Is this modification possible.

Sorry guys, was out this weekend, missed this thread.

@Guomindong: you don't want to edit AI.ini because those are global parameters. Well, unless you want to make global changes You were correct, explosion radius for each missile is inside Rockets.xml. However, you must look at the detonator's radius instead of the one for the missile. Each missile has a definition and a detonation, that's how they work. For easy stuff like damage and radius you just edit the detonation. You can refer to this post here or the other posts in that thread.

I was working on some "bowling ball" missiles which bump a ship far away instead of inflicting much damage, but it got funny and weird when you kick capital ships away lol.

[Goumindong]

Originally Posted by Trucidation

Sorry guys, was out this weekend, missed this thread.

@Guomindong: you don't want to edit AI.ini because those are global parameters. Well, unless you want to make global changes You were correct, explosion radius for each missile is inside Rockets.xml. However, you must look at the detonator's radius instead of the one for the missile. Each missile has a definition and a detonation, that's how they work. For easy stuff like damage and radius you just edit the detonation. You can refer to this post here or the other posts in that thread.

I was working on some "bowling ball" missiles which bump a ship far away instead of inflicting much damage, but it got funny and weird when you kick capital ships away lol.

Yea, that doesn't work. The parameter you are referencing for each missile is NOT explosion radius. The parameter you are referencing is the distance from the target that the missile will detonate.

E.G. The explosion_distance on LRM's is between 1.5 and 5. The explosion distance on a MIRV cluster is 20. Yes, this parameter is on the detonator

MIRV clusters do not deal damage in a radius >10 times larger than LRMs. Rather they explode >10 times further away from their target to release their payload.

This is how rockets work

From Modules:

This describes where it pulls descriptions, how the module fits into the module slots, cost, acceptable range of fire, angle of fire, etc

<HomingRocket name="LRM2">
		<short_name>#M_Name_LRM2</short_name>
		<hint>#M_Hint_LRM2</hint>
		<short_desc>#M_SDesc_LRM2</short_desc>
		<long_desc>#M_LDesc_LRM2</long_desc>
		<mesh_name>Rl_lrm2</mesh_name>
		<flat_image>missile_LRM2</flat_image>
		<hit_points>10000</hit_points>
		<mass>5</mass>
		<disable_trade/>
		<cost>350</cost>
		<technology/>
		<attach_type/>
		<recharge_time>6</recharge_time>
		<viewing_angle>20</viewing_angle>
		<dispersion>1</dispersion>
		<min_distance>20</min_distance>
		<max_distance>450</max_distance>
		<max_rocket_count>2</max_rocket_count>
		<seeking_time>3</seeking_time>
		<RocketParams>
			<rocket_name>LRM2_M</rocket_name>
			<seeker_name>Seeker_B</seeker_name>
			<detonator_name>ALR_det</detonator_name>
		</RocketParams>

The three last refer to things in the rockets.xml. Each one has a different function. Caracas defines the creation of the missile itself, seeker the quality of its seeking, and detonator the type of explosion.

From Rockets

	<RocketCarcass name="LRM2_M">
		<short_name>#M_Name_LRM2</short_name>
		<hint>#M_Hint_LRM2</hint>
		<short_desc/>
		<long_desc>#M_Hint_LRM2</long_desc>
		<mesh_name>small_rocket</mesh_name>
		<flat_image/>
		<hit_points>10</hit_points>
		<mass>50</mass>
		<disable_trade/>
		<cost/>
		<technology/>
		<EPR>0.05</EPR>
		<explosion_script>rocket_explosion</explosion_script>
		<work_sound/>
		<silence/>
		<max_speed>35</max_speed>
		<steering_power>0.3</steering_power>
	</RocketCarcass>

This above is the carcass, it includes speed, steering power, hit points(in case it is caught in an explosion) and mass


And

	<DistanceDetonator name="ALR_det">
		<time_to_live>35</time_to_live>
		<damage>200</damage>
		<explosion_distance>1.5</explosion_distance>
	</DistanceDetonator>

This is the explosion itself. It contains damage, how long the rocket will go before it explodes (I.E. real range) and the distance to the target that it will explode at.

Explosion distance is NOT the size of the explosion. Testing this is easier. Set that value to 20, watch as no missile you launch does any damage. Now change it back to 1.5 and then change damage to 2000. Watch as any missile you launch destroys multiple wings.

The size of the explosion is entirely determined by the damage of the explosion.

This is why you can modify SRMs to be MIRVs. Because each individual missile would do a small amount of damage and so the entire explosion would not be large.

Otherwise, if you say, increase the damage of all SRMs by a factor of 3, you will get missiles that do huge amounts of damage with huge AoE. This is what i was trying to avoid. The AoE.

and

	<HomingSeeker name="Seeker_B">
		<accuracy>3</accuracy>
		<anti_jammer>20</anti_jammer>
	</HomingSeeker>

Which defines how accurate your homing is and how resistant to anti-missile systems.

In general you can mix and match any of these to create a missile you want. You can also change the detonator type to ImpactDetonator but that is not recommended (it works just fine) since that makes missiles that are shot down explode on their own.

This is both very strong (enemies that shoot missiles at you when you have active Anti-Missile up generally tend to explode very fast) but very bad. Enemies that are close to you and shoot missiles will have the anti-missile blow you both up.


Such, if you want to modify the radius of damage from the explosion you have to do it through AI.ini or some other method which I have not encountered yet.

The only question is what the other two parameters at the end of the tack in ai.ini do. Rastix says they do nothing. Looking over ai.ini again i tend to believe him (since i see text after semi-colons)

Hmm, didn't do enough testing to notice - sorry guys, looks like I need to update the info there. It worked for my mod since I lowered warhead damage a lot (and hence low aoe). The jamming isn't a problem because we can see how it works in another script.

Well unless Rastix has another way to let you decouple the aoe from the damage then I have no idea. Don't really feel like reinstalling to test either, there are too many hidden limitations in the game. Maybe when Ashes of Victory comes out.

[Goumindong]

The fact that you lowered the explosion distances is also likely why you see rockets doing more "pushing". Warheads that explode close to a target are more likely to actually collide with the target before exploding (there is some amount of delay before they actually pop). And if they collide with the target then they will transfer momentum just like anything else.

[Goblin Wizard]

If you want some fun with missiles try modding alien poison missile (poison detonator). Only this missile uses special editable poisoning script. It's a common script file so you put in it any effect you want. For example you can add real blast wave with Push/Move function, effect which strips enemies of shields, disable their engines, spawn some friendly mercenaries on their backs. You can make a nasty "Marked for Death" perk and deliver it to anyone caught in the explosion radius. Possibilities are countless.

[Goumindong]

Originally Posted by Goblin Wizard

If you want some fun with missiles try modding alien poison missile (poison detonator). Only this missile uses special editable poisoning script. It's a common script file so you put in it any effect you want. For example you can add real blast wave with Push/Move function, effect which strips enemies of shields, disable their engines, spawn some friendly mercenaries on their backs. You can make a nasty "Marked for Death" perk and deliver it to anyone caught in the explosion radius. Possibilities are countless.

that could fix my problem. But I can't seem to find these properties you're discussing in the shippoisoning script. It seems like all that does is tell the game whether or not a ship can be poisoned and the rest is hard coded in the poisondetonator just like anything else.

I mean, I suppose i could make a poisondetonator which did a lot of damage for like 1 second in a very small radius. But then missiles would penetrate shields and you couldn't shoot them at aliens.

edit: XML schema seems to indicate that the poisondetonator is just as hardwired as the rest.

What would be interesting is if i could create a sub extension off of poisondetonator or distance detonator in order to do what I want. Or if i could add another parameter to the schema of impactdetonator and have the game actually use it.

Originally Posted by Goumindong

The fact that you lowered the explosion distances is also likely why you see rockets doing more "pushing". Warheads that explode close to a target are more likely to actually collide with the target before exploding (there is some amount of delay before they actually pop). And if they collide with the target then they will transfer momentum just like anything else.

I deliberately cloned the low default mass for MIRV warheads for my missiles, which is why there is no untoward momentum transfer in my mod.

[Goblin Wizard]

Originally Posted by Goumindong

thatWhat would be interesting is if i could create a sub extension off of poisondetonator or distance detonator in order to do what I want. Or if i could add another parameter to the schema of impactdetonator and have the game actually use it.

You can't. All detonators' parameters are hardcoded. I've never found out what the xml schema is really for.

Below you have an example how the ShipPoisoning script may look.

function ShipCanBePoisoned(ship)
	pilot = ship:GetPilot();
  
  if not (GetCurrentLocation() == "x220") or not (GetCurrentLocation() == "Precursors") or not (GetCurrentLocation() == "DisonSphere") then
    if (pilot == nil) then
  		return FALSE;
  	else
      if (GetQuestLabel("warhead_type") == "depol") then
        ship:SetShield(0);
        ship:PlayFX("Depol.bfx");
        return FALSE;
      elseif (GetQuestLabel("warhead_type") == "blast") then
        return FALSE;
      else
        return TRUE;
      end;
    end;
  else
  	if (pilot == nil) then
  		return FALSE;
  	else
  		if (pilot:HavePerk("Alien")) then
  	    return FALSE;
  		else
  	    return TRUE;
  		end;
  	end;
  end;
end;

--function ShipCanBePoisoned(ship)
--	pilot = ship:GetPilot();
----  flight = pilot:GetFlight();
--  
--  if not (GetCurrentLocation() == "x220") or not (GetCurrentLocation() == "Precursors") or not (GetCurrentLocation() == "DisonSphere") then
--    if (pilot == nil) then
--  		return FALSE;
--  	else 
----  	(GetQuestLabel("warhead_type") == blast) then
--      ship:SetShield(0);
----      flight:Stop();
----      ship:ApplyImpulse(100, Vector3(0, 1, 0));
----      myfunction();
--      return FALSE;
----    else
----      return FALSE;
--    end;
--  else
--  	if (pilot == nil) then
--  		return FALSE;
--  	else
--  		if (pilot:HavePerk("Alien")) then
--  	    return FALSE;
--  		else
--  	    return TRUE;
--  		end;
--  	end;
--  end;
--end;

It's just an example what I've been working on (it's far from what I've expected). GetQuestLabel thing was conncted with special "swich" skill . Every use of that skill changes the missile "warhead" type so without changing missile type you can change the way it works.

The main problem is that this script is connected with every poison detonator you make. It's hard to find good ifs to make it works differently for each type of missile. To make it work like normal missile you have to set poisoning effect damage to 0 and time to something like 1s or even 0.1s.

[Goumindong]

Yea, I am trying to think of what info we can pull off the ship or from a global area that would help us but I am failing pretty hard at it.

[Goblin Wizard]

I don't know exactly what you want to do but you can check through the scripts how the phrase "ship:" is used. You'll have an idea about functions working directly with ship like "ship:GetPilot()". Check this Manual too.