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BC Forums => BC Modding => Topic started by: Nighthawk on April 20, 2013, 02:54:53 AM

Title: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 20, 2013, 02:54:53 AM
hey guys..
(it's been a lifetime since I last visited this site! heawlee sheez!...)

I've recently got back to BC, and to tweaking scripts and HP's, and I found that the damage works kinda weird.
torpedoes and pulse weapons seem to damage the target by 100% of the damage they're supposed to do, but phasers deal about 60% of the damage they should.
I set a shuttlecraft to deal 1000 damage with a single phaser, and targeted an asteroid of 1000 hull, and got only about 650 damage dealt to it.

I've tried almost every possible combination.... close range, long range, wide beam, low damage, low discharge, strong shields, no shields....
every time I hit the target with a phaser, it deals about half the damage it's got set on the hardpoint.

has anyone ever seen the actual formula for phaser damage on any scripts? XD
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nebula on April 20, 2013, 10:42:08 AM
did you give the phaser enough time to deal that damage? ;)
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 20, 2013, 04:15:35 PM
yes, I tried short and long bursts, with different amount of power.

a phaser with 1 charge, 100% power, and 1000 damage only does about 600 to both shields and hull (the final value seems to vary between 580 and 630)
the same phaser with 1% power (and hence, a longer burn) comes closer to the 600 mark (around 600/610).
but still.... nowhere near the value of 1000 I set on the hardpoint.

it occurred to me that the damage might be "damage per second", but setting 10 charges of 1000 damage still gets stuck at 60% average.

(just tried it again to be on the safe side: 10 charges, 1000 damage, target with 90000 shields, long 10-sec burn, only 6200 damage)

a torpedo with 400 damage still does 400.0 damage at any range, at any time.
the phaser (even well within the maximum damage range) just does half the damage.
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nebula on April 20, 2013, 04:25:11 PM
are you just targeting the hull? perhaps the damage bled to other subsystems?

try this on asteroids
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 20, 2013, 04:35:33 PM
I've been hardpointing for a while now, you know  :lostit:

I'm posting here because I ran out of ideas.

I just shot the thing at point-blank range, and still cant get more than 500 out of a 1000 damage output, wether it is a 10 second or 1 second burst.

the average damage (or damage per second) is just halved for phasers.

I couldn't find any formulas around the code of NanoFX, or KM, or FTech, and there's nothing in the phaser settings that seem to affect the actual drain of the weapon... it always drains 1 charge at a time above a setting of 1 (I set the drain to 1000 just to be sure, and still it takes 10 seconds to drain)
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Locke on April 23, 2013, 12:59:09 AM
I'm not trying to pedantic or anything . . .

But so what? :hithead:  So it seems that the coding for BC has another bug . . . we really already knew the code wasn't perfect.  I guess the solution is to double-up on the phaser power and be done.  Why is it a big deal that it doesn't actually correspond?  I'm really not trying to bust your butt on this, but I don't understand why it MATTERS that the phasers don't correlate. 
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 23, 2013, 01:50:11 AM
I was trying to get some proportioned values among a few hardpoints.

it screwed my balance when I found out they were dealing half the damage they were supposed to be dealing.

but, yes... after a few hours of testing everything I could come up with, I ended up doubling the damage output.
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 27, 2013, 09:20:06 PM
ok... seems like this has turned into a HP rebellion  :facepalm:

I'm getting this weird offset in several HPs, with several systems.... no apparent relation amongst them, and no aparent consistency on the offset amount.

(http://i44.tinypic.com/2h3y91v.jpg)
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nebula on April 27, 2013, 09:43:21 PM
what is your model scale in the mpe?
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 27, 2013, 09:50:31 PM
0.01, as always

everything works fine on the rest of the HPs and models.... but sometimes one or two systems get offset at random.

IIRC, the Galaxy has an offset impulse engine, and it's been like that before I changed it.

the system works as it's supposed to... it fires and looks alright, but it won't take damage when you hit the point where it's supposed to be, unless you hit the area where it gets offset to.
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nebula on April 27, 2013, 10:19:41 PM
Tiq and I had this same issue with HPs ages ago when we were doing KM.

I don't recall what we did to fix it. :/
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: hobbs on April 29, 2013, 03:25:40 PM
not sure if this is going to help:

could it be a duplication in the list of systems? i think i had a similar problem and i went back to an older hp and added the the problematic system and it was all fine and then i added the other systems and they were fine too
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 29, 2013, 03:40:12 PM
not sure if this is going to help:

could it be a duplication in the list of systems? i think i had a similar problem and i went back to an older hp and added the the problematic system and it was all fine and then i added the other systems and they were fine too

if you mean duplicated unused systems, no... there's only one unique entry for each system
but, I did duplicate systems in order to create mirrored weapons or engines.

I'll try making sure every affected hardpoint is made of unique systems and see if that solves the problem.
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: tiqhud on April 29, 2013, 03:58:25 PM
Look closly at 'Property Templates' [right side of listing] a System Might also be there ,, and NOT placed physically on the model.

there are 2 parts to an HP [templates] and Placements, 1 is physically placed on the model [XYZ]
the other is just a listing, but it is still part of the Overall HP.

Example; you got a warp core on your model , and it is Placed, but see if in 'Templates" if you also have Power Supply, to the game Power Supply and Warp Core have the same properties [just different names] Check for a Clone in that fashion.
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on April 29, 2013, 04:33:15 PM
I just did... nada...
there's only one Aft Phaser 2.

as I'm sure there's only one Sensor Array in the Excelsior (which has the same problem), yet it appears offset too.  :banghead:

one thing that I might find common amongst them, is that I used the pick location tool to position them.
but still, I used that tool to position most of the systems, save a few major systems such as shields and warp cores,... and some do get offset, and some don't.

the impulse engine of the Galaxy is not even in a different mesh, so it can't be a problem with the structure...
and it doesn't seem to be a scripting problem because it still appears in stock QB

man... I hate when things just break for no reason  :hithead:

(EDIT: I just fixed the impulse engine of the Galaxy, by using the locate tool and manually shifting the engines to round number positions... but the same thing didn't work for the connie's phaser)
(EDIT2: the phaser is where it's supposed to be... .GetPosition() returns the right XYZ, as it's written on the hardpoint.. it's just being shown offset by the targetting reticle, and it's also being detected out of place by the damage system.... which is going to mess with the bit of armour tech I was going to adapt from FTech  :( )
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on May 06, 2013, 07:14:35 AM
ok... I got this fixed with a little script....
it isn't the ultimate coding but I guess it works.

PhaserDamage.py (http://www.fileswap.com/dl/jEMAO2sdtz/PhaserDamage.py.html)

drop into QBAutostart

Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: tiqhud on May 07, 2013, 10:39:12 AM
one thing that I might find common amongst them, is that I used the pick location tool to position them.
but still, I used that tool to position most of the systems, save a few major systems such as shields and warp cores,... and some do get offset, and some don't.
TIP: always use the LOCATE tool to place , ANything
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Nighthawk on May 24, 2013, 05:37:13 AM
guys, I want to convert this into a more elaborate mod, but I'm torn between overwriting stuff and creating a separate framework.
.... was there a way to look for files inside a folder (module)? I think I remember seeing a script that checked if a folder had a specific file in order to activate a mod (GravityFX? MVAM? can't remember)

I want to go check for an alternate harpoint in a separate folder, and if there is, prefer that one over the regular hardpoint.

that way, I can put new values in that hardpoint that won't overwrite the KM files, while still using the whole KM framework with all their techs and plugins
Title: HP mod
Post by: Nighthawk on June 13, 2013, 06:21:47 AM
I want to go check for an alternate harpoint in a separate folder, and if there is, prefer that one over the regular hardpoint.

done.

....kinda....


I'm tracking down a weird bug that causes the ships to regain health from time to time, but the mod is pretty much working.

Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: KMP on September 21, 2013, 12:03:13 AM
ok... I got this fixed with a little script....
it isn't the ultimate coding but I guess it works.

PhaserDamage.py (http://www.fileswap.com/dl/jEMAO2sdtz/PhaserDamage.py.html)

drop into QBAutostart



Bump - link is down & I want. :D  Why not pack it up & send it to bcfiles?
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: flarespire on September 21, 2013, 07:26:13 AM
First off, it's not polite to bump a thread and secondly, hardly anyone uploads to bcfiles anymore because it has poor web management (IE you have to refresh a page several times to get it to load correctly) and downloading from there can also be an issue.
Title: Re: Phaser damage
Post by: Bones on September 21, 2013, 09:38:06 AM
not to mention many countries are not allowed by gamefront policy to download from there, so basicaly bcfiles have came to it's sad end... isn't bumping/reviving a thread allowed if something we need is missing from it ? easier to ask to reupload file rather than starting whole new thread :P just me thinking ;)