Shrike's Mines & Missiles ++

[PM]

The main thing that prevented me from using QAC was other applications of Longzhu sphere. During the pre-1.10 days, why recharge the QAC when I can enhance IM90 and Taikon-200 to +150%? Today, longzhu stacking is gone, but they can still repair devices, among other things. Every time you recharge the Qianlong, you just threw away money you could have earned by repairing then selling a high-level device.

[Song]

The Lamplighter, now that you mentioned it, is one of the weapons I'm really looking forward to your take on. It's the result of the game's longest questline, and is a tradeoff to an item that can kill anything in the game(once), can be acquired while skipping the entire line, and will become even more useful in post - Heretic. Right now it's a decent close range weapon, but against everything but the ICS it's far outclassed by other easily found weapons.

Eh....the gem of sacrifice doesn't hit internals, so it only takes the ICS down to about 60% damage. Internal HP is absurdly high right now. Basically means that lategame non-WMD omnis are useless.

But in terms of the Lamplighter, it currently looks like a magical christmas cheer gun. Because of a slightly flawed attempt to make a nice exhaust for it that went rather amusingly over-the-top even with the minimum particle settings. Unfortunately, since I can't seem to make particlejets work as part of a fire effect, my backup plan doesn't work that well either. I'll come back to it later.

[PM]

Perhaps make your fire effect as part of a separate weapon effect? For example...

Code: Select all

<OnFireWeapon>
    ; Fire secondary virtual weapon posing as fancy fire effect FireEffect cannot handle.
    ; Inherits attacker's velocity unless weapon is particle type, like plasma torch.
    (ObjIncVel (sysCreateWeaponFire ...) (objGetVel gSource))

    ; Proceed with normal attack.
    Nil
</OnFireWeapon>

[JohnBWatson]

Eh....the gem of sacrifice doesn't hit internals, so it only takes the ICS down to about 60% damage.

Huh, that happens with GODmod's 'destroy' feature as well. I think that might be a glitch.

[AssumedPseudonym]

Eh....the gem of sacrifice doesn't hit internals, so it only takes the ICS down to about 60% damage.

Huh, that happens with GODmod's 'destroy' feature as well. I think that might be a glitch.

 Sort of, though less from design oversight than simply being outdated. Both of them were created before interior HP existed and then never updated to take interior HP into account. …Or so I assume in the case of the Gem, at least. I would have to download and decompile an older version of the Transcendence.tdb file to verify that for certain.

[Song]

This is correct. A lot of stuff was balanced for non-critical armor, but was not rebalanced for internal HP when noncritical stuff was removed.

[Song]

I think I may have cracked the QAC....I've buffed it to match the Lamplighter's average damage, but decreased the rate of fire so it maintains a lower damage per second. It's not easy, but it is at least possible to knock out the ICS with it.....if you've got some sentinel viruses. Without them, it becomes a lot harder.


Unfortunately, the QAC suffers from a bug in hit detection on starburst effects, so I've had to counter this by giving it absurdly high shot HP. This makes it an obscenely good emergency point-defense system. Just don't run out of charges.


I'm considering how to smooth out the reload system...it's actually fairly manageable now. The reduced rate of fire means longer periods of time without reloading. It's still something to watch for, but it's not an immediate issue like it is with the stock weapon.

I've also finalised the weapon effect. I think it looks quite reasonable.

QACFinal.png (7.94 KiB) Viewed 8683 times

It has a new sound as well (shared with lamplighter). It's not perfect, but it's reasonable.

[Atarlost]

There's a library for that.

Code: Select all

<onfireweapon>(AU_AmmoBoxHandler (list( list &whateverthelongzhuentityis; 50)))</onfireweapon>
<onupdate>(AU_AmmoBoxDCounter (list (list &whateverthelongzhuentityis; 50)))</onupdate>

should work. With the right entity and charge count per longzhu. More ammo types in the list could allow it to use other antimatter sources as well.

[Song]

There's a library for that.

Code: Select all

<onfireweapon>(AU_AmmoBoxHandler (list( list &whateverthelongzhuentityis; 50)))</onfireweapon>
<onupdate>(AU_AmmoBoxDCounter (list (list &whateverthelongzhuentityis; 50)))</onupdate>

should work. With the right entity and charge count per longzhu. More ammo types in the list could allow it to use other antimatter sources as well.

Does that automate reloading? I'm leaning toward keeping it manual (in case you want to keep Longzhus for something else) and just altering the dockscreen for the Longzhu so that the QAC always shows up at the top of the list....or building an alternate reloading mode into the gun, so you can invoke the gun for a quick reload.


On other QAC news, the final test indicates that, with Lamplighter levels of damage per shot, the gun is viable for killing the ICS if you're sensible with how you use it. So that part of the rework is complete.

[Atarlost]

Does that automate reloading? I'm leaning toward keeping it manual (in case you want to keep Longzhus for something else) and just altering the dockscreen for the Longzhu so that the QAC always shows up at the top of the list....or building an alternate reloading mode into the gun, so you can invoke the gun for a quick reload.

Yes, but it won't reload unless fired while empty. There's no need to keep a shot in the gun to prevent reloading. If you want to save longzhus just don't use the weapon.

[Song]

Does that automate reloading? I'm leaning toward keeping it manual (in case you want to keep Longzhus for something else) and just altering the dockscreen for the Longzhu so that the QAC always shows up at the top of the list....or building an alternate reloading mode into the gun, so you can invoke the gun for a quick reload.

Yes, but it won't reload unless fired while empty. There's no need to keep a shot in the gun to prevent reloading. If you want to save longzhus just don't use the weapon.

Yeah, I think I'll keep it up to the player. Longzhus are versatile enough (even post-nerf) that you should be able to choose when you use them, and the reduced ROF on my version of the QAC means you don't need to reload as often. Streamlining the existing system should work well enough.


---

I've now reworked the lineup for Bushido, and pretty much finalised most of the range of weapons you can get from them. Here's the current setup, minus the ammo:

Level 3:
-Bushido laser blaster [NEW]

Level 4:
-X-Ray laser cannon (single) [NEW]
-Bushido laser turret [NEW]

Level 5:
-Dual X-ray laser cannon (renamed current X-ray laser)
- Shuriken Neutron Blaster [NEW GRAPHICS]

Level 6:
-Bushido Energy Launcher. [NEW]

Level 7:
-Hanzo blaster [REBALANCED] [NEW GRAPHICS]
-Katana Star Cannon [REBALANCED]

Level 8:
-Ion Flame Cannon

Level 9:
-As yet unbuilt top-end star cannon. Uses the premium Nandao cartridge as its ammunition, and fires a more powerful shot than the same cartridge would if fired from the BEL. It's basically a low-ROF katana on steroids. [NEW]

There's also the Nandao series of cartridges used by their ammo weapons, starting with the Nandao 150 particle cartridge at level 5, and going up to the premium ion cartridge at level 9 or so.

In addition to these, the Sung have regained the Nandao bolt cannon...it may be renamed a bit. It fires the Nandao 150 particle bolt, and has significantly better damage than the same ammo fired from a BEL. Basically, fitting a BEL gives versatility, while fitting the specialist guns gives better damage for just one ammo type. I don't know how well this will work out, but it's a worthwhile experiment. Only 2 of the cartridges have specialised guns for them, so the BEL isn't entirely useless for ships with a lot of weapons slots free (eg. Wolfen).

[Song]

Screenshot of an older weapon I don't think I've shown off yet. This is the Akan 1200 (devname), and it's designed purely for station defense...it's over-levelled for the damage type, is extremely heavy, and takes multiple slots. It also eats 15 akan shells per second, and looks like this:

AkanBattery.png (37.66 KiB) Viewed 8632 times

This weapon only turns up installed (in an omni mount) on Rasiemesser factories, replacing the old gun on it. If you're not blast-immune, annoying one of those factories is not an especially good idea. But if one does die in front of you and you get lucky, you might be able to pick up this thing and take it out for a laugh-filled few minutes before trading it in for something practical.

[JohnBWatson]

All station weapons have an omni mount, friend.

In any case, I love it. It's like those stationary turrets you can tear off and wield for a short time in an FPS.

[Song]

All station weapons have an omni mount, friend.

In any case, I love it. It's like those stationary turrets you can tear off and wield for a short time in an FPS.

Actually, large stations with multiple guns often have limited firing arcs. And it's more specifying "this gun is not omni, but the mount is". But since keeping up with the ammo drain was tough enough anyway, I didn't think my hacked solution to regenerating ammo would stand up to 4 of these.

[JohnBWatson]

All station weapons have an omni mount, friend.

In any case, I love it. It's like those stationary turrets you can tear off and wield for a short time in an FPS.

Actually, large stations with multiple guns often have limited firing arcs. And it's more specifying "this gun is not omni, but the mount is". But since keeping up with the ammo drain was tough enough anyway, I didn't think my hacked solution to regenerating ammo would stand up to 4 of these.

Ah, right. The Curator stations.

Is your ammo regen solution the same as the Sapiens? I think that would work regardless of drain. I'd still agree that one of those is plenty.