Ok... I've found weird things in the FL engine. One could say that I even make extra time to stop and smell the oddest flowers. But this has definately got to be one of the weirdest things... ever.

Very simply, I've found out that you can turn Mines into an alternate propulsion source, capable of sending your ships at speeds of 4000+ M/s. How? Why does it work? I dunno. I'm hoping somebody will duplicate my setup and verify that it's actually happening first, because this is just plain weird.

I found this stuff happening after I went happily through my Mines, re-balancing them... and then tested them, and found (to my obvious horror) that they weren't working right. Basically, they were detonating, but hardly doing any damage whatsoever to AI ships. They were hurting me just fine... o_0

Worse yet... with OpenSP running, they were "tossing" AI ships through space- huge distances- we're talking 2+ K here. Really weird stuff. And... every time they'd "toss" somebody, it'd result in noticable lag... in SP. Which means that some sort've calculation went very awry...

So, I went through the settings, messing about... the following is what's producing this very strange (but hopefully re-producable) result.

Please note- to see this effect at its "finest", you should be at about Speed 80 or less. Hit Engine Kill, drop a mine with this setup... and wait for it to plow into your ship... and then watch yourself taking a fast trip across the Galaxy.

Steering's... ah... impractical, at least with a Shield up. The vector of travel appears to be the inverse of the mine's intersection with the polygon of the SUR it impacts against, so a rounded SUR and the vagueries of the mine's flight behind you (it's not 100% consistant even if you're in Turret Mode) mean that you end up going diagonally, instead of straight ahead. But... with an un-shielded ship with a square back-end SUR (which we could make, right now, with crate_blue.sur, let alone whatever comes along with the SUR Exporter).... we might even get pretty close to straight acceleration... at bizarre velocities... without using Cruise or anything. I have a feeling that it'll still cause mad lag, but that's conjecture too... this is such a... novel... form of movement that I have no idea whether it's useful or not.

Somebody... please replicate this result and tell me I'm not hallucinating from the long hours I've put into putting custom ShipDealers into every House System in the game (I only have the IW, HI, and BW left to do, thank goodness).

Here's the Mine's code. Needless to say... I'd like to hear any theories about what's causing this to happen. Is it reeeeeeally low Mass? The 0 Strength? Who knows?

[Explosion
nickname = mine02_mark03_explosion
effect = ku_mine02_blast25
lifetime = 0.000000, 0.000000
process = disappear
strength = 0
radius = 16
hull_damage = 1500
energy_damage = 750
impulse = 0

[Mine
nickname = mine02_mark03_ammo
explosion_arch = mine02_mark03_explosion
loot_appearance = ammo_crate
units_per_container = 10
requires_ammo = true
hit_pts = 5000
one_shot_sound = fire_mine_tracking
detonation_dist = 1
lifetime = 10
force_gun_ori = true
DA_archetype = equipment\models\mines\br_plasma_mine.3db
material_library = equipment\models\br_equip.mat
ids_name = 265172
ids_info = 266172
mass = 0.000001
volume = 0.3
owner_safe_time = 4
linear_drag = 0.000004
seek_dist = 800
top_speed = 200
acceleration = 200
const_effect = ku_mine02

[MineDropper
nickname = mine02_mark03
ids_name = 263172
ids_info = 264172
DA_archetype = equipment\models\weapons\li_cm_dropper01.cmp
material_library = equipment\models\li_equip.mat
HP_child = HPConnect
hit_pts = 5000
explosion_resistance = 1.000000
debris_type = debris_normal
parent_impulse = 20
child_impulse = 80
volume = 0.000000
mass = 10
damage_per_fire = 0
power_usage = 0
refire_delay = 1
muzzle_velocity = 20
toughness = 10.500000
projectile_archetype = mine02_mark03_ammo
dry_fire_sound = fire_dry
separation_explosion = sever_debris
lootable = true
LODranges = 0, 20, 60, 100

<EDIT>

I'm not sure yet, but I think it's the ratio of top_speed and acceleration. Bring them too close together, and odd things start happening. Just a working theory, mind you...

<EDIT>

Nope, that's not it. It's still happening, but not as often.

<EDIT>

It isn't the Mass or linear_drag. Now I'm really confused.

<EDIT>

Maybe I should just go back to stock FL values for all of this aside from the damage.

<EDIT>

That didn't work


OK... so is it just something very strange happening with my mod, or are mines actually pretty buggy?


<EDIT>

Everything back to default values. Checked behaviors. Everything's normal. What gives?

Going to raise damage and see what happens now.

Edited by - Argh on 5/29/2005 10:01:10 PM