Comets

Is it possible to create or simulate comets in EVN? Been trying to think of ways to do this but I can only think of making like a non-buyable ship that looks like a comet, but then it would land on planets among other things.

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Well, the ship idea is the only thing I can think of, though by giving it a maneuverability of 0 it won't be able to move towards a planet if it spawns in an alternate direction. A way of preventing it from landing is to give it a government that has relations that aren't good enough to land but not bad enough to attack?

Just my thought, I'm not exactly well versed on all of this yet so the gov't suggestion might not even be possible heh

This brings a nice idea though, comets that have planet-destroying weapons as point-blank ranged weapons... yeah, and you get "defend planet/station from comet" missions 😛 worth a try if it hasn't already been done

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Life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life... So get wasted all of the time and have the time of your life!

I like the defend planet/station idea, but make sure the ship doesn't move too fast, or that'd be a pretty tough mission...

cdrcoyote, if you make the ship have 0 maneuverability, it shouldn't be able to land.

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Eat blazing electric death!

Maniac Angel Raptor is correct. You could have to make a ship with high acceleration, 0 manouverability, and make sure it isnt inertialess 😛 This way, the ship would just fly towards the plannet, then over it and keep on going. Dont make the speed too high though or it will just keep looping round the system noticeably. If its speed is roughly similar to that of an asteroid, it shouldnt pose too much of a problem 🙂

You could also make an asteroid that looks like a comet, but there would be a problem that is wouldnt be able to have a vapoour trail as im pretty sure asteroids dont support that... however I've not researched this possibility so dont quote me on that one 😄

ewan

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You could even make the ship untargetable so that it gets in the way of immediate combat but doesn't become a nuisance when it's out in the middle of nowhere.

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Quote

Originally posted by SpacePirate:
**I like the defend planet/station idea, but make sure the ship doesn't move too fast, or that'd be a pretty tough mission...

cdrcoyote, if you make the ship have 0 maneuverability, it shouldn't be able to land.

**

Thanks, didn't think about the 0 maneuverability.

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Home of the EVula Plug.

You would have to set it's armor to -1 if you don't intend for it to be destroyed, but still get in the way of combat. Also, set it's weight to VERY HIGH because I imagine if you were to do the protect planet mission, you wouldn't want it to be flying back (or to the side) if you shot it with a bunch of Fusion Pulses or Stellar Grenades (which have an impact of 210).

On an aside, can you set ships to have contrails? How would you make a contrail for this sort of a thing, besides making a ship with 324 frames, and having the extra frames be animation (similar to the Hyperoids or the Auroran Cruiser)?

~Dimpfinator

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I've thought about this one, too (not for SFA, for something else).

What I thought was to make sure that all ships were affected by point defense weapons and then give the Comet a point defense beam or turret with something like a 1-2 pixel length. I'd also make the tail an engine glow and have it facing away from the main light source, no matter what direction the comet was travelling.

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Quote

Originally posted by UncleTwitchy:
**I've thought about this one, too (not for SFA, for something else).

What I thought was to make sure that all ships were affected by point defense weapons and then give the Comet a point defense beam or turret with something like a 1-2 pixel length. I'd also make the tail an engine glow and have it facing away from the main light source, no matter what direction the comet was travelling.

**

And if you made the beam invisible (though one or two pixels would be nearly that anyway) the comet could be real scary (because if it "hits" you you're done) Thing is, for practical use, it'd have to be a mission ship- not an in system dude (or a very, very, very low probability of appearance one) because everytime someone came into the comet system it would be heading in a different direction. Though this would make sense over a long period of time (because comets do in fact orbit the sun in the system) if you hypered out of a system then right back in, somehow three days later the trajectory would be entirely different.

You're all right, though. It would make a ~killer~ "save the planet from the deadly asteroid" mission. has an idea Damn, I wish I still did plug-ins.. 🙂

_bomb

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Well there's 2 types of "save the planet/station" missions you could do with all this info...

  1. Blow up the asteroid before it hits, OR
  2. Use a specific weapon to "knock" the asteroid off-course so it doesn't hit.

The 1st is good for those "high-tech" star trek type plug-ins where every major warship is outfited with "1-shot-kill" weapons and the like while the 2nd is good for low-tech option, though the 2nd could also be useful for deflecting asteroids that are realistically too large to blow up with non-planet killing weapons. (Like the planet-sized asteroid that hit the earth and caused the moon to form)

Just ideas that I might add into my own plugin when I have access to a windows plug-in editor though I'd love to try it out first in other people's plug-ins heh

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Life is a waste of time and time is a waste of life... So get wasted all of the time and have the time of your life!

lol. You guys just keep giving me more ideas for the plug-in that I am working on.

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If you had a momentarily unihabited system, you could use the gravity feature to make the comet orbit the stellar/be attracted to it, making a mission like this even more difficult. Your excuse for the unihabited system could be that everyone had fled when this thing showed up, but as soon as you destroy/deflect it enough, they will come back (after you land of course). You could set the armor to a certain percentage, and have it "run away" (jump out? I don't know if something like this is possible--or non-cheezy enough to include in a plugin) when it hits a certain percent.

By the way, what do people think about editing existing upgrades, such as solar panels to give slight boosts to armor, or shields, because they do take up room on the surface of the ship, and it stands to reason that they should, but I'm not sure whether this would throw the balance of the game off.

~Dimpfinator

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Quote

Originally posted by Bomb:
And if you made the beam invisible (though one or two pixels would be nearly that anyway) the comet could be real scary (because if it "hits" you you're done)

How does one make a beam invisible? I've been trying to figure that one out for a year now.

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Quote

Originally posted by UncleTwitchy:
**How does one make a beam invisible? I've been trying to figure that one out for a year now.

**

You could make it black so that it blends in with the background.

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Tried it. It's still obviously there.

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Quote

Originally posted by UncleTwitchy:
**Tried it. It's still obviously there.

**

Then I don't know. 🙂

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Home of the EVula Plug.

Quote

Originally posted by UncleTwitchy:
**How does one make a beam invisible? I've been trying to figure that one out for a year now.

**

Wouldn't making a black graphic and giving the beam a tiny length do that?

_bomb

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Not in, say, a system that's supposed to be a nebula where you've made the background slightly purple-ish.

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How about giving it a width of zero?

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Yeah, give it a width of 0, which makes it only have a corona glow. If you make the corona color pure black, then the beam will be invisible since coronas are translucent.

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