Submunitioning weapons question.

Hello,

I am designing a ship that has a main cannon that is quite destructive and saps quite a bit of fuel to fire (but that's not part of this question). The ship 'unfolds to fire' by the front section splitting in two like a pair of hands being pulled away from each other but that is also not important. There are three radial towers along the 'z' axis that stand off from the main hull of the ship, aft of the cannon that splits in half to fire. Here is a basic picture of the concept:

Anyway, I want these little beams to shoot from the tops of these towers at the target. They would fire directly ahead of the ship, all three at once (I figured out how to do this I believe) and would activate the main gun when they hit something- the main gun would be another beam ideally but I think that is out of the question, so it would be a big sprite. I'm reading through the submunition section of the Nova Bible and so far I can't find a way to do this. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance if any help is derived and regards,
Rik

Beams can't participate in submunition, IIRC.

EDIT: There may be ways to fake beams with normal weapons, but it would take an ungodly amount of balancing to make sure that the beam looks like a beam. As well, it would be murder to try to get submunitions working correctly. It might be possible, though.

This post has been edited by UE_Research & Development: 06 November 2004 - 06:55 PM

Can't be done, I'm afraid. There really isn't any way for a ship to 'know' when it has hit something, nor can beams submunition. Basically, it's hard to choreograph weapons like that, so one lights up (or appears to) when another does something. To be more accurate, it's mostly impossible.

One thing you could do is make the main cannon an exclusive weapon and, say, make the other three ionizing or tractor beams that are turreted. Then the ship would be able to nail an enemy in place with the trio of guns, aim at them, then switch to the main cannon and fry the target. That isn't really what you were looking for, but you have to admit it's still pretty cool...

Replicant, on Nov 7 2004, 03:08 AM, said:

One thing you could do is make the main cannon an exclusive weapon and, say, make the other three ionizing or tractor beams that are turreted. Then the ship would be able to nail an enemy in place with the trio of guns, aim at them, then switch to the main cannon and fry the target. That isn't really what you were looking for, but you have to admit it's still pretty cool...
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That's sort of what I had figured, and the workaround is also similar. I had thought that submunitioning would work because I could set the beams (or beam-like unguideds) to fire the main cannon as a submunition when thier proximity was tripped but although I think that this basic process could work the main cannon's shot wouldn't come from the ship itself The main cannon is already in two pieces (one 'setting' versus ships and the other is a planet-type weapon) so having a disabling beam would add more complication to this process- and as this ship (a Sasmut Mk.II destroyer so I can refer to it as other than 'this ship' (although a Mk.I is pictured- I lost the model in a HD crash recently and I don't have the Mk.II finished)) is almost exclusively used by AI gövt fleets I doubt the disabling beam would really ever see much use. But I bet the player could have some fun trap-shooting incomming fighters and blowing them away though!

rmx256, on Nov 7 2004, 07:42 AM, said:

...(one 'setting' versus ships and the other is a planet-type weapon)...
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Nova handles Beam planet-type weapons.

I've not tried yet, though the concept is now moot...