Basic Modding Questions

posted on May 14th, 2010, 10:10 pm

nope, that should do.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 12:39 am

I'm building some ODF's that will use the same models.  What line do I put in the ODF's to point to a specific SOD?

And a few more questions.

1 - One of my weapons will generate a temporal inversion field that destroys EVERYTHING that comes in contact with it.  Is it possible to destroy map objects like planets, moons, nebulae, etc?

2 - If my super-weapon is destroyed before the detonator goes off, I want there to be an antimatter containment breach that destroys any ship or station near it.  How would I do that or get an effect that simulates that?

3 - I found some variables that seem to be relevant to how much protection a ships armor provides to the crew and the systems.  I found it in the "craft.odf" file and there are 7 variables defining the probabilities of certain systems being hit if something breaches the shields.  They all add up to 100.  Do those variables define the armor strength?  And can they make certain items invulnerable to system-specific weapons like the auto-assimilator beam or the engine-overload weapon?

posted on June 13th, 2010, 12:53 am

you can use the basename = "some_sod" line 

1, I'm not sure, but I don't think so.

2, you could use a wave based weapon, or just an explosion that does damage.

3, that would be found in the weapons ordinance file.  the weapono.odf.  there shgould be a list of names and numbers after them,  if you put your object there, and put a 0 instead of whatever other numbers are there, it would be dealt 0 damage by that weapon.

Hope that helps

posted on June 13th, 2010, 1:08 am

Thanks for that line of code.

1 - Having the map objects be destroyed would be realistic.

2 - What about a "latinum_spray_emitter" weapon that explodes even though the ship cannot carry latinum?

3 - I was talking about these lines in the "craft.odf" file.

Code: Select all

enginesHitPercent = #f
lifeSupportHitPercent = #f
weaponsHitPercent = #f
shieldGeneratorHitPercent = #f
sensorsHitPercent = #f
crewHitPercent = #f
hullHitPercent = #f

posted on June 13th, 2010, 1:21 am

1 - Yeah, I agree, but I don't think its possible.  Boggz, TUN, or maybe phoenix could tell you better,  but since they arn't ships, are invalidastarget and have no hitpoints, then I would say its impossible to blow them up.  But they might know better.

2 - hmm, I"m not sure what you mean.  you could use a trigger weapon, and just make it so you can destroy the trigger I guess.  You would have to explain the weapon more.

3 - I believe thats the universal percentage for which a subsystem is targeted, but each ship overwrites those with their own lines with different percents.  If you want an invincible ship, I would just suggest you give it 9999999999999999 shields, or ones that instantly repair themselfs.  If you want something else, then you could just add the ship to the weapons damagevariance as 0

If you want a system to be invulnerable, then you look at the ship odf, and find the system_repairtime* and  make its time very small.

*e.g. weaponsrepairtime = 1.0 would take forever for that system to repair but weaponsrepairtime = 0.00001 would make it seem like they were never damaged, or just repair instantly. 

I hope that helps

posted on June 13th, 2010, 1:30 pm

1 - I believe I could change that with a little ODF editing.

2 - The mining freighter will be a dangerous weapon if filled with latinum.  If I copy the file that controls how much latinum is sprayed and rename it, I might be able to create an antimatter explosion.

3 - What if I just put "hitPercentChance = 0f" for a particular system making it so that weapons cannot get to that system?

A few more questions.
4 - I want to make copies of certain special weapons that have a different amount of power depending on the ship firing it.  But I don't want to keep having to put in weapon buttons for each new instance of the weapon.  Is that possible?

5 - I'm wanting to add the Maqee to my mod pack.  How would I get them to be able to raid enemy basis for resources and try to take over enemy ships?  Nevermind the enemy ships part.  I think I have that figured out.

6 - I'm going to make it so that Species 8472 weapons ignore the shields just like they do in Star-Trek.  And is there a way in the ship ODF to reduce the amount of damage caused by a weapon like "weaponDampener = 0.4" (40 percent of normal damage)?  This is to make Species 8472 more imposing and one bioship capable of destroying an armada of cubes.  I don't want to use the weapon ODF because I'd have to configure EVERY one of the standard and special weapons to every ship.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 1:56 pm

If you make your map objects as NPCs you could do it (at least for asteroids and similar things)

posted on June 13th, 2010, 3:42 pm

Define "NPC"

I can't seem to get a weapon to fire at multiple targets at once.  I put the "maxTargets" line in the weapon file, but it only fires at one target at a time.  What else do I need?

posted on June 13th, 2010, 8:03 pm

NPC, would be like ferengi. if you gave all the map objects the characteristics of a ship, and added it to the npc race, it might work, but then ships could just blow them up too.

Is the weapon a cannonimp weapon?  And I believe it needs the line basetargets = XX instead.  I don't remember what maxTargets is for.

3 - you could  do that, but I remember it not working.  it would be easier to just make the system repair instantly, but whatever works for you.

4 - hmm, I don't think so.  You could try the old  #include "something.odf"  line at the top of the new weapon, but I don't know if it works on weapons, and I've never tried it so I have no idea what it might do.   Personally, I would just copy and paste the line in the sprite file, and just have all the weapons use the same button.  Its not that hard for me, but that could just be me.

5 - well, you could just add them as an NPC, but I don't know about them taking over ships.  maybe give them an assult weapon and see if they use it?   I don't work with AI much so I really don't know.  I could tell you how to get them to spawn on a map though.

6 - ok, the first part is easy. there is a line for that.  just put ignoreshield = 1 in the weapon ordinance file.  the other part I"m not sure of.  as far as I know it works the opposite way.  you make a weapon effect a ship less, not make the ship be effected by the weapon less.  I don't think there is a way to do that except you could just give it cool invisible shields or something.  just have them not have much strength,  but repair really fast.  it would be able to take a hit from a single torpedo, but a series of torps hit the hull after the first. 

You might find a special passive weapon that could do that though.  I would look in the tooltip refrences for the pasive weapons and see if any of them do that.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 9:36 pm

Number 3 didn't work.

Nevermind about number 4.

5 - I want the Maqee to be playable.

6 - There has to be a way to dampen the weapons.  I do not want to have to modify about 100 weapon files in order to get the results I want.  Unless I just put the #include file in the weapon files.  That way, the weapons are guarenteed to do what I want.

It seems that the developers just did a copy->paste of the weapons for the Federation and that's what was causing my problems.  It seems to be limited to the Federation only.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 9:38 pm

If 'Maqee' refers to the terrorists from DS9 and Voyager, they were all slaughtered by the Dominion except for the Voyager ones. They're not likely to be coming back.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 9:43 pm

actually sisko rescued a small number in his runabout, when eddington got eated by jemhadar.

he probably put them straight into prison though lol. so i doubt they have any ships.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 9:47 pm

so how do you want them in?  you want them to be AI controlled, but playable.  I don't quite understand.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 9:50 pm

the majority of the maquis ships are already in game, the avalon launches them, they then die.

posted on June 13th, 2010, 10:01 pm

  Shhh!, I haven't finished the series yet

I think hes using this'un anyway