To the I-War community - Helpers needed!

Thanks for the warning, but I knew before that NPC ships don't use beams. I'm still unaware of most of the more in-depth statistics like the working of armor, so I'm gonna focus on releasing a basic rebalancing patch for now, nothing complex like the newly announced manual capsule space travel. Perhaps REAL will one day evolve into Torn Stars lite, perhaps not.

Edit: I see your point. Alright then. I must admit I'm still uncertain on a few things:
-armor mechanics
-limits of LDA capabilities: how much can they stop when activating successfully? Also, if I give an LDA 360 degree coverage, will the engines still be exposed as they should be?
-possibility to include time compression (This is a low priority right now, but until there's some kind of time acceleration mechanic, LDS drives will stay at their 300 times exaggerated speed. Kinda funny to see the devs even left a note in the LDS drive INI files.)
-effects of the values "minimum_efficiency" and "launch_speed"
-how exactly brightness affects detectability, and what min_brightness does.
Additionally, I am still open to suggestions regarding what to do with LDSi missiles. One question I just can't answer is "Why use anything above the short-range ones?" The enhanced range abilities seem pointless considering that sensors can't pick up anything, LDSi-shorts are capable of catching runners just fine, and their larger quantity makes them preferable to anything else.
-how and whether the antimatter power pack and secondary ring work, and whether the antimatter power pack eventually depletes itself and/or is consumed from the inventory.

In between life and death, there is only one dream to care for.

I will try to answer what I can. My memory is getting a little fuzzy on some of these things. Do you have the 'sim and subsim creation' document? It contains an entry on most of the terms found and used in any of the ini files for ships.

Here is the entry on 'penetration', which sums up pretty much how armor, penetration and damage work

Penetration
How easily the bolt defeats armour. The penetration is compared with the ships armour. If the penetration is higher the damage gets through. If the armour is higher the bolts Penetration is doubled, its damage is halved and it’s compared again. This continues until the penetration is high enough to beat the armour.

I am not certain, but I believe a shield blocks a shot fully, if it blocks it. The play between the shields and the bolts is more about the bolts getting through to actually do damage. I never tested a 360 degree LDA, but I assume it should work (testing required!). In that case engines would be blocked. There is nothing special about the engines that I have seen.

Time Compression would require some POG coding. That is not my area, but if you can code, it would be worth a try. In Torn Stars we have adjusted the LDS speeds slightly, in order to balance out missiles lacking LDS drives. The rampup time was increased alot, and acceleration was decreased considerably, so an LDS missile has a chance of hitting a target before it gets too far away. This also serves to make the systems feel larger, as it now takes a minute to cross one, rather than mere seconds.

minimum_efficiency - If the systems hit points drop below this factor of their starting points the system goes offline.

launch_speed - The speed that the missile is shot from the launcher, in metres per second.

Here is the entry on brightness from the 'sims and subsims creation' document:

The brightness properties are used in the calculation of sensor visibility.

The actual brightness value is calculated by scaling from the min_brightness value when stationary right up to the full brightness value at maximum linear speed.

This value is then used with in combination with the range from the ship to the detecting sensor, and the sensors ability to detect ships to work out if the ship appears on the contact list or not.

Regarding LDS missiles, I explained my approach earlier, but it remains to be seen how that play out with players. It does mean longer trips between stations. And you really have to be quick on the the trigger to catch ship trying to escape. However, in my playtesting it worked, and it was fun.


As for you question on the antimatter powerpack and the secondary ring...I don't know much about them. Never actually used them or tested them.

If you don't have the 'sim and subsims creation' document, you can get it on this site, or I could post it for you on torn-stars.com
I have a feeling you don't have it, and it is a critical document for any kind of systems/weapons modifications.

Thanks for the info, I'll keep it in mind. I've decided to change the LDS drives slightly: They'll still be exaggerated, but at 100 times encyclopedia-listed speed down from 300 times to make systems feel bigger, and the rampup time is doubled while acceleration is halved. Of course, the AI will also play with those rules, so running away will be harder.

A detailed sim/subsim guide would definitely be appreciated. I can't seem to find it right now.

I don't know much about POG scripting yet. It looks a bit like C++ though, so I should be able to learn it easily enough. I'll give it a try after the basic stuff is done.

Additionally, I'm looking for a way to show exactly how much ordnance is left, to make the ammunition display less confusing and more newbie-friendly. Figure that if one can make engines that go at nearly the speed of light, one should be able to keep track of how many missiles remain. The new ammo display should look like this:

Seeker Missiles: 2 (60)

By the way, is there a hotkey to switch active sensors on/off?
In between life and death, there is only one dream to care for.

Here is a link to the document.

www.torn-stars.com/index.php?opt ... topic=43.0

Apparently POG is like C, but I wouldn't really know. Just what I have heard from Poggers.

As for the switching of active sensors...I assume there might be..check in the config file see if there is anything that matches. Torn Stars has its own config and keybinding, so I am fairly out of touch with the vanilla eoc keybinds.

We are tracking missiles in US I believe..but Grandpatrout and I built a whole new loadout to handle that. That was a MAJOR task. Took about a year. Still, there must be a simple way to do it with the standard loadout. Once again I think it will take some coding. Not my area of expertise.

Alright, I'm making good progress, if everything goes well, I can make the first release today.

I'm still looking for a host and publisher, though, and I'm sure how fast the i-war2.com administration will upload the mod.

And I couldn't help but notice that several files in the I-War resources were read-only. Is there an advantage or reason to do so with my own mod?


In between life and death, there is only one dream to care for.

I don't know of any benefit offhand to having anything read-only. I keep my whole unzipped resource file read only, just so I won't overwrite anything.

Soupdragon checks in here frequently, so I am sure he will notice soon enough.

You could also try the mod database .. moddb.com

I have a page for Torn Stars there, and even update news etc. there.