Q's on the Northwind Arms

[erik dela cruz]

I'm a big fan of the Northwind Arms mod. I go nuts with joy when I play with my favorite weapons of their make (Hail to the Cerberus Fusion Cannon!...and the Mangonel....and the Polybolos...and to...oh heck I love 'em all).

....but their armors are so intriguing. I wish to inquire about:

1. Cataract Gamma Shield; It's the rarest and on my opinion, the most efficient and most powerful shield I've ever used in the game. How does it actually work? It withstood the Ares ion, thermo and positron blasters and even the Fracture cannons of the Iocryms. It actually beats the Taikon 200 in reliability and protection.
2. Cataract Alpha(or is it the Beta?) Shield: I tried using ion weapons(like the Katana) with it but I can't fire or it won't allow me to fire my said weapons. Why?
3.The Nanite & Verloren Loop Shield: How can I really make these work? The Nanite is so expensive and when I first tried it, I felt robbed.
4. The Hoplon: How can it actually cover just the front side of the ship?
5. The NW Inactive Armor: Whats the difference between activating it and not activating it(I actually tried but still found no difference)?

,,,and lastly , why is it more expensive to buy stuff from them when it's cheaper with Commonwealth stations?

[Arisaya]

These are really questions to ask atarlost; however he hasn't been around recently

[Atarlost]

I'm back around now.

The Cataphracts use the same mechanic as the Solon. Each prevents you from using a type of weapon. You noticed that the Beta blocked outgoing ion weapons. The Alpha blocks particle beams and the Gamma positron weapons. If you mean how it's coded it just uses the same basic mechanics found in vanilla shields since before 1.0. The Cataphracts exist to encourage alternate weapon choices. When they came out the most popular late game weapons were ion, which they still are, and the most popular endgame weapon other than the lamplighter was positron, which has changed.

The Gamma is good because it's a level 10 device. It's good against the Ares because they use mostly ion and positron and those are its strong points and the Cataphracts have fairly extreme strengths. They also have fairly extreme weaknesses. It's not doing well against Ares nukes. If it appears to it's because it's not soaking all the damage. It lets through as much thermo damage to your armor as a Trenton and more Plasma damage. What you're seeing with the Iocrym is that you're bringing a gun to a knife fight. Fracture cannon damage declines with range and the range isn't very long to begin with. If you're fighting at typical ranges for a short range human built weapon they're dealing you very little damage if any. The Iocrym aren't a typical videogame boss. They're a time limit for the Heretic quests, but aren't really dangerous to anything but stations.

The Nanite shield is workable with good armor. It scales with your armor since it lets through nearly all damage you take to that armor and it regenerates in proportion to its hitpoints, which are limited by the HP of the armor. It's about as good as a shield of the same level as your armor, which makes it a very good deal if you get your hands on Iocrym stuff (you can get level 11 armor installed by ringers and I think Taikon, but not level 11 shields), but not such a good deal when it first shows up. You can keep it, though, and never buy another shield until you face the Iocrym, and not even then if you can get your hands on disintegration immune armor. Since it doesn't actually protect your armor it's also a better deal if you're good at spreading where you take hits. The Nanite shield exists to encourage reliance on armor by reducing the time it takes to repair it.

The Verloren Hoop is tricky. It does quite a lot of damage if triggered at full health, but it leaves you vulnerable momentarily and has short range. It needs a fast ship and good piloting. It's not a bad shield even without using it offensively in that it's got nice regeneration and a very short delay after falling, but you will take damage using it. The Verloren Hoop exists to encourage a close range playstyle. And to play with syscreateweaponfire, which existed before the events required to link scripts with weapons.

The Hoplon provides full protection in attacks in a 90 degree arc ahead and declines smoothly towards zero dead astern. It uses the event system and arithmetic. The last line is kind of opaque because the event variable passing is anything but self documenting, but the gist is that it tells the game to use the a value reduced by the opacity generated in script for damage to the shield and to pass the remaining damage to the armor. The Hoplon just exists to play with new scripting options. It tends to encourage the howitzer-fest to start earlier since recoil assisted parthian tactics are the best way to exposing your rear, but it's an old proof of concept and half the mod is old proofs of concept and they can't all serve a gameplay purpose. It is something of an anti-omni thing since it requires you to have your nose to your foes anyways.

The Inactive/Active armors keep the same displayed HP when activated, but their resistances double across the board and they become immune to almost all status effects. All except overlay based stuff like pteravores. They also start degenerating like transuranic but faster so leaving them active all the time without a patcher of some sort is a losing proposition. Switching them back to inactive stops the decay. When active they're the best armors of their weight and level apart from the decay, competing with stuff a level later or up to 4 times their weight, but when inactive they're the worst apart from possibly some of the mook stuff. The active armors exist to reward good situational awareness. If you trigger them only when they're going to take damage they nearly double your toughness. If you don't they'll come apart on you either because they degenerate when active or because they're not very good armor when inactive.

As to the last question I don't know. I haven't changed the pricing since I originally copied the station xml from the corporate dealers so it's possible the commonwealth stations have gotten cheaper. Most of the good stuff is uncommon or rare, though, so you're most likely to find it from a corporate dealer.

[erik dela cruz]

Thank you for the response Atarlost. I appreciate this for I'm taking down notes on how to play the game better and your mod really is of great help.

On the Cataract Shields, I rarely used the Solon so I did not get the idea of how it compares with these but now it's clear. I solved my predicament by switching to either Turbo Laser or Blast or Kinetic weapons when I get Alpha and switch to particle and thermo for Beta. With the Gamma, I relly have no problem with it specially when I increase it's HP 150% (hehe) so even when faced with Iocrym or Ares the only thing noticeable is the "restart" time is quite slow but no prob with it's regeneration.

What you're seeing with the Iocrym is that you're bringing a gun to a knife fight. Fracture cannon damage declines with range and the range isn't very long to begin with. If you're fighting at typical ranges for a short range human built weapon they're dealing you very little damage if any. The Iocrym aren't a typical videogame boss. They're a time limit for the Heretic quests, but aren't really dangerous to anything but stations.

This I agree hands down. Iocrym Sentinels actually frightened me the first time I played but after several victories, they're more playable than the Ares.

With the Nanite and Verloren Hoop Shields, I need to try using these again to test your description of their capacities. Is it safe to compare the Nanite with the Hull Plate Ionizer(less the reduction of armor repair) since it also relies on armor strength? With the Hoplon, yeah it is obvious that it is perfect against omniweapons so I'll try it one time(and hope to survive).

With your advice on the Active/Inactive Armours, for me is worth the shot, I guess. Oftentimes in my encounters with Ares and (grrr)Ventaris, I get them as loot but these sure is a sure solution for the issues I had with the Transuranic Armor. Many thanks for this one.

For the price, well these are very common in Corporate Stations(and pricier too especially with Adventures) and yes are far cheaper with the CW.

Thanks again.

[erik dela cruz]

Hail Atarlost! Oh I forgot, can I ask a few more things and hope you wont mind?
1. On the Verloren Hoop Shield. I waited for the"gravitic burst" to happen once when it's being overloaded due to enemy fire but observed none. How does this occur or its effect and in under what circumstance?
2. If the Nanite Shield is "not a shield but a nanite factory", why can't I able to use it in Meteorsteel based armours?
3. How does Variable Absorption Shields compare to the Jotun Shield(besides the levels of power) or is there no comparison at all?
You see I've tried these all and experimented a bit to try out their capacities but often fail to see performance as described. Can you please enlighten me a bit more?

I haven't tried NW Arms in both 1.06 or 1.07 yet but can I still use it's current version now? Thank you for your time and I hope I ain't bugging you a bit. Thanks a lot.

[erik dela cruz]

Hail Atarlost! Oh I forgot, can I ask a few more things and hope you wont mind?
1. On the Verloren Hoop Shield. I waited for the"gravitic burst" to happen once when it's being overloaded due to enemy fire but observed none. How does this occur or its effect and in under what circumstance?
2. If the Nanite Shield is "not a shield but a nanite factory", why can't I able to use it in Meteorsteel based armours?
3. How does Variable Absorption Shields compare to the Jotun Shield(besides the levels of power) or is there no comparison at all?
You see I've tried these all and experimented a bit to try out their capacities but often fail to see performance as described. Can you please enlighten me a bit more?
I have a simple question on the Tesla Ion Howitzer. How come it's power consumption is less than the other powerful blast and thermo howitzers but delivers greater damage?

I haven't tried NW Arms in both 1.06 or 1.07 yet but can I still use it's current version now? Thank you for your time and I hope I ain't bugging you a bit. Thanks a lot.

[Atarlost]

The Verloren Hoop shield doesn't trigger when dropped by enemy fire. It triggers when you invoke it (use key 'L'). It deals damage proportional to its HP so to get maximum performance out of it you want to avoid enemy fire.

The nanite shield doesn't work with meteorsteel armors because mechanically it's a shield. The nanite factory description is fluff. At the time it was written event based devices could not detect their own power state unless they were shields*, and it's meant to perform the role of a shield and occupy the shield slot.

The VAS doesn't compare to the Jotun at all. The Jotun is variable, but there's no reason to vary it. Just pick the highest power draw you can live with. The VAS draws the same power in both modes, but does not regenerate in one mode and lets lots of damage through in the other.

The Tesla draws less power and does more damage than other level 8 howitzers because it's an ammo weapon. It's chewing through fuel rods directly from your cargo hold.

The most recent version of Northwind is for 1.05. It works the same in 1.06. I haven't tested it in 1.07 but there's no reason it shouldn't work.


* Shields can indirectly detect their power state by checking for the presence of hitpoints.

[erik dela cruz]

WOw the on Tesla Howitzer. I thought the He fuel rods are used to power it up but as you described it, it spews power directly as ammo. Awesome.

Thanks on clearing out my inquiry on the VH and VAS. The info you gave will be of great helpf for me in using the these shields. As for the Nanite I will just figure out how to maximize it's power by further testing.

I will surely test your NW mod on both Beta updates and surely have fun with it.

Thank you again Atarlost. Your mod really kicks ass!

(I wish I can create of a mod like this.....)

[Atarlost]

He3 fuel rods and assemblies are used to create ammo. It just does so with no player interaction besides pressing fire.

You press fire, it checks its charges. If it has charges it uses one. If it doesn't it deletes a He3 fuel rod from your inventory and adds a charge. If there is no He3 rod it deletes an He3 assembly and adds seven charges. The virtual ammo is spawned or deleted in an onupdate event to reflect the actual number of rods, assemblies, and charges on the gun and exists only as an interface helper.

In effect the Tesla contains a dedicated reactor that uses only He3 fuel rods and He3 fuel assemblies and draws 125 mw a shot.

[erik dela cruz]

Oh the Tesla has it's own reactor! Wow. That's really AWESOME (considering it's average weight). So that's the reason behind the cooling cycle stuff and alpha particle stripping. Really great.

Now how about the Mangonel and the Oxybels, the former explodes with UV burst and the latter with turbo laser? These are not ammo howitzers right, so what's behind their explosive power?

(By the way Atarlost, NW Devices worked perfectly on both 1.06 and 1.07! Isn't that great! )

[Atarlost]

Light munitions aren't tracked. The Oxybeles and Mangonel use munitions lighter than the Makayev Mark III and V, which don't track ammo.

Ultimately, though, it's a game balance thing. Too many ammo using weapons dilute ammo availability making it difficult to find enough ammo. For the same reason as the other howitzers and the AK505 the Oxybeles and Mangonel can't use ammo if they're going to be fun.

[erik dela cruz]

So the UV and turbo bursts of both howitzers, Mangonel and Oxybels, are laser trackers and not add-ons or by products of whatever power source being utilized?

[erik dela cruz]

......oh right, these power-ups from those mentioned light howitzers come from MHD generators. Sorry I missed that one.

[erik dela cruz]

I shoulda made this a Christmas wish but Atarlost can you make an omni Polybolos Light Howtzer (or a turreted one)? There's dual Mark I turrets so can you make one for NW? Pleeeeeaaase?

[Atarlost]

Northwind itself isn't going to get a turreted Polybolos because the UNID organization I use for it doesn't have any space. I never expected the mod to get so big so it only got 256 UNIDs alloted to it and those are subdivided by category. It's also in danger of swamping other corps. Northwind already produces more weapon types than any canonical corporation.

It's an idea I may use for the WE4 version when I get around to that since that, of necessity, uses a looser organizational system and has more weapons from every manufacturer.