Just throwin' out an idea for anyone

INTERSTELLAR WARFARE!

Ok I had an idea for a plug-in story that I thought was really interesting but seeing as how there is no way I could do anything with it as I have no idea in the slightest how to mod......... I was going to throw it up here to see if anyone liked it.

Ok now for the actual idea. This would be a continuation or alteration of the Rebel storyline. The Federation in attempt to combat the Aurorans and Polaris easier and cut ship losses are designing a Cannon that can fire from one stellar to another hitting the planet and destroying it as well as seriously damaging any ships in the system. The Rebels uncover this information and attempt to stop it as it is being built in.... uh I want to put it in the Tintinbilla(or whatever its called) stellar by converting LPAD into said cannon. There could be a Fed and Rebel side to this and I think its a cool idea. I don't have the knowledge or expertise to make this plug BUT one of you might be able to.

Well, if you want your ship to be able to be in the system, then I think the best thing to do would be to make a ship that enters the system, starts going towards the planet, and then fires a planetary weapon that kills the ship. Have a huge blast radius, too, and large damage. You'll need an animation for the death of the planet. If you want your ship to be able to choose the firing place, and see the animation, then I think you need to make the weapon a hypergate, then use a ship hanger to change the players ship into the projectile. You choose where to go, aka shoot, and then have it do the same thing, except with the players ship. I'm not sure how, though.

No no, I can't make this. But anyways I wasn't thinking about seeing it. In fact if you were in the system when it hit you would be dead. What I was thinking is that the place would be shot, the planet would be dead, and there would be derelicts everywhere.

Yeah, I know. But I probably couldn't make this either.

How to destroy the Earth

An introductory, scientifically sound guide, as to how damn hard it is to actually destroy a planet.
I strongly suspect that any weapon resembling what you describe, would bankrupt the Federation before it was ever fired.

That's not even getting into how the Feddies could get it to the target.

With that out of the way, the way I would go about producing the in-game effect you describe requires:
2 shďps: called here "Ship A," and "Target"
2 mďsns: one to summon and place each of the two above ships
2 wëaps: a two-stage weapon fired by Ship A.
2 gövts: (possibly; you want Ship A and Target to only hate each other, and no one else.)

Ship A's mďsn is set to "Hyperspace in after short delay"
Target is placed by it's mďsn on top of the planet you want destroyed.

Ship A delivers the weapon to the system.
Target acts as an anchor, so that the weapon goes where you want it to go.
Ship A and Target belong to two different gövts that hate each other, and don't care about anything else. This ensures that Ship A will fire its weapon only at Target.

Both stages of the weapon are seekers.
The first stage of the weapon has an enormous blast radius, enormous mass damage, ignores shields, disables-not-destroy, and has a short lifespan. (2-3 frames). You probably want the firing Ship A to die when using this weapon; you can do this by setting AmmoType to -99. The weapon then submunitions into the second stage.

The second stage should be a fast, planet-type weapon. Since it is a seeker, it inherits it's target from the first stage.
The second stage will home in on Target (which should still be alive, since the first stage was set to disable, not destroy. Since it is a planet-type weapon, it will hit the planet Target is placed on top of, and destroy it.

In the simplest terms:
Ship A pops into the system, and fires at Target. Firing the weapon causes Ship A to die and disappear, quickly. The weapon explodes quickly, disabling all ships in the system, and releases a submunition at Target. Since Target is sitting on top of the planet you want to destroy, and since the second stage is a planet-type weapon, the planet gets destroyed.

Nice link. However, "destroy" in the game would only mean "render uninhabitable," which is feasible.
Since the player cannot be in the system, all that with Ship A and the Target is unnecessary. When you want to destroy the planet, either do a syst-swap with Visibility and use derelict dudes, or figure out how the planet destroyed thing actually works and spawn a mission with derelict dudes. Actually, the mission way might be better in either case, because the disabled ships should not reappear.

You are not supposed to be able to see it. If you were in that system your pretty much ****ed!

Maybe your ship has some sort of special shield, because you work for the government with the weapon. Maybe your psionic powers allow you to protect yourself. Great link, by the way. I love it. Now to get a huge linear accelerator...

@ekhawkman, on Jun 19 2008, 03:13 PM, said in Just throwin' out an idea for anyone:

You are not supposed to be able to see it. If you were in that system your pretty much ****ed!

In-Game, weapons don't spontaneously spawn from nothingness. If you want it fired in the system, it must have a firing ship. This is in Nova-Engine terms, you aren't going to find a way around this.

The Ship, however, can be Made invisible. There is an option to make a ship untargetable, and you can add a cloaking device that hides it from radar on top of that. If you make the weapon itself "Can Fire while Cloak," then the delivery ship never need appear to the player at all.

"Invisible" weapon shots simply require a 1x1 black pixel for a graphic.
For completeness sake, you can apply the same graphic to your Ship A.

Notice that at no point in this set-up does the player "See" what the cause was, only the resulting explosion.

(EDIT) I should note that everything I have talked about concerning "Ship A" and "Target" and weapons, all regards to if the player is in the system being hit, when it is being hit.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 19 June 2008 - 07:40 PM

Otherwise you just use a trigger.