Gravitic Weapons

Quantum Transcendence

I haven't seen this possibility discussed on the board before, so I figured I'd post some findings of mine. The following is a recipe for blackhole and antiblackhole (whitehole?) weaponry.

1. Create a freefall bomb.
2. Make it a planet-type weapon
3. Give it a count of 1
4. Give it a single submunition
5. Set the submunition type to the same ID number as the weapon
6. Set the submunition limit to 0
7. Set it to detonate at end
8. Set the blast to be harmless to the player
9. Make it immune to point defense
10. Don't give it any speed, ionizing, mass dmg, energy dmg, recoil, or decay values
11. Set the impact to -32767
12. Set the blast radius to around 200

The above creates a stationary "bomb" which will attract any ships that stray within a 200 pixel radius of it. The ships are basically pinned to the spot. As a bonus, the ships do not become hostile. Changing to impact to a positive value repels the ships. The blackhole (negative impact) is useful in game for attacking fast ships. They can still shoot, but they are pinned to a single spot. The antiblackhole I've found to be more useful. If you have a fairly low reload value, you can string out a line of antiblackholes and create a barrier to other ships. Circling them traps any ships inside the circle, or provides a fortress if you stay inside the circle. I'll be posting a plug-in (Gravitic Weaponry) with these two weapons if anyone wants to examine the coding further. As a sidenote, if you make these yourselves you can tweak a lot of the values, but you must leave the weap as a planet-type weapon, otherwise it will detonate when a ship passes over.

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Entarus

Great. Can't wait to test the plug.

Entarus,

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Bomb

Quote

Originally posted by Quantum Transcendence:
**Blackholes + antiblackholese

**

Now that is some cool stuff. I especially like the sort of protective fortress idea.. Imagine the possibilities with that.

_bomb

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Kame

Very cool idea. I'm impressed you got them to work.

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HeWhoMustNotBeNamed

Very impressive. I was under the impression that planetary weapons could only be fired py planets. Care to elaborate on their features for us, since you seem to have a bit of expertise?

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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

what_is_the_matrix

Quote

Originally posted by Quantum Transcendence:
**I haven't seen this possibility discussed on the board before, so I figured I'd post some findings of mine. The following is a recipe for blackhole and antiblackhole (whitehole?) weaponry.

1. Create a freefall bomb.
2. Make it a planet-type weapon
3. Give it a count of 1
4. Give it a single submunition
5. Set the submunition type to the same ID number as the weapon
6. Set the submunition limit to 0
7. Set it to detonate at end
8. Set the blast to be harmless to the player
9. Make it immune to point defense
10. Don't give it any speed, ionizing, mass dmg, energy dmg, recoil, or decay values
11. Set the impact to -32767
12. Set the blast radius to around 200

The above creates a stationary "bomb" which will attract any ships that stray within a 200 pixel radius of it. The ships are basically pinned to the spot. As a bonus, the ships do not become hostile. Changing to impact to a positive value repels the ships. The blackhole (negative impact) is useful in game for attacking fast ships. They can still shoot, but they are pinned to a single spot. The antiblackhole I've found to be more useful. If you have a fairly low reload value, you can string out a line of antiblackholes and create a barrier to other ships. Circling them traps any ships inside the circle, or provides a fortress if you stay inside the circle. I'll be posting a plug-in (Gravitic Weaponry) with these two weapons if anyone wants to examine the coding further. As a sidenote, if you make these yourselves you can tweak a lot of the values, but you must leave the weap as a planet-type weapon, otherwise it will detonate when a ship passes over.

**

Here's a couple neat additions that you might want to consider:

inaccuracy of 180
put about 30-60 on a ship
weapon fires simultaneously.

You get a "Ring of Death" affect similar to that Ur-Quan (the black one) battlecruiser from the Star Control series.

Matrix

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Weepul 884

Actually, I thought of those ideas a while ago, and got them successfully implemented (heck, I even made the explosion sprite for my "anti-blackhole"), except the blackhole one acts more like a turbulent energy storm. Also, unless the "planet type" weapon setting affects how they work, using a single submunition won't work. The blast impact direction for the entire radius is in the direction the shot is travelling, not toward the center.

I'm still planning to use these ideas at one point or another.

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(This message has been edited by Weepul 884 (edited 03-30-2003).)

nighthawk

Quote

Originally posted by Russell Quintero:
Very impressive. I was under the impression that planetary weapons could only be fired by planets.

no, planet-type weapons can only hit planets (and planet-type ships)

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Quantum Transcendence

Quote

Originally posted by Weepul 884:
**Actually, I thought of those ideas a while ago, and got them successfully implemented (heck, I even made the explosion sprite for my "anti-blackhole"), except the blackhole one acts more like a turbulent energy storm. Also, unless the "planet type" weapon setting affects how they work, using a single submunition won't work. The blast impact direction for the entire radius is in the direction the shot is travelling, not toward the center.

I'm still planning to use these ideas at one point or another.

**

Incorrect, it works fine. The blast is omnidirectional. Thank you for the compliment Russell Quintero, but I don't have much expertise. nighthawk is correct. The reason I made it planet type was to keep it from detonating (and so end the submunitions string). I like the Ring of Death idea, I'll have to try that. I'll be posting the plug tonight. Can't recall the delay, but ya'll should be able to play with it in a few days.

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Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
-Steve Jobs

Weepul 884

No, I tested it and the blast's impact is in the direction of the shot's movement. Unless, of course, somehow a radial explosion would kick a ship toward the shot when the ship is running into the back end of the shot... :rolleyes:

If you've also tested it and found it to be radial, well then something weird and very interesting is going on.

To keep it from detonating, what I did was give it a prox. safety time longer than the existance of the shot. I guess the planet thing would work as well.

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Quantum Transcendence

Quote

Originally posted by Weepul 884:
**No, I tested it and the blast's impact is in the direction of the shot's movement. Unless, of course, somehow a radial explosion would kick a ship toward the shot when the ship is running into the back end of the shot...:rolleyes:

If you've also tested it and found it to be radial, well then something weird and very interesting is going on.

To keep it from detonating, what I did was give it a prox. safety time longer than the existance of the shot. I guess the planet thing would work as well.

**

Hmm, I think I know what may be happening. In mine the weapon shot is perfectly stationary (speed=0), which might force the blast to be radial. I'll do some experimenting. I'm running 1.0.0 (Had to reinstall, haven't upgraded yet), but I doubt that's the problem. I'm kind of curious as to how you plugged this in. I'd appreciate it if you could send a test plug. My address is: kiatzu@earthlink.net. The Gravitic Weapons plug is uploaded, so it should be there in a couple of days.

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Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
-Steve Jobs

Vast Deathmaster

Do what ever you need to only affect a certain mass of ship (as in small fighters and such) The result: flypaper.

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Quantum Transcendence

Quote

Originally posted by Vast Deathmaster:
**Do what ever you need to only affect a certain mass of ship (as in small fighters and such) The result: flypaper.

**

Unfortunately I don't think you can. These weapons do affect ships according to mass, so dampening the effect would make cruisers and such less susceptible. I'll experiment and see. I am playing around with getting these submunitions into a missile system though. Fire a missile and the ship is pinned to the spot. Additionally, I realized about two minutes after I posted the plug that my credits were incomplete. So I'd like to take this space to give credit to BariSaxGuy5. The outfit graphic for the "Hypermine" and "Antimine" is his work.

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Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
-Steve Jobs

HeWhoMustNotBeNamed

Quote

Originally posted by Quantum Transcendence:
**So I'd like to take this space to give credit to BariSaxGuy5. The outfit graphic for the "Hypermine" and "Antimine" is his work.

**

I was just about to call you on that.

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Vast Deathmaster

Quote

Originally posted by Quantum Transcendence:
**
Unfortunately I don't think you can. These weapons do affect ships according to mass, so dampening the effect would make cruisers and such less susceptible. I'll experiment and see. I am playing around with getting these submunitions into a missile system though. Fire a missile and the ship is pinned to the spot. Additionally, I realized about two minutes after I posted the plug that my credits were incomplete. So I'd like to take this space to give credit to BariSaxGuy5. The outfit graphic for the "Hypermine" and "Antimine" is his work.

**

What would be interesting is a "kinder, gentiller(sp?)" bomb. Sure, gluing them to the spot makes them easier kills, but what if you could tie it into the Wormhole "network".
You shoot an enemy, or near them, and they are immediately pulled in. (I've seen the deadly wormholes in Polycon where ships spiral into them.)

It would just be interesting to shoot an enemy who is then teleported away.

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spacecowboy

Unfortunately, in order for a ship to use a wormhole, they have to land on it. I don't know of any way of creating a 'proximity wormhole', as you seem to suggest: one that would activate when the ship touched the sprite. However, the Maelstrom wormholes in Polycon certainly added a level of challenge to the game, and would be very interesting if they were more common and spread somewhat randomly throughout space.

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mrxak

I tried it out, but it doesn't seem to be working. Does it really work for you?

Edit: Okay, I think I figured it out. Since it's planet-type, it doesn't effect ships at all. It can't be planet-type then. I'm trying to figure out a way to make it not disappear once it's made its effect on ships, but I'm thinking it might not be possible. So far the only way to make it work is if you have a lot of them in a line, but then the enemy ships move in a line following you.

(This message has been edited by mrxak (edited 04-02-2003).)

mrxak

Here's the deal:

I found that if you set ProxRadius to say, 5 for anti and 200 for hyper, and had both use "prox triggered by any ships", it would work relatively well used as a non-planet-type weapon. You need to use both together to trap ships though, because once they "touch" the weapon, it disappears.

Therefore:
A ring of antis around you will keep all ships away indefinately.
A single anti and a number of hypers will make ships go nuts (if there's enough hyper, the ships will eventually reach the anti, disabling the trap).
A few antis surounding an enemy ship will keep it bouncing around inside indefinately, and keep other ships away from it.
A line of hypers will lead ships down the line, and all hypers will be touched, making them disappear. Adding an anti at the end traps them in place if close enough to the hypers.

I'll email my edited version to anyone wants it.

(This message has been edited by mrxak (edited 04-02-2003).)

Quantum Transcendence

Hmm, that must be something with the new versions. As I said before, I'm using 1.0.0. Apparently they changed something, because the blast from planet-type weapons still affects ships in 1.0.0. I'll have to upgrade to 1.0.4 and see if I can hack in a solution. I'd also like a copy of your rendition mrxak. I appreciate the help. My email is: kiatzu@earthlink.net

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Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
-Steve Jobs

(This message has been edited by Quantum Transcendence (edited 04-02-2003).)

mrxak

It's on its way!