here's another couple of questions for you...

Nova's systems are all based on a short integer, with a maximum range of -32767 to +32766. The center (where the no-jump radius is based) is at <0,0>. As you fly out towards the edge of the system, when you get to a certain extent you loop back on the other side. Now, if I recall correctly, that boundary is NOT at the maximum value, but instead at something like +/-20000. Which means if you position a spob at around +/-32000, the player will never see it, but it should affect the system. Anybody remember if this is the case?

Masamune, on Feb 17 2005, 06:34 PM, said:

...Which means if you position a spob at around +/-32000, the player will never see it, but it should affect the system. Anybody remember if this is the case?
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Yeah, I think it is.

Anyone ever used the max amount of spobs with a -6000 gravity value in a ring around the planet you're on? It is so ######ing hilarious. Then I made myself unaffected by gravity, so no one else could land there :). I had succeeded in creating the personal base I had wanted so much in EV/O.

In fact, that has just inspired a new idea for Legacy.

Masamune @ Feb 17 2005, on 06:34 PM, said:

...Which means if you position a spob at around +/-32000, the player will never see it, but it should affect the system. Anybody remember if this is the case?

Yes, the system loops at 15,000 pixels, and the player comes out at exactly 10,000. Given that I could see a spob on the radar that was a thousand pixels beyond the loop point, I would say that this should work.

So it would work.. nice.

Btw do you choose gravity of the planet, or mass?

Ans do the mass of the ship have any effect?

modesty_blaise_us, on Feb 18 2005, 02:37 PM, said:

So it would work.. nice.

Btw do you choose gravity of the planet, or mass?

Ans do the mass of the ship have any effect?
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You choose the gravity of the planet, not the mass. I don't know if the mass of a ship hass an effect, but it probablly does.

It's been a while since I contributed anything useful here, but I did have a thought concerning your problem. If I understand correctly, essentially what you want to implement is a "wind" effect of roughly constant strength. As a result of this, using the gravity effect is unappealing.

What you might want to consider instead are weapon impacts, which will impart the same force on you no matter where you are in they system. You could go along with the "line of spöbs" idea, but rather than give them gravitational fields, make their governments xenophobic and equip them with very long range turreted beams with a low but constant impact value. I think the end result of this would be that every ship in the system is gradually accelerated away from the "line" until they reach their maximum speed.

Edit - of course spöbs cannot be equipped with beams, but a fast projectile should work just as well.

-reg

This post has been edited by Regulus : 18 February 2005 - 07:03 PM

Weapon      Stellers can have a single projectile or missle type weapon, with unlimited amununition (don't put the ID of a beam or PD weapon here or bad things will happen). Stellers can be made to fire either only when provoked or at any time an enemy ship is present. 
0 or   -1 No weapon
128-383   Steller has weapon of this type

-Nova Bible

'Nuf said.

I edited my post before I saw your reply, but as I said above, a fast projectile weapon would also work. I'm tempted to put together a test plugin, but I can't seem to find my registration code at the moment - it's been quite a while, and a few hard drive failures since my last attempt at engine hackery.

-reg

Gravitational field strength and mass are directly proportional. Since the Nova engine uses some undefined unit for thus, the distinction is irrelevant.

Now, if you have a vertical line of six stellars at each side of the system (x=+/-32000) and give one side ridiculous pos itive gravity and one side ridiculous negative gravity of the same amount, you will have what is essentially a one directional gravitational field throughout the system. It works as far as I could tell in the short test that I did, but if you move too far pependicular to the field, you might notice the slight curve in the direction of travel.

Regulus - that the exactly the kind of effect I'm thinking about
Keldor - a slight curve in what direction? Towards, or away from the system centre?

Regulus, the problem with that would be that spobs can only have one target each. And if they all pick the same target then only one ship will be affected. Also, ships hiding behind other ships could not be hit.
One idea would be to have the shots detonate instantly with a 32767 blast radius. That way it would impact every ship in the system The shot would have to sub into a long range invisible projectile for that to work.

Hudson, on Feb 19 2005, 07:03 AM, said:

Keldor - a slight curve in what direction? Towards, or away from the system centre?
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It's a circle... Invariably, it'll force you toward the center of the sytem, then force you toward the fringes again. And so on, ad infinitum.

Okay, Part 2

Is it possible to change all references to 'jumping' throughout the engine? If I was creating a TC and wanted to change the name of the technology that was allowing the player to move between systems 'quantum tunneling', for example, would it be possible to substitute the word 'jump' to 'tunnel', 'jumping' to 'tunneling' etc...

Part 3

Thinking about the 'Krypt Mind Attack' outfit which is issued to the player on entering the system via a mission bit; is there a simple and effective way to apply a similar process to all systems?

For example, we divide all the systems in a map into four groups, 1, 2, 3 and 4; and similarly divide all ship types into groups 1, 2, 3 and 4. All ships function perfectly in the map zone of the same number (ie. ship type 1 in system type 1). Put ship type 1 into a system of type 2 and the ship will suffer performance drop-off. But put ship type 1 into a system of type 3 and the ship would be destroyed before you know it. The same would apply for ships of type 4, if they were to be placed in systems 3 and 2 respectively.

As an addition to the above, could the player buy outfits to expand their ship's functional limit. For example, upgrade a type 1 ship so that it still functions normally in a type 2 system, experiences performance drop off in type 3, and isn't destroyed until it reaches a type 4.

Any and all thoughts would be most helpful, thanks!

For your question #3 you might use ranks. The player is able to pechase an "upgrade" that realy just activates a rank. Might work, I'm not sure

Bird of War

You can find all the jumping strings in STR# 2002 "misc strings" - Nova Data 5.

Oow, okay, just Part 3 left...

Hmm... well, the easy solution is to use the Edwardsian self destroying spob technique. Just add a wormhole to the corner of each system, way past where the player can get, give it a govt that hates the player and a planet type weapon with no prox safety. Each of these will self destruct the moment the player enters the system. Also, put it in navdefault 5-16 so it cant be selected with the fkey.

In the ondestroy field of a spob in, for example, a system of type one, put G1 D2 D3 D4, where each of these outfits sets your ship to the type it should be for that system. There are a bunch of problems with this:

1. If you change speed/accel/turning in space, the actual change will not take effect until you land, or until the player checks the info dialogue (default p key). This is just disgusting, so I strongly recommend against it. This will also hold for pretty much any solution.

2. If in system one you want the ship to have 200 shields, but in system two you want the ship to drop down to 100, there is a problem. Say you get into a fight in system one, end up with 150 shields, then jump to system two. You will still have the 150 shields: the only thing the shieldmax changes is when the shields stop regenerating, so you have to find a way to knock the shields down to 100. There are workarounds for this, technically, but this problem will still exist for other implementations.

3. This problem is only relevant for this implementation: There is almost no way to add stuff like upgrades that lessen the effects of some systems. There is also no way to do something like "in system three, double the shields for whatever ship the player is in", the stats will totally only depend on the outfits, theres no way to do any linear transform of ship performance. Also note that the only way to make it so the player can own different types of ships is to use visbits: completely new versions of every single system, containing the same normal spobs, but with different little wormhole things, such that there is a new set of outfits. This visbit approach could also be used to implement upgrades (actually... you could create an upgrade so all system threes give the player the 'local outfit' instead of the 'forgeign outfit)... so visbits might be viable, but not if you want it to affect bigger ships more.

A final note: other dudes will be completely unaffected by any of this fancyness. You will have to do stuff like create 'dude 3 in system type three', and 'dude 3 in system 1 (weak).' This is a minor pain... especially if multiplied by visbitted systems.

There are only so many things that you can do with this. Shield and Armor regen are the easiest. If you know the player has some number of some kind of weapon, you could also make that weapon suck in the bad systems. This limits lots of stuff though, and could only work with weapons the player cannot add/subtract. If you -really- want to, you can change shield and armor max. I suppose technically, if you lower their shield max and shield regen, it would still be a huge disadvantage, even if it allows them to enter the system with 200% shields.

Ah, an Idea I just got. You could set weapons such that they are only fireable while the keycarried ship is aboard, then have the ship be added and subtracted as the player enters and leaves respective systems. Just be sure to give the AI the ship (a fighter sans bay) if you have to give them the weapon.

Other implementations could be mission or cron driven, but visbitted self killing spobs seems to be the likliest to what you want. Theres no method that doesnt involve a certain amount of hacking.