new nebula ideas...just a thought

Thu Apr 12, 2007 7:54 pm by Haven

Everyone is dragging this out to be more complex than is!

Any time you see "energy_damage = X" in any FL coding, it's shield damage.

I'm not sure of a mod that has it so you can damage someone's power supply. That's an entire different kind of coding.

And as for regenerating shields -

[ShieldGenerator
nickname = shield02_mark09_hf
ids_name = 263837
ids_info = 264837
DA_archetype = equipment\models\st\li_refractor_shield.3db
material_library = equipment\models\li_equip.mat
HP_child = HpConnect
hit_pts = 6752
explosion_resistance = 0.500000
debris_type = debris_normal
parent_impulse = 20
child_impulse = 80
volume = 0.000000
mass = 10
*****regeneration_rate = any positive number*****
max_capacity = 6050
toughness = 60.500000
hp_type = hp_elite_shield_special_9
offline_rebuild_time = 12
offline_threshold = 0.150000
constant_power_draw = 0
rebuild_power_draw = 10
shield_type = S_Molecular01
shield_collapse_sound = shield_offline
shield_rebuilt_sound = shield_rebuilt
shield_hit_effects = 0, gf_pi_shield01
shield_hit_effects = 100, gf_pi_shield02
shield_hit_effects = 500, gf_pi_shield03
separation_explosion = sever_debris
LODranges = 0, 20
lootable = true

This is the coding for a random shield i scrolled down to and selected.

The line in the code where it states "Regeneration_rate = whatever" This absolutely must be a possitive value, and it cannot be added to anything else as far as my testing is concerned.

Me and a friend had an idea, instead of the Nomad's having Hull, they had instead an organic hull, or one that regenerated slowly.

However, no matter how we set it up, it never worked, and even with that line in it didn't work.

"regeneration_rate = "
"hull_regeneration_rate = "

So, my theory is taking this line and adding it to a nebula, will not give you added shield reeneration.

And as for the -100 in theory giving you shield regen, sorry for that but that has the same effect as -1.

Any negative integer instantly kills anything!

We tried exstensivley to make "Repair" turrets that only Repair ships could mount, they had a very short range and lifetime however, in theory it should have "healed" a damaged ship.

The result was 1 shot instantly killed a player battleship with 4,000,000 hull, and the "hull_damage" was set to -200 in the weapon coding.

So, adding energy_damage inside the coding of any zone, not just nebula, cause you must take into account that there are zones with radiation that aren't nebulas.

In theory, this should work and it should do shield damage.

However! you must remember, that it would have to do more than the shield can recharge.

So for example

In the unmodded FL, and most mods, NPC shields have a regeneration of 1

While the best player shields are in the hundreds.

So, if you make the energy_damage less than what the shield can regenerate per second than it will have no affect on the player, and the zone or nebula will become an NPC slaughtering ground.

But as for the power damage

But this is jsut my outlook on it.

Thu Apr 12, 2007 8:19 pm by Rankor

There are entries in the weapons_equipment.ini that indicate a possible damage
factor when the weapon is used. (most all of them have 0 damage when fired)
However, if you add a number to the equation..then using the weapons can actually damage the ship also. (not just power drain)
(in theory, if you set it's damage to -1...you shoot, you die)
Weapons can cause hull and energy damage when fired (if it is accounted for)
Probably one thought that DA had in mind was the use of nomad weapons on colonial ships would cause ship damage to use them. Even though they used no energy, they could still hurt the ship using them. (hmmmm)
That's the impression I get when I look at those figures.
Now that I think of it..that would be one heck of a practical joke.

Fri Apr 13, 2007 12:40 am by Nono

I was just thinkin about it a little, and noticed something: in FL, or many of the existing mods, the damaging areas are here to… hm speed you a bit cause your ship gets decomposed (or something like that

) but these damage areas could be used to, hem, forbid the access to a certain area, i.e. making a nebula (sphere), and creating an exclusion inside that would be nearly the same size==> result: a thin spheric wall of nebula (geez hard to explain what I aim at

)
Then, setting damage to this thin nebula for it to destroy any ship under a certain class, i.e. setting damage = 3000, an Eagle would go through without (too much) problem, but a starflier would be instantly killed.
Considering the possibility of shield damage in the nebula, it could damage shields only under a certain class, and so on…

wow, how much did I write for a simple idea x_x ,)

Fri Apr 13, 2007 3:22 am by Rankor

simply by adjusting the damage to a certain rate/sec it would be possible to kill lower level ships before they get to their destination in the nebulas.
As for shields, as was mentioned earlier..
the energy damage would have to be set greater than the regeneration
rate of the shield.
Probably something overwhelming...such as energy_damage = 500.
As long as NPC's have regenerating shields, this wouldn't be too much of a problem.
But, just energy damage won't kill a ship by itself.
All it does is disable the shield. (Unless we can figure out how it can also
drain the power so weapons won't shoot) Effectively, you could set a zone to kill
cruise so the ship is forced to slow down as though it were hit with a cruise disruptor.
However, if you have both damage factors in the same zone, I think it could make short work of most any lower class ship.

Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:41 am by FriendlyFire

Energy damage will both drain your shield and your power, once the shield goes offline. Just try firing aTIzona del Cid into an unshielded *player*. NPCs, having unlimited power supplies, are not affected by this. But energy damage really does weaken the power supply too.

As for the energy_damage inside a nebula, I am curious to see the results.Who knows...

Finally, I would think negative numbers will not work. FL's devs seem to have used mainly unsigned integers/floats/doubles. No matter what you do, a negative number cannot be assigned to an unsigned number. And about changing those unsigned to signed, good luck, that's got to be extremely hard, if ever possible.

Fri Apr 13, 2007 7:57 am by flybyu

The energy_damage = xxx does not work just tested it.

Fri Apr 13, 2007 1:07 pm by Rankor

bummer.

Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:25 pm by fox Unit 01

What he said. Would've been neat if it did.

While I'm here on the subject, what FriendlyFire said about energy damage hitting the power supply is true - in fact, when fighting Capital Ships in my 88 Flak mod, a ship loaded up with only shield-killers can be a valuble addition to a Cap Ship hunting group, as the Cap Ships themselves are unshielded and 4-6 shield-killers makes short work of the power supply (and Flak's Cap Ships must cut engines to regenerate power, which in turn makes them a sitting duck on top of having no power for a bit).
I personally like how Digital Anvil set this up (intentionally or not), as it makes shield-killers useful for tasks besides just killing shields.

Fri Apr 13, 2007 8:11 pm by lancerlover

can a wep have negative damage? in FLE you can set up a repair turret, I've never looked at it though.

Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:10 pm by General Drake

The repair Turret is just the gun turret of the repair ship

Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:45 pm by Louva-Deus

Here is one method you can try.

Set up a new asteroid field inside your nebula zone and change the contents of the asteroid file to be something like this:

[Field}
cube_size = 1000

[Cube}
asteroid = mine_nebula_shield_drainer, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0, 0, 0, mine

Then add a new mine to the asteroidarch.ini file:

[AsteroidMine}
nickname = mine_nebula_shield_drainer
explosion_arch = explosion_nebula_shield_drainer
explosion_impulse = 0
detect_radius = 1000
explosion_offset = 20
recharge_time = 1.500000
phantom_physics = true

Then add a new explosion to the explosions.ini file:

[explosion}
nickname = explosion_nebula_shield_drainer
lifetime = 0.000000
process = none
radius = 1000
energy_damage = 500

The last thing to do is make sure that the "property_flags" parameter for your asteroid field zone in the system file is either missing or set to something invisible.

This should work in theory (I haven't actually tried it). And if you couple this with field damage and setting it so that the engine requires (minimal) power to operate you could make it so people can get stranded in the nebula and eventually perish.

Edited by - Louva-Deus on 4/13/2007 10:59:02 PM

Sun May 06, 2007 4:58 am by Anomaly

Sorry for posting in old thread >.>

Just got an idea. Someone said that if you you make a ''you shoot, you die''
setup for a weapon. So in theory, you could make a ''suicide bomber''
They fire their weapon, they go boom and the explosion creates a
shockwave that kills anything within 500M. That'd be cool.

Sun May 06, 2007 7:46 pm by sona1111

yes it would

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