Shockwave Weapon

I was messing around with nova tonight trying to get a weapon that when fired generates a shockwave from the ship and destroys/disables ships in range. it became rather annoying, at first i thought i had it by setting the weapon to explode at the end of its life, setting it as a freefall bomb and seeing if that would do it, i had varying success in the end i gave up.

Has anyone been able to do this.

with the shockwave emitinating from the ships and not falling away as the ships moves... the only way i see that working is if its some kind of beam with the sprites showing the shockwave somehow???

Anyone got any ideas on how to achieve this effect.

for a better reference see Stargate Season 8, Episode "Reakoning Part 2" towards the end of the episode where the Dakara superweapon is fired and destroyed the replicators, i'm trying to reproduce that effect.

You can't make the shockwave stay centered on the ship. You could do it with beams, if it were possible to have multiple beams firing in multiple ditections without targeting things. Which it isn't. You could-Theoretically-have it be a primary weap that instantly submunitions into a whole lot of shots, that would have the center of the shockwave on your ship, though it would still trail behind you, and it would start eating the max shots on screen value pretty quick. That's the only way i can thing of, though there are people with madder skillz then I. You could also just stop the ship before firing the Superweapon.

You can make a pseudo-shockwave using a normal beam weapon with in inaccuracy of 180 or greater with a reload less than than the count (preferably a count of no more than 30 and reload of 5 or less). Odds are it won't look as you want it to, but it's the best way of keeping your shockwave centered.

@pisketch, on May 31 2007, 10:15 AM, said in Shockwave Weapon:

You can't make the shockwave stay centered on the ship. You could do it with beams, if it were possible to have multiple beams firing in multiple ditections without targeting things. Which it isn't. You could-Theoretically-have it be a primary weap that instantly submunitions into a whole lot of shots, that would have the center of the shockwave on your ship, though it would still trail behind you, and it would start eating the max shots on screen value pretty quick. That's the only way i can thing of, though there are people with madder skillz then I. You could also just stop the ship before firing the Superweapon.

Actually, if you use a turreted beam with 360 deg. of inaccuracy that fires fast enough and stays on the screen you can get a "halo" effect that surrounds your ship. Yes, it does lead to slowdown, but it can be pretty neat looking. You don't really get a shockwave effect though, I think the only possible way of simulating that is would be with a weapon that fires, explodes immediately and then submunitions into multiple projectile shots with 360 deg of inaccuracy.

Why not create a bomb that deatonates upon its release, and point the explosion field to a very large explosion boom resource? Granted, it will not be centered, but what you could simply do is that, because the weapon is so huge, make it only available to huge, slow moving ships, or simply use it as a planetary defense weapon only.

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Actually, if you use a turreted beam with 360 deg. of inaccuracy that fires fast enough and stays on the screen you can get a "halo" effect that surrounds your ship. Yes, it does lead to slowdown, but it can be pretty neat looking. You don't really get a shockwave effect though, I think the only possible way of simulating that is would be with a weapon that fires, explodes immediately and then submunitions into multiple projectile shots with 360 deg of inaccuracy.

I stand corrected. That would be awesome.

Also, i have just realized that Josh's icon is an Archon. I laughed.

This post has been edited by PiSketch : 31 May 2007 - 12:03 PM

Check this plug out. Unfortunately I can't remember where I got it.
Missiles.zip (5.15K)
Number of downloads: 10

That plug is officially cool. Sweet stuff.

I'm not 100% sure of the effect you are looking for... but you might check out a weapon idea I was toying with a bit back. Perhaps it will give you some ideas.

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A "pulse" weapon that expands out from the firing ship 360 deg. to damage missiles and ships alike (even ships unaffected by PD weapons)
(...)
The pulse weapon consists of an PD turret (or a a non-PD unguided projectile for manual operation) that submunitions after 1 frame into 36 parts with theta -10 so it makes a nice even radial spread. Now this submunition is also designated as PD so it will connect with missiles. I've found that it doesn't matter how a PD weap is launched (automatic or subbed) if it is of guidance PD, it will hit missiles. Interestingly, subbed PD doesn't hit fighters in some conditions. And PD weapons won't hit ships that are immune to PD.
So in order for the PD to take out any ship, I added a proximity trigger that will sub into a non-pd weapon that CAN hit ships. The missiles won't trigger the prox, but ships will. (any ship triggers prox flagged, and detonate

The prox and blast distance is the same as the distance a shot travels in 1 frame. So as soon as the pulse gets close to a ship, it subs next frame, where it hits the ship. The parts that don't trigger prox, don't sub. (subs fail when shot expires flagged)

That's the basic idea, though it works better with a reload of 1 and burst count of 2 with a longer burst reload. This gives 2 rings of fire so that 1 missile doesn't knock out a whole section of the ring for the rest of its travel.

There is an example of this weapon in Fighter Loadouts v3.2 (581 KB)
This plug is a proof of concept for something else (swapable fighter bays) but does happen to include a bonus weapon that uses what you might call a "blast wave".
The weapon is available in the outfitter and called "EMP System"

This post has been edited by Desprez : 31 May 2007 - 07:19 PM

thanks for the responses guys, i'll start working on some of these ideas and see how i go...

scienceguy i did try the freefall bomb idea initially

but i could not get it to stay with the ship so that was what i wanted to get happening.

Gray_Shirt_Ninja
That plug is awesome, not exactly the effects i was after but it has given me some ideas for other weapons i was working on

This post has been edited by Lostpinky : 31 May 2007 - 07:54 PM

Desprez

that fighter loadout plug emp weapon is exactly the effect i was looking for, thank you very much.

@lostpinky, on Jun 1 2007, 12:59 AM, said in Shockwave Weapon:

Desprez

that fighter loadout plug emp weapon is exactly the effect i was looking for, thank you very much.

Glad it helps.

Just remember, if you plan on retaining the manual/automatic functionality, one of the modes HAS to have a delay before switching. It's a bit complicated, but basicly, it's impossible to clear the mode switching missions when selling the item, without using the OnShipDone self-destructing dude trick.

As it is, I've explained the delay as the weapon needing to "power up" into automatic mode, but concievably, you can have both modes require a "re-configuring" delay.
You can make this delay longer, but not shorter, as it is boud to the speed at which mission ships can warp into the system.

Now, depending on your intended usage, you might not want to go into that kind of complexity.
If not, just simply give it secondary trigger or PD weap and leave it at that.
Just be carefull of how many you plan to have, as this example uses 72 shots on screen by itself.