Abilities as weapons

from Sins Forums

Here's another issue I've been tangling with for a while.  I have a couple of ships in my mod that I'd like to add an additional (4th) weapon to as an ability.  Strictly speaking, I've been successful in these attempts.

What I'm not happy with (read: frustrated, infuriated, frazzled, and bewildered) is that the weapon either fires forward requiring the ship to face it's target directly (which is wholly unacceptable considering all of my ships are using the fighter-style movement), or it fires in any random direction (which won't work because there are very canon weapon ports on the ships). 

For whatever reason, ability points that are used for weapon effects do not utilize their orientation as the weapon points do.  We'll just add that to the list of odd decisions along with making the firing arcs greater than 180 degrees.

So, is there any way to create a weapon-effect ability that actually functions like a weapon?  If I were to turn the ability on, would I essentially have a 4th weapon type?  Creative solutions and work-arounds are welcome.

Thanks!

 

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3,455 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

So basicly you want to give the ability points firing arcs? Thats as easy as giving normal weapon points firing arcs, sorry.

The best workaround would be to make the firing effect a missile so that it would shoot straight from the point and then move/turn towards the target rather then move through the ship.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

The weapon does use a missile effect.  Unfortunately, I don't want it to target anything behind the ship, which causes the missile to fire forward and then swing back around ala Phase Missile Swarm.  If I switched the forward facing line to TRUE in the ability file, the ship would still have to face the target perfectly even with a missile effect.  (Aaargh!)  For all the modding accessibility in Sins, there are some really frustrating coding limits in the engine.

I have been contemplating something a bit radical, though.  I haven't tested it but am planning on that within the next day or two.  What if I assigned the ability to a weapon point rather than an ability point?  My gut instinct tells me the firing arc is incorporated into the weapon itself, not the name of the point it's coming from.  Any thoughts or advice going into the testing?

 

 

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Mystic, reply 2
  My gut instinct tells me the firing arc is incorporated into the weapon itself, not the name of the point it's coming from.  Any thoughts or advice going into the testing?

That would be my expectation of the behavior too if you did use a weapon point for the ability.

The only solution I can think of, and it's not a really good one, would be to assign the ability as an additional "On Hit" weapon effect.  That would mean firing arcs of the weapon points would still come into play.  Unfortunately, it would not necessarily guarrantee the effect going off, would not enforce a single instance of the ability firing and is certainly not an feasible means of deliving many types of ability effects.  Bascially, it's too compromised a method but it's the only one I can think of that would actually make use of the default firing arcs.

-dolynick

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Is their any other weapons on your ship that would work better as an ability? I.e. anything that can only fire forward or have a 360 range of fire? If so, make the missile a regular weapon and make the other as an ability.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

For the love of all the holey cheese in the world, why would you not include "Weapon" as a possible attachment type if you give abilities the option for weapon effects?

As you may have guessed, it isn't even possible to attach an effect to a weapon point.  I would be totally fine with my ships needing to face it's target in perfect alignment if it didn't totally override the fighter-style movement.  It just parks itself and starts blasting away like some ancient ship of the line. 

@ dolynick: Yes, I've thought through that particular solution.  In fact, it's the means by which I'm applying a transphasic effect that lets torpedoes pass through shields for a limited time or for a single volley.  From my research so far, though, I don't think it's going to give me the desired result in this situation.

@GoaFan: At the moment I'm using two weapon slots for a single weapon type.  Weapon-0 is devoted to forward/backward arcs and Weapon-1 to the sides.  It's a bit of experiment that's testing various angles to see if I can avoid slice through part of the hull with a beam.  So far it seems to be working, but it could just be my imagination.  If that's the case, I'll combine all of those arcs and use the empty slot for this third weapon.  Which brings me to...

As an aside, I was also planning to using this elusive methodology to creative a point-defense weapon ability that could be turned on and off.  Just to talk about different ideas, would it be possible to turn a weapon on and off (while leaving all the others active).  I know a weapon can be granted access through research.  Might this be a way to approach the dilemma?