Trying to make a "Fuel Beam" plug...

I've been trying to create a Fuel Beam (to help those ships that ask for assistance) by setting the damage ratings to a negative number. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to help. How does this work in Nova?

~Tim ^_^

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"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted." --Fred Allen

Hey,

I tried to create a Healing beam to help out my allies and that had no effect. It seems that negative numbers have no effect. At least the "weapon will always do at least one point of damage" feature/bug was no implemented in Nova (allowing for tractor beams/repulsor beams that don't actually do damage).

The other thing I wanted was a Drain beam that gave me fuel when I hit people with it, but there's no way do that; if you check the Nova Bible, there's a abs function in there.

Of course, there may be some indirect ways to implement this... I have seen some crazy/brilliant ideas on these boards.

Use numbers > than 32767 and see what happens.

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I just tried -32768 for both. Ships just went KABOOM! Also made Feds angry, so I gave them some "energy," too! You know, if you're working for somebody (i.e. mission string or just delivering goods/ferrying people), or in a battle, you'll get hailed all the time, usually by those just wanting to tell you what the price was for "whatever," "whereever." I'm just testing this plug, and I went to most systems where there's lots of trader traffic, also to some empty systems near pirate space, and waited for a good amount of time in each place. I only got one taker who asked for gas. Strange, huh?

~Tim ^_^

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"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted." --Fred Allen

By the way, those ships that ask for assistance simply need to be boarded. They don't actually receive any fuel, you merely lose fuel (-100 fuel on auto-abort set) and board them.

Or did you have something else in mind?

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The programmer's code of entomology: there's always another bug.
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who have friends.
Windows users: stop asking for plugins. (url="http://"http://www.aznt.com/EVN/EVNEW/")Make one yourself.(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.cwssoftware.com")Sephil Saga Website(/url) | (url="http://"http://www.evula.org/infernostudios/search.html")Add-ons Search Engine(/url)

As orca says and I will add further to, the ships that ask for assistance are giving you a mission that can only be completed by boarding the ship. It is not hardcoded into the engine, and giving them energy in any other way (which I doubt is possible) will not make a difference, since all the game cares about is the ShipGoal, which is set to rescue, and will not recognise you giving the trader energy. (Well, that's as far as I know anyway)

Edit: In fact the ShipGoal is set to Rescue rather than board as I wrote the first time...

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(This message has been edited by Ephialtes (edited 08-10-2004).)