Torpedoes from the side

1, 2

posted on August 29th, 2013, 11:33 pm

I was trying to implement sth new in the Magellan Class starship I'm currently working on. Torpedoes that shoot from the side of the ship and fly towards the target at the front. Here is a image to clarify what I'm trying to do.

: Magellan Torpedoes; test.png (32.79 KiB) Viewed 1424 times

The question is: How?
So far I tried rotating the hardpoints in 3dsmax that are used by the torp launchers to face right/left, but that didn't work. Next I tried to use the seektime and omegaturn cmds in the torpedo odf but that didn't work either.
I really could use some help :rolleyes:

cabal

674 posts

posted on August 30th, 2013, 12:09 am

You may have to use a launcher weapon instead of a cannonimp weapon. If I remember correctly, cannon and cannonimp send the ordinance straight to the target while launcher sends it out in the direction of the hardpoint before letting the torpedo fly to its target. You can't use the fancy burst fire stuff but it should work for what you're trying to do.

Dominus_Noctis

Dev Team

11934 posts

posted on August 30th, 2013, 12:47 am

Rotating hardpoints is the only method. The Weapon class absolutely does not determine the direction that the ordnance is fired.

Make sure that your hardpoints were actually rotated - the modeling programs used to rotate often say it's rotated, when in fact nothing has been changed

Mr. Vulcan

95 posts

posted on August 30th, 2013, 1:06 pm

Make sure that you are pointing the y-axis of the hardpoint in the direction that you want, not the x or z axes as would be more intuitive

Having the axis tripod option turned on in the helper object helps with rotating things properly.

posted on August 30th, 2013, 3:17 pm

I think i got it working now. cabal was right, I have to use the "launcher" classlabel to get the torpedoes use my sideways facing hardpoints. If I use "cannonimp" they will just fly straight towards the target ignoring any facing. The only problem thats left is the shotdelay. The torpedoes now ignore any shotdelay.

cabal

674 posts

posted on August 30th, 2013, 3:40 pm

You have to use shotdelay instead of shotdelayX and you can't use multiple lines for burst fire.

Rotating hardpoints is the only method. The Weapon class absolutely does not determine the direction that the ordnance is fired.

Restricting the fire arc with a rotated hardpoint will make sure that the weapon only shoots at targets within the arc, but there is some different behavior with different weapon types. Cannon will draw a ray and fire along that while launcher shoots the ordinance in the direction of the hardpoint and then, after a short delay, the ordinance starts to seek its target.

It's noticeable in A1 where the torpedo turrets had a launcher weapon that fired straight up before the torps started going after the target. So the flight path looked like an inverted L.

Dominus_Noctis

Dev Team

11934 posts

posted on August 31st, 2013, 2:43 am

Interesting that I cannot replicate that - whenever I rotate the hardpoints, the torpedoes fire in the direction the hardpoint is facing regardless of the Weapon class. I checked with The Undying Nephalim as well and his side-launchers in Sigma also use Cannonimp and according to him they fire only as broadsides.

posted on August 31st, 2013, 3:10 pm

Did he use a resticted firing arc for his broadsiding weapons? I can't use a restricted firing arc because I want the torpedoes to shoot from the side when a target is in front of the ship.

Dominus_Noctis

Dev Team

11934 posts

posted on August 31st, 2013, 4:10 pm

Ah! I see what you guys mean now, my apologies - yea, Launcher does obey that indeed, while Cannon etc do not. Quite interesting :thumbsup:

Adm. Zaxxon

5556 posts

posted on September 1st, 2013, 6:37 am

A trick I used a looong time ago(albeit unintentionally) is to turn up the seekTime in the torpedo's ordinance. the torpedos kinda circle around the target before hitting them.

Here are the torpedos I used if it helps, though I am not sure how much modifying you will need to do to get them working as they are from a much older version of FO.