Big and FLASHY.

from Sins Forums

Alright, so Autocannons seem to be the best weapon to simulate the continuous fire effect that I have always wanted, and I know that all ships are limited to three guns.  So here's a question:

 

Would it be possible to change all/most weapons to a autocannon effect? 

 

Seriously, lasers go pew pew, but it just dosnt seem like a TEC thing to do.  Missles are alright, but they seem too slow, Although if you increase range/decrease damage, you can get them to provide the role of first strike.

As for the other races, it's harder, since they seem to have different personalities.  I would love to see those flashbeams become standard, providing the same effect as the autocannon, but more "alien" 

What would it take to have all/most ships have 360 degree firing arcs, and a nice short range type firefight with tons of ammo/beams shooting everywhere?

Increaseing the burstcount/delay really helped shake things up with my games, making it seem like a TEC battleship was really that much of a threat, but I saw that it really really dropped off when it came to other ships.

 

One last thing, on the TEC Battleship, as well as some other ships, I couldnt help but notice that there seems to be "turrets" as well.  While not animated, I could see them firing differnt directions,  Would it be possible to increase the number of those?  or put them on different sides of the ship?  Volume of fire, and consistancy are important to me, so any help with that would be appreciated.

 

modding
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

What would it take to have all/most ships have 360 degree firing arcs, and a nice short range type firefight with tons of ammo/beams shooting everywhere?
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One last thing, on the TEC Battleship, as well as some other ships, I couldnt help but notice that there seems to be "turrets" as well.  While not animated, I could see them firing differnt directions,  Would it be possible to increase the number of those?  or put them on different sides of the ship?  Volume of fire, and consistancy are important to me, so any help with that would be appreciated.
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You would have to mess with the mesh itself, no easy way of doing it. Each ship, when modeled, needs to be assigned its weapon firing points and engine exhausts and the game is very specific about firing arcs (which you can't change). So short of physically changing the model's hardpoints, there's no way to move the turrets to provide a 360 degree firing arc overall.  As for the second quote, each weapon is limited to 10 firing points all over the ship. So, you could put a few more hardpoints for each weapon to add more firing points.

This of course also assumed you have a functioning mesh reverse engineer plugin. I heard there was one for 3d studio max somewhere, that allows you to open the mesh files. But I'm not a graphics guy, so beyond this explanation I can't help you actually do what you want to do :P

Would it be possible to change all/most weapons to a autocannon effect? 
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The mod pack includes a particle editor, that's all the weapons fire is, just particles. You can create your own to do whatever you want. You should also be able to modify the ones in game right now ;)

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

What you can do Weevbucket is open up the TEC entities, and under the weapons, change the weapontype from LASERTECH to AUTOCANNON.  That way, all weapons will be autocannons, however they will still have the laser muzzle/projectile effects.

 

So for those, you need to change all the muzzle/travel effects from laser effects to autocannon effects.  Chances are replacing the "lasertech" in those categories with "autocannon" will do the trick.

 

But like I said before, I already did a lot of this.

 

My TEC autocannon mod.

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Could copy/past work with the particle effects listed? 

Sorry Sparda, I didn't look at you mod more then once, now I see you changed a lot more then I originally thought. 

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

To clarify:

Do you want every weapon to look the same as the TEC autocannons, or do you want them to generically shoot like an autocannon (ie, stream of lots of small projectiles)?

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Weevbucket, reply 3
Could copy/past work with the particle effects listed? 

Sorry Sparda, I didn't look at you mod more then once, now I see you changed a lot more then I originally thought. 
End of Weevbucket's quote

 

Particle effects are just visual.  Don't affect anything at all.  So it will work with standard vanilla particle effects.  They just won't look very good at all.

 

I used the Solar Flair mod for those effects BTW.  Great mod, there's a ModDB page for it, has a nice vid too.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Damn broken edit.  FIX THIS STARDOCK!!!

 

Anyways, feel free to use my mod however you like.  Edit, completely wreck, modify so its unrecognizeable.  Just give me credit for the base mod. 

 

My mod is purely entity editing, I just happened to have the Solar Flair mod installed at the same time, so I don't have to give the guy credit, seeing as how I didn't really use any part of it (lolz).  Anyways, I didn't change any particle effects, just a lot of TEC entity files.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks Sparda, your a big help, and yes, I do want the particle effects to change, and not affect damage.  The key in my mind is that the game is already "balanced"  It just needs to look more to my style.

Annatar: Yes and No. Yes to TEC ships, where autocannon spray does look very nice when it can go any direction, giving off a nice machine gun effect, and No, to the other races.  I know that I would like the Vasari to have more missles, and the  Advent to have more flash lasers, but for now I'm just working on the TEC, as they seem like the easiest to change without changing damage values. 

 

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks Sparda, your a big help, and yes, I do want the particle effects to change, and not affect damage. The key in my mind is that the game is already "balanced" It just needs to look more to my style.
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There are Bailknight's and Lost_WLD's mods for new effects.  However those change the entities as part of it.

 

However, if you take all the folders from those mods EXCEPT GameInfo, then your mod will have new effects and still have your rapid-firing weapons.

 

Also, I suggest you check out the latest BETA (C) of 7 Deadly Sins.  The entire TCA race uses rapid-fire guns, and they have nice glowy-blue railgun effects to go along with them too.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Well, to make TEC ships use the autocannon fire, all you really have to do is change the particle effect for whatever ship you want to the effect the Kol's autocannons use ;)

So for a Cobalt:

WeaponEffects
        weaponType "Projectile"
        burstCount 4
        burstDelay 0.250000
        muzzleEffectName "Weapon_TechCapitalLaserLight_Muzzle"       <-- Shot leaving the barrel
        muzzleSoundMinRespawnTime 0.400000
        muzzleSounds
            soundCount 3
            sound "WEAPON_TECHCAPITALLASERLIGHT_MUZZLE"             <-- These 3 are self explanatory :P
            sound "WEAPON_TECHCAPITALLASERLIGHT_MUZZLE_ALT1"
            sound "WEAPON_TECHCAPITALLASERLIGHT_MUZZLE_ALT2"
        hitEffectName "Weapon_TechCapitalLaserLight_Hit"
        hitHullEffectSounds
            soundCount 1
            sound "WEAPONIMPACT_ENERGYLIGHT_HITHULL"                   <-- So is this
        hitShieldsEffectSounds
            soundCount 1
            sound "WEAPONIMPACT_GENERICLIGHT_HITSHIELDS"              <-- Ditto
        projectileTravelEffectName "Weapon_TechCapitalLaserLight_Travel" <-- The actual weapon fire particle effect

 

So you would basically just replace those sounds, the muzzleeffectname and the projectiletraveleffectname with whatever the Kol's autocannon uses, and you'll get autocannon fire out of the Cobalt. You can then tweak its burstCount and burstDelay as you like. If you want, you can make the LRM the only ship that uses missiles, and everything else does Autocannons.

For more advanced stuff, you can also change the the weaponClassType, this will affect what research affects it. It's currently set to LASERTECH, and so the research that improves lasers applies. If you change it to the Kol's "AUTOCANNON" type, the ship will benefit from autocannon research.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks again you two.  I'm testing out how it looks on different ships now, I know it'll look a bit silly on some.

 

Another question,  When you modify the damage for the different angles, does this modify the way they shoot as well?

For example:


        DamageType "PHYSICAL"
        WeaponClassType "AUTOCANNON"
    DamagePerBank:FRONT 72.000000
    DamagePerBank:BACK 0.000000             <--- Change this to a damage vaule greater than 0.0
    DamagePerBank:LEFT 0.000000
    DamagePerBank:RIGHT 0.000000
    Range 2750.000000
    PreBuffCooldownTime 4.000000
    CanFireAtFighter FALSE
    SynchronizedTargeting FALSE

 

Also, the "CanFireAtFighter" tag dosn't seem to like to work.  Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Well, in Gameplay.constants there are accuracy bonuses for several ship classes and damage types.  Anything but "ANTIVERYLIGHT" has a huge chance to miss fighters.  Also there are damage bonuses/penalties versus the various armor types.

 

And that wouldn' do much in a case like that.  With no valid emission points for the rear cannons on the mesh, I don't think anything would happen.  However, a ship will turn to fire it's most powerful arc at the enemy, whether it is its rear, port, starboard, or frontal flank.  So theoretically, a ship could be made with ultra-powerful rear guns and weak frontal/side ones that would move to within range of its powerful rears, then turn around and start using those rear guns.  If things get too bad, it can retreat quickly and easily without having to turn while under fire.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

Reminds me of good ol' Star Control 2.

Well, after modifying a lot of the guns to go with Autocannons = TEC, Beams = Advent, and Missles = Vasari, I've run aground with a minidump.  I guess somwhere along the line, I crossed my wires.   Could it be my copy paste style has run aground?  I was useing a Vasari flashbeam for my Advent line,  would that be the problem?

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Also, so your saying if there is no fireing arc for the emission points, there will not be any lines of fire?

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

Apparently beam weapons are a cranky file to use.  I've tried to change it around so most weapons are beams, but no such luck. :d

Any suggestions?  (I think It's happening with missles as well)

Also, to be even more noobish, How do you go about changing where the Ironclad folder is.  It's sucking up harddrive space on a drive that is suppose to be JUST for the OS...:d

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

I've run aground with a minidump.  I guess somwhere along the line, I crossed my wires.   Could it be my copy paste style has run aground?  I was useing a Vasari flashbeam for my Advent line,  would that be the problem?
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Open your user.setting file in the Settings folder, and towards the bottom turn on ShowErrors. This'll show you what's causing the minidumps, quite handy.

Also, so your saying if there is no fireing arc for the emission points, there will not be any lines of fire?
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A gun needs to have firing points on the ship's mesh to use. If there are no firing points, a gun can't shoot from that side. You can change the damage value, but it won't do anything. Which basically means the only frigate that can shoot from the sides is the Flak, all the others can only have frontal weapons.

Apparently beam weapons are a cranky file to use.  I've tried to change it around so most weapons are beams, but no such luck.

Any suggestions?  (I think It's happening with missles as well)

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What errors are you getting? This'll become more obvious once you turn on the error reporting :)

 

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Found the problem with the Advent.  Had to change the weapontype, and duration.

Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top

Damage seems to have stopped working on advent o.O