Oolite Bulletins

Ramirez wrote:

... give the opponents a fixed ball turret ... as far as I can tell, the weapon_energy setting makes no difference. Whether it's 0.5 or 50.0, it still takes about 5 hits from an NPC to reduce my front shields to zero. Similarly, weapon_range doesn't seem to do much, at least if I set it to 3000m I'll still get an NPC firing its turret from beyond 4000m. Strangely though, fire_rate does work as expected.

The kind of entry I have in the shipdata is as follows:

Code: Select all

 subentities =         (    
				{	type = "ball_turret";
            				subentity_key = "feudal-ship-turret-green";
            				position = (0.0, 0.0, 19.0);
            				orientation = (1, 0, 0, 0);
					weapon_energy = "50.0";
					fire_rate = "1.0";
					weapon_range = "3000";
				}
				);

Is this a bug or have I not understood the documentation properly?

SandJ wrote:

Ramirez wrote:

... give the opponents a fixed ball turret ... as far as I can tell, the weapon_energy setting makes no difference. Whether it's 0.5 or 50.0, it still takes about 5 hits from an NPC to reduce my front shields to zero. Similarly, weapon_range doesn't seem to do much, at least if I set it to 3000m I'll still get an NPC firing its turret from beyond 4000m. Strangely though, fire_rate does work as expected.

The kind of entry I have in the shipdata is as follows:

Code: Select all

 subentities =         (    
				{	type = "ball_turret";
            				subentity_key = "feudal-ship-turret-green";
            				position = (0.0, 0.0, 19.0);
            				orientation = (1, 0, 0, 0);
					weapon_energy = "50.0";
					fire_rate = "1.0";
					weapon_range = "3000";
				}
				);

Is this a bug or have I not understood the documentation properly?

Bump!

I have spent today adding turrets to my Python and weapon_energy and weapon_range do seem to be ignored.

SandJ wrote:

I have spent today adding turrets to my Python and weapon_energy and weapon_range do seem to be ignored.

Ramirez wrote:

I think fire_rate is ok - try setting the line to something small like

Code: Select all

fire_rate = "0.2";

in the subentity group and you should see a fairly rapid stream of plasma from the turret.

Thargoid wrote:

I don't think they are working properly at the moment. I've had them in some of my OXPs for a while, and never seen them actually do anything to change the defaults (the 25 energy and 5km range).

I thought I'd reported it, but as I can't find such a report I obviously meant to do so but got sidetracked.

Eric Walch wrote:

weapon_energy and weapon_range for turrets are not correctly supported. Both functions were announced in the 1.75 release notes, so they should work and its a bug.

I just opened oolite's cache file and looked at a ship with turrets. Both entries never make it to the cache. During validation of the subentity definitions at startup, both keys are yet unknown and skipped. After that everything is handled well. But when they are dropped in the beginning, we proceed with default values. So they never could have worked.

SandJ wrote:

Thank you for that. Is there a definitive list of what should work for turrets, or is it just the turn rate (thrust) and colour for the time being?

Eric Walch wrote:

No, fire rate is also working. There is just an inconsistency where it's defined. In the old subentity declaration there was no place for customisation. That means that thrust and color are defined in the the subentity key itself and are the same for every time the subentity is used.

With the new subentity declaration for ships, you can do additional specifications for every time you add a subentity. That means all new keys were defined in the subentity array of the ship. Fire rate is defined here, meaning every turret on a ship can have its own firerate. That gives nice effects when defining them all slightly different. No longer synchronised bursts of plasma bolts, but all fired more individually. (I used that in the current version of the random-hits spacebar).
The two wrong keys are also defined in the subentity declaration of a ship, meaning they can be all different. (If they would work)

Anyhow, a bit confusing as there are now two places turret parameters are defined.

              subentities = (
                  "SiR-Turret-M   0.0   21.0  -16.0  1      0  0      0", // Magenta, top, forward
                  "SiR-Turret-M   0.0   21.0  -16.0  0      0  1      0", // Magenta, top, rear
                  "SiR-Turret-C -40.0    0.0  -25.0  0.7071 0  0.7071 0", // Cyan, left
                  "SiR-Turret-C  40.0    0.0  -25.0  0.7071 0 -0.7071 0", // Cyan, right
                  "SiR-Turret-Y   0.0  -21.0  -21.5  1      0  0      0", // Yellow, belly, front
    ...
	"SiR-Turret-C" = {
		fire_rate = "0.2";
                laser_color = "cyanColor";
		model = "oolite-ball-turret.dat";
		roles = "ballturret SiR-Turret-C";
		setup_actions = ("initialiseTurret");
        };

                subentities = ( {type = ball_turret; subentity_key = "SiR-Turret-M"; position = (   0.0,   21.0,  -16.0); orientation = (   1     , 0 ,  0     , 0); fire_rate = 0.25;}, // Magenta, top, forward
                                {type = ball_turret; subentity_key = "SiR-Turret-M"; position = (   0.0,   21.0,  -16.0); orientation = (   0     , 0 ,  1     , 0); fire_rate = 0.20;}, // Magenta, top, rear
                                {type = ball_turret; subentity_key = "SiR-Turret-C"; position = ( -40.0,    0.0,  -25.0); orientation = (   0.7071, 0 ,  0.7071, 0); fire_rate = 0.20;}, // Cyan, left
                                {type = ball_turret; subentity_key = "SiR-Turret-C"; position = (  40.0,    0.0,  -25.0); orientation = (   0.7071, 0 , -0.7071, 0); fire_rate = 0.25;}, // Cyan, right
                                {type = ball_turret; subentity_key = "SiR-Turret-Y"; position = (   0.0,  -21.0,  -21.5); orientation = (   1     , 0 ,  0     , 0); fire_rate = 0.20;}, // Yellow, belly, front

Commander McLane wrote:

Glad that you have it sorted. It's all explained in the wiki, though.

Commander McLane wrote:

In the first case you had code that didn't make sense, because you used the old-style subentity definition which doesn't contain the properties you wanted to use. That's the reason why the new-style subentity definition was introduced in the first place. So if you wanted to use the new-style properties you have to use the new-style subentity definition to begin with.

SandJ wrote:

... and the 'old-style' format is the more commonly-used for ball turrets.