Actually, the targeting recticule tries its best to compensate for the bombs... which I should note are being effected by the velocity of the ship that "drops" them, from what I've seen. It just doesn't do a very good job- when "bombs" are selected, it puts the targeting symbol way down at the bottom of the screen... if you make a "run", you'll quickly note that if the symbol is directly at the bottom of the screen, then you're heading straight and level, and the target is in front of you... which means you're "close to right".

Bombs are tricky to use, and will remain that way, although it'll get much easier once I've gotten the area-effect explosions working to my satisfaction. I plan to eventually introduce some unguided rockets for area-spamming (once a few technical problems are overcome, and I'm sure they can be balanced right) and torpedoes, which will be designed so that using them in a way that's contrary to their real-world use (i.e.- heading straight and level at the target) won't work very well.

So, basically... expect bombs to work about as they do now, but they'll be easier to use (balanced, of course, by being able to carry a lot less of them), plus a variety of other weapons like them that players can spam ships with

I'm currently working on weapons for ships, and they're going to get really interesting (imho). Ships basically fit into four loosely-defined categories:

Boats
Hovertanks
Freighters
Warships

And here are all sorts of realism vs. fun gameplay decisions to make. For example... freighters, IRL, could mount some pretty serious cannons on them (and sometimes did- look up "Q ships" from WWI/WWII). So I'm going to have to decide whether to nerf freighters or not, when it comes to weapon choices, or just leave them with slower overall speed and less armor than the military vessels (which is where I'm leaning). Hovertanks are in that gray area between Boats and Freighters in terms of weapons... don't expect Boats to carry anything heavier than a heavy machinegun, and don't expect Hovertanks to carry a Battleship's massive turrets.

I imagine Beta 1 will have some teething problems with all of these concepts, but I'm sure that everything will eventually get tightened down to everybody's relative satisfaction.

Meanwhile, things are looking great in the mod's development. Necrolord's P47 model has replaced the Starflier (now called by a new name), the first Hovertank's in the game, and numerous other models are slowly working their way in. Thanks in great part to being able to study Mephistopheles's code (which is very simple and well-structured and thus easy for me to understand, hehe), I have begun implementing custom Infocards and Icons for everything, and I expect that people will be quite pleased with the way that the Beta will feel more like a complete "world", instead of just a technical demo

A hint: Set the bombs to force_gun_ori = true. That will allow you to drop them without turning your ship towards the target. In other words, you can fly straight forward with the target under you and you can drop the bombs. If you make those hardpoints (and you should copy and alter a weapon cmp too for this) you can make the weapon non-turning at all (for up and down yu need to alter the guns cmp), so that they drop down straight from you. The only problem is, if you're not flying horizontally, they wouldn't fall straight down to the ground, because FL does not have gravity.

Yea.. what if I fly straight up and 'drop' my bombs on you

@Louva-Deus

You can try, but it's not very likely to work You won't be able to see to aim correctly, and the bombs travel very slowly, compared to aircraft or machinegun fire. It is possible to fly "over" an aircraft and hit them with "bombs", but very, very hard... and if you can do that, so what? You could do that IRL... and truth be told, it's still far easier to just shoot them

At any rate, without any gravity simulation, it's the best that can be done for bombs or other projectiles that should really have a trajectory- it's not perfect, but it works about like it should

Unless you're like me and you prefer dive-bombing. Or do I not understand the mechanism properly?

Actually, dive-bombing works... and will work even better in the next version, where I'm planning to tweak the behaviors of the projectiles more. Shots inherit the velocity of the ship, so in the next version, I'm thinking that bombs will have this trait greatly accentuated through a couple of methods I'm working on.

In short, it ain't gravity- if I had the sourcecode (and a programmer, since I am not much of one)... I'd implement gravity, and even figure out how to make aircraft have "stalls" (although I would not attempt to model "realistic" flight, by any stretch of the imagination... this isn't supposed to be a sim). But since I have neither, the results will be a little funky... but I think they'll be reasonably satisfying

I have gotten the Factions set up... woot! Now I just (just) have to get all of the content set up, get certain dynamic events set up, and tweak Trade extensively...

But I've made lots of progress- I built another custom weapon (the Medium Cannon Turret, for Hovertanks and other ships) and I now have Navy patrollers, using ships, including the fearsome Broadsword hovertank (thanks to Fallen_Angel's model and my skin, and a lot of other work). This new custom weapon's probably going to get rebuilt, as this version's not very realistic-looking, but I'm now convinced that I know how make big guns, not just teeny-weeny ones. So expect a very tank-like turret that looks properly dangerous. Plus, as the level 2 turret, I'm working on a medium-fast repeating flak gun that should be frightening to aircraft pilots... still working on that one, but it's coming along

So things are starting to look up for Beta... now I just have to get all of the Bases aligned with the appropriate Factions, get the new models all in, build umpteen-dozen skins... hehe, I'm hoping to get this all done before Christmas, so that we can all enjoy Beta 1, but I won't release it publically until it's ready-ready... right now, it's still waaaay too rough, and I have a long way to go. But this weekend I made a lot of progress, and I have some free time this week to take care of a few more skins

Oh yeah, and Outcast, I think you will be pleased... I have re-balanced the bomber turrets a bit... they're a bit less intimidating, but will still work, I think. Sadly, the dual-gun thing was just causing too many problems (due to the sound bugs causing big FPS drops, here on my system, despite trying two different sound cards), so I lopped off an HpFire point and upped the gun's ROF by 1.5, which drops its firepower a bit without really reducing its ability to hit people with random spam, which I think will be a good thing

Edited by - Argh on 12/12/2004 8:12:08 PM

Funny to see you again,

Anyway I wanted to say I am very impressed with what you are doing. It's good to see something totally new to the FL enviroment. Though the WWII era itself is not my thing, I certainly appluad your efforts. Well done!

Last night, I got the very last of the currently-implemented aircraft and ships totally switched over to XML, so I can finally abandon my heavily-modified shiparch.ini files and loadouts, and return them to "stock". Each Faction is now using the modified aircraft and ships, and the Ocean is already brimming with new Factions, including some sea-going Pirates (yo ho ho!). I don't have Fallen_Angel's sweet Pirate Galleon skinned yet, but when it's in... it'll bring a nice note of crazy anachronism to the mod

I've also implemented ammo that costs money and takes up space in aircraft... I think I'm just going to get rid of the energy bar entirely, just like the shields. The good news (for those of you who're wondering about ammo costs, etc.) is that:

1. Ammo costs very little. A single round of .30 Cal machinegun ammo costs 1 credit. Given that even the lowliest enemy ship carries around some money (in the form of Gold, which I thought was a fun way to do it), you're not likely to go broke shooting down pirates, unless you completely suck at shooting.

2. Machinegun/Autocannon ammo takes up very little cargo space. A typical aircraft can carry from 15000 to 30000 rounds, which is enough for the longest trans-ocean voyages, which will make escort missions more practical than they are now, for both bombers and fighters. I decided, after playing Alpha 4 and 3 for awhile, that running out've ammo is just plain annoying, especially with the relatively low ammo. capacities in Alpha 4, where I felt like I had to shoot like a sniper all the time. Autocannons will be game-balanced by altering the space taken, as well as the cost, so that it still makes some sense to use lower-level guns for long trips.

3. Bombs, cannon rounds and torpedoes take up considerable cargo room (of course). And they won't be as cheap, although they'll be pretty cheap for what they do. For example, the 50mm Automatic Cannon (it's an AA/light anti-ship weapon) does more damage than any of the aircraft-mountable guns per hit, fires fairly quickly, and is basically a very useful weapon. And the rounds cost 5 credits apiece. The gun itself isn't nearly that cheap, of course

After a lot of thought and some playtesting, I've decided to make heavily-armored craft like ships just have a ton of hitpoints, rather than use my convoluted armor vs. damage system. It worked, sort've... but I think that most of you would've been displeased with the way that it made ships with armor able to face innumerable bad guys without taking a scratch, and it would've made it a real nighmare to balance warships for multiplayer- a single player in a Battleship would be invulnerable, as opposed to just being incredibly difficult to kill So... no shield bars, and no energy bars, either. Just plain ol' hitpoints, and everything does damage. It's not realistic, but it does make things more balanced, and keeps the high end under control

Well I don't have internet yet so I'm downloading Alpha 4 to my USB drive to take to the apartment. Look forward to seeing your progress

I haven't put up any screenies for Beta 1 yet... here's an early one... showing a formation of Broadsword hovertanks being piloted by the Liberty Navy. Please note: this may or may not reflect the final fleet dispositions for Beta 1, as that sort've balancing-act is in its infancy. And yes, I know that the big, goofy turret looks big and goofy... I had severe problems with a more "aggro" one that I was working on, so this is a placeholder until that one's ready for consumption



Edited by - Argh on 12/14/2004 3:30:11 PM

Yet another update... got more custom weapon models working (this has actually gone from being "majorly painful" to just "annoying" with practice).

And I am super-tempted to take a "break" and build a flying mecha with moving arms, just to show people that custom weapons aren't a complete waste of time... just kidding... I will restrain myself, and make a Valkerie Gerwalk after Beta 1, or some Gundam thingy... or Armored Troopers Votom... or... y'know what's aggravating? It's that I can't make these things as quickly as I can think about them! Hehe... if I could make games at the speed of thought, nobody would ever get any work done...

At any rate, I now have a very slick "music" file that sounds like ocean surf, made by Blackhole0, some custom engine sounds (some of which are very cool, like some very nice motorboat sounds) and I have been getting lots and lots of great 3D models from Fallen_Angel and Necrolord, which I'm (slooooowly) getting all dolled up and ready for the release. But have no fear- Beta 1 is well on its way, and it's going to be kewl

And even more new news...

I've solved how to make missiles with guidance and explosions to work right in my mod (that took some deep sleuthing and a lot of cursing) and I've gotten missiles WITH flame trails to draw correctly- which may or may not impress anybody, but DA didn't even do that, and eventually gave up- their missiles are all just engineglows.

So I have these semi-guided things that I'm calling Rocket Torpedoes, that... ok, so maybe I'm just being an arrogant foo here... but I think they look and feel awesome. I've put one on the Bat (that'd be the tiny Pirate-themed motorboat from Alpha 4), and it fires the rockets up at a 30-degree angle... the rockets start pushing... and it goes up in a long, curving arc before BLOWING STUFF UP. It's soooo cool.

And yes... the bombs will still be there- I may even make a custom weapon for them, just because I can In fact, they'll be cooler than ever, because they'll actually have explosion radii that make them useful, and stuff- I had a LOT of trouble getting explosives working right in my mod (it has to do with the ocean's SUR file), but now that I do... the possibilities are endless, hehe...

Funny thing about the mecha idea, I had been thinking about how to set that up and which mount orientations would look the best. A sort of hybrid mecha could be setup to look pretty decent I think. If you want help with that sometime let me know. I have internet again so I will be around a bit more now.