Regarding weapons on ships

[Nereth]

So im up to the stage where i put weapons onto my ships, and i have a few questions

First, how many groups of weapons can you put on a starship? Will the fire control computer jsut stretch out to accomodate more buttons? or is four the max?

Second, how do i make a set of weapons run off the same button

third, ive put 4 lasers onto my ship by with the following lines:

weapon: {
type: "XRay Laser",
design: "Beam Weapon",
name: "Port laser battery",
abrv: "Port lasers",
muzzle: (-89, -17, 135),
muzzle: (-89, -37, 135),
muzzle: (-77, -17, 135) ,
muzzle: (-77, -37, 135),
size: 32,
hull_factor: 0.2,
explosion: 7
}

I want to have 4 seperate lasers that fire at once, do i actually just have one laser with 4 places where it can shoot from? Because it doesnt seem to fire the 4 at once. Just one or two.

[CavemanX]

Apparently, there can be only four weapon groups/buttons.

For your lasers, I can't check right now if multiple muzzles are supported. But you can define multiple weapons with the same group attribute, which is also the firing button label. Make sure your ship has enough power to fire the weapons, too!

Code: Select all

 weapon:     {
    type:             "Phalanx Cannon",
    design:           "Bolt Weapon",
    name:             "Fwd Cannon",
    abrv:             "Phalanx",
    group:            "FWD PDB",
 
    loc:              ( 88,36, -22),
 
    size:             24,
    hull_factor:      0.3
 }
 weapon:     {
    type:             "Phalanx Cannon",
    design:           "Bolt Weapon",
    name:             "Fwd Cannon",
    abrv:             "Phalanx",
    group:            "FWD PDB",
 
    loc:              (-88,36, -22),
 
    size:             24,
    hull_factor:      0.3
 }

[Nereth]

awesome. Works like a charm.
looking at this site, it doesnt seem that athena and nike missiles are valid weapons? is that an error in the site, or is it legit? they always did seem similar to fusion torpedoes...'

also, where can i learn about making weapon .defs, seeing as i can see myself doing that very soon.

[Dragonlead]

Lack of power is why all 4 beams don't fire at once. Check the Starshatter website (starshatter.com) and look in the MOD SDK. It gives a good basic overview to start making custom weapons. The older, wiser heads around here can help with the hiccups. The Athena and Nike missiles are valid weapons. The one big difference (aside from a slight speed change) is that the Athena comes in port and starboard flavors, whereas the Nike is a straight ahead shooter. (The eject parameter is different.)

V/R

[Nereth]

ive now got it running 8 seperate weapon scripts for the lasers, and it coul dfire them all at once, but it wouldnt when they were all under the same script.

The ship has 2e6 on the power scale (which is probably far too much, but its good for testing while im making the weapons systems) so thats probably not a problem.

But with 8 seperate ones it works

[smaff]

Bit late I know, but if you've got multiple muzzle lines, they will usually fire in sequence. If you don't want this, I seem to recall the term:
 
syncro: true
 
I *think* (I should test this) that the "refire_delay" parameter is applied per muzzle, but it sounds like sequentially firing weapons always fire the 1st muzzle if its availiable, only moving on to the next if that one is on its delay, working like:
 
Fire button pressed & held: -> muzzle-1 is available, muzzle-1 fires.
(Still holding). Muzzle-1 fired, Goes to refire_delay, Muzzle-2 is availiable, muzzle-2 fires.
(still holding). Muzzle-2 fired, Goes to refire_delay, Muzzle-1's refire_delay is up, so its availiable...
Muzzles-3 & 4 enjoy the scenery.