Topic: Remember when I started working with Planet Meshes and Weapon Hardpoints? Well,

[Dizzy]

Emerald Edge demonstrated successfully how to re-hardpoint a Planet Mesh the way I wanted to have them located at the equator instead of halfway up the poles. That was a while back. It's been tested and it works. Recently, however, Brezgonne and I consulted and he managed to re-hardpoint ALL 27 Planets so that now all of them are located at the equator.

(For those of you that dont know the problem with Planet hardpoints, let me explain. Hardpoints are where the weapons go. Since this game hit the shelf, we have suffered thru Planets not having any point defense for missiles or suicide shuttles, or for close in ship defense because the hardpoints were located toward the planets poles. Since combat takes place in 2D along the planets equator, the hardpoints are too far away to be effective for Ph3's to fire at anything and the Ph4's on a planet are much less effective being so far away. On the flip side, a ship attacking the planet has true distance from the ship to the planets equator when firing. You can see the problem with this.)

What this means is that hardpoints will now all be located along the equator allowing Phaser 3's to effectively fire as point defense and Phaser 4 range-to-target will now be true distance from the equator to a target object. For an attacker, this means it's probably not a good idea to get in that close to a planet anymore w/o 1st damaging it enough to reduce its weapons and energy levels so it won't return fire when you get within transporter range.

Firesoul and I discussed this as an inclusive feature of the next FS shiplist release way back when. I'll talk to him again to see if it makes the next release. Since the meshes are the only things updated, then any server admin could use this in upcoming server D/L installers, as the fix is under 2MB's.

And the game just keeps getting better... 

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

More importantly, a planet would also be able to launch drones and fighters.

[Dizzy]

Doubt it.

Drones cannot be assigned an arc. Therefore they would pass thru the planet mesh causing the annoying 'impact' sound over and over.

Ftrs would likely be destroyed on launch. Im not sure map objects have the ability to launch anyway. But I'm gonna put a shuttle bay and launch capacity on the planet to test it.

Like drones, AMD Racks will not work correctly either. Plasma D can be give shallow 90` arcs that may work... But anything more and it will impact the planet causing that impact sound. Highly annoying. But that wouldnt be fair to the non-plasma races, so I'm sticking with Ph3's for PD.

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

Hardpoints go on the 'outside' of the mesh.

[Dizzy]

ok whats ur email. Ill send u the meshes and the text file explaining what HP's associate with what arcs. You can test it out. I wont have the time for a while. Go ahead and play with launching ftrs and pf's and using PlaD and AMD. Mb it will work. Be nice if it does.

I do know the PD works, hehe. Tried that.

[Strafer]

From my own observations, fighters and PF originate from the center of the model. So I doubt as well they would survive, even if the planet were hollow. ADD may be as well, the graphics originate from the center but it may have a calculated source from the mountpoint so who knows.

[Capt_Bearslayer_XC]

Hmmm.. does this also mean that the hard points will not be able to fire 'thru' the planets?

[Dizzy]

Hmmm.. does this also mean that the hard points will not be able to fire 'thru' the planets?

Original HPing had arcs of fire. They did not pass 'thru'. The same arcs will be used. FH will still only fire 'front'. The difference is that the weapons are located at the equator, not 10-20k away toward the poles.

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

If you at a shiplist using Excel, you'll notice there are columns for all weapons hardpoints. The hardpoints that are valid are dependant upon the ship. UI. Each weapon hardpoint in the shiplist corresponds to a weapon hardpoint 'object' that is part of every model in the game. Perhaps you have heard some modellers on ocasion say "I havent done the hardpoints yet".
Ship hardpoints identify 'from' where weaponsfire originates on the model. Damage hardpoints identiy incoming weapons fire will strike the model. A good model will have weapons hardpoints arranged to match the ship UI, and damage hardpoints to match damage textures so that weapons fire appears to hit where the damage shows up.
The stock planet models have these hardpoints located in the centre of the model, so I have heard, although I've not verified this for myself. So, by simply moving the hardpoints outside the planet sphere, should solve the problem. A very simple thing to do, I dont know why no one has ever done it before.

[Dizzy]

all of that you said is true, cept planets dont have locational damage textures, or a UI. It is imperative for them to have a HP in the right area of the model that you assign an arc. You dont want a Ph4 HP'd on shield 4 to have an FA arc!

The hardpoints on the planet will matchup with the arcs in the stock list, but if you assign ADD or PlaD, or even heavy directional seeking weapons like Plasma torps, then you need to look closely at the text file I have and the arcs you assign or the plasma may fire into the planet resulting in repeatedly unpleasant collision noises.

[FPF-SCM_TraceyG_XC]

The 360 degree weapons are the difficult ones. Even if you place the weapons hardpoint on top of the sphere, when it fires at a ship (or anything else) that is close into the planet, it will hit the shere. Might be ok for AMD, probably not Pl-D though.

In SFB, ground installations on planets had weird firing arcs and took atmosphere into account. For simplicity, if all the arcs are kept at 60 degrees, and shiplist weaponpoints match the model weaponpoints, with hardpoints on the outside of the sphere, that should cover most cases.

If you placed the 360 degree weapon point out in space somewhere above the sphere, that would help a little, and not look too bad. Needs some experimenting with though.

Damage textures on planets can be done. When the planet is captured, you record the damage percentage its taken and remove it from the map (silent destruction so no explosion). You immediately place a new planet in the same spot, exactly the same that has a model with damaged textures. You then reapply the recorded damage percentage to the planet. Requires special mission scripts though, and a new damaged planet in the shiplist and accompanying appropriately damaged planet model.

I might fire up 3D Studio Max when I get some time and try out moving the hardpoints.

Dizzy, do you still have that Tholian web model?