Phaserbanks for feds?

posted on April 12th, 2010, 3:19 pm

i just got striked by a little idea:
In the show we often see the ships moving at different angles to let all the banks fire.
What if we implement this in fleetops?
for example the main phaser of the galaxy could be divided into 4 weaker pahsers (with longer reload time) that all cover 90° of the ship. this way you actually have to micromanage the ships a good bit an you cant shoot at followers with your 360° phasers effeciently anymore.

posted on April 12th, 2010, 3:23 pm

What id like to see is attack patterns for the feds which would relate to the shows and would relate to your suggestion.

posted on April 12th, 2010, 3:30 pm

the problem is that the fire arcs in FO arn't that complicated.  we can only have angles facing forwards.  for example:

we could have a phaser with a 1.6 arc, so it could fire froward from _ to _ (a rough 180 degree angle)

if we had a 0.5 degree arc you could fire something like to / forwards.  (45 degrees)

because of this we can only limit things to fire in angles whose middles are directly in front of the ship.  there would very little maneuvering in order to get them all to fire.

I thought that you could change this by rotating the hardpoints on the models themselves, but I could be wrong.  I didn't think it worked when I tested it myself.

if it would work, you could rotate your hardpoint 90 degrees to the left, give the arc a value of 1.6 and it could only fire at things to the left of this line |


it would be awesome if it worked, but I don't think it does.

[Boggz]

posted on April 12th, 2010, 4:02 pm

Last edited by Boggz on April 12th, 2010, 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ACtually Zaxxon:

   If FO and A2 are anything like A1, you can TOTALLY have firing arcs like the way he's suggesting.

  When you are setting a hardpoint in whatever SOD editor or whatever it is that does that you can set it to be facing a certain direction.  I did that to many Borg ships as well as a few fun Fed ships.

   The result was a giant command cube that had 2 beams facing "forward", but if it got surrounded, each side was capable of projecting it's own firepower independently.  There's another line you have to add in the weapon ODF that says that it can fire independently and again, I forget what it is, but it's totally possible.

  EDIT:  I've been informed that it's "areacannon" which strikes a very nostalgic bell .  That line allows the weapon to fire on it's own at a target.  If it's a phaser, for example, you set the hardpoint to be facing sideways, you set it as an area cannon, and then you restrict the firing arc to 45 degrees or so and suddenly you've got another phaser that will target ships independently of the main command.

  I personally find that it's most useful only on the larger Borg vessels as really, you can't micro all these Fed ships and whatnot to make use of them.  Really it just ends up being free firepower in a melee.

posted on April 12th, 2010, 4:06 pm

I believe its areacannon

posted on April 12th, 2010, 4:36 pm

hm.. your right boggz, it would be pretty hard to manage^^
but what if we follow zaxxons approach?

you have a main phaser banke in the front with a narrower firing arc and the normal 360° beam, just now weaker.(this would finally stop the feds being cowards  ) this would be possible, right?

posted on April 12th, 2010, 6:02 pm

it would be interesting to have layered phasers in that way.^^

@ Boggz

Yeah, I figured it would work that way.  I just guess my model I have is not done directly (I'll have to take it up with the owner as I don't have the raw model, only the sod.)

also the useprimarytarget = 0 line is quite useful for that task.

posted on April 13th, 2010, 12:54 am

Yeah, I figured it would work that way.  I just guess my model I have is not done directly (I'll have to take it up with the owner as I don't have the raw model, only the sod.)

 

  Stop me if I'm wrong, but can't you at least adjust a Hardpoint in a SOD viewer?  10 years ago I had almost 0 experience working with models and I managed to adjust hardpoint directions for SODS in my mod.  I didn't make any of them but I could spins them around and move them to where I needed them to be. Most models had plenty of Hardpoints for the using.  .

  That way you can spin a phaser bank HP around and face it outwards, giving it a limited arc and simulating a true phaser bank !!!

posted on April 13th, 2010, 1:03 am

Yeah. I understand the concept,(I have been modding for quite some time) but unfortunately people arn't as honest as they use to be.  There are no SOD importers, exporters, even the viewers have been locked so you can't do much more than look at the positioning of the points.  I will check again, but I don't think mine has the ability to rotate hp's.  I don't have permission to edit the models in any way either, so it would be kinda pointless.

But anyway, I'm sure its possible, and it would be cool in a2, but I don't think anything more than cool.