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Ah, but then the ship won't use its weapon. See, I've tried all these things.
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Originally posted by UncleTwitchy: **Ah, but then the ship won't use its weapon. See, I've tried all these things.
**
Why won't it use it?
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Is the weapon not fired by AI ships, unusable by players, or both?
As to the case at hand (an impact weapon), won't the beam effectively be invisible if it fires from ship center, is set to fire under sprites, and is shorter than the radius of the comet? Perhaps you'd have to use another turret point or two to cover the tail if you wanted (less?) damage to be done if you passed through it.
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(This message has been edited by Dr. Trowel (edited 10-30-2003).)
I don't know why, when you have a beam-width of 0, the A.I. ship won't use it. Perhaps with a beam-width of 0, the A.I. ship doesn't recognize it at a legitimate weapon....or perhaps a beam-width of 0 is not allowed.
The weapon that I tested this kind of thing on was with a ship that the players would never, ever fly, so whether or not it could be fired by a player was never tested.
I've never gotten the "fire under sprites" flag to work -- any beam weapon that I have always fires on top of the sprites, regardless of whether I've triggered that flag or not. It could be, however, that NovaTools is not selecting it properly.
(edit) It's frustrating, too, because I have something in SFA similar to the big Nabisco bugle that went around eating planets in the TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine" that uses a weapon of this nature. (/edit)
(This message has been edited by UncleTwitchy (edited 10-30-2003).)
Originally posted by UncleTwitchy: **I've never gotten the "fire under sprites" flag to work -- any beam weapon that I have always fires on top of the sprites, regardless of whether I've triggered that flag or not. It could be, however, that NovaTools is not selecting it properly. **
Sounds like a NovaTools bug. I've gotten the flag to work; I think I did it on weaps resources exported via ConText. I haven't tried making a beam shorter than the ship's radius, though.
I see how weapons that fire from under ships could feature rather largely in a Star Trek TC.... Best of luck!
Question: How would you get them to have the mission complete when it's knocked off course? I think you'd have to destroy it...
Anyhow, one really, really weird solution would be to have a ship whose sprites are 48x48 (Can you do 0x0? I dunno...) and all black and have an identical mask. Have this ship fire the comet weapon at the spob (however you accomplish this), set its ammoload to 1, of course, and give the comet weap a smoke trail that looks like the tail of a comet.
Only problem is that since the AI is so freaking stupid, you may see the comet appear out of nowhere.
The radar wont be too much of a problem,as you could give it another weapon that destroys the ship, then give it a boom resource that doesn't look like an explosion. Unfortunately, again, the AI is retarded and may not follow these properly. Is there some way to make an invisible ship?
Checks bible Well, you could set 0x800 in the Flags2 field, but again, God knows what'll happen here...
Damn you, AI... :mad:
(EDIT) This probably can't be used for the "save spob from comet" mission. It would, however, probably work for comets that appear every once in a while. You'd have a comet that passes over planets and possibly asteroids, but hits ships for an enormous amount of damage. How the hell you'd get this to be fired by a retarded AI ship, I dunno...it was just an idea. :)(/EDIT)
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(This message has been edited by orcaloverbri9 (edited 10-31-2003).)
Originally posted by orcaloverbri9: **Anyhow, one really, really weird solution would be to have a ship whose sprites are 48x48 (Can you do 0x0? I dunno...) and all black and have an identical mask. Have this ship fire the comet weapon at the spob (however you accomplish this), set its ammoload to 1, of course, and give the comet weap a smoke trail that looks like the tail of a comet. **
I'd been thinking about this solution too. You'd probably want to set a far-from-everything nav default in the system, and have the comet-launcher ship appear on it. Give it no (or almost no) engines but at least some turning capability so its aim can vary. Maybe cloak it and make the (unguided) weapon fire while cloaked. Perhaps setting "ship can't be targeted" and making the ship's mask pure black would be an alternate way of keeping it off the radar.
Perhaps a swarm of planet-bound comets -- like the multiple fragments that hit Jupiter (Saturn?) a few years ago -- could be simulated. As targets you might be able to use tiny black-masked spob-loving shiplets -- if being black-masked doesn't make them totally unhittable, either give 'em enough manueverability to stay out of the way or give 'em no engines at all, so that the explosions caused by their destruction make it look like the planet they are placed around is being bombarded by the comets.
I'm not sure whether all of that is workable, but it's fun to imagine....