TobiWahn,

Some of the beam weapon effects of the Rebellion Vasari titans would be perfect for the EA_OMEGA and some other beam users. Not sure what they did but it looks sweet on screen.

Sorry for my absence guys.

I have had to watch the European Football (Soccer) Championship today (and the semifinals) and have to work on a database solution (another one, for a friend) as of now, so that explains my lack of updates.

I have not forgotten you though. As for abilities, they are not set in stone, but for 0.43 we have some things nailed down (thanks davroth).

Abilities should mostly (some can't, but that live) be usable by the AI, so they must not be too complicated. Your suggestion sounds interesting and if you can make it work in a way that the AI can use it we will find a ship to put it on.

TobiWahn, Darvroth,

What are your thoughts on the siege weapons of EA ships?

For the EA Omega (and probably the Nova d'naught too) the two large oval structures under the hangar bay are were intended to launch heavy mines/missiles, see B5Scrolls - I like the idea that the forward plasma/X-ray laser turrets were meant as a 'distraction'

Maybe give the Omega/Nova d'naught ship-to-surface missiles for planetary bombardment as the (current) multiple beams from one point doesn't look B5-like IMHO.

NewHorizons,

Two issues, 1) game mechanics via the entity files, 2) particle effects to make the pretty visuals. Number 1 is relatively easy provided the model hard points don't need to be tweeked. Number 2 is time consuming and requires a talent set that for now is found only in TobiWahn. There have been other modellers and particle effect particpants over the years but for various reasons each has moved on which leaves us very thin on talent, and right now TobiWahn as mod leader is needed to incorporate the new content, QA, and model when he can... If you happen to have the talent or can recruit it, every change that is more B5 faithful that the engine can support is most welcome.

Darvroth

It is not difficult to use the Sins default missile effects. Hardpoints are not where they should be according to your wishes though and would need to be tweaked. Thats another thing entirely (it would be easy had I not adjusted some ships in size after export to mesh)

I don't take B5Scrolls as canon though U like the idea, so just file it up on BitBucket and it will eventually get done.

As Davroth said, as of now I am the modding team (with Davroth as Coder and oranisatory assistant as well as co-modertator of this forum, Bug Tester, and much else). So every Content that needs to be added (besides abilities, thanks again Davroth) has to be made by myself. That's a huge amount of work, and I have other work to do as well. So things will take some time.

You are right, and yes, a bombEffectCount of 1 should look better

Woot! Progress.

I locally changed CapitalShip_EA_HYPERION.entity to set bombEffectCount to 1 and indeed it does look more B5 like.

Searching through the other entity files shows that CapitalShip_EA_MARATHON.entity, CapitalShip_EA_VICTORY.entity and many of the Minbari war cruisers have multiple beam based siege weapons.

The Marathon does look odd, but not the others which may due to a shorter beam duration, bombTransitTime of 18 vs 2.

I suspect that if bombTransitTime * bombEffectCount > bombingFreqTime then you'll get multiple breams.

At some point I'll play a game as the Narns as some of their cap ships might have similar oddities.

G'Quan, Bin'Tak & G'Vrahn all have multiple bombardment beams - G'Vrahn in particular can have upto 3 beams from one weapon point.

Same probably also applies to the Ka'Bin'Tak - although I've not actually built one yet.

As all these ships appear to have 2 siege weapon points then bombEffectCount should probably be set accordingly.

Also, the large value of bombEffectAngleVariance (15) can cause the beams to fire in quite different directions - port & starboard beams can cross over.

Maybe reduce this figure so that it looks like Narn gunners can aim straight.

 Edit: bombEffectCount of 2 and bombEffectAngleVariance of 5 looks pretty good.

Cheers Darvroth.

I can confirm that the Ka'Bin'Tak is also affected by multiple beams from a weapon hard point.

Edit: Would it be worth using the Bin'Tak's mesh/texture for the Ka'BinTak? It's currently using G'Quan's mesh/texture.

TobiWahn, Tried poking around the mod editor this weekend and couldn't get it to do anything. Tried importing data, making new files, several buttons remained stubbornly greyed out.

Was poking around ZombieRus5 soaseplugin mod zone and came across the buffInstantActionType DoDamageToPlanet but could find no examples in the SoaSE files... I'm still tinkering with trying to get fighters to be able to damage planets and looks like a good approach. With no examples I wonder if it is one the designers abandoned... Thoughts?

Looks like it's also used by Marza and the Vasari Jarrasul, the latter over time instead of instant:

TobiWahn,

A frigate can be given a negative ExperiencePointsForDestroying value without minidumping for building or destroying. It is not elegant but I propose that the Thenta Makur ability as discussed on page 125 can be achieved by a capital ship producing a unique ship meant to be destroyed quickly with a negative XP value that will decrement the XP of the destroying factions capital ships in that fleet. At first I thought fighters were less likely to be noticed but not sure I can achieve without screwing up other abilities. If the model for the frigate was that of a fighter it would achieve the same visual trick and likely be unnoticed. I've not yet finished the ability and buff entity files yet, but it should. I'll send once I've tested.

I don't yet know what will happen if a capital ship is induced to have a negative XP by use of this ability... lots of testing to come. I'll let all know.

Darvroth