How does the shield link line of code work. i.e. the

shield_link = b_elite_shield01, HpMount, HpShield01

To what does the b_elite_shield01 bit refer to, cos it's not an actual shield, could it be this, as this problem mainly occurs on new ships.

Edited by - White on 5/10/2005 12:04:10 AM

>shield_link = b_elite_shield01, HpMount, HpShield01

each of the original freelancer ships have their own shield .3db and .sur files, basically a shield bubble

the shield files are referenced thru select_equip.ini

[Shield
nickname = b_elite_shield01
DA_archetype = Ships\bretonia\br_elite\br_elite_shield.3db
HP_child = SpConnect

I havent seen much written about these, many custom ships dont have their own custom shield link files and could be the cause of the common problem where the shields dont drop when jettisoning loot.

Aha, so if the shields .sur that is being used is smaller than the ships .sur then this could explain why the hull is going down and not the shield

White,

The .sur would still work and should still provide hull protection as the hull is still mainly inside the shield .sur bubble. Before Antons FlModel tool with the .sur resizer came along, you might have to try several freelancer ones till you got the one that fitted best.. and sometimes pieces would 'protrude' out past the .sur bubble.. but it didnt make any difference to hull damage before shield.. my feeling is that anything that protudes past the .sur freelancer treats as if there is no .sur and ignors it.

Harrier

So back to the drawing board.

Ok... here's what we currently know about SURs, and here's what's going on, I think.

1. The shield-link just points to a valid Shield for visual purposes, as far as I can tell. I resized an existing shield bubble with FLModel tool (and substituted good ol' crate_blue too), and this made absolutely no difference in the behavior seen.

2. There's clearly some sort've hack in place for capships. Watch closely, and if you fire a shieldbuster... it'll do some damage to the Shield... which is very, very quickly erased. From then on, the Shield is effectively invulnerable to further missile attacks. What I've observed in tests looks like DA was struggling with an issue (probably the multipart damage problem) and decided to hardcode workarounds.

3. The SURs for capships are special. They aren't like normal SURs- among other things, they clearly have a fairly large number of subgroups. Joining them together with FLModel Tool is possible, but it doesn't solve the problem. Once again, this implies that there is some kind've hack in place.

4. If I substitute crate_drab (another old favorite) for li_cruiser.sur, I get correct behavior. No magical regeneration of shield, no invulnerable shields afterwards.

Therefore... this problem is directly tied to the special SUR type used. In my experiments that I performed while testing FLModel Tool for Anton, the subject of special SUR types kept coming up again and again. Basically... SURs were a series of kludges from the beginning of the development to the end. Just like the CMPs for the capships (which were made very early on, and are a nightmare of over-engineering when you inspect them closely)... I suspect that these SURs were made early... and DA's team kept writing patches in their code to keep supporting them.

This would explain a lot've things, really... such as why they don't all have consistant centerpoints, and why certain ships were dropped from the game- in large part because DA had trouble getting them to perform correctly.

So... basically, we can fix things by using Crate SURs, which with the long and skinny ships works just great- you can hardly tell the difference in combat, and they detect missile hits correctly. The other ones are going to require a more complicated approach.