LordMandalore

Hey I know people have talked about this before, but I'm actually trying to get it to work, because I have given up trying to mod the piett beam weapon. Simply because I can only find code for it in a few xml's and what is in those doesn't give me enough to create a second weapon. What i eventually plan on doing is replacing the tractor beam with a mini-hypergun. The problem that I have is that as i've been looking around at all of the places (in .xml files) where the tractor beam and hypergun are i've been seeing a lot of things that i'm not really sure how they function. For example there are several lines about SFX events. Specifically when your looking in the specialstructures.xml there is this line: Unit_Hyper_Velocity_Fire So in this case i'm wondering if rules for the gun firing from the planet are mixed in with this? Does anyone know? So basically what i'm asking is this 1. Does anyone know and can tell me what all of the different SFX's do and all of that kind of stuff 2. Can anyone tell me how to create a new ability for ships? I have a vauge idea of how but I'd rather someone give me some instructions of what i need to do. If i can get answers to #1 specifically then i think that would really help. Because the hyper gun is a special weapon so those darn things always have special rules and thus far i cannot figure out what all of them are doing, so if anyone can tell me that would be nice. -------------------------- AND/OR Does anyone know how to duplicate the piett energy weapon? Because there is no entry for it in projectiles.xml and the only place i can see something that looks like rules for the animation of the laserbeam itself is in gameconstants.xml. And the only other place i can find reference to it is in uniqueunits.xml. But these 2 alone aren't enough to make a new weapon. Because i cant seem to get around having to have piett present for it to work. Because i want to make a new ship that has a beam cannon on it, and i've been having trouble editing the piett beam, and making a ship based hyper gun. So has anyone had any luck with doing something with either of these?

Ah yes this is so true, I honestly don't get why you people would have trouble. SD are accurate against corvettes at close range, which is why I am confused. The default entry in the hardpoints.xml file for most imperial laser hardpoints is Corvette, 7.0 Now to my knowledge the smaller the number the more accurate your ship is, so 7 is pretty darn accurate. But if you want to be even better you can change it to like 1 or something. So it leads me to suspect that your ships fire like one salvo and then shoot at something else. So keep clicking on the corvette over and over if you have to until its dead. Kill them all first, then go after the Capitals. But you can edit the hardpoints.xml file (if you really feel you need to) and go to every hardpoint on imperial ships and look for the line: Corvette, X.0 and make the number smaller. X being the nubmer that is currently there and change it to a smaller number, such as 1.0 OR spread your SD out so that 2 are always far enough away to hit the little punks accuratly. And concentrate on them first.

Well here is what I do when I'm in the space battles. First off I suppose I should tell you all what I usually have in my fleets. 4 VSD / ISD *Reason: Most Power and they launch fighters. 3 Tartan Cruisers *Anti fighter 1 Broadside Cruiser *General purpose for anti fighter/capital The trick that I have found to be the most effective, and the one I use most often, and since i've been using it I have lost almost no battles. First thing I do is I put everything into groups based on function. So assuming that I am on defence (no enemy space station) My first targets are the corvettes, because they are the most important targets that threaten your fleet, and I have everything concentrate on them. Getting rid of this obstacle will allow you to attack their cap. ships. I usually use 3/4 of my SD to attack every corvette that i can find, and let 1 SD start to work on the caps by itsself (going after its hanger bay if the ship has one or turbo lasers). Once their anti fighter ships are gone, is when i split my forces up. I then use my SD to work on their AF/MC, while my fighters an tartans work on their bombers, then fighters. At this point my ships have taken more damage, but very soon my fighters and tartan cruisers will destroy their fighter screen, thus allowing me to concentrate on one MC at a time. Using bombers on their shield generator while my SD go for the hanger (if the ship has one), then turbo lasers, then everything else. This should allow you to do heavy damage on their capitals pretty quick, thus recovering your early disadvantage on the capital vs captial fight. From then on its just cleaning it up, and taking one ship down at a time, and they drop pretty quick at this point with nothing to stop your bombers. All in all, my general advice is you need to clear the way for your bombers, because bombers torpedos go thru shields, some people aren't aware of this, or don't use it to their full potiental. Bombers are the most important unit in your fleet, and your anti-fighter units are next in line. Use your bombers to destroy their shield generators so your capital ships can kill all their turbo laser hard points. Once one enemy ship's Shield generator is gone have your bombers go to the next ship's SG. Kill every ships shield generator first! Then have them go back and help your capitals take the ship down. Because without shields, SD can just rape other ships! Without shields hard points drop really fast, and heres why. On average turbo laser hardpoints have about 350 health. 1 SD can do about 70 damage with 1 turbo laser salvo (assuming you still have all your hardpoints). So do the math, with 4 SD doing around 80 damage each is a combined total of about 280 damage That means that after two salvos their hardpoint is gone! This usually takes less than 10 seconds max! So this is why bombers are the most important unit in my opinion, cuz without shields, your ships hardpoints won't last long at all. This is really effective against the AI. Now when you are attacking I use a similar strat. but what I do depends on who I'm fighting. The AI is stupid regardless of what setting you are playing on. It will come after you with its fighters and corvettes. SO LET IT! Get rid of the corvettes as soon as you can! They will also come at you with their capital ships too. So here is where most people will probably disagree with me. So you just killed all of their anit fighter ships, so this is the point where people will go after the station and try to kill their hangerbay. I don't do that most of the time. I think its better to stay out of the stations gun range and kill off their capital ships first. Yes the station will continue to launch fighters, but if you were smart in the beginning you should not have lost most of your fighters, so while they come at you 1 or 2 squads at a time, you should have more than enough to kill them, SO kill those capitals before going after the station because they are the largest threat. You just need to pay attention while you are killing their capitals for the bombers that the station spawns. Anytime you see bombers have everything that is effective for anti fighter kill them immedatly! (obviously). Once the capital ships are all gone is when you go for the station. Now depending on what level it is can make this part of it harder. By this point they shouldn't have any anti-fighter or capital ships left. So they will still have very few fighters/bombers around (the most they ever seem to be able to have at one time with me is if it's a lvl 5 station they will sometimes have about 3 squads, usually 2 fighters and a bomber). Use your fighters and Bombers to attack the hanger first for two reasons. #1 hangers are the weakest hardpoint and the torpedos go thru shields. Then go after the shield generator. Once that is down I use my SD to attack turbo lasers, and my bombers to kill torpedo launchers, then missile launchers, then lasers. The station, regardless should be down pretty quick. And your losses should be minimal. Luckily the AI (atleast on my machine) goes after Capital ships and ignores the tartans (fools). So my losses usually are just one SD, or if im attacking a lvl 4/5 station with a moderate to large defending fleet, i'll loose 2 VSD on average. It only happened to me once, but the darn AI had 4 MC with a lvl 5 station, so my SD losses were like 3, and my 4th was damaged pretty bad by the end of the battle. And I have seen people talk about planetary Ion Cannons and HyperV guns. My AI thus far has never had a chance to build one lol. Cuz what I do is when I'm playing on a Galactic Conflict map is: I build a good fleet (like the one above) and have piett, tarken, boba fett, vader and a few commanders in it. And send them to every rebel planet one by one. Never with the intent on capturing the planet, just killing the shipyard and the fleet guarding it. Once able I always have an interdictor with me so the fools can't flee. And I systematically go from planet to planet killing all their space stuff over and over, replacing my losses when needed. Which keeps the AI always rebuiling their space stuff and thus far they have never built a Ion Cannon against. I have other fleets I use to conquer, but I really advice having a killer fleet. I've also noticed that their garrisons aren't as big. This is also useful because Stations take a while to build so if you keep blowing them up, they rarely have time to get to lvl 4 or 5 by the time your back to play ;D. Which makes conquering the planet when you have the ground forces to do it sooooo much easier (and for ground attacks i'm an at-at whore, cuz i love the deploy troops feature). If your opponite is smart then you might need a few anti-speeder killers, but the AI usually isn't that smart. So if your getting stuck in a GC game, and the AI (esp. the hard AI) get's too big near the end, try using my killer fleet tecnique. And on a quick note for campains, always take the time to conquer every planet execpt the misson planet. Cuz some of the posts in other threads with people having trouble with the campain modes are giving me the impression that they aren't doing that, so do it! Sry this was kind of long but I hope it helps! PS. Imperials rule!