[New Mod] Friendly Fire Avoidance System

[Prophet]

F.F.A.S. for short, a simple device that, when installed, will prevent the player from damaging autons. (actually anything that is escorting the player)
I have been testing it and it finally makes autons worth buying (and keeping).

The 1M/i are especially useful with their Ion cannons, and make excellent defenders.

Download from Xelerus

[Aury]

Also very neat!

[Tachyonfang]

Just out of curiosity, would it be possible to make a 2nd version of this mod that made it impossible to accidentally damage/destroy all friendly ships? I would very much prefer that some of my "automated missile defense systems," as well as my weapons that simply have a high rate of fire, didn't keep getting me labeled a pirate and a criminal!

[digdug]

yeah, it's possible, that would be a very nice godmod

[Amariithynar]

Not so much a godmod, but a realism mod- if you're coordinating with friendly ships, you would set your weapons to fire NOT here allied ships are. ie; firign under or above them instead.

[digdug]

Not so much a godmod, but a realism mod- if you're coordinating with friendly ships, you would set your weapons to fire NOT here allied ships are. ie; firign under or above them instead.

that's true, but since Transcendence is a 2D game, it would make the game really too easy.

[Atarlost]

Frags shouldn't be avoidable that way either realistically. Or Domina powers.

[Amariithynar]

I would definitely agree that Domina Powers seem to be more spheres of effect rather than just a linear explosion; On the other hand, I'd say that since you're invoking the power of Domina against your enemies, she's be, y'know, intelligent enough to give your allies a free pass

Explosions, and by default then frags, would look like a brief flash and an expanding ball of debris and maybe some sparks (heated metal debris). No fire ball, no sound, not even much smoke. The only poof if any you would see is the brief expansion of gasses given off by the initial reaction. For anything that gives off a sufficient particle cloud, Id say that it should be exempt, but to my knowledge all frag-type weapons are designed to split into rather large chunks, and as such fly out in rather large dispersal patterns, which would either be easily dodgeable or absorbed into shields as basically debris run-in. If they were directly on the location of the explosion or near enough to, though, I'd say that it would be still damaged- Any ship or station explosion looks rather accurate currently, considering that they're venting atmo for the explosion to travel through, and they don't stick around very long after the initial explosion either.

[Atarlost]

Get two pig carcases. Stick a kaiser helmet on one and a beret on the other. Put one a couple feet from the other. Try to put a fragmentation grenade between them in such a way that it only tears up the one in the kaiser helmet, leaving the one in the beret unharmed.

That's how fragmentation weapons work except for the TM7 and Medusa, which break into seeker heads. You don't control where the fragments go, how are you possibly going to make sure they don't hit what you don't want them to?

And, of course, anything that is a radius or area effect is spherical. There are more of them than you seem to think. Most of the nukes in fact. More than half of all nukes that have any fragmentation at all have a radius or area effect.

[Amariithynar]

When you're talking that distance, of course they're both going to get hit. A point-blank (effectively) mini-sphere of explosion and fragments, then the fragments travel completely straight in their path makes frag rounds relatively useless in vacuum. For things designed for just unleashing a mass of flechettes, it's little more than a metal explosion and should affect normally, but things that have minor frags should be ignored. Even if you were to multiply the number of fragments by an order of magnitude more to apply it to a circular pattern, you'd see that there aren't that many fragments, and as such would still be easy to ignore for faster craft. Something like a ferian Plasma Cannon likely couldn't be, as with anything that has a fragment ratio of radius (assuming this is only because the game is in 2D) or area. An easy way to do this is that if any unit is within say 2 MM from the blast radius or area, they get hit. Past that, and they're ignored due to debris being simply spaced too far apart.

As shown here, by a nuke being detonated in space above earth ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKvvrNrCOnw ) it is high-altitude, rather than properly and completely in space, and such has some atmosphere to work with, but still the overall effect is a small flat radius, due to earth's gravity. In space proper, it would retain its spherical nature, but be similarily much smaller, not flattened out by gravity. This is corroborated by NASA's own findings here ( http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/nuclear.htm ). A nuclear blast will lack the blast due to nothing to travel through- it is a vacuum after all. The same goes for the thermal radiation; Without air or other molecules to heat beyond the split-second flash of the nuke itself and any ships it manages to capture within the initial blast area, the majority of the explosion's thermal energy is instead transferred to higher wavelength radiation output. Thus, in effect, most nukes in space would produce a lot of high-intensity radiation with little else as components, and thus any ship that is rad immune would be rather unaffected by the area past the point of impact and resultant mini-explosion.

[Atarlost]

But to not hit friendlies being small isn't enough. They must have holes in the blast pattern that conveniently miss friendlies. You agree they're spherical. If the blast would avoid hitting other targets by being small it means the other targets are outside its blast radius anyways.

If you want to make a realistic space combat game you really need to find an engine that has less speed granularity, doesn't link resistances to shield and armor in an unrealistic way, and is 3d. Transcendence is Transcendence and you have to live with the oddities.

[Amariithynar]

Ah, but if you're specifically aiming for the enemy, you'd place the explosive where it'd have the highest chance of hitting the enemy, and the lowest for hitting allies- But, i digress. For all flechette type explosions, having perfect immunity to them is a silly thing, I think we can both agree. Perhaps having the proximity from the central explosion dictate the percentile of damage it would take, and remove the actual need for an individual physical projectile for the smaller explosives? After a certain distance, the spherical shape of the explosion and its fragments would become dispersed so far that it would be a case of luck to be hit at that distance, rather than an inevitability at closer ranges. Thus, explosives could then be made to still damage all in the area of effect, so that they aren't used indiscriminately- in other words, treat them much as they are treated in modern day warfare.

[Tachyonfang]

Wow-what a lot of input on this subject!
I guess I'm just a simple-minded guy who wanted to make it impossible to accidentally shoot a friendly. Perhaps even create a hot key that would allow you to re-classify a friendly as a hostile if/when necessary (like when faced with the Black Market bounty hunters-their ships always show up as green friendlies despite the fact that they rather consistently try to destroy you)