Call for volunteers: merging Allegiance into FS2

[MatthTheGeek]

I understand that switching ship classes and loadout is a core part of the Allegiance gameplay. Most of what is needed for that is there : FRED can switch ship class, switch primaries, switch secondaries as well as ammo on-the-fly, it can check your distance from a station or carrier fighterbay as a condition to trigger that, etc. What lacks is the interface to handle this nicely, and that will require scripting, which is beyond my own skills.

QUOTE (Iron_Wolf @ Aug 4 2011, 09:13 AM) just a quick question,
In alleg cap ships (with some exceptions) are all piloted (and turreted) by players much the same way that players pilot the fighters, so my question is can fs2 enable direct control of these assets or would they be just ai controlled (under comm supervision) with automatic turrets?

not that it would be a bad thing ether way, just something i was wondering.

That was answered in question k. Player controlled turrets are currently possible via scripts. Nothing prevents us to even have a mix of AI-controlled and player-controlled turrets on our capital ships as variants or what not. That's kind of up to the "asset" part here too.

[jbansk]

Being in a base and undetectable by the enemy introduces "base camping" by an enemy who doesn't know what might pop out, and "uncamping" by a mass of ships launching simultaneously to defeat the camping enemy.
Would this be eliminated?

What about particle weapons?

[MatthTheGeek]

Particle weapons have been mentioned several times. What are they and how are they different from FS primary lasers ?

[dusanc]

They are slower than speed of light

[Heyoka]

QUOTE (DusanC @ Aug 4 2011, 07:20 AM) They are slower than speed of light

They also rely on kinetic energy for damage, as opposed to thermal energy.

[KGJV]

QUOTE (MatthTheGeek @ Aug 4 2011, 02:13 PM) Particle weapons have been mentioned several times. What are they and how are they different from FS primary lasers ?

In Alleg , all 'gun' weapons are particle weapons.

Basically they shot some kind of 'bullets' that we call 'projectiles'.

each weapon fire a unique type of projectile at a given rate after a given delay and consuming either energy or ammo (or both). That's the weapon specs. Then for a given type of projectile its specs are size, speed, life span, damage class and damage value and AOE damage value (that's the projectile specs). The combo of these both specs define the particle weapon.

So all weapons have a limited range with is defined by the speed and the life span of the projectile they fired (+ the relative speed of the firing ship).

Damage can be negative, this will repair the target hull. (our famous "nanite gun" is a weapon that fire projectiles that have a negative damage value).

We emulate 'lasers' with very high speed projectile.

@Heyoka, the speed doesn't affect the damage so it's not kinetic energy.

[kramari]

I did once mess around with FRED and FRED2, mostly basic stuff though. I might be interested in seeing how this goes maybe even contributing something.

Also I loved the Blue Planet campaign, haven't seen how it is now (played it 3 years ago)

[madpeople]

Also particle weapons projectiles inherit your ship's momentum, energy weapon projectiles don't.

QUOTE (MatthTheGeek @ Aug 3 2011, 08:57 PM) Should be doable. When the player reaches 1% health, guardian it (make it invulnerable) and change ship class to escape pod. When he's near the station, change it back to fighter class or whatever you want. It should just take a few lines of sexps in FRED.

I don't think you know the full purpose of pods, to understand them better you need to know about kill bonus.

In allegiance there is a "Kill Bonus" (KB). every time you kill someone your KB increase. Your KB is a damage multiplier - if I have a KB of 10 I do 10% more damage with all my weapons (maximum KB is 50, not that anyone ever reaches that).

When your ship in allegiance gets destroyed you eject in a life pod (you know this), but you keep your KB and you have 5 minutes to get back to base or get rescued by a friendly craft otherwise you die (pod gets destroyed, you appear back in base), if your pod gets destroyed then your KB gets re-set to 0 (this is important!).

What this means as a game mechanic:

KB is somewhat like a bounty on your head.

People tend to let low KB lifepods float home (i.e. keep them out of the game - if they kill the pod then the enemy player is immediately back in a position to attack you).
People tend to kill high KB pods because those players can do more damage so are a bigger threat (high KB players might be able to over power defenders where as if they had a lower KB they might not).

If I have a low KB and I am podded I will try to suicide if there is nobody around to rescue me, and only ever float home if there is no way for me to kill my self (typical suicide methods include crashing into an enemy ship, flying through a mine field, flying close to enemy noobs [noobs who don't know better like to shoot pods because it's the only thing they can kill easily] parking in front of the exit of an enemy base to be hit by the next ship that launches [if you believe a ship is about to launch any time soon]).
If I have a high KB I try to evade the enemy as they will try to kill me to take away my damage bonus - I am likely to float home if I have a 48KB for example.

But then there are exceptions.

If we are attacking (say a bomb run) we may leave high KB pods to float because if we kill them they will re-spawn immediately to defend.
Likewise if I have a high KB and am podded but we need to defend RIGHT NOW then I will try to suicide if there is nobody around to rescue me because KB is less important than a base (well, most bases anyway a refinery in an empty sector maybe not).

Typically it's the best players who get high KBs, and killing them isn't a huge setback to those players - they will get a high KB back quite quickly. This leads some people given the opportunity to follow high KB enemy pods and kill them just before they are rescued or reach their base - to keep them out of the game as long as possible and re-set their KB (though typically you have other things to do which are more important, if you're good you might multi task - if you podded the high KB player while they were defending a miner then the miner is likely heading back to the nearest base which is also the destination of the podded player and where enemy's will be coming from, you could keep attacking the miner on the way to that base, but then switch your attention to the pod briefly as an enemy defender/rescuer approaches).

Basically when the player's ship has 0hp you want to replace the player's ship with the eject pod ship at 100%hp. If the player doesn't make it back to base or a friendly craft within 5 minutes or if the eject pod ship gets killed then re-set the Kb and put the player back in base.

Also, different faction (we call races factions) pods have different abilities http://www.freeallegiance.org/FAW/index.php/Pod

[KGJV]

QUOTE (madpeople @ Aug 4 2011, 03:55 PM) Also particle weapons projectiles inherit your ship's momentum, energy weapon projectiles don't.

<KB wall of text>

it's not directly related, it's just a parameter of the projectile ('absolute speed' flag)

KB in its current design is a very controversial feature of Allegiance and it deserves its own thread to discuss (expect mega drama there).

[SpaceJunk]

QUOTE (KGJV @ Aug 4 2011, 08:48 AM) In Allegiance this can happen when 'docked' but in FS port it could be something else like when 'near a station' or 'near some kind of special ship'.

Stations and carriers could provide cloak within a very short distance. It would prevent the magic reshipping from being an eyesore. Visually it would look like the ship faded into the invisible station shield.

Reloads and reshipping must have a timer to avoid spam/infinite hull/etc.