An idea for Imperial weapons

I've spent considerable time experimenting with the Tie Fighters turbolasers to try and get good timing, feel, etc. But I noticed something the other day when going over the movies again; the Tie Fighters seem to have two different modes of fire. The first mode is a single shot per trigger pull with a long (relatively) delay between shots. And the second mode is a rapid-fire machine gun style.

I was thinking, since MajorTom said it would be nice if the Tie Fighters had more than one weapon, maybe this could be the answer. Not two weapons, per se, but two modes for the same weapon (although obviously, file-wise, it would be two weapons, but the player doesn't need to know that). You could let the single-shot mode have a very wide firing arc and no jitter to the shot, making it more accurate for distance shooting. And the multi-fire mode could have a very narrow firing arc, with jitter added, to make it harder to land all those bolts when up close.

The bolts would look exactly the same and have the same specs, because it should be the same gun. But it would give the player a feeling of increased flexibility for different situations. And nobody could complain that the Tie Fighter is supposed to have only one type of gun, because it would.

This is something we might even apply to select other ships as well.

What do you think?

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If you jump to an external view in the standard EoC game, the fire pattern for the Quad Light is very similar to the rapid-fire Tie Fighter shots seen in the movies. Perhaps slow down the rate of fire a tiny bit and then increase the power required for each shot by a fraction (IIRC, the 'bursts' in the movies are rather more short-lived than the EoC Quad Light).

no problem: thats basically what we already have

It's two separate weapon .ini files. We'll just rename them so you select either the "Single Mode Laser" or the "Rapid Mode Laser".
They already have different ranges and refire rates. We just need to tweak them. The bolts need work though. They should be different (shorter for the rapid fire?) but the same color.

Shane is right about the quad. One of the guns currently on the Tie is a Quad deriviate. You can tell by the setup scene used in the tie_ftr_quad_swm.ini



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I disagree. The quad light fire pattern doesn't look any more like the Tie guns than any other random group of bolts. The quad light bolt setup is intended to represent a gun that fires several bolts at the same time, not a rapid-fire spread.

Also, why should the bolts be any different for either mode? I don't see any reason for it. They're exactly the same for each "mode" in the movies, why should we change it? The same goes for firepower. With a very narrow fire arc and jitter added to the rapid fire mode, that mode would be very hard to use at long range (but still possible), since most of the shots would miss. The idea here is not to create two different weapons, but to give the player a feeling of flexibility and control over how he chooses to use the weapon he does have.

As for the bolt graphic, I have a very nice texture I made with colors sampled directly from the movie.

edit: I just want to mention that I don't think that any stock EoC weapons or graphics are appropriate for this mod. The should all be custom made, especially since it is so easy to make them.

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Whatever.

Originally posted by Second Chance

I disagree. The quad light fire pattern doesn't look any more like the Tie guns than any other random group of bolts. The quad light bolt setup is intended to represent a gun that fires several bolts at the same time, not a rapid-fire spread.

Your whole concept is based on an idea that you can manipulate jitter on any gun specifically. Jitter is a static value in Flux. Once the game is started, jitter is the same for all guns. The only guns where you can turn jitter on or off are the slug throwers (icSlugThrower). You can't use them as a Laser because they require Ammo. So you won't be able to have a rapid fire spread.

BTW: you don't have to let a Quad deriviate fire several bolts at the same time if you don't want it to.

Also, why should the bolts be any different for either mode? I don't see any reason for it. They're exactly the same for each "mode" in the movies, why should we change it? The same goes for firepower. With a very narrow fire arc and jitter added to the rapid fire mode, that mode would be very hard to use at long range (but still possible), since most of the shots would miss. The idea here is not to create two different weapons, but to give the player a feeling of flexibility and control over how he chooses to use the weapon he does have.

The bolts should be different so the player has some visual feedback. The bolts are what he sees when he fires after switching between two weapons.
Besides that, when the bolts come out in rapid sucession during rapid fire mode they may overlap each other. So they probably need to be shorter for the rapid fire mode. The color can be the same, just a bit different in length and width.

You can work with the arc but a narrow arc only means you won't get a target lock unless you are pointed directly (within the given angle) at the target. (If you don't have a lock its useless to fire because flux won't calculate the collision.)

Why don't we leave the theory level and just do it the easy way: use a single gun for the one mode mounted on one of the nulls and two guns (one on each null) for the rapid mode? The nulls are so close together you probably won't really notice the difference. Then you can tweak the guns however you like them.
The main thing is to try it out.

edit: I just want to mention that I don't think that any stock EoC weapons or graphics are appropriate for this mod. The should all be custom made, especially since it is so easy to make them.

If you want to make em, more power to ya! [8D]

Originally posted by Second Chance in the 3D section


I need to look through the films again to check the A and B-wing guns, but the X-Wing needs to have it's guns fire like in single player mode; i.e. each barrel fires in turn, not at the same time. I'm sure you can do that. But let's continue the gun topic in the mod scripting forum.

The X-Wing does have a linked mode too doesn't it? In MP all the guns are linked or not linked.(you can't switch fire modes)

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