Weapons: Lyran ESG, or the Hydran Hellbore?

[Furyofaseraph]

Hello folks,

I am posting this to satisfy a bit of curiosity that has crept up on me during my sleep. Now, bear in mind: I have never modded BC before, so I may very well be flaunting my ignorance. I am wondering if it would be possible (and how hard would it be) to create some rather unusual weapons systems. Most of them come from SFB/SFC, but I have a few ideas of my own.

1) Lyran ESG (Expanding Sphere Generator). Basically the way this works is, you pour energy into the system, and activate it. While its active a sphere around your ship is generated at a certain radius (the radius is not fixed, but is in fact user selectable). Anything that comes in contact with that sphere gets damaged, but depletes the life of the sphere.

2) Hydran Hellbore. Essentially this throws a projectile at a ship, and the projectile, instead of damaging the facing shield - will in fact damage the shield with the lowest hitpoints.

3) Plasma Snare. Basically a projectile that if it hits will slow down your ship and reduce your maneuverability for a time.

4) Plasmatic Pulsar Device. Essentially it locks onto a vessel and sends plasma bursts down a carrier-beam. The weapon either hits or misses on the firing of the carrier-beam - if the carrier beam hits, the pulses are sent and they deal "splash" damage to the facing shield and adjacent shields.

[Starforce2]

there are 3 types of weapons in BC, not counting tractors. Beam weapons (phaser disruptor compressor lazer or whatever you want them to be) pulse weaponry, and torpedo. Pulses and torpedo you can play with for plasma torps and such but it doesn't have the complexity of sfc and other games.

[Bones]

yep but some modders proved even BC weapons can be developed beyound their capabilities like ATP chronoton torpedo or repulsion torpedo I'm sure at least Hydran Hellbore could be achieved, PPD probably, ESG I wouldn't count on it ;)

[MLeo]

Sorry I didn't see this thread before...

I suggest FoundationTechnologies (FTech) for all of the below described techs.

• The visual might be a bit tricky to do, currently unsure how. If the sphere doesn't need to repel (so it affects ships in an area) then it's fairly easy to do with Proximity objects in BC. Otherwise, you might be able to load a model, but transparency is a bit of a problem. A nebula might also do the trick.
• We can make a projectile not do any damage on impact, while preserving the visual, and then do something else instead, such as damaging another shield vector (without the visual!).
• Sounds like a most basic FoundationTechnology tech, but currently, there isn't support for keeping track of this like there is for disabling systems, which would be an extreme version of this (so engines are simply "out").
• This would be the trickiest of them all, techs with beams are usually not a lot of fun. There currently even is a bug in FTech that prevents using beam techs (the user simply won't notice any beam techs). While it's trivial to send projectiles, it's harder to keep them aligned to the beam. And it's currently impossible to prevent damage from occuring from a beam hit. I think the best way to do this is to play with the various graphics options for phasers. You can set the start texture, the middle texture and the end texture. Aside from that also the texture speed. While it may look like orbs/pulses going down the beam, the beam itself would still do the same damage as any other phaser.

[Furyofaseraph]

I can do without the graphical joys - so long as the mechanics would work out correctly. Is there some sort of Wiki or something for FTech?

[Dawg81]

thats what we got MLeo for rofl

[Starforce2]

yea mleo is sorta that used encyclopedia we kick from forum to forum, scribble rude jokes on, ect. Reminds me of that dex commercial...

[MLeo]

Except you can't get rid of me even if you want to. And you always get creeped out because each time you open it, it contains new stuff, and there are always blank pages at the end.... And suddenly you get it, it's reading you.

Or was that another story?


The more or less basic intro into FTech is the readme (take the pdf or rtf, and mind the ``, they should be ' ').

I have to admit, the first tech isn't that suited for FTech, since you talk about a button/slider. And FTech doesn't do that (as of yet). More like QBAutostart.
I can't create it for you, but I can help you get the basic parts together.

[Furyofaseraph]

It doesn't need to be a slider. In SFB/SFC its not - its more like a set of radio buttons: set radius to 10Mm, 20Mm, 30Mm, etc.

EDIT:
To be honest, I don't have much of a desire to make a mod - it was more for curiosities sake. What I'm more interested in working on is my wiki :-)

[MLeo]

A wiki about what?

The problem with any UI is the question where to put it.

[Furyofaseraph]

A wiki about what?

The problem with any UI is the question where to put it.

It's for my own version of the star trek universe, which started off as a way to reconcile SFB with mainstream trek. However, I realized that there is a lot about trek that I don't like. (all of voyager, for example.) So, I started to kind of build my own trek universe using what I like about mainstream trek as building blocks.