Aft torpedoes (someone want to try something out?)

[The Joelteon7]

Armada has a fundamental problem when it comes down to firing torpedoes from anywhere on the ship that isn't in the forward position. You can easily rotate hard points and get them to fire aft, but the damn omegaTurn makes aft torpedoes just buzz around and take out the ship, looking rather corny in the process.

So I've had this idea and told a few people about it, but I need someone actually willing to spend about 5 minutes to go crazy and try this out. If my theoretical plan works, you could get sideways and aft firing torpedoes, which combined with slower physics or larger craft would make for a lot more interesting play.

Right, here goes:

1) Place a hardpoint at the rear of a craft (or side, but I think it would be more visible if placed aft).
2) Make sure the hp is facing aft of the model AND the fireArc in the photon ordinance file is limited in such a way (say a good 45 degrees).
3) In the photon ordiance (verify that one, I haven't checked out the files in ages), reduce the omegaTurn (or what controls the turning movement of the torpedo) to a lower amount. Significantly, for the purpose of trying it out.
4) Increase the shotspeed of the torpedo by a *bit*. Whatever you think is worthy.
5) Go in-game and try this out.

This *should* make the torpedo fire aft and not swivvel around and go forward and vice verca. If true, modded ships could have multiple canon torpedo tubes without having 15 torpedoes swarm on the enemy because they turn around...except from the Akira, because it does have a stinking amount of them.

Repeated measures:
A) Try it on the side of a ship. This would enable the Akira to fire her sideways launchers (yes, she does have some!).
B) Put 4 on a starbase in each quadrant. If my theory works, depending on where the ship is, only one would fire at a time (4 seperate torpedoes I mean, not one sharing 4 hp's).

I would be interested to see what someone can do with this.

[Squire James]

hmm I might try that, I'm after adding lateral and aft-firing weapons to KA2 ships.

[Graytail_the_Shaman]

I'd be interested in this if someone gets it to work and works out anything to refine it to make it fairly perfect or just looks good and runs smooth I'd be willing to attempt it.

[Adam_Atlantian]

I'm so on it. I'll post a screen shot or something when i get it working.

Well I figured it out. After a number of tries and different number combinations I wised up:

shotSpeed = 140.0
// This affects the turning radius/rate somewhat unknown.
omegaTurn = 0.0
//The amount of time that the missile obeys the limitations of omegaTurn
//After that, it heads straight for the target
seekTime = 100.0

Putting the omega turn to 0 stops the torpedo from turning and then bumping up the seek time to a high number will keep the torpedo from zipping to the target. With this the ships hardpoint has to be faceing the target in order to hit it. One problem i see with this is the ship fires torpedoes everywhere.

thus i came up with this idea. If your ship fires two torpedoes give it 4 hardpoints for each torpedo on every side of the ship so it doesn't look like the ship is wasteing torpedoes.

I meant to say, even though it's implied, It's the Seek time that makes torpedoes go for the target. The Omega turn just specifies with the Torpedo will do before going for the target. Some of my tries were pretty funny. I've never seen a torpedo chase its tail before lol.

I tested this in A1. I dont know what will happen in A2.

[Graytail_the_Shaman]

cool beans to bad I suck with modeling and putting hardpoints on ships.

[Atlantis]

Hmm, it's a good plan, but I don't really see the point. Every weapon on the ship will be targetting the same enemy, so the fore launcher and the aft launcher will both fire at that same target when it's in arc. And as Armada normally picks the closes hardpoint to the enemy, the aft one will fire while the target is behind your ship, and the fire one will fire when it's in front. So why not just put the fore and aft hardpoints on one torpedo file?

[AdmarilRyan]

well I'm sure you can get a ship to fire at multiple targets at the same time, I thought the fusion cubes did that.

[The Joelteon7]

The point is, you really need this to work with slower ship physics, where positioning DOES matter. Obviously, on the stock game the ships will just turn on their dime and fire the for anyhow, but having the ability to fire aft torpedoes only when the enemy is aft should be something nice for mods to include. It gives a better sense to the ST universe if you have a fleet movement, a ship appears aft and the aft phasers/disruptors/torpedoes kick in rather than your entire fleet turning around and firing.

I'm glad that someone has however got this to work.

EDIT:

well I'm sure you can get a ship to fire at multiple targets at the same time, I thought the fusion cubes did that.

No, they just destroy the target really quickly, so it seems like multiple targetting

[AdmarilRyan]

well....ok....you got me.

If you have very large and slow ships fighting small fast ones this would make a difference, as the small ships could be changing distance all the time and so it would be realistic if all the weapon arcs were firing at independant rates (ie, the back can fire right after the front has even if the front hasn't pased the firedelay time as it is being "reloaded". Of course for that situation we are talking a major physics redo. Getting multi-targeting to work would be nice too but if that isn't already in the game then it could prove very difficult.

[Majestic-MSFC]

Originally Posted by AdmarilRyan

well I'm sure you can get a ship to fire at multiple targets at the same time.

Multi-targeting weapons have been out for years since the Armada 1 days and they have work fairly well, its just a simple addition of a line or two of code to the weapon odf file.