UniBeam issues

I want my 15 rapid-fire quantum torpedo launchers Uber-Defiant now! - Get help from modders. Share your work. Discuss modifications.
posted on March 17th, 2016, 5:50 pm
Hello there,

After watching a lets play series on Klingon Academy, decided to have a play around and change some of the graphical and gameplay effects of some of the advanced weapons in KA2.

Noticed a bit of a weird issue with my UniBeam weapons. Currently I have three;

Graviton Harmonic Resonance Cannon- GHRC - Damages hull, even with shields up. No damage to shields.
Quantum Carrier-Wave Beam - QCB - Damages shields. No damage to hull.
Cohesive Fused Deuterium Irradiation Cannon - CFDIC - Kills crew even through shields.

I did have them functioning simply by doing damage, and using damage mode, or by setting how many crew it killed per shot. This works okay, but it looks a little odd in game (a beam hits a ship for 6 seconds, no effect the whole time, then when it turns off, suddenly it does all that damage at once).

So what I decided to do was remove the damage and use the drain rates. Currently experimenting with the GHRC.

Code: Select all
//Old damage
//damageBase = 200
damageBase = 0

drainHullPercent = 1.0
drainHullTime = 6.3
drainHullRate = 50


Now what this *should* do is do the same amount of damage, but continuously. So instead of 200 damage in one go, it will do (slightly more, at 300) over 6 seconds. (if you are wondering why 6.3, that's the length of the sound effect)

However in game this is not so. Testing it against a Romulan mining station, with damage set to 200 and the rest commented out, it works as advertised. With the drain effect on and the damaged removed, it barely dents the hull at all. I've even tested it against a B'rel, which at 300 total damage it ought to shake to pieces (B'rel has 140 hitpoints). Barely does a thing.

So either the UniBeam isn't working right, I've misunderstood the code so it's not doing the right amount of damage (is it Rate * Time = Damage or is it Damage Per Second = Rate / Time ? ) or there is something else afoot here.

EDIT: I've even set the drainHullRate to 300, it still does nothing :/
posted on October 11th, 2019, 6:05 am
Were you ever able to work out how to make the various drainHull commands for UniBeam weapons work? If so what was the trick? I have been changing around the percent/time/rate but have not been able to get the drain effect to trigger at all.
posted on October 11th, 2019, 7:54 pm
I've noticed this as well. Even if drainhullpercent is 1 (which is supposed to be 100%), the drainhullrate just doesn't seem to apply at all. I've set it up in a way that it should destroy a ship by draining its hull in 1 second, but it doesn't even touches the hull....
posted on October 12th, 2019, 3:45 am
For a working draining weapon, check the FIeld Of Fire weapon in FO :) . There are also others, but I've forgotten... :blush:

A relevant ODF to look for: kli_fieldoffireAr4o.odf
posted on October 12th, 2019, 7:18 am
Did you have "affectedsystems = 1" in the ordinance file? Draining effects are capped by this command alongside subsystem disables, so without it the drain won't be applied.

Also I'd have to check but I believe that drainrate actually determines the total amount drained, regardless of how long it happens. So the one you posted would drain 50 hull total, I think. Check out the Romulan Arlterium weapon from the Generix, it has several effects mashed together.
posted on October 13th, 2019, 5:05 pm
This is the complete ordnance ODF. I can't see any error in it, but please doublecheck it for me. It's still not working. Note: 2000 points should be more than enough to destroy a ship, but it doesn't even affect the hull.

classlabel = "UniTorpedo"
specialenergycost = 175.000
damagebase = 140
"kktragh.odf" 112
"rsabinus.odf" 126
damagevariance = 0
damagethreshold = 0
shieldcrewmodifier = 0
hullcrewmodifier = 0
shotgeometry = "romW_plasma.SOD"
ignoreshield = 0
lifespan = 6.0
omegaturn = 0
shotaccel = 70.0
seektime = 0
affectedsystems = 2
drainhullpercent = 1
drainhulltime = 1
drainhullrate = 2000
explosionhit = "romW_plasmaH"
explosionshieldhit = "romW_plasmaHS"
hitsound = "xhit_torpedo2.wav"
shotspeed = 250.0
spriteduration = 1
shotcolor = 227
radius = 0
posted on October 14th, 2019, 1:14 am
I never did figure this out. Not sure that function works correctly.
posted on October 17th, 2019, 6:45 pm
I had some time to test the codes. The good news is that you can drain hull, crew, shields or special energy. The bad news is that UniBeams and UniTorpedos can only drain crew or shields. If you want to drain hull or special energy you have to use a microorganism weapon with the "micro" classlabel. Unfortunately the microorganism weapon always has a 100% chance of applying the drain effect if it hits the target, and you can't define more than one drain effect per weapon, unlike UniWeapons.

But fortunately with the combination of an UniWeapon and an empty-sprite microorganism that has an identical shotdelay cycle but lower hit chance, you can have almost the same effect :)
posted on October 19th, 2019, 2:12 am
Well no wonder that code doesn't work, it's all blurry! How is the engine supposed to execute if it can't even read it?
posted on October 19th, 2019, 8:54 pm
Tryptic wrote:Well no wonder that code doesn't work, it's all blurry! How is the engine supposed to execute if it can't even read it?


Fuzzy logic.
Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Bing [Bot] and 2 guests