Twin Lasers

[ADCK]

For those that don't know, us poor peasants are only allowed one laser facing forward, while npc's can have two or more forward facing lasers (krait for example, if i recall correctly)

So i suggest more lasers!

Basically, what I'm trying to say here is; I'd like something like the following to work:

Code: Select all

weapon_position_forward = ("-1.0 -5.0 12.0", "1.0 -5.0 12.0");

I'm not suggesting adding more actual weapons, just visual support for ships with two lasers, it wouldnt do any extra damage, it would just look better.

Another suggestion: Another visual ugrade. The ability to make subentities able to fire lasers when we fire lasers. (For 0 damage, for balance reasons)

Yet another suggestion: The ability to set the angle of the laser, as bigger ships that have the laser on the bottom of the ship don't line up with thier crosshairs.
Eg.

Code: Select all

weapon_position_forward = ("-1.0 -15.0 12.0 88.4");

where the first 3 numbers are X Y Z position, and the final number being the Y angle (0 would be straight up, 90 straight forward, 180 straight down, 270 suicide lasers ) and perhaps a 5th number for the X angle...

[Commander McLane]

Not the native Krait. None of the original ships has multiple forward lasers.

I am not in favour of multiple lasers for players. And I don't even know whether this is because they would be too much of an advantage, or too much of a disadvantage. The advantage is obvious: You can kill an opponent faster. However, the disadvantages may be much stronger:

1) Two lasers facing the same direction and using the same cooling system would heat up twice as fast, three lasers three times as fast. So you would have effectively only half (or a third of) the shooting time you have with only one laser.

2) Because the laser beams fire parallel to each other, chances are that actually only one of your beams would hit your target, the others would be wasted. (Note that contrary to what you perhaps think multiple lasers do not converge in their target. This is also true for NPCs. The NPC Imperial Courier may fire three laser beams at your ship, but if your ship is less wide than the distance between the IC's outer lasers (which is quite wide), the two outer lasers will miss you every time.) Combine this with the increased rate of heating up, and you may end up with having actually only half (or a third of) the firepower you had with only one laser.

[ADCK]

I worded it wrong, I didn't actually mean twice the power or new weapon facings, i'm just talking about visuals here.
It would be nice if we could have our lasers actually fire from... our lasers.

Basically, what I'm trying to say here is; I'd like something like the following to work:

Code: Select all

weapon_position_forward = ("-1.0 -5.0 12.0", "1.0 -5.0 12.0");

I've never actually tested that... so if it does already work, you have permission to slap me with a wet fish!

(Edited 4 times lol... I'm OCD when it comes to spelling)

[Kaks]

Sounds good!

Fingers crossed, hopefully someone cleverer than me will code that soon...

[ADCK]

Sounds good!

Fingers crossed, hopefully someone cleverer than me will code that soon...

I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to do, I've already seen NPC's do this, so the code's already there... just not for players.

[Killer Wolf]

didn't realise the lasers would fire parallel, i assumed the code drew the laser to hit the centre of the screen where your crosshairs are. :-/

[Eric Walch]

didn't realise the lasers would fire parallel, i assumed the code drew the laser to hit the centre of the screen where your crosshairs are. :-/

It becomes very clear when looking at the Bandersnatch.oxp. That ship has one central laser and 3 on subentities. When you modify the ship by removing the central laser, you will notice it has difficulties to hit you. Apparently it lines up the centre of its ship wit the target and shoots than. But lasers mounted to far off-centre will just miss the target, because they all fire straight ahead. (You just should not move or it hits you by accident)

[Cody]

It would be nice if we could have our lasers actually fire from... our lasers.

I'm puzzled... or have I missed something? I can be a bit slow on occasion.
My laser fires from my laser... the barrel even glows red when I fire it.

[ADCK]

didn't realise the lasers would fire parallel, i assumed the code drew the laser to hit the centre of the screen where your crosshairs are. :-/

It becomes very clear when looking at the Bandersnatch.oxp. That ship has one central laser and 3 on subentities. When you modify the ship by removing the central laser, you will notice it has difficulties to hit you. Apparently it lines up the centre of its ship wit the target and shoots than. But lasers mounted to far off-centre will just miss the target, because they all fire straight ahead. (You just should not move or it hits you by accident)

Thats a good point, another suggestion i'd like to ad on top of my +visual laser support is the ability to set the angle of the laser too, as bigger ships that have the laser on the bottom of the ship don't line up with thier crosshairs.

So something like:

Code: Select all

weapon_position_forward = ("-1.0 -15.0 12.0 88.4");

where the first 3 numbers are X Y Z position, and the final number being the Y angle (0 would be straight up, 90 straight forward, 180 straight down, 270 suicide lasers ) and perhaps a 5th number for the X angle...

Can it be coded?

[ADCK]

It would be nice if we could have our lasers actually fire from... our lasers.

I'm puzzled... or have I missed something? I can be a bit slow on occasion.
My laser fires from my laser... the barrel even glows red when I fire it.

Yes... Perhaps you should read the title of a thread when posting in it?
Yes a single layer will fire from where you tell it to in shipdata.plist, but thats for a single laser,
now say if you wanted to make a ship that had two forward facing lasers? Currently impossible.

[Kaks]

Sounds good!

Fingers crossed, hopefully someone cleverer than me will code that soon...

I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to do, I've already seen NPC's do this, so the code's already there... just not for players.

You'll be surprised by the number of changes needed to make twin forward lasers a workable player option. However, I've been an Oolite dev on and off for only 2 years, so there's quite a few parts of the code I haven't had a chance to figure out properly yet!

Do feel free to prove how easy this is to do by actually doing it: I'm already looking forward to seeing a patch from you to allow players to use twin lasers!

[ADCK]

Well, the original elite had it (dunno about all versions)

That's from the NES version, which is considered canon.

With all the suggestions that are denied because "It isn't canon" , it'd be nice to see a canon suggestion make it into the game
(btw that last line is a joke that's poking fun at a recent thread here)

[DaddyHoggy]

Well, the original elite had it (dunno about all versions)

That's from the NES version, which is considered canon.

With all the suggestions that are denied because "It isn't canon" , it'd be nice to see a canon suggestion make it into the game
(btw that last line is a joke that's poking fun at a recent thread here)

The C64 looked exactly the same - but I always wondered about this even when I was in my early teens - if I had a single pulse laser fitted why did I get four (Star Wars X-wing style) lasers somehow magically centred on my cross hair which always seemed to be focussed on the thing I was trying to shoot...

[ADCK]

The C64 looked exactly the same - but I always wondered about this even when I was in my early teens - if I had a single pulse laser fitted why did I get four (Star Wars X-wing style) lasers somehow magically centred on my cross hair which always seemed to be focussed on the thing I was trying to shoot...

A wizard did it.

>.>

I didn't think of it as "4" but "2" cause it was wireframe and i was only seeing the edges.

As for why they focused on the thing you were trying to shoot, I don't get what you're trying to say here, that's what crosshairs/ironsights/big-red-X's have done since the dawn of modern weaponry

As for why you get two for the price of one, good marketing? Or maybe they take one pulse laser, cut it in half, and stick one 1/2-pulse laser on each wing?

[DaddyHoggy]

The C64 looked exactly the same - but I always wondered about this even when I was in my early teens - if I had a single pulse laser fitted why did I get four (Star Wars X-wing style) lasers somehow magically centred on my cross hair which always seemed to be focussed on the thing I was trying to shoot...

A wizard did it.

>.>

I didn't think of it as "4" but "2" cause it was wireframe and i was only seeing the edges.

As for why they focused on the thing you were trying to shoot, I don't get what you're trying to say here, that's what crosshairs/ironsights/big-red-X's have done since the dawn of modern weaponry

As for why you get two for the price of one, good marketing? Or maybe they take one pulse laser, cut it in half, and stick one 1/2-pulse laser on each wing?

Erm, what I mean is that either my lasers were parallel in which case they only appeared to converge or they were somehow pointed slightly inwards - which they can't have been because otherwise I would have seen them cross if I fired at nothing or the angle inwards was so small as to be pointless... So given that my lasers shots were effectively parallel - how come they met and hit at my crosshair centre no matter what I shot at - i.e. whether is was very close or very far away - does that now make sense to you? (A very small ship - exactly centred on my crosshair would never have been hit with parallel beams)