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I created a beam weapon with Guidance = 10. Yet, when I test it by firing on ships to make them hostile, it doesn't fire, no matter how close I pass to them. Any ideas as to why this might be? My other beam weapons work fine.
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Ships have to have a special flag checked to allow point-defense weapons to fire on them. Point-defense is primarily used for shooting down missiles rather than automatically firing at enemies, so if you want it to work like this then you will have to go through each ship resource and make sure that flag is checked.
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Ah. Thank you, Guy.
Don't forget that the firing is automatic. You can't control a point defense weapon when it fires... and it fires only on hostile ships.
Perhaps if you set it to be a turret, the weapon would be more of what you intended it to be.
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I've goaded ships into firing missiles at me and my experimental point-defense beam still doesn't fire (at the missiles -- Guy explained previously that it won't fire at the ships without tweaking those ships).
I sold off my jammers, thinking perhaps they were making the point-defense moot. No difference.
I equipped myself with a quad light blaster turret, thinking that by experimenting with it, I could learn how a point-defense weapon is supposed to operate. But it doesn't fire at anything either.
I'm stumped.
Even the QLBT won't fire? That's odd. Have you tried the Storm Chaingun? Are you using any plugins that modify missiles in any way?
I just tried a Storm Chaingun and it doesn't fire at anything either.
The only plugin I'm using is the one I'm experimenting with for learning purposes, and it doesn't do anything with missiles.
I'm flying a Raven, if that matters.
Make sure the flag1 0x0080 is not set for the missile you want to be destroyed by PD hits.
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The missiles in question are the standard ones in EVN (IR, radar, etc.), none of which have that flag set. (The only ones I find in the Nova Data 4 file that do are the Polaron variants, and nothing's lobbed any of those at me.)
I'm using the stock EVN scenario (i.e., data files), supplemented with my plug.
As another test, I traded in the Raven for an Enterprise and equipped it with a Storm Chaingun (with ammo). Otherwise, the ship was completely stock.
Shot at various ships that launched missiles at me -- as near as I can tell, the chaingun never fired (I didn't survive very long!).
What sort of visual indicators should I see if the gun is firing? Shouldn't I get a "remaining ammo" display, for example? And maybe something that looks like projectiles coming from my ship? I'm a bit new to EVN and hadn't tried any point-defense weapons in the course of normal gameplay before I started trying to learn to write plugs.
You can't get a live ammo display for PD weapons although you should be able to check your ammo by bringing up the player info dialog every so often. There will be little shots that look sorta like bullets coming out of your ship when the Storm fires, however the rate of fire is extremely slow compared with what you might expect. Also, it only fires 3 shots before going in to burst reload. This is really strange. Take out all plugs you may have and try again. If the Storm still won't fire then it may be a bug.
Turns out the Storm was firing. I just couldn't see it doing so amidst the torrent of incoming fire. But the Pilot Info showed the ammo being depleted. The Quad Light Blaster Turret may have been firing, too, and I couldn't tell for the same reason (and there's no ammo to check, in the case of a blaster).
This experience gave me an idea for another test. I thot perhaps my beam PD weapon has the same problem: it fires, but there's something wrong graphically, so I simply can't see it.
So I assigned Ammo Type 145 to it, bought some wraithii, and got ships to shoot at me again. The ammo count for the wraithii never changed. I tried this using Guidance = 9 and = 10. (Does anyone know the practical difference between choosing 9 vs. 10?)
New ideas would be welcome.
Guidance 9 is a turret - it's a gun which shoots discrete projectiles. Guidance 10 is a beam.
You could always try changing a weapon which you know works into a beam without changing anything else, and see if that works.
<<<Guidance 9 is a turret - it's a gun which shoots discrete projectiles. Guidance 10 is a beam.>>>
Right, but what I meant was "What practical difference does the choice make?" For example, if I were the engine programmer, I might code Guidance 9 so it computes some target leading to allow for projectile travel time, and skip this for Guidance 10. Anyway, I'm wondering whether anyone knows the difference(s) in how the EVN engine implements these 2 guidance types.
<<<You could always try changing a weapon which you know works into a beam without changing anything else, and see if that works.>>>
Good idea. I changed the Storm Chaingun guidance to 10 and, otherwise, left it unchanged. When I tested it, it didn't use any ammo. So it's not surprising that my beam PD used no ammo when I set its guidance to 10. But why might this also be true when its guidance is 9?
While searching the archives, I came across a post from Matt Burch that implies Guidance 9 does, indeed, compensate for the target's relative motion.
Now, since no one's replied to my last post, let me try a different tack: Does anyone have or know of a plug that includes a beam point-defense weapon? If I can get a copy of one that works and examine it, perhaps I can diagnose my problem.
The Reset Missions plugin does, or one of them, anyway.
Point defense beams are usually ridiculously overpowered, since they travel at essentially infinite speed and do high damage.
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Originally posted by Belthazar: **The Reset Missions plugin does, or one of them, anyway.
Point defense beams are usually ridiculously overpowered, since they travel at essentially infinite speed and do high damage.**
That could have been from the Beam bug, where the beams did ridiculous amounts of damage... While that was supposedly fixed, were PD beams not?
~ SP
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No, the bug was in the way the beams stacked when one had multiple beams, not in how individual beams behaved. The PD beam is overpowered even when it's acting on its own. That said, I haven't actually tried out a PD beam post bug fix, since I'm on a PC, and in the PC version, the bug hasn't been fixed yet.
It's also possible that it's because the weapon I have in mind might have been written as a cheat weapon, with too low a reload rate.
I've downloaded every version of Reset Missions on the Ambrosia web site, as well as the older ResetPilot101, and don't see anything in the Read Me files that looks like a Beam PD. The outfit descriptions are pretty much the same in each version:
"1. Inertial Dampener: pretty much speaks for itself right? if your not piloting one of the inertial dampened ships in the game (Polaris Raven, Vell-os ships) this will make any other ship act like them for controlling purposes.. For grins I also added Multi-Jump on this device (20 Jumps)..
2. Wide Field Cloak: basically this unit cloaks Escorts as well as long as they are in formation.. oh yeah and it doesn't drop if you are hit by random fire, cost energy, and is completely undetectable unless the enemy has a Cloak detector.. (could conflict if you have multiple cloaking devices installed you should remove them this is the top of the line)
3. Tractor Beam: again exactly what it sounds like if you dont know it from the older EV's it is a beam weapon set to second trigger that does no damage simply pulls whatever it locks onto towards you..
4. False ID: This one resets your legal status in all govt's to the base value so of course you can land wherever in order to start your mission string you want..
5. Combat Drone Bay (and Drones): this is an update of another plug I did that includes the Combat version of the Cargo drones with a disabling beam weapon, you can carry up to 6 of them in a bay and up to 2 bays.. (graphics by AAC)
6. Wraithii Generator: this is a version of the wraithii cannon that is almost identical except it is Disable only for those times when you just want to capture something fast.. oh and it doesn't need ammo.."
That's curious... it appears in the version that I have (version - it's called the "Anti-Missile Beam".
Edit: Ah, it appears in the plugin, but not in the readme...
(This message has been edited by Belthazar (edited 06-20-2004).)