Shield Regeneration from Weapons in Nova

GutlessWonder

Is it possible to have a weapon regenerate the player's shields whenever it is fired? I.e. it would still do damage whenever it contacted another ship, but firing it would regenerate the shields/armor of the player's ship (but not all the time, only when the weapon was activated/fired).

This question stems from a desire to make a biological ship whose method of attack would be using a weapon with an incredibly short range that would drain the enemy's shields while raising its own. It would look like the ship would be attaching itself to its target and then draining the shields for its own use.

To that end, in addition to what I'm asking about above, would I then be able to add a tractor beam effect to the weapon, to keep the target from escaping too easily?

In the end, could I create a tractor beam that damages the target and raises the player's shields when fired?

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getcrack4me

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Originally posted by GutlessWonder:
... snip ...

After looking through the Nova Bible, I see no mentions of using shields as ammo for a weaponso I guess you can't reverse the ammo and have a regen shields effect.

Maybe someone else can think of some clever way around this.

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Jonathan Boyd

Don't see any way to do it. Though I am curious about what effect a bomb with the 'Blast damages player' flag set and negative damage would do. I don't think negative damage worked in previous versions, sadly.

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The Vortrex

If you know a way around that, you can also make some "Shield Regenerator" that uses up fuel. So when you fire it it uses fuel but also regenerates shields.

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nighthawk

make two weapons (they'd have to both be primary so the one can never fire without the other) which are both granted when you get the outfit for one:
first weapon (the draining beam):
beam turret, damage x, range y, negative impact
second weapon (the shield raising thing):
turreted projectile (invisible. you may have to make give it a nonempty mask so that its proximity explosion will hit your ship), damage -x, prox radius y, blast radius 1

i haven't tested it, but you can make weapons like that whose blast hurts the player, and you can make weapons which do negative damage correctly, so i don't see why you couldn't put the two together

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GutlessWonder

Thank you very much. My second question is this, is the AI able to fire two weapons at the same time like that, or can it only fire one primary and one secondary weapon at a time?

I was thinking about creating (whenever editors are made for windows) a biological race that would operate similar to metroids. (if anyone reading this doesn't know what a metroid is, think of an organism that attaches itself to others and drains their energy)

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Magnificat Anima
Please, point out my faults, so that I may correct them

Jonathan Boyd

Quote

Originally posted by nighthawk:
**make two weapons (they'd have to both be primary so the one can never fire without the other) which are both granted when you get the outfit for one:
first weapon (the draining beam):
beam turret, damage x, range y, negative impact
second weapon (the shield raising thing):
turreted projectile (invisible. you may have to make give it a nonempty mask so that its proximity explosion will hit your ship), damage -x, prox radius y, blast radius 1

i haven't tested it, but you can make weapons like that whose blast hurts the player, and you can make weapons which do negative damage correctly, so i don't see why you couldn't put the two together

**

The problem with this solution is that even if it works, you can charge your shields up without hitting anyone and you can't make the weapon a secondary one, as you've pointed out.

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getcrack4me

Quote

Originally posted by GutlessWonder:
**Thank you very much. My second question is this, is the AI able to fire two weapons at the same time like that, or can it only fire one primary and one secondary weapon at a time?

**

The AI can fire all of its weapons simultaneously (all secondaries and all primaries) unless you specified that a weapon negates the firing of others.

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Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne

GutlessWonder

Quote

Originally posted by getcrack4me:
**The AI can fire all of its weapons simultaneously (all secondaries and all primaries) unless you specified that a weapon negates the firing of others.

**

Wonderful

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Please, point out my faults, so that I may correct them

Masamune

Wow. You can really make negative-damage weapons that work? Coolness! All sorts of cool new outfits are going into SS ASAP!

On a more somber note, I must point out that the AI is not bound to the fire-all-primaries rule the player is. The AI can fire as many or as few weapons as it pleases anytime it wants to. I found this out in Robotech, where I tried to make a massive destruction wave weapon, one planetary and one non-planetary, both on Primary trigger. The AI would fire one or the other, but very, very rarely both (depended on the situation). Since they were designed to work together, that was a problematic situation.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

Mazca

Quote

Originally posted by Masamune:
On a more somber note, I must point out that the AI is not bound to the fire-all-primaries rule the player is.

In fact, anyone can see this in the base scenario of Nova. Where? Remember those damned Pirate Valk-4's with their ion cannons and railguns? The computers can blast you from afar with the railguns without wasting fuel on the ion cannon, while the player is forced to use both, making the railguns a lot less useful.

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Jonathan Boyd

Just had an idea - what about a weapon with submunitions?

Fire a projectile with a 1 frame lifespan, which detonates at the end, releasing submunitions. Te first weapon will do negative damage to shields, while the submunition shot would go and damage the target ship.

Of course, I'm not sure if negative damage works or not, but at least this gives a way of doing it which would allow use of a secondary weapon and forces the AI to fire 'both' weapons.

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Gus

Quote

Originally posted by Jonathan Boyd:
**snip
**

Not a bad idea. It might work.

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Andcarne

Well, if you make a weapon turreted, it will only fire with a target selected. You could use that to make sure the player doesn't just fire it at any time.

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nighthawk

Quote

Originally posted by Jonathan Boyd:
The problem with this solution is that even if it works, you can charge your shields up without hitting anyone and you can't make the weapon a secondary one, as you've pointed out.

that's why i said it has to be primary: if it's primary both have to fire at the same time (on a player ship). this, coupled with the fact that the healing weapon has a prox radius equal to the hurting weapon's range, means the healing weapon will only heal if the hurting weapon hits (or has a chance of hitting).

the submunition thing might work if you did it in a similar way: the first weapon has a prox radius equal to the range you want and does healing (with really small blast radius so it doesn't heal your target). the submunition has range equal to the first one's prox radius, but has a really small prox radius and small blast radius (probably 0) so it only hits your target and not anyone else nearby

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Masamune

Quote

Originally posted by nighthawk:
**that's why i said it has to be primary: if it's primary both have to fire at the same time (on a player ship). this, coupled with the fact that the healing weapon has a prox radius equal to the hurting weapon's range, means the healing weapon will only heal if the hurting weapon hits (or has a chance of hitting).

**

The problem is that the player could go up to a friendly ship, not shoot AT it, but have the healing weapon's prox trigger go off, healing him for free. Granted, this would require the player to understand the way the weapon works, but I'd sure do it.

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~Charlie
Sephil Saga Homepage: (url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")www.cwssoftware.com(/url)

mrxak

Negative damage actually works? I thought this was impossible...

Jonathan Boyd

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
Negative damage actually works? I thought this was impossible...

Not as far as I'm aware. Everything I've said is conditional on it working, which I've never tested. Is suspect that it doesn't, given that negative shield values wrap round to large positive ones. I imagine everything is an unsigned integer.

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Azratax2

Um, I just tossed together a plug to test this and i cant make it work. Have any of you actually done this? Or just talked about how cool it would be if you could do it?
I cannot make my neg-damage weapon regen enemy ships eityher. THUS, I conclude that neg damage doesnt appear to work. Does anyone have any reports of it working?
-Az

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