Mod that would change the game dramatically

Fri Dec 19, 2003 12:00 am by GRRhhg

I've re-installed Freelancer recently and was going through a few mods and messing around with it, but there's one feature in the game that consantly bothers me.

It's the thing about the forward mounted guns rotating independently from the ship to hit things in a wide cone of fire, allowing you to do some mad strafing and maneuvers and still hit somebody. Juking while pointing the crosshairs on your target is the sole method of killing without getting killed, and the AI is especially annoying at hitting me like that. If the crosshairs were slaved solely to maneuver the ship rather than aim the guns independently, it would change the game.

I would like to know if it's possible to change that so that the forward facing guns have a smaller cone of fire or fire forward only and you must maneuver the ship to hit the enemy. This would place more emphasis on good maneuvering as you must be pointing directly at someone to hit him. It would also make transports and capital ships valuable: Fighters would have to attack them head on rather than at angles and would get mauled by turret fire unless they had a strategy. Just increase speed and weapon lethality, and you've got a game that becomes much more interesting.

It would automatically balance capital ships against fighters as the fighters wouldn't be able to dodge and attack at the same time versus hulking cruisers. It would also make it more difficult to survive a head-on battle when outnumbered. It would be interesting to see this is a total conversion mod with new ships and capital ships.

Fri Dec 19, 2003 12:12 am by Chips

Yes, you could decrease the rotation and manouverablility of the guns in the CMP files - so that they only have bloody limited amounts of fire.

Also - decrease this to a very very small number too.....

turn_rate = 90

Fri Dec 19, 2003 4:09 am by firebase

actually making those axis of rotattion in the cmp equivalent to 0 will not do good, cuz the ship can still shoot in certain angle, i think its 15 degrees max and min. Now in all weapon specs in the weapon_eequip.ini it has this entry... i think, cone angle = something... now setting this to zero might be the answer... This was discussed in some thread before, i don't know which one...

Anyway... never tried it...

All I do for LOVE

Fri Dec 19, 2003 7:27 am by Kr3m

in the weapons_equip.ini, change this value:

flash_particle_name = (name of flash particle) <=== leave alone
flash_radius = 15 <=== might be the radius the guns can shoot in.
light_anim = (name of flash animation) <=== leave alone
projectile_archetype = (name of ammo) <=== leave alone
separation_explosion = (debris file) <=== leave alone
auto_turret = false <=== leave alone
turn_rate = 90 <=== change to 0.

The flash_radius might be the radius the guns can shoot in. If changing turn_rate = 90 to turn_rate = 0 doesn't fix the guns, try changing flash_radius = x to flash_radius = 0.

Sat Dec 20, 2003 3:48 am by firebase

i think flash radius is the size of the flash animation that it will emit evrytime you fire that gun....

All I do for LOVE

Sat Dec 20, 2003 11:15 am by Chips

the flash radius IS the size of the flash from the gun, not the bloody movement dummy. Turn the turn rate down like i said, decrease the darned CMP rotations (i know it doesn't go to zero) then open up the guns CMP files instead, and change the rates for ITS hardpoints, or that is what i imagine. It needs to have SOME sort of movement though. You would never hit a darned thing IF you made it only shoot directly forward in one spot. Why? Well - the NPC's move around alot, and you would have to not only match, but move alot more to try to match theirs. Basically - you wouldn't ever hit the small fighters. Also - you would get seriously whooped by stuff too....

Suggest you try it out.

To the person who posted the flash radius.Please check your info first. Oh, and don't start by saying that auto turret = true means that the AI shoots your turrets for you..........

Website: Pathfinderstudios

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Mon Nov 01, 2004 2:05 pm by Megatog615

Sorry to bring back an old post, but I myself am thinking of making a mod that would use a technique to stop the guns from shooting directly at the mouse. Has anyone come up with a way?

Predator of Mirrodin

Mon Nov 01, 2004 5:42 pm by Dev

Wow, this is an old thread... ok, well, the easiest way to do it would be to set the guns so that they have turn rate = 0, followed by reducing the MUZZLE_CONE_ANGLE value in constants.ini until you get the cone of fire that you want (if you want guns to strictly fire forward, then set it to 0 as well).

Edit: this would of course require people to use the "fire all guns" key rather than the mouse.

Edited by - Dev on 11/1/2004 5:42:54 PM

Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:17 pm by Argh

Uh, since I've been working on precisely these problems for some time, here is my solution. It may or may not suit others.

First off, modders need to make TWO KINDS of GUNS. Caps here for special emphasis. One kind for players (let's call these "true fixed-forward" or TFF) and one kind for the AI (let's call them "non-fixed-forward", or NFF).

Basically, to limit NFFs, one must change the constant in CONSTANTS.INI, which is MUZZLE_CONE_ANGLE. In my case, I switched that to 5.

Now, try that without altering anything else, and you will see something "odd" happen- your guns will abruptly quit firing when your mouse moves too far up/down or right/left. You can also observe that turrets (buy a Rhino and equip all of the turrets) no longer have the omnidirectional fire profiles that they used to.

Basically the net reseult of lowering MUZZLE_CONE_ANGLE is that the AI, when using forward-pointing weapons, will have to face the player in order to shoot. Setting it to 0 means nothing will shoot, unless it's a true TFF.

TFFs are created by changing two variables in the WEAPON_EQUIPMENT.INI file. First, set FORCE_GUN_ORI to "true". This forces the shot to be oriented where the gun is actually pointing, as opposed to the often wrong angles seen in FL, especially if players have their mouse sensitivity very high. The second variable is TURN_RATE, which should be set to 0. TURN_RATE is how swiftly the gun changes position to match the requested vector passed to the gun by the interface.

Now, you should not give TFFs to AI ships in their Loadouts. AI ships choke very badly if given TFFs, but my experiments indicate that they're just fine with NFFs.

Now, as for hitting things... well, I've been working on that. Suffice it to say that you need to use the Cockpit View, and for an optimal experience, you need to use modfied gun angles to create convergence... but y'all can just wait for the first public alpha of my mod to see what I mean there... basically, I can tell you with 100% confidence that, "yes, you can hit things", and that the lead indicator will still work correctly (assuming that all of your guns are TFF, that is).

Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:01 am by Megatog615

Thanks a bunch Argh!

Predator of Mirrodin

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