A weapon that does nothing.

@coraxus, on Nov 17 2007, 09:27 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

Wasn't this done before? I thought I read it somewhere in the Nova Hacks topic.

Actually, I suggested such before in another topic, although not the Nova Hacks topic. If it ended up in there, someone either thought of it before I did, or actually bothered to transcribe my idea into it (and, I think, given some fine tuning, it could actually work pretty well).

@-visitor-, on Nov 17 2007, 02:17 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

Solution:

Make all ships "Planetary" type, and the Drone weapon "Normal" type damage (so they pass straight through). At the end of its life-span, it submissions into a short-lived "Planet" type damage weapon, which detonates at the end of its life-span.

Problem:

In order to work, all weapons that are Typically "Normal" must be "Planetary", which makes planets susceptible to damage (and, therefore, are at risk).

Solution:

Greatly enhance Planetary durability, so that a stellar is not rendered uninhabitable by stray weapons fire. Only high-yield weapons must be able to cause enough damage to make a difference.

Um...why not just make the weapon planet-type?

Also, it's submunition. And neither one of those is a verb, hence the common practice of saying "subs".

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 17 November 2007 - 06:39 PM

From the bible: "ProxSafety - A time delay for the weapon's proximity fuse". So all it does is prevent detonation when something wanders into its prox radius. If it actually impacts with something then it will still detonate.
Again from the bible: "SubCount - The number of submunitions to create when the shot reaches the end of its life or detonates because something wanders into its proximity radius". So they will not fire on direct impact (ie, if you release the weapon right on top of a ship).

This post has been edited by Guy : 17 November 2007 - 07:05 PM

@orcaloverbri9, on Nov 17 2007, 01:42 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

A weapon will sub on impact as long as the flag preventing it isn't set.

As of last time I played with subs, here's what I know:

A weapon that physically strikes its target (the sprite masks collide) will detonate (assuming its prox safety has elapsed) but will not release any submunitions it may have.

A weapon will only release its subs if it either expires and is flagged to release them at that time, or if it detonates on account of its prox radius being tripped (the sprite masks do not collide).

Guy: I have never seen a weapon with a prox safety still in effect explode from hitting a target (only from expiring when flagged to explode at end of life.)

Orca: I'm not aware of any flag affect submunitioning on impact.

Redchigh: Make sure the "subs fire at nearest target" flag is configured properly. I can't remember the specifics of how it works (not sure we ever figured them out) but I suspect you don't want it set for this drone weapon.

~Qaanol

ps. I'm amused that you thought up the "drone" idea. I never thought of anything like it. I actually came up with this homing weapon self-subs at end of life explosion mechanism to enable a totally different functionality. Yours is sci-fi and mine is from an entirely different genre. <cryptic grin>

I'll back up Qaanol on this one; I was messing around with subs just a couple of days ago, and I was rather frustrated by the fact that they wouldn't work upon direct impact. And since I already have the Nova Bible open... There are flags dealing with submunitions, but nothing that will allow them to appear upon direct impact with anything.

Incidentally, I'd think the point of making it a weapon and not a ship would be so that it can be fired on by PD weapons, while other weapons would pass over it.

@guy, on Nov 16 2007, 03:39 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

Ah, now I had an idea for something like that once. Never tested anything, the only thing I had thought of was arming the fighter with a bay holding a similar ship to itself but the bay would be a self-destructing weapon. When you first order the fighter to attack it launches it's fighter which will attack the target while the first fighter dies.

I tried to make a "smart missile" once. It was a fighter with the same graphic as the missile, so you fired it, and then when you told it to attack, it shot a missile that killed the launching ship. Didn't work though. The ship wouldn't blow up.

@qaanol, on Nov 18 2007, 01:15 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

Guy: I have never seen a weapon with a prox safety still in effect explode from hitting a target (only from expiring when flagged to explode at end of life.)

Of course I could be remembering wrong

Ah, that's right, I forgot there was a distinction between a direct impact and entering the prox radius. In this case, why not just set ProxRadius to 1?

Because prox radius is mostly useless, working from the center of a sprite and not the edges.

I haven't played around with those stats too much, but wouldn't setting the prox radius to something rather high help achieve the desired effect? Obviously you don't want it so high that the blasts won't reach the target, but something large enough to almost guarantee that it'll detonate prior to reaching target?

Something just a little bit bigger than the sprite?

@guy, on Nov 17 2007, 09:05 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

Because prox radius is mostly useless, working from the center of a sprite and not the edges.

I know. Center would be fine for this purpose, since it's supposed to fly around like crazy anyway.

Flawed: That's impossible to do unless all the ships are nearly the same size.

Anyway, I'd say set it to roughly the range you want the ship to fly around at, then set subs to fire at the nearest target. This way it will bounce around as the ship moves.

This post has been edited by orcaloverbri9 : 19 November 2007 - 05:16 PM

@orcaloverbri9, on Nov 19 2007, 05:26 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

I know. Center would be fine for this purpose, since it's supposed to fly around like crazy anyway.

It wouldn't help though. A direct impact occurs when the weapon sprite touches the ship sprite, regardless of whether the ship is also within the weapon's prox radius.

@0101181920, on Nov 17 2007, 06:10 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

I tried to make a "smart missile" once. It was a fighter with the same graphic as the missile, so you fired it, and then when you told it to attack, it shot a missile that killed the launching ship. Didn't work though. The ship wouldn't blow up.

Did making the missile that it launched a deadly weapon not work?

Perhaps it was the issue with 0 death delay where the ship does die but remains on screen.

@0101181920, on Nov 17 2007, 08:10 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

I tried to make a "smart missile" once. It was a fighter with the same graphic as the missile, so you fired it, and then when you told it to attack, it shot a missile that killed the launching ship. Didn't work though. The ship wouldn't blow up.

I'm doing something a little similar in EVN:UGF. In my case, its a kamikaze-type ship that the player can't buy. The only weapon is "Suicide," which, obviously, destroys the user. It fires an unjammable homing missile with a super-long range and the same maneuvering characteristics as the original ship, which does immense damage when it strikes a target.

@crusader-alpha, on Nov 19 2007, 12:30 PM, said in A weapon that does nothing.:

Did making the missile that it launched a deadly weapon not work?

That's what I tried. But it just floated there, disabled.

It needs a non-zero death delay.

Try 10. That's much faster than most players will perceive.

Oh you can go much lower than that, I can go down to 2 on my system. I'm not sure whether or not it's system dependent but I go with 3, just in case.

This post has been edited by Guy : 21 November 2007 - 12:25 AM

Amazing. It now works. Thy karma has affected us again, Ambrosia forums.