1.08a

[Vachtra]

Personally I think if you have a slot that says the weapon should only fire in a specific arc or direction that any weapon, even omni weapons should be constrained by the slot. It would be like telling the slot is on the side of the ship and has a left side firing configuration but when you slap an omni in there it's in fact shooting through your own ship to hit the opposite side.
In my opinion the 180 degree back firing slot should limit the omni as well and needs to be fixed and the slot that has the firing arc is working as it should.

[PM]

Unless there is a way to filter all omni weapons in or out of the criteria field in DeviceSlot, this would make it impossible to have a ship fire only non-omni weapons backwards.

Why should only ships that fire forward by default get to use omni weapons, but other ships that can fire in an arc or only in a non-forward direction (such as Luminous) cannot use omni weapons as intended.

[PM]

Minor bug: If a ship's class field has a slash (/), such as the Ronin ships, this causes the reactor in the ship select screen to display its text as Unknown Code in yellow letters. This did not happen in 1.07 and before. If I fix that by adding a backslash before the slash (\/), the reactor text is shown properly, but then the name is shown as \/. For example, Ronin\/B.

[george moromisato]

After starting a game as a Luminous drone ship, I acquire an omni laser. I install it for the Luminous, which has minFireArc = maxFireAre = 180 to force weapons to shoot backwards. The omni laser remains omnidirectional. This is good -- I install the weapon for omni capability (instead of a more powerful turbolaser)...

Thanks--that explains it. The <DeviceSlot> feature is exposing the fact that the engine did not know how to combine different fire arc directives (from the device slot and from the weapon itself). There are really three different classes of fire arc:

omnidirectional
swivel (but not omnidirectional)
fixed (not necessarily at 0 degrees, however).

Both the device slot and the weapon can specify one of the three fire arcs above. I've added code in 1.08b to (somewhat arbitrarily) combine them as follows:

1. If a weapon is omnidirectional then it stays omni, regardless of the device slot [this fixes your problem with the Deimos].
2. If a device slot is omnidirectional then it stays omni, regardless of the weapon.
3. Otherwise, if a device slot swivels, then the weapon honors the swivel, regardless of weapon properties (e.g., if a weapon specifies a 30 degree swivel but the device slot says 10 degrees then the device wins).
4. Otherwise, if a device slot is fixed, then its fire direction is combined with weapon properties (e.g., if the device points 180 degrees and the weapon swivels, then the result is a swivel centered on 180 degrees).

I've updated the section on the wiki, but feel free to make it clearer: http://wiki.neurohack.com/transcendence ... on_devices (Fire Direction section).

[Vachtra]

I understand the decision to make omni weapons trump the device slot but the reason I think they shouldn't is that forward shooting ships don't necessarily have a forward slot. Instead it's a generic slot that defaults forward, possibly on the bottom or top of the ship which makes onmi weapons work fine.
Correct me if I'm wrong but a ship with a back slot also has generic slots right? If you want to use the omni, why wouldn't you put it in one of those? Or did I misunderstand the slot setting? Does the setting affect all of the weapons in every slot?

[george moromisato]

I understand the decision to make omni weapons trump the device slot but the reason I think they shouldn't is that forward shooting ships don't necessarily have a forward slot. Instead it's a generic slot that defaults forward, possibly on the bottom or top of the ship which makes onmi weapons work fine.
Correct me if I'm wrong but a ship with a back slot also has generic slots right? If you want to use the omni, why wouldn't you put it in one of those? Or did I misunderstand the slot setting? Does the setting affect all of the weapons in every slot?

The problem, I believe, is that there is no player user interface for selecting which slot a device gets installed in. When you install a device, we just put the device in the first open slot. In the future, perhaps, we could have a UI for picking slots; in that future, I would agree with Vachtra: the device slot should override the weapon. But until then, <DeviceSlot> elements are meant to add unique capabilities to player ships without that UI.

Another way to think about it is this: the <DeviceSlot> element doesn't define a device slot with properties; instead, it is an automatic way for selecting which slot a device will go in (given that there is no UI for the player to pick).

[PM]

The problem, I believe, is that there is no player user interface for selecting which slot a device gets installed in. When you install a device, we just put the device in the first open slot. In the future, perhaps, we could have a UI for picking slots; in that future, I would agree with Vachtra: the device slot should override the weapon. But until then, <DeviceSlot> elements are meant to add unique capabilities to player ships without that UI.

If or when this future UI is implemented, would this mean omnidirectional weapons lose omni? That would hurt, given that omni weapons are weaker due to being omnidirectional.

[george moromisato]

If or when this future UI is implemented, would this mean omnidirectional weapons lose omni? That would hurt, given that omni weapons are weaker due to being omnidirectional.

No--I only meant that it would then be up to the ship class design and the player. For example, in this imaginary future, all default player ships might have generic slots, meaning that they work like they do today: they confer no ability (omni or otherwise) and always expose the ability of the weapon (omni, etc.)

But someone could design a player ship with a single omni device slot. In that case, the player would choose which weapon (omni or not) to place there (at install time). Perhaps, to balance out the capability, that same ship class could have restrictions on its remaining slots (e.g., forward facing slots that are incompatible with omni weapons).

Bottom line: the future that I painted (which may not come to pass for a while) is the same as today only with more control by both the modder and the player.

[Ttech]

If or when this future UI is implemented, would this mean omnidirectional weapons lose omni? That would hurt, given that omni weapons are weaker due to being omnidirectional.

No--I only meant that it would then be up to the ship class design and the player. For example, in this imaginary future, all default player ships might have generic slots, meaning that they work like they do today: they confer no ability (omni or otherwise) and always expose the ability of the weapon (omni, etc.)

But someone could design a player ship with a single omni device slot. In that case, the player would choose which weapon (omni or not) to place there (at install time). Perhaps, to balance out the capability, that same ship class could have restrictions on its remaining slots (e.g., forward facing slots that are incompatible with omni weapons).

Bottom line: the future that I painted (which may not come to pass for a while) is the same as today only with more control by both the modder and the player.

I'd be interesting to see what happens. I love more controls, though this new version has slowed my core2duo down to a crawl.

[Vachtra]

I haven't noticed any performance problems but then again I'm running it on a fairly new system with plenty of oomph.
This probably means I should test my mods on my old laptop. Even with the new system one of my current mods that I'm working on takes a couple seconds to load.

[shanejfilomena]

( " Duh................." )
it's a Turret slot.

that is what I got from what is posted : If you have an explicitly Omni slot : it = Turret.
so the conversation might now turn to : where (is) it and / or what does it look like? does it come in Fusha? I just got new pillows for the guest cabin..... LOL