These questions regard the weapon settings in the .entity files.
What WeaponType are there?
What AttackType are there?
What DamageType are there?
What WeaponClassType are there?
How do the DamagePerBank settings work?
What is SynchronizedTargeting?
What is PointStaggerDelay?
How do all of these settings relate to what needs to be done in XSI to ensure that the proper weapon meshpoints/Nulls fire the correct weapons?How do I differentiate weapon banks in XSI?
Beam, Projectile, and Missile.
AttackType is the, well, type of attack the weapon has. This is the field that's compared to the armor type to determine damage bonuses/penalties. For a full table, look at gameplay.constants which lists the damage multipliers of each AttackType against each armor type.
So CAPITALSHIP, ANTILIGHT, ANTIVERYLIGHT, etc.
Pysical and Energy. There's no difference between the two, other than the Advent carrier's aura that gives a bonus to Energy weapons only.
This is the actual weapon that you see on infocards and that's tied to research. Autocannon, Plasma, Wave, so on.
There are 4 possible banks on a ship. Front, Left, Right, Back. A single weapon can be located on any or all of them (the firing points for this are set on the actual model). So the setting is how much damage the weapon does *per shot* from each bank. For example the Kol's Autocannons are located on all 4 banks so it does 27 damage per shot from front and back, and 49.5 damage per shot from the sides.
Whether or not all firing points fire at the same time. For example, all 4 of Kol's front beams fire at the same time, because SynchronizedTargeting is set to TRUE.
The delay between the weapon firing from each firing point. The higher the number, the longer the pause. So, again for the Kol, if you increase the stagger delay for its beams it will take longer for the next firing point to fire the weapon after the first.
This is *not* the weapon cooldown setting, and is purely cosmetic.
The only thing that's related to the actual model is DamagePerBank. You need to have the firing points on the bank for the weapon to shoot from it. Which is why most frigates only have a value for the FRONT bank, since they don't have weapon hardpoints on the others.
This should be in the XSI tutorial in the mod pack, else someone else will have to answer this one since I don't model.
EDIT: Annatar11 beat me to it! He's good, real good at that.
WeaponType- this refers to a generic setting; there are three different settings- Projectile (Plasma, Autocannon, Laser, Wave, Pulse Gun), Missile (Missile, Phase Missile), and Beam (Beam, Pulse Beam).
Attack Type refers to the attack type of a weapon; this determines its % bonus against different armor types.
Damage Type refers to how damage is applied in reference to the particle effects. BACKLOADED means that when the last weapon effect hits the target, damage is applied. OVERTIME works, well over the duration of the effects. OVERTIME will work with projectile weapons (like the aforementioned list and Missile weapons). In vanilla, it is only used on Beam weapons (Beam, Pulse Beam).
WeaponClassType refers to the weapon class. These are some: FLASHBEAM (Pulse Beam), AUTOCANNON (Autocannon).
DamagePerBank refers to the amount of damage in a particular direction.
Synchronized Targeting. Hmm. I'm not really sure what this one does, though my guess is that a particular weapon type uses a synchronized targeting scheme (basically FFs that weapon type).
PointStaggerDelay I believe refers to the particle effects. I'm not sure though, as it could also refer to the damage point staggering.
As for XSI-relation, this is what is needed- A ship can only have three weapon types on it. Weapon-0, Weapon-1, and Weapon-2 (for XSI). Abilities (in Entrenchment) can go up to five, four active&1 passive (Ability-0 thru -4). You can have a maximum of 60 weapon hardpoints, and 10 of any other. However, the 60 weapon points are shared between three types (the equality of it is dependent on the model), while ability hardpoints can actually be as many as 40, with 10 for each ability (50 in Entrenchment).
You do not differentiate banks in XSI. It is unneeded. In all reality, I gather that you pulled these lines out of a ship entity file. None of the entity file settings actually relate to the mesh except for the lines that delineate the shieldmesh name and the mesh info. Weapon delineation is done by naming the hardpoints 'Weapon-0' for your 1st weapon, 'Weapon-1' for the 2nd, and 'Weapon-2' for the 3rd.
Thank you very much for so many answers! = +Karma!
Is there a list somewhere with ALL of the WeaponClassType options? Is there a way to add them (to add a "Hybrid" type that deals part energy and part pysical damage, or at least the name for the InfoCard, even if I cannot have to deal split damage)?
For whoever can answer the XSI question, I know how to add weapon meshpoints in XSI, but I'm not sure how those points are selected for dealing damage from different banks. E.g. Do I need to add something to the name?
I haven't seen a lit of the WeaponClassTypes, however there's a very finite amount. Look through all the capital ships of each race, and you should get most of them
There's no way to make a new one, but again as far as the game is concerned there is no difference in mechanics between Physical and Energy damage. The only thing that actually looks at it is the one ability setting that can modify the cooldown of Energy weapons. But that's it.
here's the weapon class types, by their entity designation name and strings designation-
AUTOCANNON- Autocannon
MISSILE- Missile
LASERTECH- Laser
BEAM- Beam
LASERPSI- Laser
PLASMA- Plasma
WAVE- Wave
PULSEGUN- Pulse Gun
FLASHBEAM- Pulse Beam
PHASEMISSILE- Phase Missile
And now for the special ones, that are UNUSED-
DART- Kinetic Bolt (I made a mod that used the three unused types; the syntax was changed to DART=Railgun, PLANETBOMBARDMENT=Fusion Blaster, and ION=Ion Cannon
PLANETBOMBARDMENT- Planet Bombardment
ION- Ion
SynchronizedTargeting does not effect when the weapon points fire relative to each other - that would be a PointStaggerDelay of 0. Rather, it causes all weapon effects to converge to the same point on the target rather than hitting different areas on the ship.
Also at least BurstCount does change average DPS of the weapon, if not PointStaggerDelay.
I stand corrected on SynchronizedTargeting. But no, BurstCount does not change weapon damage at all. The damage of the weapon is not tied to its particle effect, and BurstCount only modifies how many particle effects are displayed when the weapon fires.
can you tell me more about these? anything really whats the diff is there a diff effect? do you still have the mod?
I haven't checked the other two, but Dart is used as the Advent bombardment projectiles. Their bombardment damage research bonus increases that.
well, actually, planet-bombing damage is just given as 'bombing damage' under infocards.
The only thing weapon classes are used for to my knowledge is to delineate different weapon researches, and also add some variety, as well as different strings values.
The ION weapon type I haven't a clue as to what it may have been the basis of. PLANETBOMBARDMENT may have been the basis of TEC bombing gear, and DART may have been the basis of Advent bombing gear.
While I do still have the mod, I was adding stuff to it that caused issues to stability, so I zipped it up to a different directory on my computer to fix it back to normal.
As for uploading it, NO. The mod was mostly just testing out a lot of stuff. I am working on a mod, but you won't likely see it for a while. At least not until after the beta release of Halo: Sins of the Prophets.
The Weapon Class Type names are defined in the Strings file. Just use the search function in WordPad to find the 'ION' line. Make sure that you check 'Whole Word Only' and 'Case Sensitive'.
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