the inhibitor gets re-applied.
@ Orca, Wait, wait. The negative impact beam will prevent jumping? How does that work? Is that a property of beams, or of negative impact?
Do all beams prevent jumping? Or does any weapon with negative impact prevent jumping? If the latter, how long does the effect last? (could you jump between shots?)
Does the firing ship have to be greater mass than the target?
back @ Edwards, The leech ship doesn't prevent the player from jumping, the leech ship dieing prevents jumping. The Inhibitor ship tries to kill the leech. My current problem is that the Inhibitor doesn't want to fire on the leech. And it does look like the Inhibitor is chasing you when the invisible leech is stuck to you.
@desprez, on Aug 19 2006, 02:13 PM, said in Gravity Wells:
Wait, wait. The negative impact beam will prevent jumping? How does that work? Is that a property of beams, or of negative impact?
Property of negative impact, because you can still jump when the vellos are attacking you. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but if the ship isn't inertialess, then it will work. Basically what happens, is the negative impact send the ship flying towards its "vortex". And what do ships that have inertia have to do? They have to stop, turn around, align back up with the target system, and then jump. So if the negative impact is always on, the alignment is always going to be screwed up. I've never seen this happen in Nova, but if you align in the wrong direction before entering hyperspace, you will end up at a different destination.
As long as the negative impact is on, then the ship(has to have inertia) can not go into hyperspace. Yes you can jump between shots, but thats if the ship can align back up with its destination system before the next shot hits them. Have you ever noticed when you are about to enter hyperspace(usually when your running away), that when your aligning, the impact from the shots dont move you? Same concept, but I dont think AI will try to jump while your shooting and hitting them.
For the weapon to work, no. Put it this way, you can't drag another ship into hyperspace with you. So the mass of the ship is irrelevant. If this ship has a greater mass, you will notice yourself being pulled. If the ship has less mass, you wont knowtice your being pulled, but you cant enter hyperspace. So it depends on how you want the player to feel: that he is trapped and can move, or that he is being pulled and trapped. :laugh:
Someone clarify this or shoot it down....I'm just oiong by common sense, books ive read, and my blackhole weapon.
This post has been edited by chronodrago : 19 August 2006 - 04:48 PM
@chronodrago, on Aug 20 2006, 09:47 AM, said in Gravity Wells:
I'm just oiong by common sense, books ive read, and my blackhole weapon.
Well rather than inventing all this bollocks about how you might end up in a different system than what you expected, how about we just read the bible?
Impact Functions normally, with one exception: if the impact is set to a negative value, the beam acts as a tractor beam. Smaller ships will be pulled towards the firing ship with a strength proportional to the Impact value, while a small ship firing a tractor beam at a larger ship (or asteroid) will "latch on" to it and be dragged along. Note that you cannot enter hyperspace if held by a tractor beam from a ship that's larger than you are. Note also that inertialess ships are not affected by tractor beams.
This post has been edited by Guy : 19 August 2006 - 07:35 PM
Wooops :laugh: I dont have the newest bible and I usually don't read to much of it.
Which is precisely your downfall. The bible comes with Nova so if you have the newest Nova then you have the newest bible, though actually that was taken from the pre-release bible available directly from the EVN page.
Well, that passage from the bible seems to imply that it's only beams, but it's listed under the impact section. I guess I'll have to test it.
If projectiles and blast radius are enough to impart negative impact, then I think that's the way to go. I can have a shot that detonates after 1 frame and use the blast radius to determine the area of inhibitor effect.
That way it will affect all ships and not just the current target.
It's a shame the inhibitor ship will have to be more massive that everything else.
Anyway, gotta test stuff.
THe ship only has to have a greater mass if you are planning on using a beam with negative impact. If its a projectile, its not needed, becuase my blackhole weap is a projectile with lots of negative impact and it suks anything(Im a starbridge and it sucks in a leviathin.)
@desprez, on Aug 21 2006, 03:06 AM, said in Gravity Wells:
It's from the special beam differences bit at the end. Then again the normal impact field indicates that negative impact isn't allowed, though we all know it is. So let us know how your testing goes
Ok. It only works for beams. And only if the firing ship has more mass.
Of course, the impact still functions as it should, but that doesn't stop the player from hyperspacing by itself.
This is un-usable as a planet based weapon because it has to be a beam. And somewhat un-usable as an invisible dude over a spob (to simulate the planet firing). This is because your hyperspace navagation doesn't grey out when caught in the beam. It still looks like you can hyperspace, but when you try, you get a message at the bottom of your screen saying you can't hyperspace while caught in a tractor beam. Now, you could patch that string resourse, but the fact that the player doesn't get the bright/dim indication when they cross the hyperspace threshold is a major interface problem for non-traditional jump zones.
You can easily make a normal interdictor ship, but it has to be massive, which may bring its own problems.
All right, I've made a plug that implements gravity wells (well, actually it adds an anti-well, but it's the same thing). It's rather sloppy, but it works. The only significant downsides are a constant "entering hyperjump area" beep when you're inside a well, and an occasional flicker of the hyperspace destination display. Both problems could probably be toned down by increasing the length of the auto-abort chain, but you'd probably want to eliminate the "can jump" beep altogether.
Resource requirements are about 3 missions for every 50 wells. You may also need a leech-ship to make the spob fire.
Use with AbsoluteMinimum.
(EDIT) Incidentally, it is quite possible to land on the well-producing spob.
This post has been edited by Edwards : 21 August 2006 - 12:07 AM
That will only work in reverse.
The reason it won't work to prevent jumping close to the planet is that there exsists a tiny moment after the spoob resurects and before it kills itself. During that tiny moment you won't have the inhibitor, and can jump.
It's easy to pick out that moment by simply holding down the warp key and your ship will jump as soon as it can. Ever notice if you hold down the warp key as you fly to the necessary distance from the center of the system? You ship jumps the moment it is clear.
It works in reverse, because the way you have it set, the planet grants jumping and there is a tiny moment where you can't jump. As long as your key press covers more than 1 frame of time, you'll be able to jump.
This is why I originaly had to resort to self-destructing dudes, which is even sloppier. I now see how I can combine your idea and mine to elminate one of the dudes and make it slightly faster, but it will still not be ideal. Basicaly, the dude will cover the resurect/destroy gap before removing the inhibitor.
This post has been edited by Desprez : 21 August 2006 - 11:57 AM
Are planetside beams still broken?