Charge and then fire?

from Sins Forums

Heya fellers, just a quick question for ya. Is it possible to make a weapon "charge up" (think homeworld 2 beam weapons) before firing? As in, play the muzzle particle effect a time before the projectile itself actually fires? I thought a few of the settings in the ship's entity file might do that but they don't seem to do anything of that nature.

modding
4,320 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I too would like to know if this is possible. :erk:

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Im not sure about weapons but you can look at the Advent ablilty Cleansing Brillance for some ideas. It has charge up like you are looking for.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

The Beam blast ability might be the most accurate ability, though it is not possible with normal weapons.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Not possible with normal weapons, huh? Well at least I know now for sure. Some of the weapons will have to be turned into special abilities because the chargeup period is a balancing feature (namely Dread cannons.. dear god insta-fire Dread cannons!)

While we're here, I've got another question.

Is it possible to give regular weapons AoE damage? I think it has something to do with buffs or passive abilities or something but I am unsure of specifics.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I know you can via abilites passive or active. Finest hour or Cluster missles for examples.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

You can edit a particle effect that shows the "shot" and the "recharge" effect after the shot ( for example 5 seconds long)

later

take a  look to the entity files of the ship you want to mod and modify the "recharge" time of the weapon setting it as long as the particle effect you made.

So it shots, recharge ( with the effects ) and it shots again each 5 seconds

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting asadex, reply 6
You can edit a particle effect that shows the "shot" and the "recharge" effect after the shot ( for example 5 seconds long)

later

take a  look to the entity files of the ship you want to mod and modify the "recharge" time of the weapon setting it as long as the particle effect you made.

So it shots, recharge ( with the effects ) and it shots again each 5 seconds
End of asadex's quote

That would kind of go against the idea of recharge, especially if it is for balance reasons.

To make weapons AoE make a passive ability and the buff will be an instantAction where the apply is ApplyBuffToTargetOnWeaponFired and the trigger will be OnWeaponFired. The next buff is ApplyBuffToTargetsInRadius and the last buff will be a DoDamage buff.

I think the best reference are the buffs for AbilityChargedMissiles (this is not a passive ability but an activate/deactivate ability) you will only need to copy the InstantActions of the buffs.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

Having weapons as abilitys is definately the way to go for the bigger stuff. For proper control and not to mention you can stop the AI from using them on stupid targets.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

I haven't looked at the buff system yet but I intend to fairly soon to rig the Heavy Plasma Torpedo + several large-scale beam weapons. This sounds fairly complex, but hopefully I can manage it.

It sounds like from the buffs you are naming that the AoE damage is applied instantly upon firing? That may not be desirable for the Plasma Torpedo in particular since it's a slow-moving projectile with a range of about 90k+ pending balancing (gravity wells are much larger in this mod than in vanilla). But that's just what I gather from the names - once I get my new batch of ships converted to mesh format I'll try this out.