Submunition trouble

Having problems getting the right effect

In CTC-C, I have a weapon called a Shower Missile which is a missile that will sub in about two dozen smaller mines about 400-500 pixels away from the ship. A Shower Missile is meant as a roadblock and to soak up PD fire for Capital Ships, but I'm having trouble getting the mines to work correctly. The missile will sub into these mines like it's supposed to, but that's where the trouble begins. When I make the mines Homing Missile weapons with zero turning, they'll spread out like they're supposed to, and PD weapons will fire at them, but they never slow to a stop like I want them to. If I use the Unguided Missile weapon type, they'll slow down, but never spread out, and PD weapons won't fire at them.

I just want to know if anybody on the EVDC would approach this differently, or has any other ideas.

Point defense weapons pretty much only shoot at homing-type weapons.

If I were doing it, I'd be looking at a three-stage solution:

First stage, as is.
Second stage, scatter the mines.
Third stage, draw Pt. Def. fire. Zero Speed on this one.

(EDIT)
Alternatively, if you want to save on wëaps used, for your Second stage you can take advantage of the fact that a shot with a longer ProxSafety than its Life Span will never Hit anything:

Life: 20 (just something short)
ProxSafety: 21 (Life + 1)
Durability: Med-High
GuidedTurn: High
SubType: Itself
SubLimit: 20 (Life x SubLimit is going to be the actual duration of the shot)

This shot will pass through (around?) the targeted ship instead of hitting it.
The resulting swarm of these Homing shots released by the Shower Missile will surround the target, stick with the target, and make its PD weapons go crazy, and thus, useless.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 06 July 2008 - 07:20 PM

Interesting idea, the using the ProxSafety and LifeSpan like that. I love it. It's not what I had in mind for the shower missile, but I might have to make a "Swarm" Missile just for that purpose; I wanted it to be possible for the target ship to get too close to the mines and get blown away with considerable force. If the mines can't ever hit anything, you can see how that would be a problem. Still, I love it.

Now there's a problem with using three stages like that; if the second stage is of "homing missile" type and the third is too, but the third has zero speed and the second does not, then the mines will "jolt" to a stop instead of smoothly slowing to a stop. I don't think that'll look very good in-game.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 06 July 2008 - 08:43 PM

Does negative speed work?

Negative; it fires backwards and in a group, so if it hits something, 20 mines actually hit something at the same time.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 06 July 2008 - 08:58 PM

A shower missile?

Try this, create a missile weapon with about 10 damage a shot and give it some big recoil, then create a freefall bomb weapon that expires quickly, and has the missile outfit for submunitions, with a SubCount of like 20-50, and a Theta of 180. Make the subs fire at nearest target, then get up close to watch your target shake violently as it get pounded with dozens of missiles at once!

Yes, I'm evil.

Especially fun if you get hit with it, makes your screen go all shaky.

No, I don't think you understand...

Well, as soon as I get MC 4a9 installed, I'm going to try using 4 weapons to get the desired effect; 1 for the missile that gets up close to the ship, one for the burst, (homing type) one for the slowing down to a standstill, (unguided type) and one to "activate" the mines. It should look pretty neat in the end.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 08 July 2008 - 11:00 AM

If it works, can we chuck it in the Innovative Weapons thread? Theres a thread that needs some love.

Eh, sure. But my final product only required three weap resources; it seems as if the second resource was redundant, as I can get the same effect with a homing weapon that's immune to PD fire, uses an invisible sprite, and with a third sub that fades in instead of appearing all at once. It looks more ominous that way, but it works.

Also, I implemented a "Swarm Missile." It's looks real cool in game; you guys are going to love it.

@templar98921, on Jul 9 2008, 11:19 PM, said in Submunition trouble:

If it works, can we chuck it in the Innovative Weapons thread? Theres a thread that needs some love.

There's a thread for cool weapons?

Yep. Searching is wonderful, yes, it is.